Free Takeoffs and Landings by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page A

he could see was clouds.
    â€œPretty cool, huh?” Mom said beside him.
    Chuck nodded. Suddenly he wanted to tell Mom where he’d gone today. But he couldn’t. When she’d asked, when they met back at the water fountain in the mall,he’d just said, “Oh, I just wandered around. Saw the city.” And then Lori had said something nasty, and Mom got distracted, so he didn’t say anything else. Which was fine. He didn’t want anyone ruining the day for him. He could just hear Lori: You went to the art museum? Why?
    Never in a million years could he have explained to Lori what it had been like to stand in front of those paintings and feel what the artist had been trying to show him. He’d seen paintings before, of course—copies of them, anyway. One of the kids in their 4-H club had that lady with the strange smile—Mona something . . . Mona Lisa?—hanging up in their bathroom. In their bathroom! But that whole family was kind of weird. The dad was a professor at some college an hour away. Everybody knew professors and people who commuted that far weren’t normal.
    What Chuck had seen in the art museum was different from looking at some lady’s picture hanging over a toilet. At the art museum, the paintings were treated reverently—framed just so, hung just so, lighted just so. And people practically tiptoed around.
    At first, Chuck had been afraid that someone would tell him he didn’t belong, maybe even kick him out. He’d practically trembled when he paid his money at the front desk. He waited for the thin, dry-looking man to push his sweaty twenty-dollar bill back and sniff, No hicks allowed. But the man only made change and handed him a brochure, and Chuck was free to look at whatever he wanted.
    He didn’t see any other farm boys in jeans and John Deere T-shirts walking around, but nobody seemed to care. One of the security guards even gave him an encouraging nod as he walked from room to room.
    Chuck had stood in front of a big red painting for a long time. It was the kind of thing that Gram and Pop would have mocked as “modern art.” They’d seen something like it on TV once, and Pop had scoffed, “Did some kindergartener make that?” But Chuck felt like he was falling into the color, it was so intense. And he, Chuck Lawson, who never understood anything at school, understood that painting.
    â€œLike it?” a voice said.
    For the first time, Chuck noticed a man standing beside him. He had a goatee and a ponytail. Pop would have scoffed at him, too. Chuck was afraid the man was making fun of him—as if someone with a ponytail could never see someone like Chuck liking a painting like that. But the man looked serious.
    â€œYes,” Chuck said simply.
    â€œGood,” the man said.
    And that was all, but it was the best conversation Chuck had had in years.

Mom had more to do in Atlanta than she had in Chicago.
    â€œI’m busy until four o’clock today, and then there’s the banquet this evening,” she said over breakfast. (They were eating at McDonald’s. Did that mean something?) “Will you two be okay on your own?”
    â€œSure,” Lori said.
    â€œOh, yeah,” Chuck said.
    Was it just Lori’s imagination, or did he sound enthusiastic? Chuck never sounded enthusiastic about anything.
    â€œWell, try to stick together,” Mom said, almost nervously, wiping the remains of an Egg McMuffin from her lips with a napkin. “This is a big city, you know.”
    â€œWe know, ” Lori said, too sharply. Mom gave her a look but didn’t say anything. Lori instantly wanted to apologize. That was silly, though—why should she apologize for saying, “We know”?
    Lori wondered if Mom didn’t really have that much more to do in Atlanta. Maybe she was just tired of hanging out with Lori and Chuck.
    Lori wouldn’t blame her.
    But Mom had explained that