The Astonishing Maybe

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  For my Wonder Roo

  One

  About halfway through Tennessee, I decided that I would never, not ever, forgive my parents for dragging me to live in some dirt town in rural Nevada.

  “Not Nev-ah-da. Nev-a-da. A-like-in-apple right in the middle. Better learn to pronounce it like a native,” Dad said for about the millionth time, “or they’ll make you move to California.”

  Whatever. I didn’t want to be a native of Nev-a-da or Nev-ah-da or anywhere but Wildwood, New Jer-sey. “At least California has an ocean.”

  “Are we going to the beach?” my little sister, Harper, asked. “I want to go to the beach.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “We’re never going to the beach again. We’re moving to the desert.”

  “You’re pouting so hard, I can hear it, Gideon.” Dad tilted the rearview mirror so he saw me through it. I barely suppressed the urge to stick out my tongue.

  “So, will we be in Tennessee forever or what?” I asked.

  “Would you like to be?” He flicked on the blinker and slowed, swerving toward the shoulder. “I mean, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but…”

  I scrunched in my seat, arms crossed over my chest. “No.”

  “You’re sure?” Mom turned in her seat and looked at me. “I hear Nashville’s real nice.”

  I was tempted to call her bluff and say yes, leave me in Tennessee. Mom wouldn’t even let me go to the boardwalk with my friends without making an adult cross their heart and hope to die that they wouldn’t leave us alone.

  Dad clucked his tongue against his teeth. “I have a job all lined up in Logandale. Nashville’s out for me. But I bet we could find a circus around here somewhere that would pay good money for you, if your heart’s set on staying in Tennessee forever.”

  “Dad!”

  “So”—he stuck out his bottom lip and lifted one shoulder like it didn’t matter to him one way or the other—“you want to keep going?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right-o, Boss.” He shot me a little salute and somehow turned things around so that continuing this drive west in an SUV pulling a trailer full of our stuff was my idea.

  Harper leaned forward in her booster seat and said, “Hey, Giddy’s not the boss. I’m the boss!”

  “Don’t call me Giddy,” I said.

  Harper bounced in her seat. “Giddyup! Giddyup!”

  “Mommmm!”

  Mom said, “Okay, Harper. That’s enough now.”

  I turned my scowl out the window and waited to get to Arkansas.

  * * *

  Three more days of driving made me even grumpier.

  Between Dad playing screaming old rock-and-roll music for hours on end and roughly three thousand games of tic-tac-toe with Harper and so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I felt like I might die if I ever saw another one, I hated just about everyone and everything.

  Maybe I liked seeing the world’s largest bottle of hair tonic in Oklahoma and standing in New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and Colorado all at the same time—but I’d never admit it.

  And anyway, none of that mattered, now that we were almost to our new home.

  Nevada was ugly. Okay, so the mountains were nice. But there wasn’t anything on them. No trees. Nothing green. We were moving to a very brown state.

  It didn’t have the Atlantic Ocean. No boardwalk. Probably no hoagies. Definitely no Wildwood Middle School. I hated Nevada and no one could convince me otherwise.

  I was still in the car, grinding my teeth, waiting as long as I dared before I got out to help unpack the trailer, when I saw her.

  She was about my age, twelve-ish, with dark hair hanging in two braids almost to her waist, and she was tall and skinny. Grandma Ellen would have said that she was all knees and elbows. And she would have been right.

  What yanked me right out of my sourness, though, was everything else about her.

  She wore cutoff jeans and a white T-shirt with purple polka dots. Pretty standard stuff. But she also had rainbow-striped socks pulled up to her bony knees and roller skates that looked like blue-and-yellow running shoes strapped to her feet. And over her clothes, she wore a red swimsuit with a purple stripe running down each side. She had something tied around her neck, flapping in the hot, dry breeze as she skated in slow circles on her porch.

  Was this strange girl my new next-door neighbor? She looked like she came from another planet. Despite myself, I was curious enough to open the car door and step my first foot in Nev-a-da.

  I felt a little bit like Han Solo or Indiana Jones. An explorer, exploring new lands with strange creatures. And that was kind of cool.

  “See, there’s a kid next door,” Dad said, rubbing my head as he passed me. “You’re going to be fine, Boss.”

  I ducked away from his hand and looked at the girl to check if she was watching. She wasn’t. Her eyes stayed on the road that ran in front of our houses.

  I looked that way, too. She seemed to be waiting for someone, but not even a single car had driven by since we pulled into our new driveway.

  Our street was just her house and ours, next to each other with one other house on either side. Just four houses with a wide patch of bare desert across the street, and some kind of farm behind.

  Whoever she was, she was focused on the empty street. She didn’t even seem to notice me.

  I mean, us.

  * * *

  Step #1: ignore her back.

  I walked back and forth with boxes of dishes and books and clothes. I stacked two boxes on top of each other. I tried for three the next trip, but Mom stopped me before I could break something.

  The girl didn’t even glance my way.

