Escape Velocity

by Robin Stevenson

  He hasn’t even got a Dana Leigh tattoo yet.

  “You think she’d give me another chance?” Dad asks.

  I hesitate. I don’t really know, and it doesn’t seem fair to get his hopes up. Then again, maybe hope is what he needs. “She says you have a good heart,” I tell him at last.

  “Well, kiddo, you can tell her my good heart is a damn sight better now than it was a week ago.”

  I laugh. “I love you, Dad,” I say before I hang up the phone.

  I walk into my bedroom and pick up the copy of my mother’s book that has been lying on my bed since I ran off last night. I trace the words Escape Velocity with my finger, follow the fine black lettering, slide my finger down to my mother’s name and follow the loops and curves that spell out Zoe Summers.

  I open the book and remember a game I used to play as a kid: I would ask a question, any question—Will I get a good mark on my math test? Will Chloe sit with me at lunch? Will Dad get me a drum set for my birthday?— and then flip open any book to any page, drop my finger to any line, and see what wisdom the words held for me. “Is my mother going to call on my birthday?” I asked hopefully, when I was maybe nine. “‘I have been Foolish and Deluded,’ said Pooh. ‘I am a Bear of No Brain at All.’” And of course, my mother didn’t call.

  I wonder what advice my mother’s book would give me. I try to formulate a question in my mind, try to figure out what it is I need to know. “Does she love me?” I whisper at last. I start to open the book; then I stop. I’ve caused myself and my mother enough trouble, trying to wring truth from her fiction. Besides, what difference does it make? I know she would say she loves me, if I asked. But that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the past. It doesn’t change who she is.

  I don’t know what time my mother will get back, and I think I’ll go insane if I sit here by myself all evening. I leave a note on the kitchen counter and walk over to Justine’s, on the off chance that she’ll be home.

  Justine is surprised but seems pleased to see me.

  “I was wondering if you felt like doing something,” I say tentatively. “If you’re not busy.”

  She makes a face. “Just doing homework. But I could probably stop. Twist my arm.”

  “Oh. If you need to work, that’s okay.”

  “That’s your idea of twisting my arm? You need practice.” She grabs her coat and slips out the front door.

  “I was just procrastinating anyway.”

  I grin. “You sure? I don’t want to be a bad influence.”

  Justine snorts. “You? Puh-lease.” She buttons up her long coat. “Feel like walking?”

  “Sure, whatever.” I stick my hands in my pockets and match her long strides. “So you won’t believe what just happened.”

  She looks at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Heather showed up at the apartment.”

  “Oh my god. Really? Did your mom flip out?”

  I shake my head. “No. Well, sort of, but we talked. It’s all okay. Heather was pretty horrible though.”

  “Horrible how?”

  “To my mom. Blaming her for stuff that happened years ago.” I step sideways to avoid a puddle. “I think she’s probably mentally ill, so maybe it’s not her fault exactly, but still. I can see why my mom can’t handle having her around.”

  “Mmm. Well, at least now you know.”

  “Yeah. No more secrets.” I look at Justine. She is wearing huge silver hoops in her ears, and they swing back and forth as she walks. “That’s something, I guess.”

  “It’s what you wanted, right? Some answers?”

  “Yeah.” I kick a bottle cap along the sidewalk, and it skitters off the curb and into the road. “But I thought I’d feel better than this. You know?”

  “Nope.” She stops walking and grabs my arm. “Come sit down, okay?” She points to a bench in a small park across the street.

  “It’ll be wet,” I protest, but I follow her anyway and sit down beside her on the bench, which is graffiti-covered but reasonably dry. “What?”

  Justine’s eyes are locked on mine. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” I blow out a long breath, searching for words. “I guess it’s just that it doesn’t really change anything. I mean, so my mother and I talked. So what? She’s still going to be all about her writing and her boyfriends.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I guess maybe I had some dumb fantasy that it’d be different.” I think about the first time we met and how glamorous my mother had seemed to me. “Dad always tried so hard never to badmouth her, you know? And I had her built up in my head to being this amazing person. Someone who was so special that none of the usual rules applied. I wasn’t even mad at her for leaving me. I mean, she abandoned her own kid, and somehow I had the idea that I should respect her for being so unconventional and following her dreams and all this…all this…crap.” I look up at Justine, but instead of the sympathetic expression I am expecting, she rolls her eyes.

  “Lou. Enough already.”

  I blink. “What?”

  “You’re analyzing everything to death.”

  “I’m trying to make sense of it all,” I protest.

  “No. You’re just going around in circles and not getting anywhere.”

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  Justine shrugs impatiently. “Look, your mom’s selfish. You knew that already. But you’re getting to know her better, and you actually have a relationship now, which is more than you had before.”

  “And I probably have to go back to Drumheller in a few weeks.”

  “You could stay here,” she points out.

  “I don’t know if she’d want me to.”

  “Quit trying to figure out what she wants. What do you want? Do you want to stay here?”

  I think about Dad, and Dana Leigh, and my life back in Drumheller. “I think my dad is going to need me when he gets out of hospital.”

  “Not forever, though right?”

  “Mmm. I guess not. But I think he’d be hurt if I left.”

  “So? He’d get over it. You need to figure out what you want.”

  I run my fingers along the back of the bench and pick at a loose curl of peeling paint. “Dad’s going to be in a rehab place for a bit. A few weeks, maybe.”

  “So you have some time. You don’t have to decide right away. You can see how things go.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  Justine puts her hand on my arm and gives it a gentle squeeze, like a tiny hug. “You’ll figure it out. I know you will.”

  I get home before my mother. My note is still lying on the counter where I left it. I pick it up, about to crumple it, and something catches my eye and I stop. A copy of my mother’s book, lying on the counter beside the phone. I stare for a long minute at the cover: the pale grayish blue of a December sky, the dark silhouette of a bird in flight. I wonder who that bird was meant to be, and whether the flight was supposed to represent escape or something more hopeful, like spreading your wings. Which is a cliché, as Zoe would no doubt point out.

  I don’t think I’ll ever show my mother my own writing.

  On the other hand, just because she is a writer doesn’t mean I can’t write poems if I want to. After all, I wrote poetry before I ever met her.

  Quit analyzing everything, I hear Justine say, and I grin. I know exactly what she’d tell me. So go write a goddamn poem then.

  My mother’s cardigan is hanging over the back of her kitchen chair, and I can smell her perfume on it. I bend close and breathe in deeply. My mother may not be exactly who I want her to be, but we’re only beginning to know each other.

  Our story’s not over yet.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the British Columbia Arts Council for their generous support during the writing of this novel. Thanks also to Sarah Harvey for being a truly wonderful editor, mentor and friend.

  Robin Stevenson is the author of many books for children and tee
ns, including the young adult novels Inferno, A Thousand Shades of Blue and Out of Order. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her partner and son. For more information about Robin and her books, please visit www.robinstevenson.com.