Chapter 17 #2
I quietly switched the movie to Mary Poppins, keeping the sound low. I avoided The Wizard of Oz, sure that the wickedness in that movie would make Mom see mine.
I needed her to be very asleep so I could go to her room. I knew that nothing important would be hidden anywhere else in the house. I never went into her room alone. If there was something I shouldn’t see, she would put it there.
When her head fell back on the cushions, I covered her with a blanket so she would be cozy and less likely to startle awake. I turned the sound even lower.
I tiptoed inside her room and flipped on the light.
My senses tingled with the certainty that an explanation for her reaction was here somewhere.
She was hiding something from me, and because of it, I would not be able to go to Shelfmart on Monday and start working.
Was I really sick? Or dying? I had to know.
I searched quickly through her drawers, lifting up all the clothes, especially ones I never saw her wear. I found nothing.
I opened her closet door. In the bottom corners were several boxes, but they only held a few odds and ends of things that were broken or we no longer used. In the corner by her bed was a small table covered in a blanket. On it she kept some books, a candle, and an alarm clock. I lifted the quilt.
Beneath the table was a large cardboard box. I dragged it out and opened the flaps.
Inside was some kind of machine in a beige box. Tucked along one side was a folder filled with papers. I pulled it out and glanced inside. My name was on the first one! There were notes and pages. All of them were about me!
I couldn’t look at them now. I quickly closed the box back up and moved it back under the table.
I took the folder to my room. For a moment, I couldn’t figure out where to put it so she wouldn’t see. But then I stuck it in the bottom of one of my drawers.
When I got back to the living room, I sat carefully on the cushions, but Mom startled awake. She rubbed her eyes. “I sure crashed. It must’ve been the sugar from the cake.”
“Sugar does that?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s called a sugar crash. The sugar gets your body all energetic, and then once you’ve used it all, you get really tired.”
“Interesting.”
My heart was pumping so hard I could swear she’d be able to hear it.
But I had done it.
Waiting all the way to the end of the movie to find out what was inside that folder was excruciating. I didn’t get a sugar crash whatsoever. I was wildly awake.
When Mom finally went to bed, I waited for her to go to sleep. After the house had been quiet a good while, I sneaked to my dresser and opened the drawer. The folder might be nothing. But I had to know.
I sat on the bed and spread out the pages.
The first one seemed to be from a hospital.
Mom was right. I did have a condition. It was called epilepsy.
It caused amnesia. I didn’t know what amnesia meant, but by the time I read the description of my condition, I understood.
A seizure could make me lose my memories.
The room spun, moments from my life that hadn’t made sense rushing at me and aligning with this new information. Why I couldn’t remember being small. There were dresses in the back of my closet that didn’t fit me, but I had no idea when they might have ever been worn.
I felt sick. I wanted my mother. I wanted her to hold me close on the sofa. For us to watch the Munchkins and laugh at their dances.
I wanted to stop knowing, but I couldn’t.
And there was so much more. The other pages were filled with small text and long words. I didn’t understand any of it, and the dictionary was in the other room. I kept going.
I stopped when I found a piece of paper that looked like it had been torn out of a notebook. It said the year was 2016, and I, Ava Roberts, had just turned sixteen years old.
But that couldn’t be right. I turned sixteen years old today. And it was now 2018. I read the date every time we drove by the bank on the way to the grocery store. A flashing sign said the day, time, and temperature.
My stomach tightened. Nothing made sense.
I had to keep going. The notebook paper also said I had epilepsy, like the hospital pages.
It said not to trust my mother. And it told me to keep a note on my belly at all times so that I would know the handwriting I could trust. The handwriting on this page.
Handwriting. The word made my belly buzz with fear.
A heavy piece of paper listed my name, and Mom’s name, and another name as my father. Marcus Anthony Roberts.
Where was he?
It listed my birth date. Today was not my birthday at all! I turned eighteen three months ago! Mom had lied, big time. She’d made me a cake to fool me.
My eyes smarted with hot tears and my belly heaved. Why had she done this?
I stayed up all night reading. Not only the folder, but also other things I found. Another page told me that I hid notes in my room. The first one said to look beneath a dresser drawer, but when I looked, nothing was there.
This must be an old note. And if Mom had read it, she would have taken what was there already. I just knew it.
But maybe there were notes in other places, ones I didn’t mention here.
I searched my room like I had never known to search before. Under my bed. In my closet. At last I found a page taped to the bottom of a box. I read it quickly.
Don’t trust Mother. Trust only this handwriting.
My belly quivered as I searched for more. Another was tucked in my closet in the space where the bar met the wall. This one was longer. It told me about the paper flowers. That they held a secret.
The note said they hung on the wall, but they must have been taken down, as the paper flowers I knew about filled a drawer.
They were old and faded, bent and torn. I examined them carefully.
There were roses, tulips, daffodils. All flowers I’d learned about with Mom as we worked on them in the yard.
Then I saw it. Some of the colored flowers had words on the back, so tiny as to be almost impossible to read.
As I searched and read, I realized everything I’d ever known was a lie. We had not always lived in the country. We had been to other places. I read about a woman named Grandma Flowers who lived next door.
I’d once lived a life totally different from this one.
I had planned to run away at eighteen, but never got that chance. I don’t know what happened, or why I failed, but it must have been Mom—Mother.
I read about a boy named Tucker. He had been special to me. One flower said:
Tonight, you will give Tucker a flower that tells him you love him. Look for the yellow daffodil that will tell you what he said back.
I sorted through the dozens of flowers strewn over my floor. I had five or six yellow daffodils, but none of them told me what I wanted to know. Who was this Tucker? And what had he said when I told him I loved him?
Could he help me? Was he out there looking for me?
My heart hammered in a way I’d never felt before. I wasn’t dying. I was more alive than I’d ever been. I could feel the blood in my body, running hot and telling me to go, go, go.
I had to start my own adventure. Maybe I did have a scarecrow and a tin man out there somewhere. Maybe Tucker was one of many people my mother kept from me. A history she didn’t let me learn.
I began packing. The flowers. The folder. What clothes would fit in my duffel bag.
I would not confront my mother. She had a power over me I did not understand. She scared me. I realized how little I knew about anything. But my eyes were open.
I would have to leave my mother behind. She’d recognize if I was scared, or if I had an expression on my face like the wizard. I was now the girl hiding behind the curtain.
I put on my best shoes, my favorite dress, and a jacket. I crept through the house while my mother slept. As the sun spread its rosy light on the fields, I slipped out the back door.
Then I ran.