All the Impossible Things

by Lindsay Lackey

  “I see. No, that’s fine. Uh-huh. Okay. Where—?”

  Red watched her riffle through a stack of papers on the desk at the end of the counter. She pulled out a business card.

  “Yup, I got it. That’s fine, Dad, really. No, don’t worry. It’s okay.” She pressed her palm into her eye, listening. “Just try not to worry. Keep us posted? Yeah. Okay. I love you.”

  The phone beeped when she hung up. Silence crowded into the space left behind. Nicole let out a long breath and rolled her neck.

  “Celine’s in surgery,” she said to the floor. “They’re removing her gallbladder and appendix.”

  Red shifted her weight between her feet.

  Nicole pressed her fingers into her eyes again, then turned and finally looked at Red. “She’ll be okay, Red. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Her expression was stony, unreadable.

  Noah had stopped crying a while ago. The house was silent now, except for periodic gusts of wind against the windows. Red’s head ached from the effort of keeping the storm inside her skin.

  “The boys are in bed,” Nicole said. She was leaning on the counter, her fingers gripping the edge of it. “Red—” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat. “I need to know what happened. In the barn.”

  Red tried to swallow, but her mouth felt like sand.

  When she didn’t answer, Nicole said, “I don’t … I can’t quite wrap my head around what I saw when I came in.”

  Red frowned. She couldn’t explain it. Even if she wanted to, it wouldn’t make sense to Nicole. It was the wind. I lost control of it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know you were there.

  Of all the words tumbling through Red’s mind, only the last set came out. The wrong set. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  Nicole’s eyes were the sun. Enormous, scorching, furious. “You didn’t know I was there?” Her voice got louder, higher with each word. “You’re telling me, what, exactly? If I hadn’t been there, you’d have hit my children with that rake?”

  The earth seemed to shift under Red’s feet. The rake? Nicole was upset about the rake? She tried to make sense of it, tried to imagine what Nicole had seen when she’d stepped into the barn. “I—no!” But the words were too small, too quiet in the face of Nicole’s fury.

  “Were you going to hurt my children?” Nicole came closer.

  Red stepped back, stumbled. No no no!

  Something heavy and black brushed past Red’s legs. Gandalf. The dog stood between the girl and the woman, her head high and her tail up. Standing like this, her usual bigness became downright huge. She faced Nicole, angling so that Red was behind the wall of her body.

  Anthony was there a second later. “What’s going on?” His voice seemed to jolt Nicole out of her rage.

  She wilted and covered her face with her hands. When she dropped them, the fire had vanished. “Red has to leave. We need to call her social worker to come pick her up. The number is on the counter.”

  Chapter

  34

  Red shut the door to her room, locking even Gandalf out, and sat on her bed. Anger and shame and confusion coiled around her heart. How could Nicole think she’d hurt the boys? She was just trying to get rid of the rat. Hadn’t Nicole seen it? That giant, hissing rat that probably would have bitten off Noah’s fingers the second he got close?

  A cold whisper shivered through her. But she had hurt them. Her wind had knocked them down. She hadn’t meant to do it, but it was still her fault.

  No matter how hard she tried, she kept losing control. She didn’t want to be scary or dangerous. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.

  She wanted her wind to protect, not hurt. Like her mother’s had once done for Red. Before. Before the pills turned her into something Red didn’t recognize.

  But Red’s wind wasn’t like that. It had always been like her mother’s wind after. Chaotic. Out of control. Destructive.

  If it wasn’t for her wind, the boys wouldn’t have fallen. Noah wouldn’t have gotten hurt; Nicole wouldn’t be so angry. And Red wouldn’t be waiting for Ms. Anders to come and take her away. Again.

  Gandalf whined in the hallway, but Red ignored her and curled up on the bed. Why did her wind have to be bad? Why couldn’t she control it?

  She thought of the leaves she’d sent flying for the dogs. She thought of Celine hearing her voice in the blizzard. Since coming to the Grooves’, she’d been able to control her wind a little. But definitely not enough.

