You May Already Be a Winner Read online

  And I said . . .

  ~

  I said nothing.

  ~

  Then she went to bed and Berkeley said, “Will you read me Corduroy?”

  I looked over at my Berk. Curled up in Dad’s big chair.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  And I read about Corduroy and his lost button.

  In the middle of the night I wrote a note for Carlene. It said this:

  Why did Lala say that? Do you think my dad is a loser?

  I also put: I still want to go to Monster Jam.

  I stared at it.

  Then I ripped it up.

  Maybe my dad was trash and if she didn’t want to talk about it, neither did I.

  ~

  I crossed off Monster Jam on my calendar.

  The next day went by and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

  Trashy.

  Loser.

  Gross.

  Girlfriend.

  Ugh.

  Berk and I did our usual routine and no Bart and no nothing.

  I didn’t feel like eating the maple bars Delilah brought us and when Mrs. Sydney Gunnerson stopped by the tramp to say she’d teach me how to sing some songs because I’d asked her about that a while back because I thought maybe I’d go on The Voice and at first she’d said she had no time but now she said she would do it but I just said, “No thanks.”

  She put her hand on her hip and got a look on her face. She was wearing a turban on her head.

  “I will not offer again, young lady.”

  And I looked at her face. She had thick black glasses and wiry hairs coming out of her chin, but she was kind of pretty in an old lady kind of way.

  I wondered if she was trashy and gross.

  “No thank you,” I said again.

  Berkeley said, “I will.”

  And Mrs. Sydney Gunnerson said Berkeley’s voice wasn’t mature enough yet.

  And then she left.

  I sort of regretted saying no to her because then I’d get to see the inside of her trailer firsthand and because of The Voice but I also didn’t regret it because I felt like throwing up.

  We sat on the tramp.

  We read our books.

  We ate our stupid sandwiches.

  I watched Grant and Bob walk around. Grant was trying to fix something on his car and swore.

  And Berkeley yelled, “That’s a bad word” and I wished she would just be quiet but Grant looked over and said, “Did you say something?” and Berkeley said, “That was a bad word,” and Grant laughed and said, “Sorry, I’ll try to watch my language,” and Berkeley said, “You really should,” and then he laughed again and then burped, which I thought was kind of rude.

  I also knew for sure Bart was a liar. The FBI would have no interest in someone like Grant.

  So that’s how the week went.

  Boring and nothing.

  Except Paul did show me two MMA moves called the Double Leg Takedown, which I tried out, and Paul said, “Dang girl,” because I was actually pretty good at it, and also the Spinning Back Fist, which I need to practice.

  And I got a job taking out Wanda and Jerry Smith’s garbage each week for a dollar because Jerry, who usually does it, twisted his ankle at Petco when he was trying to clean out the cat cages and Wanda doesn’t leave her house.

  But other than those things, boring. And nothing.

  The weekend was even worse.

  On Saturday, Carlene and Bonnie were giggling on Carlene’s front porch and I came out and said hi.

  And then they both stopped laughing and Bonnie said, “We have to go,” and she took Carlene’s hand and they went inside.

  I could see them go to Carlene’s room through the windows and they turned on music and they were probably going to the mall soon.

  I wondered if Bonnie was invited to the Monster Jam.

  Mom and Berk were inside.

  We were supposed to go swimming at the rec center later but I didn’t feel like it.

  Delilah came by in her jogging outfit even though she doesn’t jog and she said, “What’s troubling you, hon?”

  I said, “Nothing.”

  And she said, “Don’t look like nothing.”

  So I ignored her and went and sat on the tramp.

  Then I got off the tramp.

  Then I walked to the KOA to see if anything was going on there.

  Nothing.

  Except a couple sitting on a picnic table feeding each other doughnuts, which made me feel like barfing all over them.

  Dad didn’t have a girlfriend.

  No way he had a girlfriend.

  I walked back.

  Nobody interesting was on the trail and it was Little League practice at the fields; not that I cared ever who was over there except for one time there was a family reunion and they brought a band that played Taylor Swift and I liked it.

  Blah.

  Nothing.

