Free Two-Thousand-Pound Goldfish by Betsy Byars

know what I’m going to say?”
    “It’s just,” he went on, “that there is so much I don’t understand. Weezie’s always saying things like, well, she says things like maybe I wouldn’t want to find Mom, maybe I wouldn’t like what I found. She tries to make me think there’s something terribly wrong, that Mom’s turned into some sort of monster!”
    Aunt Pepper sighed. She sat down on the arm of the chair. “I think I know what’s bothering Weezie.”
    “What?”
    “Well, Weezie found out from her father—she went to see him a couple of Sundays ago—and she found out that your mother was here for three months last spring.”
    “Here? In this city?”
    Pepper nodded. “She lived with some people in an apartment on the east side, and Weezie’s dad saw her a couple of times and—”
    “I don’t believe it!”
    “Honey, it’s true. I wouldn’t make up something like that. She—”
    “If Mom had been here for even one day, she would have come to see me. I know she would.”
    “She did see you once or twice. She went to your school and watched you come out.”
    “What? Watched me come out of school? How would she know which one I was? How would she know when my room gets out? The third graders get out a half hour before us—did she think one of them was me?” He got to his feet and began walking around in circles. “How did she even know what school to go to? Why didn’t she speak to me? There’s a boy in my room that looks like me and people get us mixed up—maybe that was who she saw, maybe she spoke to him.”
    “Oh honey, stop it. Honey!”
    He turned. “Did you see her?”
    “Once.”
    “Where?”
    “Well, she was waiting when I got off work. She was standing across the street by the newsstand, and we walked down the street and went into Albert’s and had a beer. We talked and—”
    “Why didn’t she talk to me? Why didn’t she take me somewhere?” He felt he had so many questions he would spend the rest of his life getting answers. “What did you talk about?”
    “She wanted to know about you. She said she’d seen you. And, honey, she knew exactly which one you were. She knew immediately. She said you had on a navy jacket and dark glasses.”
    “A lot of kids wear dark glasses.”
    “And I told her you wanted to be a movie director and that—”
    “Why did you tell her that? I didn’t want her to know that.”
    “I told her because I knew she would be interested. And I told her about how you and Grandma come over every Sunday and how you and I talk. I told her you were original and funny and that she was missing out on a lot.”
    “And what did she say?”
    “She said, ‘I know that.’ ”
    He sat down heavily. It was a rocking chair, his grandmother’s, and he sat on the edge. He had thought when he was little that this was a magic rocking chair because it would never turn over. No matter how hard he rocked, and sometimes he would rock hard enough for the chair to balance for one scary moment on the tips of the rockers. Still, it never turned over.
    Now the world had gone so wrong that if he leaned back even the slightest bit, the old chair would tip him onto the floor. He held on with both hands.
    “Oh honey, your mom’s gotten herself into such a mess. She’s gotten in with real violent people. They’re making bombs, and some of them have robbed banks, and—”
    “Not my mom!”
    “I think she wants to come home. She looks tired. She’s thin. She’s—”
    “I don’t even want her to come home now.”
    “You’re just hurt because your mom was in town and you didn’t get to see her, and I understand how you feel. It’s all right if your mom’s out in San Francisco and she really can’t get to see you, but if she’s here, well, it’s so much worse.”
    “I used to go around when I was little, and I would want my mother so much that I would say it to myself over and over. ‘I want my mom—I want my mom,’ like that. And sometimes I would