Free The Chance You Won't Return by Annie Cardi Page B

her at breakfast? Somebody would have to take care of her. What if people found out? They’d have to, eventually, if she were just around, calling herself a famous pilot. That’s who I’d be at school — not even the girl who was death on wheels, but the girl with the crazy mom. We couldn’t let her come home until she was better again. They had to make her better again.
    Before I could tell Dad any of this, he said, “And please don’t mention anything to your brother or sister, all right?”
    “Then why are you telling me?”
    Dad leaned forward, hands clasped together. “I’m going to need your help, Alex. We’re not in a great situation, and I’ll need you to do things around here and help with your mom when she comes back.”
    I looked away, my throat tightening.
    “And besides,” Dad said, taking my hand, “you were right there today. Wouldn’t you be upset if I’d lied to you instead?”
    No,
I thought. I wanted him to lie. To tell me Mom had the bubonic plague or leprosy or whatever. I would have believed him. But I still would have been wondering. “Fine,” I said. “I’ve got homework to do, so . . .”
    “All right.” Jackson jumped down from my lap and went to sit by Dad’s feet. Dad didn’t seem to notice.
    Katy was in our room, doing math homework on her bed. She glanced up when I came in but immediately turned back to long division. Katy’s fingers ticked as she counted out her answers. She sighed and erased something in her notebook. I grabbed a pillow from my bed and threw it at her, hitting her in the side of the head.
    “Hey!” Katy hurled the pillow back at me, but I caught it. “What’s your problem?”
    “Nothing.” I sat on the edge of my bed, tapping my sneakers against the floor. Katy was trying to figure out her math homework again. “I drove tonight,” I told her, tossing my pillow from hand to hand. “Jim Wiley taught me.”
    “Congrats.”
    “He’s the one who drove into his house.”
    Katy looked up. “What’d he get you to do, take down the school gym?”
    I grinned. “Not yet.”
    “So you’re giving up driver’s ed at school to take lessons from Jim or something?” she asked. “I don’t think you’ll get your license that way.”
    “I don’t know yet.” Katy knew that Mom and Dad were supposed to meet with Mr. Kane that afternoon. And presumably, she knew that something was wrong with Mom. Even though Katy had justified the maps to herself, I wondered what she thought about Mom being in the hospital.
    “So Mom’s sick,” I said.
    “I know,” she said, flipping through her textbook. “Dad said they were running some tests. Do you know how to make a fraction into a percent?”
    “She probably won’t be back for a few days,” I said.
    Now Katy was comparing two different pages. “I think it has something to do with decimals. You did this, like, four years ago and you can’t remember?”
    I threw the pillow at her again, this time hitting her book. “Ask someone on the bus tomorrow.”
    I didn’t expect to see Katy’s face so distorted with anger. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her lips were twisted as she shouted, “Stop throwing things at me,” and hurled the pillow back, catching me in the head.
    “I’m trying to talk to you,” I said. “You always get all upset when I ignore you, and now you’re just ignoring me.”
    “You’re not talking about anything,” Katy said. She closed the book, but her finger marked her place. “Dad already told me all of that, and I really need to get my homework done already.”
    “What if Dad didn’t tell you everything?” I didn’t want to be the only one who knew. I promised myself that if Katy outright asked, I’d tell her. That was fair enough.
    Katy opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked at me hard. “Like what?”
    “Like how Mom freaked out at the meeting with my driver’s ed teacher today.” Katy’s face furrowed as she thought about whether or not she wanted