“Patty!”
“What you want me to do?” I shrugged. “Look, you’ll be up front soon enough, and then all you gon’ do is wish you were in the back. So chill, and enjoy your limo ride to the farm, Waffle.” I tried not to laugh while closing the door and throwing up the peace sign.
This is gonna sound silly, but when I walked into school, the hallway seemed different. Just knowing that Momly used to clean the floors of Chester, used to make it shiny every day just so it could get all scuffed up and dirty again, the same way she did our house, her car, and everything else, had my mind doing flips, thinking thoughts it never thought before. I was looking down at the floor, the light shining off it. Looking down like usual, but for a different reason today.
At my locker, Becca was waiting for me, wearing a weirdo smile, holding a piece of paper.
“Hey,” I said, surprised she was there.
“Hey. So, last night I was looking for more cool stuff about Frida, and I decided to just do something silly and Google Frida Kahlo and space, just to see, y’know? I wasn’t really expecting nothing, but listen to this.” Becca held the paper up and read, “?‘A constellation that exists only on paper is useless.’?” She slapped the note down to her side. I gave her a blank stare. A so what face, which is when Becca yipped, “Frida said that!”
“But what does it mean?”
“I have no idea. But she said it!” Me and Becca laughed. “And I’m going to think about it, because maybe we can use it for the project.”
I nodded, smiled. “Then I’ll think about it too.”
“Sweet. By the way, your little sister is the cutest.” Then Becca held up two fingers like Maddy and said all corny and awkward, “Peace.”
Peace. That’s the opposite of what came knocking on the door at the very end of homeroom. Mrs. Stansfield had taken roll, and the morning announcements happened, which was usually about permission slips and the day’s lunch menu. Sesame chicken—yes! One of my favorite things to eat. My stomach started growling as I heard those two words come crackling through the intercom. So excited. And then Jasmine Stanger made her own morning announcement, that she had to take her belly button ring out. She lifted her shirt. Her belly button had turned into an alien. And my stomach stopped growling.
After the announcements and before the bell rang, the intercom speaker came buzzing back on.
“Mrs. Stansfield?” Ms. Durden’s voice came growling through. Ms. Durden worked at the front desk in the office. Had a face like a baby doll and a voice like a car engine.
“Yes?”
“Can you please send Patina Jones to the office? Her uncle’s here to pick her up.”
My uncle? To pick me up? Why? What? I jumped up, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door. As I walked down the hallway, I could see Uncle Tony pacing back and forth.
“Uncle Tony?”
When he turned toward me, his face looked like there was ice under his skin. “Patty!”
“What you doing here?”
My heart was pounding even before he said what he said. The thing you never want to hear. Something I’d heard before, and never wanted to hear again. “Something’s happened.”
Something’s happened.
Something’s happened?
The bell rang.
“What? What . . . happened?” I asked, already heading for the doors as my classmates poured into the hallway, homeroom over. My legs felt heavy and my body was doing what it does when I run, but I wasn’t running. I was walking, but it didn’t really feel like I was doing that, either. I was just . . . moving.
“I’ll tell you in the car.” Uncle Tony grabbed my hand, squeezed it as he led the way.
“Is it Ma? Is something wrong with Ma?” There was something about him holding my hand, something about that moment that made everything around me fade into streaks of yellows, browns, and pinks. The hallway muted in my head. I could only hear my uncle.
“We’ve gotta get to the hospital,” he answered, steering me toward his SUV. He broke into a jog.
We have to go. We had to go. To the hospital. To the HOSPITAL.
Unmute. One second of teenage noise explosion before barreling through the double doors.
“The hospital?!” I cried out. “Uncle Tony, what’s going on? What’s wrong with Ma?” But he didn’t respond until we were in his SUV. He jammed the key into the ignition and pulled away from the curb. And before I could ask again, he looked me square in the face.
“Your mother is fine,” he confirmed finally. And I could breathe. But only one breath. Because then Uncle Tony said, “But Momly and Maddy were in an accident.”
“What . . . wha . . . do . . . whattayoumean, Momly, and . . . and Maddy? What are you talking about?” It was hard to find words, because it was hard to find breath. My whole body felt like it had been emptied out. Like I ain’t have bones or blood or nothing inside.
Uncle Tony repeated. “I don’t know how else to say it, Patty. They . . . they were in a car accident.”
Like I said—the opposite of peace. Well, not really because the opposite of peace is war, and I wasn’t at war. But there were definitely cannons going off in my brain, just like Mr. Winston had been talking about. To the left and to the right. And all over. Cannons shooting exploding cannonballs of worry. Explosions of, Is Maddy okay? Please let Maddy be okay. And Momly? Is she hurt? Is she . . . Boom. Boom. Boom. All Uncle Tony knew was he’d gotten a call from the hospital, not ten minutes ago. He was just leaving for work. That all they said was there was an accident. That he didn’t know much more than that. He kept one hand on the wheel, and with the other he reached over and took mine again. Squeezed tighter this time, like trying to squeeze some it’s gonna be okay in me. Trying to squeeze his own scared away the same way I do for Maddy sometimes. Oh, Maddy. No one was kicking the back of my seat. Maddy. Maddy, please, just . . . Momly, please, please, just . . . be . . . just be . . . breathing.
“Have you called my mom?” I asked as we pulled into the hospital.
“Not yet.”
I immediately pulled out my phone, but Uncle Tony patted my hand down as he wheeled the SUV into a parking space.
“Let’s, um . . . let’s just wait until we see what’s what, okay? Y’know, get a diagnosis.” He turned the key, killed the engine.
My heart lurched at diagnosis. There’s “die” in that word.
TO DO: Be there (and stop Maddy from going there)