Laughter erupted from somewhere. I ran down the hall and started opening doors. One room was nothing but walkie-talkies plugged into charging stations. A huge sign read NO COFFEE MUGS ALLOWED EXCEPT FOR JOYCE’S. The next room was desks and computers and oxygen tanks. One was just weird scientific machines. Then there was a bathroom. I heard voices from around the corner. I ran toward them. Then I tripped.
On the floor was a spaghetti pot sitting atop a flattened-out trash bag. Inside the spaghetti pot was a T-shirt with something familiar on it… a rainbow handprint. I reached down and picked it out of the cold gray water. GALER STREET SCHOOL.
“Dad,” I cried. “Daddy!” I ran back down the hall to the wall of windows.
Both Zodiacs were zooming away from Palmer Station, toward our ship. Dad was in one of them.
Then, at my back, “You little rotter.”
It was Mom, standing there. She was wearing Carhartt pants and a fleece.
“Mom!” Tears sprang up in my eyes. I ran to her. She dropped to her knees, and I just hugged her so hard and buried my body in her. “I found you!”
She had to carry all my weight in her arms because I had just given up. I stared into her beautiful face, her blue eyes examining me like they always used to.
“What are you doing here?” she said. “How did you get here?” Her wrinkles radiated like sun rays from her smiling eyes. There was a big stripe of gray running down her part.
“Look at your hair,” I said.
“You almost killed me,” she said. “You know that.” Then, with tears and confusion, “Why didn’t you write?”
“I didn’t know where you were!” I said.
“My letter,” she said.
“Your letter?”
“I sent it weeks ago.”
“I never got your stupid letter,” I said. “Here. This is from Dad.” I handed her the velvet bag. She knew what it was, and pressed it to her cheek and closed her eyes.
“Open it!” I said.
She untied the cord and pulled out a locket. In it was the photograph of Saint Bernadette. It was the necklace Dad had given her after she won her architecture prize. It was the first time I’d ever seen it.
“What’s this?” She pulled out a card and held it away from her face. “I can’t read what it says.” I took it from her and read it aloud.
1. BEEBER BIFOCAL
2. TWENTY MILE HOUSE
3. BEE
4. YOUR ESCAPE
FOURTEEN MIRACLES TO GO.
“Elgie,” Mom said, and breathed out a sweet relaxed smile.
“I knew I’d find you,” I said, and hugged her my tightest. “Nobody believed me. But I knew.”
“My letter,” Mom said. “If you never got it—” She pulled my arms apart and looked into my face. “I don’t understand, Bee. If you never got my letter, how are you here?”
“I did it like you,” I said. “I slipped away.”
PART SEVEN
The Runaway Bunny
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21
My first day back at Galer Street, on the way to music, I passed my cubby. It was stuffed with notices from the past few months. Crammed in with all the flyers about the recycling challenge and Bike-to-School Day was an envelope, a stamped envelope, addressed to me in care of Galer Street. The return address was a contracting company in Denver and the writing: Mom’s.
Kennedy saw my face and she started hanging on me, all “What is it? What is it? What is it?” I didn’t want to open the envelope in front of her. But I couldn’t open it alone. So I ran back to homeroom. Mr. Levy was with some teachers who were about to walk to Starbucks on their break. As soon as Mr. Levy saw me, he told the others to go on ahead. We shut the door, and I tried to tell him everything all at once, about the intervention and Audrey Griffin who saved Mom and Choate and my roommate who didn’t like me and Antarctica and Soo-Lin’s baby and finding Mom and now this, the missing letter. But it squirted out in a big jumble. So I did the next best thing. I went to my locker and gave him the book I wrote at Choate. Then I went to music.
At lunch recess, Mr. Levy found me. He said he liked my book OK, but in his mind, it needed more work. He had an idea. For my spring research project, how about I complete it? He suggested I ask Audrey and Paul Jellinek and Ms. Goodyear and anyone else to provide documents. And Mom, of course, but she wasn’t going to be back from Antarctica for two weeks. Mr. Levy said he’d give me credit for the classes I’d missed so I could graduate with the rest of my class. And that’s what this is.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 7
The missing letter from Mom
Bee,
I write to you from a shipping container in Antarctica, where I’m waiting to have four wisdom teeth voluntarily extracted by a veterinarian. Let me back up.
Last thing you knew, I vanished while being chased around the living room with a butterfly net. Earlier that day, you’ll recall, I was at World Celebration Day. To avoid actual “celebration” with occupants of said “world,” I made busy at the coffee table, pouring, stirring, and slamming, in all, five cups of mud. The moment the performance was over, I hightailed it home (not to Dr. Neergaard’s to get my teeth pulled, which was truly an insane idea, even I had come to realize that) and intervened in my own intervention, rendered much more painful by the fact that I had to pee something fierce. I went into the bathroom, and, hark, cameth a tap, tap, tap.
You know how we thought Audrey Griffin was the devil? Turns out Audrey Griffin is an angel. She plucked me off the balcony and whisked me to the safety of her kitchen, where she presented me with the dossier of my truly terrible behavior, which you have by now received via snail mail.
I know it seems like I just took off, but here’s the thing: I didn’t.
For all I knew, Elgie was still planning to take you to Antarctica. He was very adamant about that in the intervention. The next morning, I headed to the airport so I could talk to you both in person. (Be warned. I will never, ever email, text, or possibly phone anyone again. From now on, I’m the Mafia, only face-to-face contact or nuttin’.) I asked if you had checked in, but divulging such information was strictly forbidden — those 9/11 hijackers just keep on giving — so my only option was to check in and board the plane.
As you know, you weren’t on the flight. I panicked, but then a pretty stewardess handed me a glass of orange juice over chipped ice. It tasted way better than it had any right to, so I took the trip to Miami, my mind on fire: a furious, injury-seeking missile. Elgie was the rat, I the misunderstood genius. The screeds I rehearsed were epic and airtight.
Stepping off the plane in Miami was like reentering the womb. Was it the welcoming voices of LeBron James and Gloria Estefan? No, it was the scent of Cinnabon. I ordered a large and headed down to a tram, which would deliver me to the ticket counter. There I’d buy passage home and accept my fate.
The Cinnabon wasn’t going to eat itself, so I sat. Trams came and went as I pulled apart the puff of deliciousness, enjoying every bite, until I realized I’d forgotten napkins. Both my hands were plastered with icing. My face, too. In one of my vest pockets was a handkerchief. I held up my hands, surgeonlike, and asked a lady, “Please, could you unzip this?” The pocket she unzipped contained only a book on Antarctica. I lifted it out and wiped my hands and, yes, my face, with its clean pages.