The Astonishing Maybe

by Shaunta Grimes

  Roona shook her head. “She needs my dad.”

  “Roona.”

  “I’m going to rescue him.”

  I kind of half laughed, hoping she was kidding. She was not. I could see that in the way her face set, her chin lifting like she was offended I wasn’t taking her seriously. My laugh turned into just staring at her and blinking. “You can’t rescue someone from prison.”

  “Yes I can.”

  “The prison’s on an air force base.”

  “I’m serious. I’m going to get him out of there. Will you help me?”

  “No, I won’t help you.”

  I expected her to get mad at me. To scream and wake up my parents. To cry. If she had done those things, it would have made sense. But she just went over to my dresser and started to climb onto it, so she could get back through the window.

  “Wait. What are you going to do?”

  She stopped without turning back to me and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

  I’d been up for hours with visions of baby Roona trapped in an inferno twisting in my head. I said the only thing I could think of to stop her. “Your dad almost killed you, Roona.”

  She froze. She wasn’t moving anyway, so it really did seem like she turned to ice, right there by my window. “Don’t say that.”

  “I Googled him,” I said. “It’s true. He started that fire, when you were a baby. That’s why he’s in prison in the first place.”

  “He saved me.” She went from ice to fire, just like that, and jumped back from the dresser to my bedroom floor. Her voice rose and my eyes darted to my door. “He saved me!”

  “From a fire he started. Look it up yourself.”

  “Shut up! You shut up!” She leaned forward, her face close to mine, and then screamed, “I hate you!”

  I stepped back, as if she’d slapped me. Her hands were fisted at her sides and she was shaking like it took all she had to keep from hitting me. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  My bedroom door flew open, and even though I knew that I was in more trouble than I ever had been, even more than yesterday—because I was still in trouble for that—I had never been happier to see my parents.

  Except, when I looked up, it wasn’t my parents at the door.

  “Giddy?” Harper rubbed her eye with one fist and tugged at her nightgown with the other. It was too small now, but it was her favorite because she thought it made her look like a princess. “Giddy, why are you yelling? It’s early.”

  Roona looked at Harper, then me again, then went over to my dresser. She climbed back out the window, headfirst. I stood on my toes to lean over and look out after her. She popped up to her feet and faced me.

  “Well,” she asked. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  I looked back at Harper. She was all the way awake now and staring with wide blue eyes. Maybe if I wasn’t so tired, I would have been able to think of the right thing to say.

  That probably wouldn’t have been, “Meet me under that big tree in the back at eight.”

  “I have something to do this morning.”

  I wanted to ask, but didn’t. I just said, “At three then.”

  Roona left.

  Harper shook her head and said, “Oh no, you won’t meet her at the tree, Giddy. Mom said you’re grounded for life!”

  “Shut up.”

  Harper jerked back. “Well, she did.”

  “I don’t care. And you better not say a word about Roona being here.” I took a step toward her. She squeaked and ran back out of my room.

  As tired as I was, I felt like I was never going to sleep again. Roona, her parents, my parents, the old folks crying, the PTA parents freaking out, the bus to Las Vegas, fire … it all felt like heavy bricks sitting on my chest.

  I lay down, though, and I must have slept because the next thing I knew Mom was calling me to breakfast. Now I felt heavy and groggy, like sleep was a wet blanket covering me.

  Quintons don’t lie around, though. Eventually Mom came in, opened my curtains, and adjusted my lamp (I’d put it back crooked), then put her cool hand on my forehead. “Are you feeling okay this morning?”

  I wasn’t. Everything about Roona and her dad and mom—it was on the tip of my tongue to blurt out that I was afraid my friend was going to do something very, very stupid. That her mother might do something even worse.

  But then, Mom said, “Roona’s going to be okay.”

  “I want to go see her. Please.”

  “Dad and I talked last night, Giddy. We think it would be best if you didn’t hang out at Roona’s house right now.”

  “What?”

  She looked around my room, like she was seeing it for the first time. “Just for a while.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  She sat on the edge of my bed and put her hand on my leg. “I know it feels that way. But it’s for your own good. I just need you to trust me.”

  I sat up, kicked her hand away. “But it isn’t fair. Roona’s my friend.”

  “I know, baby.”

  “She needs me.”

  “She’s going to be okay, I promise. We have to let her family take care of…” She trailed off, waved a hand around her like what she was trying to say was a gnat flying in her face. “Everything.”

  I froze. She knew something she wasn’t telling me. I could see it on her face. And I thought I knew what it was. The only thing that made sense. “Her aunt Jane.”

  “Miranda said her sister is coming to take Roona to Boise.”

  “For how long?”

  Mom shrugged. “I don’t know, Gideon, and it really isn’t our business. Roona will be fine. They have a farm there.”

  “When is she leaving?”

  “Gideon.”

  “What about Mrs. Mulroney?”

  Mom reached for me again, this time brushing the hair from my forehead. “We can’t make people take care of themselves, Gideon. That’s just a fact of life.”

