“If you really want to know if your mom loves him, you could ask her when she fell in love with him for the first time. Maybe ask when she first knew that he was the one.”
“My dad was the one,” I say, a little angrier than I intend. “Asshole Glen isn’t even close. Not even on the same planet.”
“Sorry,” Sarah says.
“It’s okay. And it’s not a bad idea. Better than me asking her what the hell she was thinking when she married the guy. Right?”
“Exactly.”
Except my mother is gone. She’s been replaced by a pod person or a genetic duplicate or something else I can’t even imagine. I suddenly feel the urge to tell Sarah about the other mother. Trust her with my secret. Maybe even ask her for help. Let her be the superhero I know she wants to be. But I know I can’t. She wouldn’t believe me, and even if she did, there’s nothing she could do. Still, I want to tell her so badly.
I reach for more popcorn instead. I’d like a sip of soda, but my can is on the other side of the room, on the dresser beside the chair, and I don’t want to risk losing my spot on the bed. Only a lunatic would give up this spot.
Sarah’s mom calls from the bottom of the stairs to ask if we need anything.
“No!” Sarah yells back. “All set!” She doesn’t move from our spot, either.
“Should I go?” I ask. “I can go if you think your mom wants me to go. The fight’s probably over by now.” Glen and the other mother are probably having sex now, which is what Glen and my mother usually do after a fight. I don’t tell this to Sarah. She may be ready to say the word sex to me, but I’m not ready to say it to her.
“She’s just making sure we know that she’s downstairs. Like I could forget.”
“Do you know when your parents fell in love?”
“Mom says it was love at first sight,” Sarah says. “She was in college, working at a roller-skating rink. She handed Dad a pair of rental skates. Their fingers touched. That was it.”
“For your dad, too?”
“No,” she says. “He doesn’t even remember seeing my mom that night. He says Mom wore him down. ‘Love’s version of erosion,’ he likes to say. Not exactly romantic.”
“They’re still together today,” I say. “That doesn’t happen a lot anymore.”
“I’m lucky, I guess.”
Something about the way Sarah says this makes me not believe her. I want to ask more. Find out what might be wrong. I’ve only known Sarah for a day—this impossible day of the other mother and Mrs. Foley and Sarah Flaherty—but I already want to save her from the sadness I can see hiding behind her eyes.
I eat more popcorn instead. I wish I had remembered to bring my soda across the chasm. I try to avoid saying any more stupid things while keeping our thighs pressing together as long as possible. We talk about school. I tell her about Charlie’s need to be prepared. She tells me about her old school and the best friend she left behind. We talk for about fifteen minutes before her mother calls again, asking if we need anything. We decide it’s time for me to leave.
I feel like I should kiss Sarah as I say goodbye. I could. We’re standing alone at her front door. I’m almost sure I could lean in and kiss her on the cheek, and she wouldn’t mind.
I don’t, of course. I say thank you and goodbye and walk away.
I may not be crazy like Luke thinks and Mrs. Newfang might think, but I can recognize when I’m acting delusional.
eight
Brian’s plan is a bad one. That’s why I agreed to help. When it comes to Mr. Morin, he deserves all the bad that he can get.
I’m just not so sure if his bad plan is good anymore. It’s so strange. Two days ago I couldn’t wait to get started. It was all I could think about. But now all of my thoughts are focused on getting my mother back. Figuring out what the hell is going on.
It’s hard to imagine caring at all about Brian’s plan tomorrow.
I guess it makes sense. In all those movies with asteroids and aliens about to destroy the world, no one is ever worried about homework or a busted washing machine or paying the bills. Big problems make little problems go away. The other mother isn’t an asteroid, but she’s still a big problem. An asteroid-sized problem.
Quite possibly an alien.
Maybe she is an alien. I know it sounds ridiculous, and I don’t really believe it, but the explanation for where my mother went and how she’s been replaced has to be ridiculous. Nothing not ridiculous makes sense. An alien is just as likely as anything else, as stupid as that idea may sound.
But there’s something else. Another reason for maybe not helping Brian. After spending today with Sarah Flaherty, I feel like I should try to be a better person. The same kind of person I am when I’m taking care of Charlie and Julia. That might not be possible, but I feel like I should at least give it a shot. Not to impress Sarah but just because of Sarah. It’s like my orbit has changed since yesterday, and now I revolve around Sarah instead of me. A little bit, at least.
But Brian is counting on me. And Mr. Morin is a real asshole.
Mr. Morin is my science teacher. He’s also a dictator. His nickname would be Hitler except he’s only about five feet tall, so we call him Little Napoleon instead. We should drop the Little from his name, since Napoleon was short. Just calling him Napoleon would cover his height, too. But someone who isn’t me decided to call him Little Napoleon—probably someone who had never seen a picture of Napoleon and didn’t know what a shrimp he was—and it stuck. It kind of annoys me. It’s not as clever a name as it should be.
Mr. Morin has favorites. Kids who can do no wrong. Kids who get away with murder and get all the stupid privileges that kids want for doing nothing. Just because he likes them. He knows their parents or taught their brothers or sisters or just heard good things from other teachers. So they get stuff like friends for lab partners. First in line for lab equipment. Hall passes without the third degree.
But it’s mostly the way he speaks to the kids he favors that annoys me. He talks to them like they’re human beings. He says hello as they walk into the classroom. Asks about their weekends. Knows the sports they play. Remembers details about their lives that he never even bothers to ask the kids who aren’t his favorites.
Kids like Brian and me are not his favorites.
My best school year ever was fifth grade. My last year of elementary school. My teacher’s name was Mr. Maroney. On the first day of school, Mr. Maroney called me over to his desk and asked me to sit down. “I have to talk to you,” he said. I thought I was in trouble, because back then I was always in trouble.
I guess I’m still always in trouble. It’s just harder to see it when you’re in the middle of it. Maybe that’s what teachers mean when they say you can’t see the forest through the trees. That always sounded so stupid to me, but maybe it makes a little more sense now.
Still, if you can see a ton of trees, you can pretty much assume you’re in a forest.
Mr. Maroney said that he had heard about all my problems in fourth grade. All the trouble I got in. The fights. Yelling at teachers. The time I flipped my desk. The other time I flipped my desk. The rock I threw at the bus. But as far as he was concerned, I had a clean slate. “You’re starting from scratch,” he said. He told me that I was a model student in his mind, and I would remain a model student unless I did something to ruin it.