  * * *

  Step #2: boss Harper.

  I marched my little sister around the yard like a drill sergeant.

  “Hurry up,” I told her. “And don’t forget, that box goes in the bathroom.”

  “I don’t have to do what you tell me to, Giddy,” she said. “Mom said so.”

  Harper was five and young enough to still get away with all kinds of stuff I’d never slip past our parents. Case in point: she stuck out her tongue, even though Mom was right there. Then she headed off to unpack her dolls when I tried to make her carry my skateboard into the garage.

  The girl next door still didn’t look at me.

  I mean, us.

  * * *

  I didn’t have a step #3.

  When the trailer was finally empty, I was sent to my new room to make up my bed and start to unpack. Instead, I stood at my window and watched her skate in her slow circles between her front door and the edge of the porch steps. She never took her eyes off the road. Never once looked up at me.

  Two

  New Jersey summers are sticky, humid scorchers, but Nevada was something else altogether. We’d moved into a blast furnace. Outside my bedroom window the sky was a clear, cloudless blue. It looked like a nice
day, until you opened a door and ran into a wall of heat.

  When the doorbell rang the next morning, I was lying on my bed with a fan blowing on my face, and my well-worn copy of The Hobbit on my chest ready to grab if Mom came in to check up on me.

  Lying around was not an approved activity in the Quinton household.

  I grabbed the book and fumbled it open when Mom called out, “Gideon! Gideon, come here.”

  Was she seriously going to make me meet some neighborhood lady who’d come to snoop out what kind of crazy family would move to this hot, dry, dusty place?

  In a small show of rebellion, I went out into the living room in just my dinosaur pajama bottoms. I rounded the corner and then came to a dead stop.

  Why hadn’t I put on a pair of jeans?

  And a shirt.

  I would have given anything for a T-shirt right then. The girl who had completely ignored me the day before watched me with careful eyes so dark brown, they were nearly black. Her hair floated around her in a wild cloud of brown curls.

  Mom’s back was to me, her neat blond hair in stark contrast, and she was asking the girl about the middle school.

  “Gideon will be in the seventh grade.”

  “Me, too,” the girl said.

  “Do you like your teachers?”

  She shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Oh. I … really?” Impressive. Mom wasn’t caught off guard very often. Like, never.

  I took a step backward, but Mom turned and saw me. Her eyes dropped down to my pajama pants and she gave me a look that said, plain as day, natural consequences, Gideon.

  In other words—this is what I get for lying around in my pj’s all morning.

  “Gideon, this is Roona. She lives next door.”

  The night before, all I wanted was for Roona to notice me. I didn’t even know why it was so important. Now she pushed her hair off her forehead and stared at me, and I wished I could sink into the floor. I finally managed to get out, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Roona said. “Want to go swimming?”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You have a pool?”

  “Sure. Everyone in Logandale has a pool. Haven’t you felt how hot it is here?”

  “I want to go swimming.” Harper bounced on her toes. The end of her blond ponytail twitched like a cat’s tail.

  “No way,” I said.

  “Mom!”

  “That’s enough, Harper.” Mom tilted her head and gave the exact answer I knew was coming. “I don’t know. Is your mother home, Roona?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Roona said, sweet as pie.

  I felt the maybe another day coming before Mom opened her mouth, and my disappointment was sudden and sharp. I scrambled for an alternative that might keep Roona at our house. A game of Monopoly? Riding bikes?

  Mom surprised me, though. “Go ahead, get changed, Gideon.”

  “Me, too?” Harper asked, already headed for her new bedroom to find her swimsuit.

  “Not this time, Sweetpea.”

  Harper pouted and I blinked. I needed a second to absorb this turn of events. “Okay,” I said slowly, expecting the other shoe to drop.

  “I’ll walk over with you and meet Mrs.…”

  “Mulroney,” Roona said.

  There it was. Not too bad, though. I ran into my room, traded my dinosaur pajamas for a pair of swim trunks that I had to dig through three boxes to find, then ran back before Mom could change her mind.

  * * *

  My mom and Roona’s didn’t look like they came from the same planet. Mine wore a white dress that covered her knees and her arms to her elbows, even though it was about a thousand degrees outside, sandals, and lipstick. Roona’s wore denim overalls, was in her bare feet, and was covered with flour.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mom walk around in her bare feet.

  Mrs. Mulroney paid attention to me before she even looked at my mom. She smiled and said, “You’re the boy who moved in yesterday. I told Roona I thought you were just her age. Seventh grade?”

  “Oh. Yeah. When school starts again.”

  “Daria Quinton,” Mom said, holding out her hand between me and Mrs. Mulroney like she was at a business meeting or something. Mom had never been to a business meeting, as far as I knew, so I wasn’t sure what she was doing.

  Mrs. Mulroney wiped her hands on the back of her overalls, then shook with Mom. “Miranda Mulroney.”

