DON’T YOU DARE READ THIS, Mrs. Dunphrey.
It’s four in the morning, and I’m writing here because I can’t sleep at all. I lie on my front, then my side, then my back, then my front again … And all the time my brain’s racing around thinking of new things to worry about.
I’m scared. I’m scared like I’ve never been before. Mom’s gone.
I got home from working at the Burger Boy tonight about nine o’clock, and I was kind of surprised because the whole house was dark. I knew Matt had to be home, and I was pretty sure Mom wasn’t supposed to go in to work until midnight.
Then the first thing I heard when I unlocked the front door was Matt sniffling. I swear, he was back in his room, hiding under his bed, but he was crying so loud you could hear him all through the house. I yelled out, “Matt, what’s wrong?”—I mean, I was thinking maybe someone had broken in and beaten him and robbed us. Or something like that, not that there’d be anything to steal in our house. I even called out, “Mom?” forgetting I was ignoring her. But Matt didn’t answer, and Mom sure didn’t.
I turned on the light in the living room, and there weren’t any signs that anyone had broken in. And that’s when I saw the note on the coffee table.
I’ve got it memorized now:
The weird thing is, at first, I couldn’t make myself understand it. It’s like I could read, but I didn’t know what the words meant. Then I was like, “Oh, Mom’s gone to find Dad. Well, maybe that’s better than having her sitting around here bawling all the time.”
Then I read the note again. And again. She didn’t say anything about coming back. Did she mean she wasn’t? I read the note one more time, but there’s not a whole lot to figure out from those two sentences. I have to admit, I felt a little lightheaded. It’s not like Mom was ever Mother-of-the-Year material, but no one wants their mother to run away.
And then I thought, did I drive her away because I was ignoring her? Or—is it my fault anyhow, because it’s my fault Dad left?
Matt snuck up behind me then and grabbed me around the waist. He held on so tight I could hardly breathe.
“Mom’s gone,” he said. He looked terrible—hair all messed up, eyes all puffy from crying, lint all over his shirt.
“Yeah, she’s gone,” I said. “So what? What’d she ever do when she was here?”
I sounded really mean, because I was scared, I guess. He started crying harder, like I’d hit him or something.
“Hey, don’t cry,” I said. “I’m not saying I didn’t like Mom. But we’ll do okay without her. That’s all.”
“Will she come back?”
“I don’t know. Don’t count on it. Then you’ll be happy if she does. Okay? In the meantime—you know I’ll never leave you.”
That seemed to make him feel better.
“She left us some money, didn’t she?” he asked.
I hadn’t even thought of that. We went over to the kitchen drawer where Mom always keeps an envelope of money. It was empty, of course.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I make lots of money at the Burger Boy. I’ll take care of everything.”
I kept talking to Matt like that—telling him how good everything was going to be, how I’d take care of him and it’d be like an adventure, just him and me. And by the time I got him to brush his teeth and crawl into bed, he was even giggling.
Then I came back to my room, and I started thinking about how I don’t make enough money at the Burger Boy to take care of everything. I don’t even know what bills Mom has to pay. Do they come in the mail, or do you have to go to the electric company and stuff to pick them up?
I told myself, maybe Mom will be back tomorrow, and all this will be silly.
But I couldn’t really believe it, you know?
I probably sat on my bed, worrying, for about an hour. And then I did something really strange. I dug back on the floor of my closet and pulled out the old, mashed afghan Granma had me working on before she died. The crochet hook was on the closet floor, too, under some old T-shirts, and I figured out how to put it in the yarn and crochet. I had to really concentrate—in, loop, out, loop, out, out—I’m surprised I remembered at all. The afghan smelled a little bit like the lavender soap Granma used to use. But I didn’t really think about that while I was crocheting. I didn’t think about anything for a long time. It was kind of comforting.
I don’t know how long I crocheted, but eventually I had to stop. And then I started worrying again.
Why didn’t Granma teach me something smart, like paying bills, instead of how to crochet?