Free The Silver Glove by Suzy McKee Charnas Page B

weekend.” She’d told me later how the first time she got on a beginners’ slope and bent over to fumble around with the bindings of her rented boots, a single ski whizzed down from someplace above her at about forty miles an hour and shot past an inch from her nose. That was that: a broken leg was a reasonable risk to run, but not a runaway ski jammed through your head. She never went again.
    The jacket looked great.
    â€œIf there’s any message about Gran, write it down for me, okay?” she said. “Remember, don’t stay up too late. ’Bye, Valli.”
    She turned and ran down the stairs singing the “Blue Danube” waltz or maybe the one called “Tales from the Vienna Woods,” I always get those two mixed up. It hurt me a lot to see her look so happy and young, and to know she was heading for disaster.
    My right hand felt on fire and twice its real size, and the stairs wavered in front of my eyes. I remember thinking, “I’m sorry, Gran,” over and over as I wobbled around in a little circle in the hall. I’d had my chance and I’d failed.
    All I could do was to stumble back to the living room couch and fall down on it, where I either slept or passed out.
    When I woke up, sunlight was pouring in the windows. My hand felt okay. The cut had scabbed over. My clothes weren’t even wrinkled, as if I hadn’t moved all night once I’d corked off.
    The apartment felt empty: sunny, still, and void.

 
    8
Me in Shock
    Â 
    Â 
    F ROM HER BEDROOM DOORWAY I could see that Mom was there, all right, curled up under the big red quilt with her hair sticking up in a cowlick where her head was jammed against one of the pillows.
    So why did I still have this awful feeling?
    â€œMom?” I said.
    She mumbled.
    I went in and flopped down on the bed next to her. “Hey,” I said. “Are you still sleeping?”
    She rolled over and blinked at me. My mom has spectacular eyes, the only really green eyes I’ve ever seen. “Umm,” she said vaguely.
    â€œListen, Mom. Did Gran call this morning?”
    â€œÂ â€™Course not,” she said. “Lost, your Gran. Prob’ly can’t remember our phone number.”
    Her eyes were tearing up. I changed the subject. “How was your date last night?”
    Mom sighed and rolled away from me a little, staring up at the ceiling. “Mmm,” she said.
    â€œDid you like the skating?”
    â€œSkating.” She sighed. “Beautiful.”
    She stretched, yawned, sat up in her nightgown, and reached for her robe, moving in a strange sort of lazy motion. She got up and wandered over to the full-length mirror on her closet door.
    The cowlick stood up right over her ear. Normally she would have sworn at it and tried to brush it down right away. Today she just stood there, swaying a little, and gawping at the mirror.
    She had her shadow, I could see that. What she didn’t have was her reflection.
    Or rather, the reflection that I saw—though I bet nobody but Gran or me would have seen it—was of my mom in her jeans and ski jacket, on ice skates, turning in a slow, blind circle with closed eyes.
    â€œMom!” I screamed. I pulled her away from the mirror.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” she said in a blurred, irritable voice, pushing my hands away. She turned back toward the mirror. She sat down on the end of her bed and just stared at her crazy, fake reflection.
    â€œMom,” I said.
    â€œSshh,” she said, not even looking at me. “ ’M busy.”
    I retreated to the kitchen, where I sat hunched up in a chair trying to keep from exploding in tears. Gran had given me this one thing to do, and I’d failed, failed, failed. So instead of my mom, my real mom, I had this—this weird, drippy, zombie-mom who came padding barefoot into the kitchen after me and stood looking aimlessly around.
    â€œSit down,” I said angrily. She