ELEVEN
“OKAY,” I SAY. “Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.”
“So you’re feeling . . .” Jax begins. “Okay?”
“Well, obviously, no.”
It’s just me and Jax at the moment. After a good two minutes of me and my mom blinking at each other, not really knowing exactly what to say because how could we, someone started hollering at her about a mushroom exhibit emergency. So she’s meeting us at the food court for lunch after everything is sorted. In the meantime, I’m in the gift shop helping Jax find a sweatshirt for his frozen arms.
Oh, yeah, and I’m totally freaking out, too.
“Are you positive that’s your mom?” Jax asks, flipping through sweatshirts on the rack. He gestures back in the direction of the exhibit. “She’s really alive?”
“I’m sure,” I say. I’ve studied enough pictures of her that I could pick her out of a crowd of a million curly-haired ladies. But there was something else, too. A feeling. Maybe it was a mother-daughter bond, maybe it was an extra push from Spirit, but whatever it was, it was real. “It’s her. And she looked alive to me.”
“So . . .” Jax stretches the word out like he’s waiting for me to go on. When I don’t, he asks me, “What are you, uh, thinking?” The way he says it, it’s like I’m a balloon he’s worried about popping.
“What am I thinking?” I repeat. I count off all the thoughts bumping around in my head. “Okay, so my mom’s not dead. Which means she’s alive. Which means she’s been alive. Which means she’s been living somewhere this whole time—and maybe I don’t know where she’s been, or why, but I know she’s definitely never been Far Away. Which means my aunt was lying or confused or who knows what. Which means Who the heck was Aunt Nic talking to that whole time? Which means everything my mom told me, about boarding school, or the routes I was planning, or these shoes”—I kick out one foot to show off my gray sneakers, which I thought my mom and I once had a pretty good conversation about—“never even happened. Which means I never really met her, right? Only I must’ve met her, because she’s my mom. Only I don’t remember that at all. And did she draw those pictures of me because she saw me, like, she lived with me? Because if she lived with me, then Aunt Nic obviously knew she wasn’t dead. Which means Aunt Nic was lying. Which means . . .”
I get a flash of a memory of Aunt Nic’s hands in my wet hair, massaging my scalp under the warm water in the motor home sink, while she passed down messages from my mom. Was Aunt Nic really lying when she said those words? What other words has she been lying about? And was Roger right, that Aunt Nic can’t talk to any spirits, or was my mom’s the only spirit she faked? All of a sudden, it’s like every single thing I know about who my aunt is, who my mom is, who I am—it’s all a lie.
I turn back to the rack of sweatshirts, because that’s way easier to focus on than my world exploding. “Here,” I tell Jax, yanking one off the rack. “This is your size, right?”
Jax wrinkles his nose at the sweatshirt, and as soon as he does I can tell why. The one I’ve pulled out is neon aqua, with a giant black silhouette of a panda and puffy letters that read, I ♥ THE SAN DIEGO ZOO! Not exactly Jax’s style. But I guess I must really look like a popped balloon, because before I can put the sweatshirt back, Jax grabs it from me and says, “It’s perfect. I love it.”
“Shut up, no you don’t,” I tell him, moving to return it to the rack. “You don’t have to humor me or whatever, just because my aunt ruined my whole life by making me think my mom was dead.”
“I mean, yeah, that’s the worst,” Jax agrees. “But on the bright side”—he whips the sweatshirt from my hands—“you have amazing taste in outerwear. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go buy this, because I think it will look fantastic on me.” I snort. But okay, I guess it worked, because I’m smiling, just a little, now.
We’re waiting in line to pay for the ugliest zoo sweatshirt in history when Jax says, “If you want to leave, you know, we can.” His voice is soft, like he doesn’t need everyone around us knowing my business, which is nice of him. Maybe that’s the sort of thing his grandpa wanted him to help me out with. “I mean, this is a lot for you to deal with right now. So maybe we should just go find your mom and figure out a time for you guys to hang out, like, tomorrow, or next week, when your brain’s had a minute to catch up.”
I appreciate Jax looking out for my brain, but I shake my head. “My whole life,” I tell him, “I thought my mom was dead, and now Spirit leads me right to her?” I stick my hand in my coat pocket. Feel the cool, rough cement of that tether, speckled with glass. “Nah, I’m sticking around to see what happens.”
The person in front of us finishes up, and we step to the register. “Okay,” Jax says. “But if you need an escape . . .” And he flashes his hands at me.
