The Astonishing Maybe

by Shaunta Grimes

  “Okay,” she finally said. “We’ll be back in two hours.”

  My heart thumped against my ribs as I listened to them go out the front door. I listened harder until I heard the garage door open and the car back out of our driveway.

  The clock on the living room wall slowly ticked away five minutes.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said out loud to the empty house.

  I put on my tennis shoes, grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, then went out the back door.

  * * *

  The old folks’ home was a straight shot, once I got on Logandale’s main road. I pedaled as fast as I could, with an internal clock ticking down to two hours.

  If Mom came home early, or if she tried to call, I was toast. Or if Dad left work early—which he could, since it wasn’t a regular workday. Or if someone saw me and told Mom. I didn’t know who. We barely knew anyone. But that didn’t stop the fear from threatening to swallow me whole.

  It took me about ten minutes to ride to the old folks’ home, but it felt like an hour. I parked my bike, cursed myself for not remembering I’d need a lock, and said a quick prayer that no one would steal it.

  I wouldn’t be there long, anyway. Miss Oberman’s truck wasn’t in the parking lot. I needed to get inside and ask her mother how I could find her.

  The problem was I was trapped outside by the keypad lock.

  I paced back and forth, waiting with no patience at all for someone to come and unlock it.

  It took awhile, but I got lucky. A man and woman about my parents’ age came to the door with a couple of kids. I stood near my bike, trying not to look weird or suspicious.

  The man opened the lock and herded his family in before going in himself.

  I caught the door before it swung shut and followed them as closely as I dared. I stood near the two kids until the receptionist was caught up with signing the family into her big black book.

  Then I took off down the hallway that led to room 115.

  No one was crying today, at least. I didn’t see any evidence of the Mean Reds, either. I was grateful for that as I walked fast toward Mrs. Oberman’s room.

  Her door was closed. Roona had just walked in last time, but I couldn’t make myself do it. What if she was sleeping? Or worse. What if she was dressing?

  I knocked softly. When I didn’t hear anything, I knocked again, louder.

  An old woman’s voice called, “Come on in, Theresa.”

  I opened the door. Clearly, I wasn’t Theresa. Mrs. Oberman squinted at me from her wheelchair, parked near the window.

  “Hello,” I said, suddenly shy.

  “Do I know you? I think you’re in the wrong room.”

  “Um…” Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m friends with Roona Mulroney? We visited you, you know, on your birthday.”

  “Roona,” the old woman said. “Sweet girl. We haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I really need to find your daughter. Can you help me? Maybe give me her address?”

  “Theresa? She—”

  “Mother?”

  I turned, startled. Miss Oberman, still old, but not nearly as old as her mother, stood in the doorway. She looked at me with narrowed eyes and I wished I was just about anywhere else on Earth.

  Not Boise, though. That helped me stand my ground.

  “You’re Roona’s neighbor,” Miss Oberman said. “Going to the middle school in the fall.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

  “Is Roona here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Is everything okay?” Miss Oberman sat on the edge of her mother’s bed. “Is Miranda okay?”

  She knew. For some reason that released the knot of tension in the center of my chest and everything came pouring out. “I don’t think so. Roona says she has the Mean Reds and I’m not totally sure what that is, I’ve never seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but I know it’s not good. It’s really not good.”

  “What happened?”

  “She’s baking all these pies. And cookies and fudge and stuff. And Roona’s dad isn’t in the air force. He’s in prison.” I covered my mouth with my hand.

  “It’s okay,” Miss Oberman said. “I knew that already. Go on.”

  “We went to Las Vegas, me and Roona, to see him. Only we couldn’t, because”—I waved my hand to encompass the whole prison thing—“well, you know.”

  “Who took you to Las Vegas?”

  “We went by ourselves,” I said. “On a bus.”

  Her eyebrows shot up and I thought it had probably been a long time since anyone surprised her. “Go on.”

  I thought about it for a moment. I had promised Roona that I wouldn’t tell my parents, but I hadn’t promised that I wouldn’t tell Miss Oberman, so I did go on.

  “Roona really needs help,” I said. “I don’t know how to help her.”

  “You can tell me,” Miss Oberman said. “I’ve known Roona since she was a kid, her mother, too.”

  “Roona told me her mother grew up on a farm in Boise.”

  “She moved there when she was in sixth or seventh grade,” Miss Oberman said. “She moved back here after she married Roona’s father.”

  “Roona’s aunt Jane is coming to get her next week,” I said. I was up against the wall of the truth. I’d have to either tell or walk away.

  “To take her to the farm.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Miss Oberman’s face changed. “I knew Jane when she was younger, too.”

  My heart sunk into my belly. “Roona can’t go to Boise.”

  “No,” Miss Oberman said. “No, I don’t guess she can.”

  I froze. She knew that, too. Maybe not the whole truth, but enough to not make me say out loud that Roona’s aunt had hit her with a stick hard enough to leave scars.

  “Can’t she stay with you?” I asked. “I tried to talk my parents into letting her stay with us, but they think she’s a bad influence. Only she’s not. She really isn’t. She’s my friend—”

  “You’re a good friend, Gideon. I’m glad Roona has you.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “No, she’s not the kind of girl who would let someone do the asking for her, if she knew.”

