A crease deepened between Celine’s eyes and she pressed her fingers into the curve of her neck. “Any sign which way he went?”
“Not that I saw,” Jackson said. Exhaustion had etched holes in his voice. “But he has to have left a trail. He’s basically a four-hundred-pound bulldozer.”
Celine looked at Red, a little frown tugging on her lips. “Red?”
Red flinched, even though Celine’s voice was quiet.
“Do you want to help us look for him tonight? Or would you rather go inside and rest?”
It’s my fault. Tuck’s gone, and it’s my fault.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I want to look for him.”
Celine nodded, pulled the hood of her jacket up. “Okay. Let’s spread out a bit. Red and I will look that way”—she pointed north, past the arena—“and you go south. He couldn’t have gone far.”
“He’s pretty fast when he wants to be,” Jackson said.
“We’ll find him.” Celine squeezed Red’s shoulder.
Jackson nodded. “Okay. You take Gandalf. The storm may have chased coyotes out of their dens.”
Red shivered and tucked her nose into the collar of her coat, trapping hot breath against her neck. The thought of Tuck lost somewhere in the dim light of the half-moon, facing off with a snarling coyote, made her heart ache.
They set out, their boots crunching over dirt and dry grass. Red copied Celine and swept her flashlight back and forth in long arcs. Gandalf raced ahead of them, then circled back, sniffing and wuffing.
Just that afternoon, Red had sent leaves scattering for the dogs in a playful breeze. She hadn’t felt wind like that—happy, gentle, warm—in a long time. And she’d never made her wind like that before. But this—splintered branches and twisted metal scattered across the ground. Things broken and battered and lost.
This was familiar.
When Red was little, her mom’s wind could tousle Red’s hair from across the room, turn the pages of a book she was reading, or send a stuffed toy scooting along the carpet in a tumbling dance. Red had loved her mom’s wind back then.
Before.
But Red’s wind had always been more like her mom’s wind after.
After the pills. After the fights with Gamma. After the nights she didn’t come home, even though Red cried for her.
Those winds of her mother’s hurt. They didn’t tousle Red’s hair anymore; they bit at her cheeks with cold teeth. They blew relentlessly, making Red’s skin raw and chapped. And when her mom got angry, the winds got bigger. Scarier.
Those were the winds Red had inherited.
Until she’d come to the Grooves’, her wind had never felt light or playful. It wasn’t always bad, necessarily. Sometimes it even helped her, like the last time The Mom’s boys cornered her in the yard to pinch her arms. She’d let her wind swell, let it blow them off their feet in an angry burst. She didn’t hurt them. Just scared them so they’d leave her alone.
Red was only protecting herself. She’d been sent away after that, though. The Mom was convinced she was dangerous, even though she didn’t know what had happened.
Would Celine and Jackson think she was dangerous now, too? Would they send her away?
The thought brought a fresh wave of anxious flurries to her skin.
Maybe she was dangerous. As much as she wanted her wind to be good or playful like her mother’s used to be, maybe it couldn’t be. Maybe her wind was broken. Or maybe she was.
It was better for everyone if she kept it inside as much as possible. But whenever she did, the air outside churned and bellowed. Like tonight. It had splintered trees and ripped gates off their hinges.
How could she stop that?
And now, Tuck was gone. Because of her.
“We’ll find him, Red.” Celine’s voice was solid in the darkness, her words sure-footed.
But Celine was wrong.
They didn’t find him. Not even a trace of him. Not that night, and not the next morning.
The Kapules came over to help them search. They walked through the fields and looked in Celine’s garden. Jackson even drove the dirt road around their property with Red and Marvin in the back of the truck, each looking over one side, scanning for a glimpse of green-brown tortoise shell among golden grasses.
But Tuck had vanished.
Chapter
18
The next three days passed in a fog of silence for Red. When Ms. Bell called on her at school, Red didn’t respond. Marvin tried talking to her, tried assuring her that Tuck would be found, but she ignored him, too. Celine and Jackson made her mug after mug of cocoa, leaving them on Red’s nightstand, then taking them away again—untouched—a few hours later. Celine scheduled an emergency appointment with Dr. Teddy, but even he could only get a few shrugs out of her.
It wasn’t that Red didn’t want to talk.
It was that she couldn’t.
Every time she tried, the words got stuck in the back of her throat. They piled up behind her tongue, heavy and sharp as stones.
My mom doesn’t want to talk to me.
Tuck is lost.
It’s my fault. Everything is my fault.
Celine and Jackson started having whispered conversations that would stop the moment she came into a room. Red knew her silence frustrated them. They weren’t the first foster parents to be frustrated by her. Or maybe it scared them. Maybe they sensed the storms building inside her with each passing day and were afraid of what she could do, like The Mom had been.
Either way, she knew what the whispered conversations meant. It always meant the same thing.
They were sending her away.
The knowledge still couldn’t free Red’s tongue. Any day now, she knew Ms. Anders would come with her peach gummies to take her. To another house. Another room. Another starting over. So she packed a few things in her old backpack and kept it under the bed.
Waiting.
Ready.