  “Can Roona come hang out here, then?”

  Mom took a deep breath and then exhaled it slowly. “I need to talk to Dad about that. Maybe.”

  That was the best I was going to get right now. “Roona can’t go to Boise. She really doesn’t want to, Mom.”

  “No one wants to leave their parents, Giddy. No matter how bad things get.”

  “But—”

  She stood up and walked to my door. Before she went through it she turned back and said, “Did you know that people who live there call it Boy-Sea? Not Boy-Zee.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  What I did know was nothing like this ever happened in New Jer-sey. Nothing about this move had been what I’d expected.

  * * *

  Dad kissed the top of my head and the top of Harper’s on his way out the door. In New Jersey he had to take a bus every day to work at an ad agency. He was always gone by the time we woke up and usually he didn’t get home from work until after we were in bed.

  In Nevada, we got to say good-bye to him and he had been home for dinner every night.

  Roona hadn’t seen her dad at all, not even once, since she was a baby and almost died in a fire that he started. When I couldn’t sleep, in the middle of the night, I tried to imagine how that had happened.

  Maybe he fell asleep with a cigarette, like my mom was always afraid my grandpa Larry would do before he died. Maybe he left the oven on, which was why I couldn’t make my own frozen pizzas. But I didn’t think that people went to prison for accidents.

  Dad was almost out of the kitchen when I launched myself at him and wrapped my arms around his waist.

  He stopped, said, “Oh,” then hugged me back.

  I wanted to say I was sorry, again, but nothing came out.

  He put a hand at the back of my head and said, “You okay, Boss?”

  Something inside me unclenched and I nodded, suddenly embarrassed. I let go. “Have a good day at work.”

  He smiled, then looked over my head at Mom and said, “I will. You h
ave a good day of summer vacation.”

  Ten

  It felt like I was never going to have another fun day again in my whole life. Harper was happy, though. I played checkers with her. Twice.

  “Let’s watch Finding Nemo,” she said when I won the second time. I never let her win. It used to make her mad, until she started winning for real sometimes.

  I shook my head. “I think I’m going to read.”

  “Reading’s boring.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Yes it is! I hate reading.”

  “You like when Mom reads to you.”

  She started to put away the game. “That’s different.”

  At least I’d had Roona for a little while. Harper didn’t have any friends in Logandale yet. I don’t know what came over me, but I said, “Do you want me to read to you?”

  “Really?” She looked up, the game forgotten. “Fancy Nancy? Or Llama Llama?”

  I shook my head. “Just wait here.”

  I went to my bedroom. I reached for the first Harry Potter book, but I saw The Hobbit sitting on my nightstand and changed my mind.

  Harper didn’t wait for me. She climbed into my bed and was sitting up against the headboard. I sat next to her and opened my book.

  “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

  “What’s a hobbit?” Harper asked. “Why does it live in a hole?”

  “Hush … Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

  “Worms are gross.”

  * * *

  I would have missed it, if Harper hadn’t fallen asleep with her head on my shoulder. I was looking out the window because my eyes were too tired to read anymore.

  Roona walked by in her teenage-Roona getup.

  I sat up so fast that Harper woke up. She blinked and said, “Is the story over?”

  “Stay here.”

  I stood and went to the window. Roona walked into her garage. To her bike. I looked back at my door. Mom was in the living room. Between Mom and Harper, I was going to have to take my chances with my sister. “Can you keep a secret?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “What kind?”

  “Not a bad one. I just need to talk to Roona.”

  She took a breath, let it out slowly, then asked, “Are hobbits good at keeping secrets?”

  “The best.”

  “Will you read to me more later?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  I went out the window as quietly as I could.

  By the time I got around to her, Roona was on her bike at the bottom of her driveway. I stood in front of her, hands out just like the guard at the air force base had done. “Where are you going?”

  “To the grocery store.”

  “What?”

  “Go home, Gideon.” She tried to push her bike around me, but I put my palms on the handlebars. “Move.”

  I didn’t know what to do. My stomach hurt, my head hurt. I felt tears just behind my eyelids and I fought desperately to keep them in. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to save my dad.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She pushed her bike around me and walked it down to the sidewalk.

  I think what freaked me out the most was that I couldn’t imagine what she was going to do. How could a twelve-year-old girl break a grown man out of prison with nothing but a baby blanket, a bike, and a pair of roller skates?

  I looked back at my house. Harper must have kept her promise. Otherwise Mom would be dragging me inside by now. Roona put a foot on the pedal and started to swing herself into the seat.

  I ran after her and grabbed the back of her dress. “Wait.”

  She stumbled and put her foot back on the ground. “What are you doing?”

  “Can’t you…” What? Can’t she what? “Can’t you just say what you’re going to do?”

  “Why?”

  I tightened my fingers around the handful of her dress. “You can’t take the bus to Las Vegas again.”

  “Yes I can.”

  “Where will you get money?”