“Thanks,” I say, and I smile. And while Jax is paying way too much money for his new sweatshirt, I make up my mind. Since Spirit led me right here, today, I’m going to make the most of meeting my mom. There will be tons of time to deal with Aunt Nic and all the awful things she did later—but for now, I’m just going to focus on the good stuff. My real-life mom, who smiled big as the sun when she saw me.
“Don’t like mustard, huh?” my mom asks as we leave the Sabertooth Grill register with burgers on our trays. And then, as we’re settling ourselves at a table, she says, “Check.” Like she’s making a list of things I like and don’t so she can remember everything about me. Just that tiny word makes millions of happiness bubbles fizz up into my chest. I’m sitting next to my mom, I can’t stop thinking. My mom is alive. And she wants to know me.
I am humming with happiness.
“And you really like mayonnaise,” I note, eyeing the three tiny paper cups she’s filled.
“On burgers, mayonnaise is good,” she says. “But on french fries”—she slides me a paper cup of my own—“it’s heaven. I promise.” She says that last part with a laugh when she sees my wrinkled-up nose. “Try it.”
So. I pluck a french fry off my tray and dip it in the mayonnaise. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be disgusting, but it’s the first thing my mom’s ever asked me to do, so I do it.
It tastes amazing. “Oh, wow.” Somehow the salt in the fry is a perfect match for the creaminess of the mayonnaise.
“Right?” she says, and she’s smiling. It’s a smile that says she can’t believe how lucky she is that I stumbled into this spot, in this moment, and found her. I’m pretty sure my own smile says the same thing.
“I’m never eating fries with ketchup again,” I tell her.
My mom claps her hands together. “Another convert!” She slides a mayonnaise cup in Jax’s direction as he wedges himself into the bench beside me. “What do you think, sir?”
“I don’t eat mayonnaise that’s been squirted from a tub,” he replies, and my mom lets out a hoot like she finds him just delightful.
I snag Jax’s mayonnaise cup from him and dunk another fry. Fine with me if he doesn’t want to try it. I’m sort of glad my mom and I have something that’s just ours together.
“So,” Jax says to my mom—and I guess I should take it as a good sign that my mom is one new person he actually wants to talk to. He unscrews the cap of his water bottle and darts his eyes at me before asking, “Why does everyone think you’re dead, and who’s James Darek?”
It’s silent for a moment after that, no one talking, and I shift my butt uncomfortably on the metal bench. Because, I mean, okay, it’s not like I wasn’t wondering the exact same thing, but it seems a little rude, maybe, to just ask like that. What if my mom gets offended and leaves, after Spirit went to all this trouble to get us together?
But my mom just lets out another laugh—a whipping-back-her-head-and-showing-off-all-her-teeth sort of laugh. Which is a good thing for Jax, because if something he said made my mom leave, I’d make sure he was a spirit.
“So, enough with the small talk, huh?” my mom asks. That grin is still on her face.
Jax darts his eyes at me again. Picks up his water bottle but doesn’t take a sip. “It just seems like important information,” he says.
He is nervous, I realize. I can tell by the way his eyes flit all over when he’s talking. Me, my skin is still tingling with happiness. My mom could talk to me about mayonnaise for an hour and I’d want to hear it all. My mom, I keep thinking. My mom.
“Fair enough,” my mom says in response to Jax’s question. She takes another bite of fry. “I guess the easiest answer is that James Darek is me. Although I’m pretty sure somebody”—she winks at me—“already figured that out.”
I grin and dunk another fry. “Why’d you change your name?” I ask.
She shrugs, like the answer is so simple. “I started hearing rumors that Nic was going around telling people I’d died. I guess for her, it was a business decision, made her look more sympathetic, maybe, or more like a realistic ghost-whisperer, I don’t know. Anyway, I was struggling a lot, back then, and I thought—maybe that’s not the worst business decision for me, either. So I let people believe Jennie June was dead, and I started over as James. J. Ames. Nice, right? The ‘Darek’ part just had a ring to it. My career’s skyrocketed since I changed it.”
“So,” I say slowly. Because my skin may be humming with happiness, but there are a million other emotions just under the surface, and I’m worried that if I let one sneak through they’ll all come flying out, and then this nice buzzy happiness might buzz right away. “Aunt Nic just decided to tell me you were dead? For her business?”