After school on Wednesday, Red watched Jackson from her bedroom window as he cut the fallen half of the oak tree into logs and hauled them to the woodpile by the barn. Her throat burned with unspoken words, and her stomach ached with shame.
She turned away from the window and sat on the bed. Tomorrow would mark five days without Tuck. Five days. Days Tuck didn’t have food or friends or his heat lamp. It was getting colder, and a steady, wintry wind had been blowing since Saturday night. It wasn’t good for a tortoise to be out in the cold. Tuck was built for deserts, not frozen fields. Red shivered.
Tomorrow was also Thanksgiving. Would Ms. Anders come get her tonight, so Celine and Jackson could enjoy the holiday? Would anyone else want to take her in—a girl of storms and silence?
The questions chased her back onto her feet. She pulled the envelopes out from under her mattress and stared down at them. She’d examined them a hundred times, but there wasn’t the slightest clue as to why they’d been returned. Tears pricked her eyes and she shoved them back under the mattress. She paced the room a few times. Swirling emotions skimmed off her skin in a restless breeze that rustled book pages.
Why had they been returned? What had she done wrong?
She tried to think back, struggling to recall if she’d written something that might have made her mom mad. But Red wrote so many letters, and she couldn’t even be sure they were all sent. The Mom said she’d sent them, but Red once found a letter crumpled up in the bottom of The Mom’s purse, grease-stained and forgotten after a tube of hand lotion had exploded.
But obviously some of her letters had been sent. Because now they’d been returned to her. Unopened. Unwanted.
A gust of frustration made the blankets on Red’s bed ripple. She stomped over and pulled one of the envelopes out from under the mattress again. It felt heavy, like disappointment and broken promises.
Heat rose up inside her, making hot, dry air circle the room in a blazing gust. She crumpled the envelope in her fist.
Her mother was supposed to be relea
sed from prison in 370 days. Red scowled.
No.
Mothers weren’t supposed to be in prison at all. They weren’t supposed to be addicts. Mothers were supposed to fly kites and share secrets and take care of their daughters. Her mom was supposed to be here, with Red. They were supposed to be together.
But they weren’t.
And now, her mom didn’t even want to read her letters.
Red tore the envelope in half.
She pulled the pieces of her letter out, and tore them, too. She tore and tore, ripping apart her sentences, shredding her words until they fell from her fingers in a flurry of papery snow. If her mom didn’t want to read them, then fine. She didn’t want her to read them now anyway.
Something hot and thick rose from Red’s belly. She clawed at her mattress, pulling out more envelopes, but refusing to let herself cry. Her wind whisked the tattered paper from her fingers and sent it scattering and skipping over the bed, across the floor, around her feet. The shards caught in the folds of her blankets and snagged in the curtains. They blew under the dresser, tangled with dust bunnies, and piled up against her pillow.
She stood, face burning, as the fragments of her letters flurried and drifted. Her breath came in ragged gasps, but the heat in her chest was cooling. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and went to the window. Outside, Jackson had finished chopping up the fallen oak. He wasn’t in the yard anymore.
Red opened the window all the way. The cold November air smelled like freshly cut wood and coming snow.
Just before her mother was arrested, the two of them went to a park outside Denver. It was one of Red’s favorite parks, with giant red rocks and a bunch of walking trails. Earlier that day, her mother had written a letter. She wouldn’t let Red read it, but Red knew it was for Gamma. She’d seen Gamma’s name at the top of it.
“What does it say?” she’d asked her mother as they walked.
“Nothing.”
“But … it has to say something.”
Her mother dragged a hand through her long hair. “Leave it alone, Red.”
They stopped at the base of a trail that wound up into a thick grove of trees.
“Stay here,” her mom said. “I need to be alone.”
Red lagged behind, but still followed her silently, pausing behind trees when she thought her mom might have heard her coming. But her mother never glanced back. Finally, she stopped at a spot overlooking a field. The valley below was bright and bursting with wildflower color. Her mother stood in the shadows of the trees and leaned her elbows on a fence along the edge of the trail. Her dark hair shifted around her face, even though there wasn’t any wind. Red watched as she took the letter she’d written to Gamma from her pocket and stared at it. She didn’t read it. Just held it in both hands, fingers gripping the edges so tightly, the paper wrinkled.
“You were wrong, Mom,” Red heard her say. “Some things really are just impossible.”
Then, to Red’s horror, she ripped the letter to shreds.
A wind, cold and angry, scooped the pieces of the letter from her mother’s hands and carried them up up up.
“Are you happy now?” her mother shouted into the sky.
The sky didn’t respond.
Red’s eyes followed the pieces of that letter swirling in the air, but her mother turned away and started back down the path, never seeing her daughter hiding in the nearby bushes.
Pushing aside the memory, Red began collecting the scraps of her own letters from her bedroom floor, grabbing at them in frantic, hurried swipes. She held out the bottom of her shirt like a basket and scooped the pieces into it. Then she returned to the window.
In the distance, the sun was sinking toward the mountains, casting ocher light that sent long shadows slanting across the landscape. Red held a handful of paper out and concentrated with all her might. Her wind, still frothy with hurt, whipped the bits of her letters from her fingers and carried them up up up, vanishing into the sky. She emptied handful after handful into the air, until the basket of her shirt was empty.