  Her mouth tightened as she decided whether she could trust me. I held my breath and didn’t let it go until she said, “I took my mom’s debit card.”

  She trusted me. That felt fantastic, for about five seconds. Then what she said sunk in. I let go of her dress. “If your plan is to get yourself arrested—yeah, that’s a really bad, bad plan.”

  “That’s not my plan.”

  It hit me all at once. She didn’t have one. Except for retracing our steps back to Las Vegas, the exact same way, she didn’t have any plan at all.

  She started to get on her bike again.

  “Wait. What about your mom?”

  Roona looked over her shoulder at me. “She hasn’t stopped baking since we got home from Las Vegas.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Should you leave her?”

  “I don’t have a choice.” She took a breath through her nose. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  And then I heard, “Gideon Douglas Quinton, you better get your endangered little rear end in this house!”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Crap,” Roona said. “Crap.”

  I looked at her as Mom yelled my name again. “Gideon!”

  “You can’t tell her.”

  “You can’t go.”

  Roona was my friend. At least she used to be. We’d had an adventure together, just like Bilbo and the dwarves. But I saw her hate me right then. Instead of staring at me, she looked right through me. Then she turned her bike around and wheeled it back toward her garage.

  I turned, too. Mom stood at the door, her hands on her hips, but she didn’t look angry. She watched Roona walk to her house with real concern.

  * * *

  It felt like three o’clock was never going to roll around. The only good thing was that even if Roona did go to buy a bus ticket before then, she wouldn’t be able to leave until the morning.

  Finally, finally, at 2:55, I found Mom working on her scrapbooks at the dining room table.

  She looked up at me and wrinkled her nose. “Do you smell something?”

  I wrinkled mine, too. I did smell something. Something burning, which made my stomach turn after what I’d learned about Mr. Mulroney last night. “Can I go outside?”

  “I don’t want you to go to Roona’s, Gideon. I mean it.” She turned and looked toward the dining room window. “Seriously, what is that smell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She went to the back door and stood on the little stoop for a minute, sniffing and looking around like she might find a brushfire burning right there.

  “It smells like a barbecue to me.” I’d done enough sitting around all day to know that she would want me outside. She had a thing about fresh air. “Can I please just go to the backyard?”

  She finally said, “Okay. But stay in our yard.”

  “I will.”

  “And if that smoke smell gets worse, I want you to come inside.”

  “I promise.”

  Eleven

  “All right,” I said.

  Roona turned to look at me, her dark eyes wide and eager. I instantly felt bad for making her think, even for a minute, that I was going to try to help her break her dad out of prison.

  “All right, you’ll help me?” she asked.

  I shook my head. Roona needed help. For sure. The kind that she’d get at a school counselor’s office. The best I could do for her was let her talk, so I could tear her idea to pieces and let her see how stupid it was. “No. I meant—all right, I’ll listen to your plan.”

  We were sitting back-to-back, I was on my side of the chain link between our backyards, she was on hers. I wasn’t sure about her mom, but mine was obviously still not ready to even think about lettin
g me cross our property line.

  In fact, the reason I could even talk to Roona right now was because we were in the only corner of the yard that Mom couldn’t see from the kitchen window. If she came outside to check on me, she’d blow her top.

  I might not be able to leave our yard for the rest of the summer, Dad said when he called at lunch to see how I was doing. You should have thought harder about the whole circus-in-Nashville thing, Boss.

  It seemed like a hundred years ago when he had pulled over on the side of the road in Tennessee and offered to find me a circus to join. At least he was calling me “Boss” again.

  Roona shifted and the chain link pressed against my back when she pushed her weight into it. She didn’t answer right away. I was pretty proud of myself for not gloating.

  There was no way for a twelve-year-old girl to break her father out of prison. It was ridiculous to even think about it.

  “You don’t have to be such a jerk,” she said softly.

  I turned to look at her over my shoulder, stung by the hurt in her tone. “I didn’t say anything.”

  She picked up the water gun she’d plucked out of her little pool and squirted me. The water was warm almost to the point of being hot. I wiped it off my cheek. “Hey.”

  “You thought it,” she said.

  “I’m a jerk because I thought something?” I stood up. “That’s not fair.”

  She stood up, too. Her hair was a wild bird’s nest around her face and shoulders, hanging down her back in a thick tangle that looked like it hadn’t been brushed since Las Vegas. She had dark circles under her eyes.

  Wonder Roo had really, truly left the building.

  “Where’s your blanket?” I asked.

  “It’s gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’? We brought it back to you.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  “Burned, okay. It was burned.”

  It took a minute for me to understand what she’d said. I looked toward the grill sitting by her back door.

  “You burned it.” Not a question. The smoke smell Mom smelled inside was stronger out here. Not like a barbecue, even though that’s what I’d said. Not dangerous, either, like a house fire or a wildfire. It smelled warm, like a fireplace burning in winter. It wouldn’t have taken much to burn the thin little blanket to ashes.