Berkeley and I were at breakfast.

I thought I’d go to the library again. I wanted to write down all the records Steve Fossett had.

Maybe I’d try one. Maybe I’d fly around the world in a balloon. Or climb a mountain.

I also wanted to look up student exchange programs and enter some more contests. I was way behind.

I thought Berk and I could eat lunch and wait at the park by the library until three thirty when the elementary got out. Then we were safe to go in the library and we could stay there until dinner.

I was planning this all out when Mom said, “Hurry and finish, you’re going to be late for school.”

Berkeley and I both stopped eating. “What?”

She was looking at her phone.

“Mom?”

“What?”

“School?”

She nodded, still not looking at me. “School.”

Then she said to Berkeley, “You need to get ready, too.”

“Where am I going?” Berk said.

“Day care,” Mom said, like it was normal. Like of course she was going to day care and of course I was going to school even though I hadn’t been in weeks and maybe months and was probably already kicked out.

“I can watch her, Mom,” I said. Like this was some new idea.

“She doesn’t have a cough anymore,” she said back. We were in a fake conversation about a fake world and everything that was happening was fake.

Mom walked out of the kitchen to the bathroom.

I felt sick. Berkeley looked pale herself.

“Hang on,” I whispered to her. “I’ll go fix this.”

Mom was in the bathroom.

I walked in and sat on the closed toilet.

“It’s okay, I can watch her,” I said again.

Mom was studying her face in the mirror.

“Okay, Mom?”

“The school called,” she said. “You have to go.”

The school called. The school called. The school called.

They’d called before when I first stopped going and Mom said, “Just don’t answer it.” We had a home line back then because Mom didn’t pay her cell.

But now she had a cell and I guess they found out her number.

“Tell them I’m homeschooled,” I said.

“You’re not homeschooled,” she said.

She was picking at something below her nose.

“You can say I’m homeschooled. Lots of people are homeschooled.”

“You’re not homeschooled,” she said again. “We’re a regular family. I go to work. You go to school. Your sister goes to day care.”

I felt something hot start to burn in my stomach.

We were not a regular family.

Not.

A regular.

Family.

At all.

She got out her lipstick. Pink this time. Why was she doing this to me?

“School is out in, like, two months,” I said. “I won’t have time to catch up. I don’t think I should go back,” I said.

She leaned into the mirror.

“Mom.”

~

“I don’t want to go back.”

~

She leaned closer.

~

“Mom.”

~

“Mom.”

~

“Mom.”

“Mom?”

“Mom!”

“What?!” She slammed down the eyeliner. I took a step back, her voice so loud. “What? Why are you shouting? I can’t stand shouting.” She was breathing hard. “Go sit in time-out.”

~

I stood there. My heart thumping.

~

“Go,” she said.

“What?”

“GO SIT IN TIME-OUT.”

She was serious.

She was putting me in time-out.

“GO!”

I tried to be okay. I tried to just be normal. I tried to turn around and sit in time-out, which I guess was the corner where she put Berkeley sometimes.

I tried to do that but I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t look at her and I tried to do what she said and I thought, I can’t do this.

Then I went and sat in the corner in time-out.