Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [9]
“No!” Jack threw the phone — screamed and threw it as far as he possibly could.
It was one thing to be able to leave his mom messages and wonder if she got them. But now she’d have no way of reaching him. What if he got kicked off the campsite tomorrow? How would his mom know where to find him? How would they possibly connect?
Jack lay down at the base of a tree and bawled.
Jack could tell that Aiden’s parents knew something was wrong when he returned to the picnic. He tried to stay as close to the truth as possible, saying he was worried about his mom — her not feeling well and all.
“What was I thinking?” said Aiden’s mom, whose name, Jack had learned during lunch, was Diane. “I should have checked in on her, asked her if she needed anything.”
“Oh, that’s OK,” Jack said quickly. “It was just a migraine . . . I think.” He had added that last bit, the “I think,” because he didn’t exactly know what a migraine was. But he’d seen commercials on TV, and it seemed like a sort of headache, but a really bad one.
“Well, I’ll definitely check on her when we bring you back,” Diane said.
Great, Jack. Now what?
It was impossible to have fun for the rest of the afternoon. He hated being away from the campsite now that he didn’t have a phone. What if his mother returned and he wasn’t there? What if she tried to call? He doubted she’d be able to reason, to stay put, to wait patiently as he had.
And then there was Diane’s determination to check up on his mother. There was no way she’d keep his mom’s disappearance a secret, no matter how hard he tried to convince her. She’d be just like the social workers and the guidance counselor and everyone else who thought they were helping when they were just making things worse.
He thought the veins in his head were going to burst as Aiden and his mother walked him back to his campsite.
“Huh. The car’s gone,” Jack announced as soon as they were in sight of his tent, hoping he sounded genuinely surprised. “She must have gone to get more medicine. She said she would probably have to do that.”
“That’s your tent?” Diane asked.
Jack could hear the other questions in her voice. None of the other sites looked like his — just a little Hubba tent and nothing else.
“She got sick as soon as we arrived,” said Jack. “We never even bothered to unpack anything.”
“You poor thing. Tell her that I’m making dinner tonight. I’ll bring over soup — and other good things.”
“Oh, that’s OK.” Jack suddenly felt as if he was on a speeding train, heading for a collision. “She’ll probably bring us back some takeout.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Diane said. “Soup goes with everything. Tell her I’ll be back to see what she needs.”
“OK.” Even though he was getting used to lying, he couldn’t figure out what to do next.
“Do you want to hang out till your mom gets back?” asked Aiden.
Diane smiled at Aiden. You could tell she thought he was doing the right thing.
“Thanks,” said Jack, “but I’m good. I’ve got comics; I think I’ll just read for a while.”
After they left, Jack crawled into his tent to think. What would he say when they returned? Maybe he could pretend that his mom had just disappeared. That wasn’t as big a deal as her having been gone since — when? Friday night? But what good would that do? There would be a big search. The story would be in the papers, just like that story about the missing girl. And he’d be taken from his mom for sure.
Once, when he was about seven, he and his mother were down in the subway station, waiting for the Forest Hills train to take them home. He was sitting on a bench, reading the advertisements on the wall across the tracks. His mom, who was wearing lots of silky scarves, was bouncing around, talking to people in the station. When he glanced over, he saw her whispering something into a homeless woman’s ear. The woman smiled, rocked on her heels, and shouted gibberish.
“That’s right!” his mother had said. “You’re absolutely right! Jack!” she’d shouted. “Come here!”
Her voice had grown more — what? Jangly. Urgent. It was his mother’s voice, but it wasn’t his