Takeoffs and Landings(3)

Most of the time, Lori’s younger brothers and sister drove her crazy. But if they’d come, they’d hide the fact that Chuck and Lori and Mom had nothing to say to one another.

Only, Mom hadn’t invited them.





Chuck was sweating. The backs of his legs stuck to the plastic airport chair.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

Planes went up. Planes went down. Planes crashed. Happened all the time.

He closed his eyes and saw plane parts strewn across a mountainside. Bodies bobbing in the Atlantic Ocean. That one crash had had a lot of kids. A whole high school French club thought they were going to Paris.

Chuck made himself breathe slower.

Mom flies a lot. Hasn’t killed her yet.

Yet. She’d never had Chuck along. Bad-luck Chuck.

Lori was staring at him. Why? Oh. He must have snorted. Kids at school always made fun of him for that.

Sorry, Princess Lori, he thought. Sorry I bothered you.

You’d think she’d be nicer to him. Seeing as how they were all going to die.

No, Lori would live. She has good luck.

The sun always shone on Lori. She walked on a path of light.

Chuck crawled in darkness, groping his way through the muck.

He saw a face in his mind. Girl from school, wide-spaced eyes, freckles across the nose. A new kid. She was asking somebody: “That’s Lori Lawson’s brother?”

The girl’s eyes bulged, her jaw practically scraped the floor. Like he was Frankenstein and Lori was Miss America. Like Lori was Einstein and he was the idiot drooling in the back of the classroom. Like he was pond scum and she was the peak of evolution.

Well, all that was just about true.

The only thing Chuck had on Lori was being born first.

Far as he could tell, the extra year hadn’t helped him any.

Mom was talking now. Chuck focused too late to catch any of her words, but she pointed; he understood. It was almost time to get on the plane.

Chuck’s stomach lurched. He pictured his plate at breakfast: five of Gram’s thick pancakes, stacked. And then—gone. The plate was empty when he put it on the counter.

Stupid. Shouldn’t have eaten so much.

Or not. Why die on an empty stomach?

Did Daddy—?

Chuck didn’t let himself think about that. He stared out across the waiting room chairs, all welded together in rows, like a grid. A pattern. People and luggage jammed in the seats and aisles, messing up the pattern. Random. Everyone about to fly. To die?

You wanted this, Chuck accused himself. You wanted it bad.

He could see himself, last spring, begging Pop. “Please. I’ll do night work all by myself for a month. Just let me go with Mom. I’ll pay attention to everything you say. I’ll work hard.”

Pop chuckling, rubbing his bald head. A little grim. “You should be paying attention anyway. You should work hard all the time.”

Pop was right. Chuck was just thinking of the trip as a chance to avoid replanting beans, baling hay, feeding hogs, spreading manure.

No. He’d wanted the trip for more than that. He remembered what he’d thought: In Chicago and Los Angeles and wherever else Mom wants to go, nobody will know I’m just fat, dumb Chuck Lawson. Maybe . . .

It wasn’t worth hoping for.

He’d always be fat.

He’d always be dumb.

And if nobody else noticed, Lori would always be there, remembering.

Still . . .

All spring, he’d silently cheered Mom on as she argued with Pop that, yes, Chuck could take two weeks off from farmwork without causing them to slide into bankruptcy once and for all. Even when he didn’t like the way she argued.

“You’ve said yourself he’s not that much help, anyway,” she’d said one night after Chuck was supposed to be upstairs in his room, doing his homework. “Didn’t you say last year that he cost you hundreds of dollars, running over three rows of beans by mistake? I’ll be saving you money, taking him away!”

Chuck was in the kitchen, eating peanut butter straight from the jar. Mom and Pop and Gram were in the front room, talking over the noise of the TV. Chuck flattened himself against the wall (as much as he could; he didn’t have the kind of body that flattened). He couldn’t quite hear Pop’s answer, but Mom’s reply came through loud and clear.

“Yes, of course I’m joking. I know you’re not getting any younger, and you rely on the boys for help. But we’re just talking about two weeks here. I’ll pay for you to hire somebody to take Chuck’s place. I just think it’s time for Chuck and Lori both to see more of the world than Pickford County. And to see what I do.”

Pop’s answer was a mumble again. It might even have been Gram who spoke.

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Pickford County,” Mom said.