Takeoffs and Landings(32)

Then he ran smack into Miss Prentiss, between a red Ford and a blue Chevy. She was shaking her head sadly.

“Oh, Chuck,” she sighed. “You know why this happened.”

She kept shaking her head, but she stopped being Miss Prentiss. She turned into Mrs. Swain, his second-grade teacher. Then she turned into Mom.

Chuck woke up soaked in panicky sweat. His heart was racing, and he couldn’t catch his breath. He got up and stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the shower full blast. He climbed in shakily and stood there letting the stream of water beat against his skin. It cleared away the sweat but did nothing for the jumble in his mind.

Had the dream Miss Prentiss/Mrs. Swain/Mom said, “You know why this happened,” or “You know what will happen now”?

Chuck stayed in the shower long past the point that Pop would have been yelling, back home, “You gonna leave any water for the rest of us?” These fancy hotels always had lots of water pressure. He kept thinking the shower would wash away everything. But this was as useless as pressure-spraying the hog barn. Some things could never be washed away.

The whole bathroom was filled with steam when he finally turned off the water and pulled back the curtain. Now it was silence that roared in his ears. No, not silence—he could still hear the words from his dream. They were definitely, “You know what will happen now.”

A warning.

Chuck stepped out and toweled off; his hands shook as he pulled on his clothes. He pushed open the door just to get away from the fog, but it trailed after him.

Mom and Lori were sitting on the bed together. They both jumped when they saw him.

“Chuck,” Lori said.

“Chuck,” Mom said.

They were both talking at once. Chuck didn’t catch a single word either of them said. Wait. Did Lori say, “art lessons”?

Chuck had almost forgotten. He’d agreed to take art lessons. Art lessons meant he’d keep drawing once they got back to Pickford County.

He couldn’t.

He looked from Mom to Lori and back again. He was too stricken to make sense of what they were saying, but their voices pushed at him, picked at him, pressured him. Lori’s words still pounded in his ears. “Art lessons . . . Art lessons . . .”

Panic sent Chuck halfway across the room.

“Forget it!” he yelled. “I don’t want art lessons. Ever!”

He jerked his artist’s notebook out of his suitcase. He threw back the cardboard covers and grasped the inside pages, everything he’d drawn. In one motion, he’d ripped all his drawings in half.

“See?” he said, panting like a dog. “I hate art. I won’t be different anymore.”

Mom and Lori stared back at him, their eyes huge. Maybe one of them said something. Chuck didn’t hear. He was noticing how much Mom and Lori looked alike, how they tilted their heads the same, raised their eyebrows the same. Why couldn’t they get along? They were so much alike—Lori was the queen of Pickford County, and Mom had the whole country applauding her every night. If he ever drew a picture of the two of them together like this, maybe they’d see—

No. He’d already forgotten: He’d never draw another picture.





Los Angeles.

This was the only place on the whole itinerary Lori had wanted to go. Before the trip, she’d lain in bed imagining talking about it afterward: Oh, yes, when I was in Los Angeles . . . On the first day of school, maybe. Kids would turn around in the hall and shoot her looks of amazement and envy.

It would be obnoxious, she knew. She’d have to be careful not to drop “Los Angeles” into too many conversations, or people would hate her for it. But Los Angeles was the pinnacle of cool, the home of hip, the seat of scandal—it stood for everything that Pickford County wasn’t. Lori just wanted a little bit of that reflected glory to rub off on her. Sometimes she worried that the guys back home thought she was too staid, as if she came with her own apron attached, a housewife already. Sometimes she felt like their own mothers, when she was leading 4-H meetings: “And the next item of business is—Jason, would you please get your feet off that table? You’re getting mud everywhere.” No wonder she’d never had a serious boyfriend, the way all of her friends had.

She’d thought that if she’d been to L.A., maybe the guys would see her through an aura of starlet glamour. Sexiness by association.

But now, watching out the window as their plane prepared to land, she couldn’t summon up so much as a shred of eagerness, even when she thought she glimpsed the huge HOLLYWOOD sign through the clouds. This whole trip had been such a disaster, all she wanted was to go home. Even if it meant being seen as staid forever, she just wanted Mom to deposit her and Chuck back safely with Gram and Pop. Gram and Pop didn’t blame Lori for Chuck’s problems.