  “I think her mom really needs help, too. Roona’s afraid if she goes to Boise—”

  Mrs. Oberman made a noise from her wheelchair. “Sad story, those two girls. Their father…”

  I turned to look at her, confused. “Which two girls?”

  “Miranda and Jane,” Miss Oberman said. “Their father was … well, he wasn’t a very good man. There wasn’t a lot we could do in those days.”

  “You knew them, too, Mrs. Oberman?”

  “Mother was a social worker,” Miss Oberman said. “You should go on home now, Gideon. I’m glad you came here to talk to us.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. She was right. My internal countdown-to-Mom was still ticking away. I wasn’t sure whether Miss Oberman was going to help, or what she was going to do if she did help. But I felt better for telling someone.

  Roona was going to hate me if she found out.

  Fifteen

  I raced home, my brain scrambling for a reason I didn’t answer the phone, in case Mom had tried to call. I thought I was probably okay, because if she’d tried and I hadn’t answered, the car probably would have been in the garage.

  It wasn’t.

  I ran around to the backyard, to get into the house through the kitchen. Out of habit, my eyes darted to Roona’s yard. She wasn’t in it.

  What if her aunt showed up early?

  What if Mrs. Mulroney had hurt herself or Roona?

  What if Roona really did run off to try to break her father out of prison somehow?

  I shook my head, hard. Was this what Mom lived with all the time? A thousand what ifs every time I wasn’t in her sight?

  I went i
nside and took a record-fast shower, so I could use that as an excuse if Mom asked why I didn’t answer her call.

  I wanted to go to Roona’s, but I didn’t. What was I going to tell her? That I’d told her secret to someone I barely knew?

  * * *

  Mom called after I was out of the shower and lying on the couch pretending to watch Terminator. It was an old movie, but I’d seen it a bunch of times with Dad when Mom was off somewhere with Harper and it made me feel better to put it on, even if I couldn’t focus on it.

  “We’re on our way home,” she said. “How’s everything there?”

  What she meant was did you go to Roona’s? Or maybe, did Roona come over? “Fine,” I said. “Just sitting here all alone.”

  “I hope you’re not watching cartoons,” she said.

  “I’m not.” Not a lie.

  “Can you take the ground turkey out of the freezer? I thought I’d make tacos tonight.”

  “Sure.”

  I hung up and went into the kitchen, found the meat in the freezer, and put it on the counter. Then I went back to doing absolutely nothing.

  My brain was working, though. A million miles an hour.

  I stayed there, thinking about Roona and her secrets and her problems, until I heard the garage door open. I clicked off the TV and sat up before Harper came barreling in.

  “That was so awesome!” She ran in circles around the coffee table. “Isabella is my best friend, Giddy. I have a best friend, just like you and Roona.”

  “Gideon will make friends when school starts,” Mom said as she put down her purse.

  I looked up at her. “I took out the meat.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  Harper plopped next to me on the sofa. “Want to watch Finding Nemo?”

  I stood up. “Not right now.”

  * * *

  The rest of the afternoon stretched on and on. Now that Mom was home, she wouldn’t let me just bury myself in movies or television. Or video games.

  She had a thing about screen time.

  I sat at my desk with my notebook open to my plan, staring out my window.

  I wanted Roona to come by. The more time that passed without her doing that, the deeper the dread sitting in the pit of my stomach buried itself.

  I hadn’t seen her all day. Not in her backyard. Not at my window. Nowhere.

  Dad finally got home at six, and a few minutes later, he knocked on my door and said, “Hey, Boss.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Dinner’s just about ready.”

  I closed my notebook and slipped it into my desk drawer. I hoped it wasn’t too obvious that I had something important in there. “Okay, thanks.”

  Dad came all the way into my room and sat on my bed. “How was your day?”

  I turned in my chair to face him. “It was okay.”

  “You know,” he said as he loosened his tie. “Mom will forgive Roona.”

  “It wasn’t all her fault,” I said. “She didn’t make me go.”

  “I know. Mom knows, too. She just worries about you.”

  “Roona’s my friend,” I said. “And she’s our neighbor.”

  “I know it. I promise, just give it a while. A couple of weeks.”

  “I thought we were supposed to help our friends and neighbors.”

  Dad’s mouth tightened and he stood up. “Five minutes till dinner.”

  * * *

  Tacos are Mom’s specialty. And they never had any gluten to start with, so they were the same as they always had been.

  I just couldn’t eat much. My stomach was in knots. Mom was watching, though, so I forced down most of one.

  “Isabella’s birthday is in three weeks,” Harper said. “I’m invited.”

  “That’s great,” Dad said.

  “Oh my gosh, Giddy.” My sister took a big bite of her taco and chewed it before going on. “Do you think that Roona’s mom will make Isabella’s birthday cake?”

  I was a little startled by the idea of Harper, or anyone else, eating a cake baked by Mrs. Mulroney in the state she was in now. “No.”