  Maybe that can change.

  The thought held a shiver of possibility. Maybe that can change.

  So much had changed since she’d come to the Grooves’. She’d started believing in impossible things again. Her mom had come back. She’d found Tuck. Maybe her wind could change, too. Maybe she could make it good.

  Maybe Celine and Jackson wouldn’t kick her out if she had better control of it.

  But how?

  The remaining half of the oak tree outside the bedroom window creaked like an old hinge. Snow was falling now, a million dandelion-seed wishes, glinting and vanishing before they hit the ground. Vaguely, she thought that it was going to be a white Christmas after all.

  A social worker arrived two hours later. It wasn’t Ms. Anders. A fresh wave of fear crashed over her.

  The social worker—Peter Something—said, “Ready to go?”

  Red nodded. Anthony was there, but not Nicole. She probably wanted nothing to do with Red now. Gandalf and the other dogs pressed their noses against her legs, and for once didn’t yap or jump.

  “You’re staying with the Klines tonight,” Peter said.

  She tightened her grip on the strap of her backpack. Not the Kapules? The Kapules were the respite family for the Grooves, their Support Friends. If they weren’t taking her, that could only mean she wasn’t Celine and Jackson’s foster kid anymore.

  Peter kept talking, but Red didn’t hear anything he said. This was it. She was leaving. Nothing else mattered.

  The front door blew open, slammed against the wall. Peter and Anthony jumped, and three of the dogs yelped and scurried away. Red closed her eyes as the wind churned through the house. There was no use trying to control it. Her wind would never be good. She would never be good.

  A cold nose pressed into her palm. She looked down at Gandalf, and the dog licked her fingers. Red’s fear deflated a little.

  “We better go,” Peter said. He approached the door cautiously, like he was afraid it would slam in his face.

  Gandalf stayed on the porch, staring after them. The trees lining the driveway bowed as the car passed, and clouds curtained the stars. Peter tuned the radio to Christmas carols, but Red barely heard the music. All she could hear was the angry howl of wind inside her skin.

  Chapter

  35

  BEFORE

  She could hear laughter coming from down the hall. Music, too. It sounded like a party.

  Three-year-old Red climbed off the toddler mattress on the floor of her bedroom and tried to open the door, but it was locked from the outside. She pulled on the doorknob and called for her mother.

  Her mother didn’t come.

  She banged her hands against the door. She wanted to play, too!

  Footsteps. The lock jiggled. Red stepped back, excited. Her mother had come. She would take her to the party!

  A man opened the door. Red was so surprised, she didn’t flinch when he picked her up. He smelled sharp and earthy, like dirt and sweat and something sweet.

  “What’s wrong, girlie?” he said, his face too close to hers.

  Red called for her mom, even louder this time.

  “You wanna party, too, princess?” He tickled her legs and belly, his fingers so rough they scratched her skin. Red shrieked and pushed against his shoulders. He laughed.

  Suddenly, the door blew open, and there was her mother.

  “What are you doing to my kid?” she demanded, reaching for Red. Red’s cries had turned into choking sobs.

  The man dodged Wanda’s hand
s, like Red was a football and this was a game. “We’re just getting to know each other!”

  “Give her to me, Taps. She’s scared!”

  He laughed. “Naw! She loves her uncle Taps!”

  He sidestepped Wanda and pressed his lips to Red’s neck and raspberried her. She screamed, terrified of the loudness and wetness of his lips on her skin.

  Out of nowhere, a gale-force wind slammed into Taps, pinning him against the wall. His stringy hair blew back from his face and his eyes watered. He let go of Red, and her mother snatched her from the air before she could fall. Wanda’s hair was a wild, writhing creature in the tempest. She held Red close to her body as she leaned in to Taps’s face.

  “You don’t ever touch my child! You hear me? Not ever!”

  Red dug her fingers into her mother’s shirt, tucked her head under her mother’s chin.

  A second man appeared in the doorway, eyes huge. Wanda stepped back from Taps and the wind died instantly.

  “Ricky, you and Taps should go.”