Even though I’ve only just met her, my mom knows exactly how to calm the rising storm inside me. She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand, her grip warm and comforting. “Please don’t blame your aunt, all right?” she says kindly. “There’s so much I regret about what happened. The truth is, I had a rough time of it, after you were born. I was so young, and Nic always had a better knack than I did for taking care of people—you know my mother had Alzheimer’s, right?”
I nod. “She died about a year before I was born,” I say, but it’s half a question. Because who knows if anything I think is true really is.
“That’s right,” my mom replies, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. One thing about my life, at least, is true. “Our mother had a rough few years, so Nic left college to take care of her. She was a real saint to do it. So when you were on the way, I knew Nic would help me out, too. She was amazing. Is amazing.” Suddenly my mom flashes her eyes at me, like she’s just so excited to see me. “Just look at you, Cara!” she says. “You are stunning in blue, you know that?”
It takes me a second before I realize “Cara” means me.
“Uh, I go by CJ,” I tell her. I feel weird having to tell my own mother my name. And I hate Aunt Nic even more for keeping me away from my mom so long that she doesn’t know what to call me.
But the anger dies down as soon as my mom reaches out and tucks one of my stray curls behind my ear. “CJ’s lovely,” she says. “It suits you. You’re a beautiful girl, you know.” And in that moment, I’m so filled with happiness I’d swear I could float.
“Can I say the thing I don’t get, though?” Jax asks. I can tell by the sound of his voice that I’m about to lose my floaty feeling. “How come you couldn’t be James Darek and take care of CJ?” He still hasn’t touched the hamburger in front of him. “What happened?”
I shoot Jax a What’s the matter with you? look, but he doesn’t even notice. “You can ignore him,” I tell my mom. Floating. I want to be floating. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t—”
“No, I don’t mind,” my mom says. She gives my hand one more squeeze before reaching for her fries again. “I think the simplest answer is that Nic thought she could provide for you better than I could. And I can’t say she was entirely wrong. I was never good at the sorts of jobs that get you paid.” She lets out a little laugh. “This gig is bigger than anything I’ve ever done”—she waves her arms at the zoo around us—“but I’m still eating lettuce sandwiches three nights a week. But I always thought, as soon as I make something of myself, I’m going to get that girl back.”
And just like that, I’m floating again. Soaring, really.
“You mean it?” I ask. The words are delicate, like tissue paper. “You’d really want to live with me?”
Sunshine on the beach, that’s what my mother’s smile is like. “I’d have to be out of my mind not to want that, my darling girl,” she says. And I smile back. “I’ve been working so hard, CJ.” My mom sets down her burger and leans in close to ask me, “Do you like the exhibit?”
Her eyes are eager as she waits for the answer. And when I say I think her mushroom jungle is pretty spectacular, her smile nearly grows bigger than her face.
My mom tells me all about the exhibit—how long it will take to complete, and what materials she’s using, and how when the zoo contacted her she was “smack-me-on-my-butt bowled over!” Her face lights up bright as the sun while she talks about her work, so I keep asking questions, and she keeps talking. Meanwhile, my brain is buzzing, same as my skin. I’m going to live with my mom. No boarding school. No tour bus filled with liars. Just me and my mom. I wonder what her house looks like. Bright and sunshiny like her, I bet. I wonder what we’ll eat for dinner, and what we’ll do on weekends. Play board games, like me and Aunt Nic do sometimes? Probably something even better. Suddenly I picture us traveling. Mini-adventures, just us two. I’ll navigate and she’ll pick all the coolest, artiest spots I’d never think to visit.
“I’ve been working with the mushroom theme since I was a kid,” my mom goes on, still talking about her exhibit. I do my best to tune back in, to focus. “I think I always liked the idea of life growing from decay and darkness. Mushrooms just triumph, you know?”
I love how passionate my mom is, about things I would never think to be passionate about.
I pull the cement mushroom cap out of my pocket to show her. “I found this today,” I tell her. “In the backyard of your old house.” Maybe the mushroom cap isn’t exactly a tether, the way it normally works. But Spirit did use it to pull us together, now didn’t they?
“Oh, wow.” She takes it from me and cradles it in her hands, like it’s a favorite pet she hasn’t seen in ages. “You must’ve thought your mother was some kind of nutcase when you saw that barbecue pit, huh?”
“I thought it was incredible,” I tell her seriously.
“I think you’re incredible,” she replies. And then—well, it will take more than a cement mushroom cap to keep me tethered to Earth after that. “Just you wait, CJ,” she says, pushing her tray toward me so I can eat more of her fries. “A few more years and I’ll have saved up enough so we can finally be together for good, like we always should’ve been.”