After her mother had disappeared down the path that day, Red had chased the fragments of the letter. She’d collected as many pieces as she could, later taping them into her impossible notebook. She taped them there because, at the time, she still believed impossible things could happen.
Now, though, she wasn’t so sure.
As the last bits of her own letters disappeared, Red pulled the impossible notebook out of the nightstand drawer and opened to her mother’s page. There were too many missing pieces for her to make out the whole letter, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was the largest scrap on the page. The scrap where her mom had written her own list of impossible things.
it’s all impossible. Being a good daughter. Staying sober.
Being a mom.
More than anything in the entire notebook, Red had wanted to prove these three things wrong. Wasn’t that why Gamma had given Red the notebook in the first place? She wanted Red to remind her mom about the difference between hard and impossible, too.
But Red never got the chance. Her mom was arrested a week later, and Red was put in foster care.
And now, her mom didn’t even want to read Red’s letters.
Red slammed the notebook closed and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a thud and fell to the floor, pages bent and spine twisted. Like a bird, broken after flying into glass.
Dear Mom,
I’m moving in with a new family tomorrow. Ms. Anders said I’ll have my own room since the family has three boys and no girls. It’ll be nice to have my own space, I guess. This group home has eight girls in it, and most of the time they’re fighting. There’s this girl, Alicia, who is always stealing stuff from people.
It’s not so bad here, though. The other day they took us to a movie. I was thinking about how you taught me to stand by the screen during the end credits with my arms in the air and look up so it feels like falling. I was going to show some of the girls, but the house mother made us leave right away. I’m glad, though. I don’t really want to do that trick with anyone else. That’s our thing.
It’s lights-out, so I better go. I’ll send you my new address in my next letter so you can write me back.
I miss you.
Red
Chapter
19
Thanksgiving morning, Red didn’t come downstairs. What was the point? Words were still lodged behind her tongue. Tuck was still missing. Shivering currents were still skimming across her skin. Celine and Jackson wouldn’t want her sitting silently at their table, ruining their holiday.
It was better to stay away.
Her orange backpack was under the bed, stuffed with clean underwear, a pair of jeans, two sweaters, and the books Celine had given her. Even though it wasn’t touching the bed, she could feel it under the mattress, heavy and cold. Across the room, the impossible notebook stayed where it had fallen. She’d already decided: if Ms. Anders came for her, she would leave the notebook behind.
She was curled up on the bed, knees hugged under her chin, staring at the bent pages and broken spine of the notebook, when someone knocked on the door.
Red said nothing.
“I’m coming in,” Celine said. She opened the door and Gandalf came bounding in. The dog immediately jumped on the bed, making Red’s whole body bounce, and lay down at Red’s feet, licking her socks.
Celine was holding a newspaper. She sat at the foot of the bed and stroked Gandalf’s ears, newspaper folded in her lap. Red waited for her to say something. But Celine just sat there, letting the silence circle and settle between them like a dog on a pillow. Outside the window, the fractured trunk of the old oak creaked softly.
After a long time, Celine reached over and squeezed Red’s foot gently. “We’d love for you to join us today, Red. Marvin and his family are coming for lunch. We thought we could go out and search some more after we eat.”
Red said nothing.
“I know wh
at it’s like to miss someone,” Celine said. Her voice was quiet in a way that made Red think it was true.
But Red said nothing.
“We all love Tuck very much. And I promise you, we are not going to abandon him. We’ll find him, Red. We’ll do everything we can.”
A tear slipped over the bridge of Red’s nose and soaked into her pillow.
“We won’t give up. That’s not who we are. We’re Tuck’s family,” Celine said.
Red said nothing.
Celine unfolded the newspaper and set it next to Red’s arms.
Red looked at it, then uncurled her body and reached for it, hands shaking.
There, on the front page of the Bramble Bee, was a picture of Red sleeping with her arms slung over Tuck’s shell. His face was turned toward her, and it looked to Red like he was smiling.
BELOVED TORTOISE GOES MISSING, the headline read. FAMILY ASKS COMMUNITY FOR HELP.
Celine stood. “We’d love for you to join us today. For lunch, and for searching. For whatever you want to be a part of.”
Red said nothing.
But her heart ached from wanting to.
Chapter
20
The ache in Red’s heart swelled when the doorbell rang in the middle of lunch. Celine went to answer.
“Oh my goodness!” Her voice was filled with genuine surprise.
From the dining room, where Red, Jackson, and Marvin’s family were eating lunch, they could hear the sound of feet shuffling and people murmuring. They all got up and joined Celine at the front door.
A crowd of people were on the porch. Neighbors, people from church, kids from school. Even people Red had never seen before. Dozens of folks, all wearing heavy coats and looks of determination.
A man with sandy hair and a thick mustache shook Jackson’s hand.
“Bill,” Jackson said. “What’s going on?”
“I hope we didn’t interrupt your Thanksgiving meal,” Bill said. “We’re here to help find a tortoise.”
“We saw the article,” a woman in a knit cap said. “So we organized a little search party.”
All the Impossible Things Page 7