  So I sat on the tramp and knew in my whole life nothing was ever going to happen and I was going to rot and die.

  ~

  I thought that, but I also thought how deep down in a place between my intestines and stomach, in a small little pocket, a voice was telling me that someday I’d see Bart again.

  That he’d come.

  That he’d understand.

  That he was different like me.

  That we both had big ideas and were going to big places.

  Not to give up.

  And I said, “I don’t even care about him. Give up what?”

  And the voice said, “You know.”

  And I said, “I do not know.”

  And the voice said, “You know.”

  And I said, “No, I don’t.”

  And I was getting very angry at this voice because I didn’t even care about Bart anymore. Just then a marching band came down our street.

  This was the biggest marching band I had ever seen. Bigger than the one on the Fourth of July. Bigger than the one on TV at Thanksgiving.

  Bigger than if the universe had a marching band and it was populated with people and animals and small trucks.

  They were playing a song.

  And someone was singing, someone with a horrible loud voice.

  People on their way to work said, Baby what did you expect. Gonna burst into flame, go ahead.

  And just then, in the middle of the trombones and the saxophones and the tubas, just then, around the corner came an elephant, and on top of the elephant was Bart. Standing with a microphone and pointing at me. “There she is, ladies and gentlemen,” he said.

  I laughed.

  He smiled.

  The band stopped marching but they didn’t stop playing.

  Bart said, “Your dad doesn’t have a girlfriend but I do.”

  I laughed.

  He motioned for me to come on top of the elephant with him.

  “How?” I yelled, and he pointed at a rope ladder.

  So then I did. I climbed the rope ladder and jumped into his arms and he threw down the microphone and right there, in the middle of our street with the music playing and Carlene and dumb-bum Bonnie and Chip and Tandi and Jerry and Wanda Smith and Baby George and Delilah and Paul and Mrs. Sydney Gunnerson and Fancy Melody and Harry and Bob and Grant and everyone, especially Mom, watching, me and Bart kissed and kissed and kissed.

  ~

  I sat on the burning tramp and knew that maybe the voice was right.

  I would see him again.

  I had an idea.

  I asked Mom if I could go to the library.

  “Again? Now?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We’re going to the pool.”

  “Can you drop me off?”
<
br />   She looked at me. Then at Berk. “You want to be dropped off at the library?”

  She was acting like it was the weirdest thing she’d ever heard.

  “Yes, please,” I said. “While you guys swim. I need to get some studying done.”

  She stared at me.

  I said, “I’m trying to stay at grade level.”

  Even though she didn’t let me go to school, things like that always got to her.

  “Grade level?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So I can be in seventh grade next year.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said.

  I said, “It’s really for the best.”

  So she dropped me off.

  ~

  When I got there I did four things.

  I got a drink. They have the coldest best water there.

  I picked out a DVD called The Buttercream Gang for me and Berk for later.

  I waited in line for a computer and then I entered a sweepstakes called Lights, Camera, Switzerland! and one called TJ Maxx Dazzle in Diamonds and then Big and Rich’s Las Vegas Run Away With You Weekend—in case I didn’t get to go to Monster Jam after all.

  And then for the most important reason to be there, I Googled Steve Fossett. Which felt like it might bring Bart back.

  ~

  Bart was right.

  Steve Fossett was the best person ever.

  He went around the world in a hot-air balloon.

  He hiked almost all the highest peaks in the world except Everest, which I wouldn’t want to hike that one because you could lose your fingers at the least or turn into a Popsicle and die at the most.

  He swam to Alcatraz.

  And he raced cars.

  He flew a fixed-wing airplane around the world nonstop.

  The only bad thing about him was he went out on a solo flight one day and then disappeared.

  Thousands of people searched for him. Thousands and thousands.

  For months.

  For years.

  But he was gone. Without a trace.

  And then, after looking and looking and looking, his wife had him declared legally dead.

  It was very mysterious.

  I wish it had stayed like that. Legally dead but no evidence.

  Maybe he escaped to the woods and was living as a mountain man. Maybe he’d trekked to Antarctica and had built an igloo castle. Maybe he hitchhiked to New York City and was a musician on the streets.

  He could be anywhere. Doing anything.