And just like that, I’m crashing again. “Years?” I repeat.
I don’t realize I’ve started to cry until my mom grabs my hand again. “Oh, CJ,” she says. “Oh, honey.” Her face is as pained as I feel, and I hate that I’ve made her look like that. “Is she really so terrible, your aunt?”
I want to explain, about Aunt Nic’s hands in my hair, making me care about her, making me think she cared about me. But all that comes out is a squawk.
“I’m so sorry, CJ,” my mom says, and she’s hugging me then, warm as her smile. “I wish I’d had someone else to turn to all those years ago. I really do, for your sake. But my parents were gone, and your father wasn’t exactly in the picture.” When she sees the question starting up inside me, she explains, “I’m afraid that’s my fault, too. It was a short-lived love affair, and by the time I knew about you . . .”
One more tiny check in the “truth” column for Aunt Nic.
“But here you are now,” my mom says. “And you’re perfect.”
That smile. I could get used to that smile.
I’ve honestly forgotten Jax is even sitting at the table with us until his phone rings. “Um,” he says, checking the screen. “It’s your aunt.” He says it like he’s worried I might dump mayonnaise from a tub on him just for telling me. “You want me to answer it, or . . . ?”
“Just hang up,” I snap. I never want to talk to Aunt Nic again.
“I mean,” Jax says slowly. The phone keeps ringing, the same stupid song. “She’s probably, like, worried about you?”
“Good!”
That’s when my mom reaches for the phone. “Let me,” she says. Before I can stop her, she presses the green button on the screen. “Nic!” she says into the phone, bright as sunshine. “Guess who?” There’s a pause, and I don’t know what Aunt Nic is saying, but my mom smiles as she tells her, “Cara found me.” She reaches for my hand across the table, correcting herself. “CJ, sorry.”
My mom squeezes my hand again, and I try to soothe the remaining bubbles inside me. Rage. Shock. Disgust. Jax keeps trying to meet my gaze, but I don’t need to know how sorry he feels for me.
“She figured that one out on her own, Nic,” my mom is saying. “She’s a smart girl. Beautiful, too. Thank goodness she didn’t get Dad’s nose.” Suddenly my mom seems irritated. “Well, I’m not the one who lied to her her whole life.” Whatever Aunt Nic says then, my mom narrows her eyes to slits. “That was uncalled for.”
“CJ,” Jax whispers at me across the table. “CJ.”
I finally look over at him. “Yeah?” I’m trying to listen to my mom’s end of the conversation, but apparently Jax has something super urgent he needs to share.
“Are you okay?” he asks me.
I only squint at him. I have no idea how to answer that question.
By the time I tune back in to the conversation, my mom is pulling the phone from her ear. She stretches it out to me. “Your aunt would like to talk to you,” she says.
“What do you want?” I bark into the phone. My voice is a wolf. A lion. I hope it hurts to hear it.
“CJ,” Aunt Nic says. She sounds sad, sorry even, but I know enough now not to believe anything that comes out of her mouth. “There’s . . . a lot we need to talk about, obviously.”
I do not respond.
“I don’t want to do this over the phone. We’ll talk when you get back here.” Another pause. “This must be very confusing for you, CJ.”
“I’m not confused at all,” I tell her.
“Your mom’s going to meet us after tomorrow’s show in Oceanside. We can all talk. Together. We’ll take as much time as you need, then head out to Phoenix the next morning. Sound good?”
“Not as good as knowing my mom my whole life,” I reply.
Aunt Nic takes a deep breath. “Please tell Jax to drive safely, all right? I’ll see you in a few hours. I love you so much, CJ.”
I hang up the phone.
I do not want to leave. I do not. But my mother needs to get back to work, and anyway, she assures me, she’ll see me tomorrow.
“You okay?” Jax asks me again as we climb the on-ramp to the freeway. It’s the first thing that wasn’t about shifting he’s said to me since we got back in the truck.
“Yeah,” I reply. Together we upshift till the truck is humming smooth and we’re well on our way. “Why wouldn’t I be? I met my mom today. And . . .” I stare out the window as the cars zoom by. Did I ever pass by my mom, on a highway like this, and not realize it was her? “I think I finally get it now.”
“Get what?” he asks.
There’s a new sort of bubble that’s rising up in me, lighter and swifter and warmer than all the others. The tiniest bubble of hope.
“I know why Spirit sent me here,” I tell him. “For real this time.”