  Taps slipped down the wall like a stain, and Ricky grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. They hurried from the apartment.

  A gentle breeze wound around Red’s arms and legs and face, cooling the raw places.

  “You’re safe now,” her mother whispered.

  And Red believed it was true.

  AFTER

  “You can’t keep doing this!” Gamma slammed a laundry basket onto the bed. It bounced, clothes erupting from it and scattering onto the floor.

  Wanda grabbed Red’s arm and lifted her from the bed. “She’s my kid.”

  “Yes, she is. But you seem to forget that. You spend every night out. You can’t hold a job. Red needs you to be here, Wanda! She’s five years old. She needs her mother.”

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?” Wanda growled. “Come on, Red. We’re leaving.”

  Her fingers were hurting Red’s arm, and she tried to pull away, whining. Wanda half dragged her into the hallway.

  “Don’t do this, Wanda! Don’t take her like this!”

  “You just said she needs her mother,” Wanda said, turning on Gamma. “So I’m being a mother and taking her home!”

  Red twisted out of her grip and tried to run back into the bedroom. Wanda moved to follow her and Gamma stepped between them.

  “Not like this,” she said.

  “Get out of my way, Mother.”

  Gamma lifted her chin. “I’m not letting you take her this time, Wanda. She isn’t safe with you. Not like this.”

  “Red, come on,” Wanda barked.

  Red clutched Gamma’s legs from behind. Wanda’s eye twitched. Her hair was stringy and her skin grayish and dull. There were scabs on her arms that she kept picking at with ragged nails.

  “Come on,” she said again, holding out a hand.

  Red shook her head. “I don’t want to.”

  For a moment, her mother didn’t move. And then, before Red knew what was happening, a wall of air slammed into both her and Gamma, flattening them. Gamma landed on top of Red, and Red felt something snap. Her mother’s wind roared through the room.

  “Stop this!” Gamma shouted.

  Wanda screamed in rage and then turned and disappeared down the hallway, taking her wind with her. Red heard her footsteps thundering down the stairs, followed by the slam of a door.

  Gamma sat up and bundled Red into her arms. She was crying.

  “Are you okay, baby girl?”

  Red’s wrist throbbed and her whole body shook, but her eyes were dry. Gamma let out a strangled gasp when she saw Red’s wrist, which was already swelling. But Red didn’t feel the pain. All she felt was the heavy understanding that her mother was gone again. And that it was her fault.

  Chapter

  36

  When the phone rang late on Christmas morning, Red was still in bed. She’d said her stomach hurt when Mrs. Kline came to get her for breakfast, and turned down opening presents around the tree. She knew she was ruining the Klines’ Christmas. It was better if she just stayed out of the way.

  “Red, honey. Mr. Groove is on the phone.”

  “Jackson?” Red sat up. Jackson was calling her? Here?

  Mrs. Kline smiled. “Yes, dear.” She held out a yellow cordless phone.

  Red took it. The plastic was cool against her ear.

  “Hey, kiddo.” Jackson’s voice was gravelly. “How’s my girl?”

  Red hesitated, glancing back at Mrs. Kline. She’d been so sure she would never see the Grooves again. Never hear their voices. Or if she did, she was sure they’d be furious, like Nicole had been. But aside from sounding tired, Jackson sounded … like Jackson.

  Red wanted to say, I’m sorry. She wanted to say, I wasn’t going to hurt them. She wanted to say, I want to come home. Instead, she said, “How’s Celine?”

  “Resting. The surgery went okay. They took out her gallbladder and her appendix.”

  “Is she gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah, she is.” His voice snagged on some invisible hook. “She is. They just need to keep her a few more days. She needs some tests.”

  His voice caught again, and Red frowned. Something was wrong. Something Jackson wasn’t saying.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Why can’t I go to my mom’s?” The words were sour on her tongue. “Why did you have to send me to the Klines’? I can go to my mom’s house!”

  Jackson cleared his throat. “Red, you know the judge said your mom isn’t ready yet. We—”

  “She is! She is ready! I don’t want to go back into the stupid system again. She’s ready enough!”

