The Astonishing Maybe

by Shaunta Grimes

  Eight

  It took an hour and a half for my parents and Mrs. Mulroney to get to Nellis Air Force Base. My parents arrived in our SUV with Harper in her booster seat in the back. Roona’s mom followed in her yellow VW bug.

  Mom’s teeth were clenched, her eyes red rimmed. She pulled me against her as soon as she saw me, then pushed me away and held on to my shoulders. “Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again. Do you hear me?”

  I nodded, but I was looking at Dad. He was wearing a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and the purple tie Harper and I had given him for Christmas last year was loosened around his neck. He probably didn’t even make it to work that morning. I’d made him call in when he just started his new job, and realizing that made my stomach hurt.

  I had never seen him look the way he did. He’d been crying. He didn’t look angry or relieved. He looked disappointed, and it made me feel sick to my stomach.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He held Harper in his arms. He didn’t hug me, like Mom did. He just shifted one shoulder. Call me Boss, I thought. Please, call me Boss. He said, “I’m glad you’re okay, Gideon. We were really worried.”

  Harper pressed her face against his neck. She didn’t look at me at all.

  Roona and I had spent the time while we waited for our parents to pick us up sitting in Mrs. Farley’s office. She was an administrator, she told us, and I thought that was probably something like a principal. Her office definitely felt like a principal’s office.

  Roona had sunk into some kind of funk where I couldn’t reach her. She didn’t speak to me or Mrs. Farley for the whole ninety-minute wait. She didn’t answer when I asked if she was okay. She didn’t take the can of Coke that the guard offered her.

  I drank both cans of Coke and had to pee twice. When Roona got up to use the bathroom, too, I went over to Mrs. Farley’s desk. “Can’t she just see him?”

  Mrs. Farley looked sympathetic. “I wish that I could let her.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “First, because it’s not up to me. But also, she’s a minor here alone. There are protocols for visitors, especially since we’re a military base. It just doesn’t work the way you want it to. I’m sorry.”

  I went back to my seat and when Roona came back, she handed me my ham sandwich. She didn’t eat hers. She just sat and held it in her lap until her mother arrived. When Mrs. Farley asked her and her mother to come into her office, Roona threw her sandwich away.

  Mrs. Mulroney and Roona came back out from the office fifteen minutes later, both of them with red eyes from crying. Neither of them looked at me and I didn’t know what to say, so I just watched them walk outside.

  Mrs. Farley called my parents and me back into her office next. I walked slow, like I was being led to Smaug’s lair to be eaten by the dragon from The Hobbit.

  And then I saw Roona’s blanket, folded neatly on the chair she must have been sitting in. I started toward it.

  “Gideon,” Mom said. “Come back here.”

  “Roona left her blanket.” When none of the adults answered, I said, “She needs it.”

  Mrs. Farley picked it up and handed it to me. I hugged it against my body and wondered if it was all I had left of the old Roona. I hadn’t known her very long, but it seemed to me like she would never be herself again.

  I wished that Roona had left a couple of the happy brownies for my parents. It was going to be a long drive home.

  * * *

  “I don’t even know what to say to you,” Mom said half an hour later as we drove away from the air force base. “Do you know how worried we’ve been?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it.

  “What were you thinking?” Dad asked as he drove with both hands on the wheel. He didn’t look at me in the rearview mirror.

  “I didn’t want Roona to go by herself.”

  “If you were worried about Roona, you should have talked to us,” Mom said.

  I slumped in my seat, still holding on to Roona’s blanket. It didn’t give me any magic power. I wished it could speed up time so we could just be home already and I could be sent to my room. We followed Roona and her mother all the way home and I wondered what was happening in their little car.

  * * *

  I started to go to my room as soon as we got home. No need to be told. Mom stopped me, though. “Not so fast, Gideon.”

  I stopped and turned toward my parents. They stood together in the middle of the living room. Harper stood between them and me.

  “Go to your room, Harper,” Dad said.

  Not fair.

  “What did I do?” Harper asked.

  “Nothing, honey. We just need to talk to your brother.”

  She pouted, but walked to her bedroom.

  I held on to Roona’s blanket more tightly and asked, “Can I take this next door?”

  Dad shook his head. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “But she needs it.”

  “Give it to me.” Mom held out her hand. I held on tighter. “Now, Gideon.”

  I gave it over. “It’s really important to her.”

  “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  Mom folded the faded pink blanket and my breath caught in my throat. It was just a blanket. A worn-out baby blanket. It didn’t have any magic in it at all. Neither did the blueberry pie or the cookies at the PTA meeting or the brownie Roona gave the man on the bus.

  Magic wasn’t real. And I was an idiot. “I’m sorry.”

  “I bet you are,” Dad said.

  I squirmed. He thought I was sorry I got caught. And he was right. I was sorry I got caught, even though I knew it was coming right from the beginning. But I was also sorry I made him cry. Sorry I made Mom worry. Sorry that I’d never believe in magic again for the rest of my life.

  “Seriously, I don’t even know what to say to you,” Mom said. She looked toward me, but not really at me.