  “Well, she might.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Before Harper could argue anymore, someone knocked on our front door. If someone had taken a picture of us in that moment, it would probably have been funny. Everyone but me had food halfway to their mouths.

  My heart clenched.

  In New Jersey, people knocked on our door all the time. But not here. We didn’t know anyone in Nevada except Roona and her mom, and if they were here, then something was wrong.

  “What in the world?” Mom asked.

  Dad put his taco down and stood up. When Harper did, too, he put a hand on her shoulder. “You stay here.”

  I turned in my seat and watched him go to the door and open it. I saw blue and red lights flashing in front of our house and I stood up.

  “Gideon,” Mom said.

  I followed Dad. The taco I’d managed to eat sat like a lead ball in the pit of my stomach as I stood behind him. Miss Oberman stood on our porch with her arm around Roona.

  “Mr. Quinton?” Miss Oberman said. “My name is Theresa Oberman. I’m a friend of the Mulroneys.”

  Dad stayed where he was, blocking the opening in the door with his body so I could barely see Roona. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “No.” Miss Oberman tightened her arm around Roona. “But it will be.”

  “I don’t think I understand.” Dad sounded genuinely confused. He didn’t know all of Roona’s secrets the way I did.

  “Roona’s mother is very ill. I’d like to go with her to the hospital, but I don’t think it’s a good place for a little girl. She thought maybe she could stay with you for a couple of hours.”

  I held my breath as Dad looked over his shoulder at Mom, who’d come up behind me with Harper. Mom reached for the door and opened it wider. “Of course,” she said.

  Roona closed her eyes and tears fell down her cheeks. Miss Oberman bent and whispered something in her ear, then pushed her gently into our house. Dad moved out of the way for her and she came right to me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just hugged her back.

  Miss Oberman said, “If you’ll give me your number, I’ll call in an hour or so. I should know more then.”

  Roona held on tighter while the adults exchanged telephone numbers, and then Dad shut the front door.

  “Are you hungry?” Mom asked. “We’re having tacos for dinner.”

  Roona let me go and took a deep breath. “I’m not hungry. Thank you for letting me come over.”

  Mom reached for her, brushed her bangs from her forehead. Then she looked at me. “Why don’t you take Roona to the living room and let her rest on the couch for a while, Gideon? She looks worn out.”

  * * *

  “You told Miss Oberman, didn’t you?” Roona asked quietly when we were in the other room sitting side by side on the couch. I almost lied. The word no was literally on the tip of my tongue. But then she added, “Truth.”

  “I went to the old folks’ home and found her.”

  “By yourself?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t tell my parents.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “I showed them my back.”

  “Your mom, too?”

  Her face scrunched and her breath caught, but she didn’t start to cry. “She was so sad. Sadder than blueberry pie.”

  “She cried?” I asked.

  “I thought I was going to drown.” Roona wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Why was there an ambulance?”

  Roona’s face crumbled again. She shook her head and took a deep breath. After she blew it out again, she said, “My mom needed it.”

  “Did she—” I didn’t know how to finish that question. Hurt herself? Take too much medicine again? Try to hurt Roona?

  “She was afraid she would.” Roona picked at the edges of the blanket she was s
itting on. “Miss Oberman was afraid she would.”

  “You don’t have to go to Boise.” Surely not now. Not after both Mrs. Mulroney and Miss Oberman saw her back. “Do you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m staying with Miss Oberman until my mom is better.”

  I sat back into the couch, relieved. “That’s good. That’s real good, Roona.”

  “She said she’d ask about taking me to see my dad.” She shrugged one shoulder. “If he wants to see me.”

  My mom walked into the living room just then. She had two bowls of ice cream in her hands. “It’s not pie,” she said. “But I thought maybe you could use a treat.”

  Epilogue

  It would be a while before Roona told me more about what happened that night.

  “Miss Oberman asked about my back,” she said without looking at me. She’d already forgiven me for telling her secret, but guilt bit into me anyway. “I didn’t know how she knew. I tried to say there wasn’t anything wrong.”

  “But you showed her,” I said.

  “Mom got upset. She was angry at Miss Oberman for thinking that she’d let me get hurt.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “She pulled my shirt up, to show that there weren’t any marks.”

  But there were marks. “She saw them.”

  “She wasn’t my mom anymore,” Roona said. “I mean, she was. But she wasn’t. Know what I mean?”

  I didn’t. My parents were always my parents. Quinton-ish. Normal. I’d never appreciated that before, but I did now.

  “She started crying,” Roona said. “She couldn’t stop. She … she crawled under our kitchen table and curled up in a ball.”

  “That’s when Miss Oberman called the hospital?”

  Roona nodded. “She crawled right under the table with Mom and held her like she was a little girl.”

  I knew the rest. Miss Oberman brought Roona to our house and took Mrs. Mulroney to the hospital. She’d been there three weeks.

  “Not forever, though,” Roona said. “She’s already getting better.”

  In the meantime, Roona was living with Miss Oberman in a little house about half a mile from ours.

  I still wasn’t allowed to cross the street with my bike, but sometimes I did anyway.