  “Back into—? Red, listen to me. Nicole told me something happened yesterday.”

  There it was. The reason they didn’t want her anymore. Nicole. Nicole, who saw the wrong thing. Nicole, who didn’t let her explain. Nicole, who was their real daughter. Red lay down on her side and curled into herself, the phone pressed hard between her face and the pillow.

  “She said she lost her temper and was unfair to you. And she was afraid maybe you didn’t understand why the social worker had to come.”

  Red whimpered. She couldn’t help it.

  “We’ll talk about it more later, but I want you to know that the only reason you’re with the Klines is because Nicole and Anthony aren’t certified to take care of you without me or Celine there. And the Kapules are out of town for Christmas. It was just an emergency situation. Okay?”

  The Kapules were out of town. Relief washed over her so quickly, she sat up again. How had she forgotten the Kapules were in Hawai‘i?

  Jackson kept going. “Nicole feels terrible about what happened. Nobody wanted to confuse or upset you. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you myself. Can you forgive us?”

  Her throat was as dry and scaly as Tuck’s feet. “You’re not … kicking me out?”

  There was a rush of breath in the phone. “No! Oh, Red, no. No, we are not kicking you out. We will never kick you out. No matter what. This situation was a mess, and I’m sorry. But we’re still your home, Red.”

  They weren’t kicking her out. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Yet she wanted to go back to her mom—didn’t she? Was it bad that she suddenly wanted to stay with Celine and Jackson? She closed her eyes. “Okay,” she whispered.

  “Okay.” The phone crackled and she heard the trill of a distant ambulance. “I better get back inside. Will you thank the Klines for hosting you for me?”

  Red asked, “How long?”

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow, unless something changes here. You’ll be okay one more night?”

  One more night. Just one. Not all the rest of her nights. Just this one. She could do that.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good girl.” There was a smile in his voice.

  “Tell Celine—” Her voice vanished. She wanted to say, I love her. She wanted to say, I was so scared. She said, “I’m glad she’s okay.”

  “I will. I’m glad she’s okay, too.”
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  “Jackson?”

  “What, honey?”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  He grunted, like the words were a jab in his ribs. Like he’d forgotten it was Christmas at all. “Merry Christmas, Red.”

  * * *

  When Jackson arrived to pick her up the next evening, the last storm clouds had cleared, and the air was crisp and bitingly cold. He stepped into the Klines’ foyer, his hands tucked deep into his coat pockets, and his shoulders hunched up to his ears.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said.

  Something in his smile seemed off. Looking closer, she thought maybe his eyes were red, like he’d been crying.

  “Well, come along, Red,” Mrs. Kline said, waving for her to hurry.

  Red swallowed the lump in her throat and picked up her backpack. Jackson’s gaze flitted away from hers too quickly.

  He offered his hand to Mrs. Kline. “Thank you so much. I hope we didn’t disrupt any holiday plans for you.”

  She waved him away. “Not at all. That’s why we’re here. You have my number now?”

  Jackson nodded. “We do. Thanks.”

  “You call us anytime. If we can, we will! That’s our motto.” She smiled at Red. “And you, young lady. Thank you for spending Christmas with us.” She pulled Red into a stiff hug.

  “Let’s get home,” Jackson said, holding the door for her.

  On the drive back to the farm, Red told him about the Christmas movies they’d watched, and showed him the book Mrs. Kline had given her. He didn’t say more about Celine, other than that Nicole and Anthony had helped her to get settled at home. The conversation between them wasn’t easy or smooth like it usually was. The warning bells in Red’s head clanged. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

  When they pulled into the driveway, gravel crunching, Jackson turned off the engine and sat still. The truck click pop tinked into silence. Red waited. Finally, he shook himself, chasing the haunted look out of his eyes with a small smile.

  “We better get inside.”

  She wanted to scream at the mystery of it all. She wanted answers and words and understanding. But she also didn’t. She also loved the quiet safety of the truck and of not knowing.