Suddenly, Charlie popped into my head, but this time I didn’t push him right back out again like I had been.
I had news…huge, smile-so-big-it-hurt news. I had to call Charlie now. I had to want to call him now. Didn’t I?
I waited for my legs to pump faster because I couldn’t wait to get home and call him.
I waited for my brain to start putting together the words I was going to use to tell him about everything I’d done to get those three cards in my pocket.
I waited to finally feel okay that he never was going to send me those sorrys I still looked for in my inbox.
But my legs didn’t pump faster, and my brain didn’t look for words, and I did not feel okay. My smile finally gave out, and I biked off the side of the road into a field of dead grass, tipped myself onto the ground, and looked up at the white sky.
I didn’t want to talk to Charlie. I wanted to want to, but that wasn’t the same.
I didn’t want to hear him talk about basketball and how unfair it was that Coach Stiles wasn’t giving him more playing time.
I didn’t want to hear him repeat all that dumb stuff his dad always says, the stuff now he always says.
Most of all, I didn’t want to hear him say how crazy it was to think a doughnut could change your life.
I did miss Charlie, but not the one who’d answer the phone if I called when I got home. I missed the Charlie who refused to go to yard the day I thought I’d killed Charlotte K. But that kid was gone. He’d slipped away so slowly, it had been easy to pretend he was still there. But he hadn’t been, not for a long time, not since way before the move. And neither had TrisandCharlie.
I wanted to jump back on my bike and race home, leaving everything I was feeling out there. But I couldn’t move. My chest hurt like something was trying to crush it, and I just had to lie there and take it.
I don’t know how long I lay there staring into the blank sky pinning me to the ground, but by the time it finally let me up, it had started going gray.
17
I’d planned Doughnut Day so I could have the kitchen all to myself. I didn’t want anyone looking over my shoulder or telling me I was messing up. And I definitely didn’t want anyone with me if it turned out these doughnuts weren’t what I’d been dreaming they’d be all this time. Dad was taking Jeanine to the Solve-a-Thon. And Mom was going to keep Zoe busy playing Peter Pan in the basement, where, thanks to the zip line Jim the Kidnapper had installed, she could fly even without happy thoughts or fairy dust.
I didn’t want to waste any time on Doughnut Day, so the night before, I got out the equipment I’d need, including the fancy pastry gun Mom had gotten me.
I’d been practicing using the gun, and if I pressed down the plunger really fast with the gun at just the right angle, I could shoot icing onto a cake from halfway across the kitchen. Not that you’d ever need to do that, but it got me thinking that the police should consider trading in their guns for ones that mow people down with a stream of cream or mousse or something like that because then, if they’ve got the wrong guy, big deal. It’s kind of genius, right? Not in an I-can-solve-three-hundred-math-problems-in-six-hours kind of way, but still.
When my alarm went off at seven thirty the next day, I got dressed, grabbed the pastry gun—I’d decided it was too valuable to leave out in the kitchen all night—and climbed down the ladder.
I knew Jeanine would have gotten Dad up at the crack of dawn for the Solve-a-Thon, but I was worried Mom might still be in bed. She’d been staying up late trying different chicken pot pie recipes. She’d decided chicken pot pie was a must for the restaurant but that hers needed some kind of twist. The one she’d made with beets had bright pink puff pastry on top, which was definitely different, but none of us loved the taste, so she was still experimenting.
“Levin. Tris Levin, licensed to fill.” I threw open my parents’ bedroom door, pastry gun aimed at the bed.
“Mom?”
The bed was empty, and the mattress had been stripped.
I heard a moan and followed it to the bathroom. There, lying on the floor, curled around the toilet in her bathrobe, eyes closed, was my mother.
This was bad—bad for Doughnut Day, bad for me, and, thinking about it now, bad for Mom too, though I have to admit, I wasn’t so focused on her at the time. At that moment, seeing her there on the floor, all I wanted to do was shout, “Get up! It’s Doughnut Day! My day! I’ve earned this day. I deserve this day. So whatever you have, suck it up!” But I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Are you okay?”
She moaned a “no” and hugged the toilet a little tighter.
“Did you throw up?”
Yes moan.
“More than once?”
She held up four fingers.
“Feel better?”
No moan, louder and longer than the first.
“You wanna try to get up?”
“Tile. Good. Cold,” she said, eyes still shut.
“But…” I knew I shouldn’t say it, but I couldn’t stop myself. “It’s Doughnut Day, remember?” I held up the pastry gun. “So you are getting up soon, right?”
She opened one eye and glared at me with it.
“Okay. Sorry. I was just asking because,” I