  “I couldn’t let her go alone.”

  I didn’t expect that to work, so it came as a complete shock when Dad’s face softened for the first time since he showed up at Nellis Air Force Base. Mom looked at him, then me again, then shook her head and walked into the kitchen with Roona’s blanket.

  “Do you know the things that could have happened to you, Gideon?” Dad sat on the sofa, like the strength had gone out of him. “I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “A thousand things could have happened.”

  But they didn’t. I wanted to say that, but I thought better of it. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “What did you think would happen?” Mom asked from the kitchen. “How did you think I’d feel when I found that note?”

  Anger spiked in my guts, out of nowhere. Before I could stop it, it came shooting out of my mouth. “I said I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s not like I’ve never been out on my own before!”

  “What are you talking about?” Dad asked. Mom’s face froze. She shook her head once, then closed her eyes.

  Mom pushed her glasses to the top of her head and wiped her eyes.

  She still wouldn’t look at me and it made me angry. “I spent a whole day with the police when I was four.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dad said.

  Mom sat on the sofa next to him. She finally did look at me then. And she looked like I’d reached out and slapped her. “You can’t possibly remember that.”

  “What?” Dad looked at her and I felt like the world’s biggest rat. For most of my life it had been our secret and I told. “He can’t remember what?”

  “When Dad was so sick,” she said. “Remember, Gideon and I went to Philadelphia?”

  “She left me at the gas station,” I said. It just burst out of me. Like pus from a popped zit. “She forgot me. And I was fine. And I was fine today, too!”

  “You left him at a gas station?” Dad stood up.

  “My dad was dying,” Mom said. Dad held both hands u
p to stop her. “I should have told you.”

  “Go to your room, Gideon,” he said.

  “Dad—”

  “Just go.” He looked at me, avoiding Mom. “It’s fine. Just go.”

  * * *

  I’d ruined my family. I lay on my bed and covered my face with a pillow. I’d ruined everything with my big mouth.

  My parents would get divorced. Mom would have to be a nurse again. Harper and I would only see Dad on weekends, like my friend Frankie in Wildwood. Or maybe they’d have a big court fight, because Mom forgot me at the gas station. Maybe Mom would be arrested and go to jail like Roona’s dad.

  I jumped off my bed like it had bitten me and went back into the living room, ready to beg my parents to stay together. I stopped dead at the end of the hallway.

  My parents stood in the middle of the room. Dad had his arms around Mom and her face was buried against his shoulder. He brushed his hand over her hair and whispered something I couldn’t quite hear.

  Okay, I thought. Okay. And I went back to my room.

  * * *

  My whole family felt like it was running in slow motion. For the rest of the day, neither of my parents brought up my Las Vegas adventure. Even Harper was way less hyper than usual.

  “Did you give Roona back her blanket?” I asked Mom while she made dinner.

  “Not yet.”

  “Can I?”

  She stirred rice into water. “I’ll do it later.”

  “She really needs it.” I couldn’t stand to think of Roona next door, alone with her shaky mother, without her blanket.

  “She wouldn’t have left it if it was that important to her.”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Roona and the look on her face when that woman told her that her dad was a prisoner. Mom was wrong. She had it backward. Roona wouldn’t have left her blanket if she was okay. “I just want to make sure she’s—”

  “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “I don’t think she’s Wonder Roo anymore.”

  “What?” Mom put the lid on her pot and turned to look at me.

  “Can we go together to give it to her?”

  She looked at me a minute, then sighed. “Fine.”

  She set the timer on the microwave for twenty minutes for the rice, then walked out to the living room. Roona’s blanket was on the table by the door.

  “Keep an eye on the rice for me?” she asked my dad. He was sitting on the sofa with Harper. The Disney Channel was on, but it didn’t seem to me like they were watching it. He lifted his chin and we left.

  * * *

  When Mrs. Mulroney opened the front door, neither of us said anything. Her hair was the same color as Roona’s, dark brown, with the same thick curls. Every other time I’d seen her, it had been pulled back in a knot behind her head. Now it was loose and sticking up all around her head in a cloud.

  Her eyes were dull. She seemed to see us, but not know who we were or why we might possibly be standing at her front door. She wiped at her runny nose with the back of her hand and finally focused on Mom.

  “Daria,” she said. “Roona has … well, she has a mind of her own is what. She gets an idea in her head and it just sticks.”

  Mom looked concerned. She had her nurse face on, and suddenly I was scared. That face meant something was really wrong. “Is Roona here?”

  “Oh yes. She’s not leaving here for a good long time,” Mrs. Mulroney said.

  “Gideon picked up her blanket this afternoon.” Mom lifted it toward Mrs. Mulroney.

  She reached for it and as soon as her fingers closed around the soft, pink fabric, she started to cry. Mom handed me the blanket and said, softly, “Gideon, why don’t you go find Roona and give this to her.”

  I took it, but was a little afraid to move. Like maybe it was some kind of trick. When both women just looked at me, I sidled into the house and then moved quickly toward Roona’s bedroom.

