Page 22 of Gone Tonight
Rosie looked down and I thought I saw her blushing. She was embarrassed to witness my humiliation.
I wanted to bolt. No, what I really wanted to do was hurl the heavy pizza pan on our table at Coach’s head, then grab Brittany by her Barbie hair and smash her face into the table.
Rage burned within me. A buzzing sound filled my head. They’d gone too far this time—all three of them had. My fists clenched as my breaths came faster.
Then something made me look up.
I saw James carrying the tray with Mrs. Davis’s wine and iced tea and a beer for Coach into the room. James’s eyes were fixed on me.
I didn’t know how much he’d heard of Coach’s little speech. But he must have gleaned something.
Because as James held my gaze, he leaned over and spit into Coach’s drink. Then he did the same to Mrs. Davis’s.
By the time he delivered the beverages to the table, placing them in front of my adult tormentors with a flourish, the hot tears of rage in my eyes were gone.
It wasn’t like everything was better, but I’d regained control. Dinner broke up a few minutes later, after Coach and Mrs. Davis had drained their glasses.
James was nowhere to be found when I left, even though I looked behind me a few times on my way out the door.
But the next afternoon, I found a note tucked into the slats of my school locker. It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be. I knew who wrote the neat, blocky letters.
I watched you today. You should be captain.
CHAPTER ELEVENCATHERINE
After a restless night, I wake up and stumble out of my bedroom, hoping Mom made a pot of coffee before she left for work.
But the Mr. Coffee machine is clean and empty in the dark galley kitchen.
I fill the glass pot halfway with water and dump it into the reservoir, then open the cabinet to grab the tin of Maxwell House.
There’s a cardboard container of eggs next to the coffee.
I stare at it dumbly for a second, then reach for it and open the tabs. Four white eggs are nestled inside. I touch one of them. It’s room temperature.
Mom must’ve put them away here. They could be a salmonella factory by now.
I drop the eggs into the trash can and the cardboard container into the recycle bin, watching as one of the eggs cracks apart and oozes out of its shell.
My head swims and I grip the edge of the counter.
I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll undergo genetic testing to see if I’ve inherited the gene for early-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s my own decision, one my mother can’t deny me. I’ll pay for it myself if it comes to that.
Even if the gene is coding my future, it won’t necessarily mean an early death sentence for me. Brilliant researchers are constantly working to find a cure. There could be—willbe—so many advances in the next few decades. And if I turn out to be carrying a mutated gene, I can avoid passing it on if I decide to have kids by undergoing in vitro fertilization. I would have the option of stopping this disease in its tracks, making it end with me.
My palms feel sweaty and my thoughts are racing.
The coffeemaker’s gurgling helps pull me into the present moment. I grab a mug and walk over to it. Then I almost drop my mug.
The liquid in the pot is clear.
I forgot to put the grounds into the filter.
My heart feels as if it’s exploding, even as my mind searches for an explanation. I was obviously distracted, who wouldn’t be? There’s no significance to what just happened. My mistake with the coffee isn’t an echo of the one my mother made with the eggs.
We all misplace cell phones and lose words and forget items we’ve made a mental list to pick up at the grocery store, especially when we have a lot on our minds. Those aren’t signs of Alzheimer’s.
If we forget we even have a cell phone after we’ve been using it daily for years and get lost on the one-mile drive home from the drugstore even though we’ve driven the route countless times, like my mother did?