  ~

  But then one day, a hiker ruined it.

  He found a bone.

  Steve Fossett’s bone according to DNA.

  I sat at the computer and stared at his picture and then the picture of the bone. He had disappeared without a trace but then they found a bone.

  A teeny tiny bone. All that was left.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

  That night, after they went to the rec center and I found out about Steve Fossett, Mom said, “I’m going out.”

  I was eating ramen.

  Berk was in the street playing with the Johnson girls.

  Carlene was nowhere.

  “Out?”

  Mom was wearing tight jeans and a shimmery shirt.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “What?”

  “That,” I said, pointing to her shirt.

  She looked down. “It’s my blouse.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  She shrugged. “Do you like it?”

  I stared at her. Her hair was loose and she had on thick red lipstick.

  She looked how I was going to look when I had my first kiss and it made me kind of mad.

  “Who you going out with?” I said, ignoring the question.

  “Tandi. And Chelsea.”

  She fixed her hair in the reflection on the microwave.

  “I thought you hated Tandi.”

  She sighed. “I don’t hate Tandi. We just had a disagreement.”

  It was more than a disagreement though. Everything was normal and then one day they had a fight and Mom wasn’t speaking to her. Tandi even came over and Mom wouldn’t let us open the door.

  But now they were going out together.

  “Chip is letting Tandi go out?”

  Mom looked at me. “Why wouldn’t Chip let Tandi go out?”

  I shrugged.

  She turned now and faced me.

  “Why would you say that? Tandi can do whatever she wants.”

  Her face was red and I didn’t know why and I said, “I just meant, I thought Tandi and Chip have date night on Saturdays.”

  Mom looked like she didn’t know this.

  “They do?”

  “Carlene said they do. And that they make out.”

  “They make out?”

  I nodded. “Carlene said they go on a date and then they come home and make out.”

  Mom smiled. Then she turned back to the microwave. “I don’t know what they usually do but she’s going out with me tonight.”

  I sat there.

  Then Mom said, “Put Berkeley to bed by nine, okay?”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She looked at me. “I already told you. Out.”

  “Out where?”

  “Out.”

  I tried to imagine my mom out. Out at a bowling alley for laser glow-in-the-dark bowling and she gets a strike and everyone cheers and a man named Carl picks her up and puts her on his shoulders.

  Out at Los Hermanos to eat chips and salsa and then someone says, “Sing! Sing! Sing!” because my mom used to be in a band and she used to play the banjo and she’d have gigs that we went to and I thought she was the prettiest woman in the world. Now I didn’t think that as much.

  Or more probably, she’d go to Lamars, the pool lounge where I knew Dad went and sometimes Mom.

  I hoped they wouldn’t go to Lamars.

  What I really wanted was for her to stay home.

  To watch the Buttercream Gang with us.

  To make caramel popcorn and let me put my head in her lap and then she’d braid my hair.

  I wanted her to tell us stories about her grandma’s house, which was way in the country and had horses and stables and a pond where you could swim.

  And I could be sad that I never got to go there because she died before I was born and Mom would be sad, too, and we’d be sad together.

  I wanted her to not go out with dumb Tandi and whoever else was maybe saying my dad was trash.

  She grabbed her keys.

  “Go to sleep by eleven,” she said, and then she walked out the door.

  ~

  I went to sleep at twelve thirty on the couch.

  I have no idea when she got home.

  One problem is when there’s no floor.

  Like you’re walking around and you don’t even care about where you’re going to step because you’ve never had to worry about it before.

  And then out of the blue, on a Monday, or a Tuesday, or maybe a Wednesday, the most boring days of the week, when the sky is gray and everything is happening how it always happens, on one of those days, suddenly you take a step and the ground is gone.

  And you’re falling

  And falling

  And falling.

  A bad part is there’s no warning.

  No one tells you.

  And even worse, it seems like the ground is there.

  That it will always be there.

  It looks like regular old carpet or grass or cement or tile or dirt or rock. Right there, under your feet.

  But then you take a step, and you fall right through.

&nbs
p; ~

  Saturday night was bad.

  Monday morning was no ground.

  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.