  They held hands for maybe a second too long. Mom took hers back first. “Roona invited Gideon for a swim, but if you’re busy—it looks like you’re cooking.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Mrs. Mulroney said. “I was going to come say hello today. I had to get an early start on these scones.”

  “Scones?”

  Mrs. Mulroney smiled. She was probably the prettiest woman I’d ever seen up close, and I wondered if that was why Mom was acting so weird. Girls were weird in general, so I wasn’t sure.

  “For the chamber of commerce breakfast tomorrow morning,” Mrs. Mulroney said.

  “My mom bakes for all of the events around here,” Roona said.

  Mrs. Mulroney smiled and put a hand on the back of Roona’s head, smoothing the wild curls. “I just picked up raspberries fresh at the farmers’ market. Would you like a scone?”

  “No, thank you.” Mom didn’t eat gluten anymore. Gluten is basically in everything that’s baked and tastes good. She tried to make us all stop, but that didn’t last long thanks to Dad. “Another day might be better for that swim.”

  “Please, Mom,” I said, but low, under my breath.

  She looked down at me, then said, “If you’re sure he won’t be in your way.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. He’ll keep Roona occupied so I can get this last batch in the oven.”

  * * *

  Roona’s swimming pool was plastic, eight inches deep, and filled with a garden hose. I stared at it, caught between disappointment and not wanting to show my disappointment. At least it was in the shade of the house. Otherwise, I think I might have melted. The water inside it was as warm as a bath.

  We sat in folding chairs that scorched the backs of our thighs; our feet dangled in the shallow water. We’d already covered the basics. Roona was an only child who had lived in Logandale all her life. Her dad was in the air force and her mom was a baker. I missed New Jersey and had a little sister named Harper. My dad was an artist, but he worked in marketing. My mom was a nurse and worked in an emergency room before I was born, but now she was just a mom.

  Silence stretched between us as we kicked at the water with bare toes. It didn’t do anything to cool us off. The awkwardness got to me, and as happy as I was to have someone to hang out with, I wondered if it was lunchtime yet.

  Roona said, “Let’s play Truth.”

  “Truth?”

  “Like Truth or Dare—only just truths. Two rules. We have to answer and we have to tell the truth.”

  My stomach tightened. I’d never liked new things and it seemed like this new thing could go particularly bad. “I think I have to go check in.”

  “No you don’t,” she said. “It’s only ten thirty.”

  Shoot.

  “Well—what kind of questions?”

  “Whatever kind we want. It’s our game.”

  “What if one of us really, really doesn’t want to answer?”

  Roona wrinkled her nose and thought for a minute, then said, “Okay, we each get one pass.”

  This is what my dad would call being caught between a rock and a hard place. Roona was the closest thing I had to a potential friend so far in Nevada. I hadn’t even seen any other kids in our new neighborhood. If I blew her off, it was going to be a long, lonely summer—and I’d have to start seventh grade without any friends at all.

  “Do any other kids live on our street?” I asked.

  “Is that really the first question you want to ask?”

  “What? No. I was just curious.”

  “This whole game is about being curious.” R
oona straightened her pigtails over her shoulders and said, “No other kids. Ready to start?”

  Not even close, but even though I’d already had the thought myself, I didn’t want her to decide it was time for me to go check in with my mom, so I said, “Fine.”

  She clapped her hands and sat up straighter in her chair. “You go first.”

  “Wait.” My brain seized up, like it had never heard of a question before. “What?”

  “Ask me something. Anything. It doesn’t matter what it is.”

  “Um…” Don’t say something stupid. Don’t say something stupid. “What’s your favorite color?”

  She quirked an eyebrow in a perfect arch. Man, I wished I could do that. “Yellow.”

  “Mine’s blue,” I said.

  “I didn’t ask, so that doesn’t count.”

  “Okay.”

  “Wait. Should we both answer all the questions?” she asked, very seriously.

  “Sure,” I said. “I mean, I guess so.”

  “Favorite movie.”

  Umm. Umm. The only thing I could think of was the movie Harper watched about three thousand times on Dad’s iPad during the drive from New Jersey. It came blurting out before I could stop it. “Finding Nemo.”

  “Beauty and the Beast.”

  Okay. Okay. “Favorite song.”

  “Anything by the Beatles.”

  My brain went blank again. Her answer was too cool. Why couldn’t she have said some boy band? It felt like someone had filled my empty skull with concrete. “Uh…”

  “Just say the first song you think of.”

  The only song I could put my finger on was my mom’s favorite song. “‘With or Without You.’ You know, U2?”

  She nodded with appreciation and I warmed up to the game. She asked, “Last time you brushed your teeth.”

  I’d forgotten before I went to bed the night before and I almost lied, but for some reason I just couldn’t. “Yesterday morning.”

  “This morning.”

  Middle names. Douglas and Louise.

  Favorite soda. We both liked Dr Pepper.

  Favorite ice cream. I liked chocolate. She liked rainbow sherbet.

  Favorite holiday. I liked Christmas. She liked Arbor Day.