  She was sitting on the floor, under her window, curled up with her knees hugged to her chest in a patch of sunlight like a cat.

  “Roona?”

  She looked up at me. “What are you doing here?”

  I held out her blanket. “You left this.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  I’d only known Roona for a week, but the idea of her giving up on Wonder Roo made me feel weirdly off balance. “Are you sure?”

  She sat up, crisscross applesauce, and said, “Wonder Roo is full of shit.”

  My eyebrows shot up. The curse word coming out of Roona’s mouth tickled something inside me. Laughter bubbled up and when I tried to hold it back, it choked me.

  “Don’t laugh at me!” She stood up.

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are!”

  I swallowed, trying to get myself under control, and thrust the blanket toward her. “Please take it.”

  She’d twisted her hair into two braids, like the first time I’d seen her on her porch. Her face screwed into an angry mask. I took a step back, expecting her to scream or come after me to push me out of her room or something.

  Instead, she reached up and took the blanket from me. “Fine.”

  My internal Mom radar told me that my name was going to come from the living room any second. “Is your mom okay?”

  “No, she’s not okay.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. My parents had never, ever not been okay. I’d never once worried about them the way that Roona must have been worried about her mom right now. Even just a couple of hours ago, when I blurted out that I’d been left at the gas station, my worry only lasted a few minutes.

  “What are you going to do?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t do anything, I guess. Can I?”

  Her father was in a federal prison camp. Her mom was sick in a way that I couldn’t really wrap my head around. Something bad had happened in Boise, which should have been a safe place. I felt absolutely helpless. “Should you call your aunt?”

  Roona shook her head. “No way.”

  She hugged the blanket and rubbed one edge between her fingers.

  “Gideon, it’s time to go.” Mom’s voice came from the living room. Her calm voice. The kind she’d use when Harper smashed her thumb in a door or I had a bad day at school.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Roona.

  She shrugged one shoulder. She had her blanket hugged to her with both arms, and that made me feel better.

  Nine

  I set my alarm clock for three a.m. and tried not to think too much about the trouble I would be in if either of my parents woke up and found me on the computer in the middle of the night.

  At this point I was already in so much trouble that a little more seemed like no big deal. What were they going to do?

  I thought it would be hard to sleep, but when my alarm went off, I was deep in a dream about being on that Greyhound bus with Roona. Everyone in the other seats sat frozen, like people in the wax museum we went to last summer. Even Roona. The bus drove on and on through the desert and I was the only one who noticed.

  I stumbled into the living room, groggy, tempted to just go back to bed.

  But I had to know.

  Our computer was on a small desk under the window. It was the same in Wildwood. Dad liked to look out when he worked there. I glanced over my shoulder at the hallway, half expecting one of my parents to be standing there. Then I turned on the monitor.

  The computer let out a little three-note blurt and I nearly came out of my skin. I covered my own ears, as if that would help. My heart felt like it had jolted up into my head and I wasn’t groggy anymore.

  I looked at the hallway again and held my breath, but no one came out. I didn’t hear my parents’ bedroom door open. When I could breathe again, I carefully typed “Curtis Mulroney” into the search bar.

  The results popped up almost instantly and I knew right away that Roona had never Googled her father’s name. I’d never Googled my parents, either, and as soon as I
had that thought I felt queasy. Like that time I ate a cracker with fish eggs on it at my aunt Laura’s house when I was eight.

  I felt like I was snooping. Like I was digging through Roona’s personal, private things.

  I clicked the first link and read this:

  Curtis Mulroney, 25, was arrested today in Las Vegas after a three-day manhunt. Mulroney is suspected of arson. Authorities suspect the Logandale plumber of starting a house fire after a drunken argument with his wife. The Mulroneys’ infant daughter was sleeping in the house. There were no injuries.

  “Oh my God.” I looked back at the hallway, suddenly wishing that my mom or dad would come out. It would be worth getting in trouble if it meant not sitting alone in the dark with the knowledge that Roona’s father was in prison for lighting a fire that could have killed her.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t make myself click any more links. Eventually I turned off the computer and went back to bed. But not to sleep. I didn’t sleep anymore that night.

  * * *

  I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling sick to my stomach, when Roona knocked on my window at dawn. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  She looked through the window at me. Her face was puffy and red, like she’d spent the whole night crying. Her hair was a halo of tangled curls. She waved one hand toward herself and said, “Meet me on your porch.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m not allowed.”

  She pinched her lips together, then came closer. “Fine. Then open the window.”

  She obviously wasn’t going away and if I opened the window, at least I wouldn’t have to yell through it, so I did. Before I knew what was happening, though, she was coming headfirst into my room, right over my dresser. I grabbed the lamp before it crashed to the ground.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I need your help, Gideon.”

  I put the lamp down once she was standing in the middle of my room. “What’s wrong?”

  “My mom’s sick,” she said. “Like before.”

  “Like when you went to your aunt’s house.”

  She nodded and wrapped her long, skinny arms around her body. “I’m scared.”

  “Do you want me to get my mom?” I wanted to get my mom. Badly.