A Year Without Autumn (9 page)

“The old Autumn would have said exactly that!”

“Well, the old Autumn didn’t know anything about reality,” she says flatly. “The old Autumn was quite happy living in a childish make-believe world where bad things didn’t happen and where you could make up whatever silly story you liked and tell yourself it was true.”

“And the new Autumn?”

Autumn stands up and brushes stones and gravel from her legs. “The new Autumn knows that the world isn’t like that,” she says. “Come on. We should be getting back. I don’t want Mom to wake up in an empty condo.”

We head back in silence. My thoughts all seem to be buried under mush, and I don’t know how to articulate a single one.

We get to Autumn’s door. I know I should offer to go in with her, but I can’t face going back in there.

“Listen, I’d better go in on my own, OK? Spend some time with Mom,” Autumn says, as if she’s read my mind. Or maybe she just doesn’t want me around. I wouldn’t be surprised. The last thing she needs right now is a best friend who’s only adding to her problems.

“See you later?” I ask.

Autumn nods. Her face is empty and lifeless. It’s like a mask made from gray cardboard. It’s like someone else. Not Autumn. This isn’t Autumn.

As she places her hand on the door, I’m desperate for her to turn around, flash me one of her terrific grins, and tell me it’s all a big mistake. Her biggest, cleverest, most horrible practical joke.

A tiny part of my brain is still clinging to the hope that she’ll get to the door, then turn and scream, “Sucker!”

She doesn’t. She goes into the condo and closes the door behind her without turning around to wave.

Now what? I’m stuck in this strange world that I don’t recognize, and the one person in the world I’d normally want to share it all with — the one who would usually help me make sense of it, figure it all out with me as though it’s a big exciting adventure — isn’t there anymore, and I’m standing out on a path on my own.

Which is when it occurs to me: if she’s right about it being amnesia because of the shock and everything to do with Mikey, perhaps it’s only all the things to do with
her
family that I’ve forgotten. Perhaps everything will be completely normal with
my
family. Maybe I’ll remember everything as soon as I get back to my parents and to Craig. And then once I’ve remembered everything with them, I’ll remember everything to do with Autumn, too.

I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, but the idea makes more sense than anything else that’s happened. I find myself practically running back to our condo, excited and relieved that I’ve got a plan for how to get out of this nightmare.

My legs are like jelly as I stand outside our door.

I reach for the doorknob, my hand shaking, and push the door open. I waver, my hand gripping the doorknob so tight that my fingers turn white.

What if I
never
remember the last year and I’m lost in this confusion forever? What if it’s not amnesia, and it’s something that I’ll never be able to understand or explain to anyone?

What am I going to find in here?

I could turn back now. No one’s heard me. I could go. Run away. Go to sleep or something. Maybe if I do that, my memory will be back when I wake up. Maybe this is all a dream! That’s why none of it makes sense. It’s not even happening!

But I know I’m kidding myself. I’m not dreaming. However crazy and frightening it is, whatever’s happening here is real. I have to get to the bottom of it — and whether it gives me all the answers or not, I have to face whatever might be waiting for me in our condo.

I step inside and close the door behind me.

The
hallway is filled with junk. That’s the first thing. Coats on the floor, shoes everywhere. And a stroller. I stare at it with the same level of amazement as I would if it had just dropped out of a flying saucer in the sky.

And then I go into the living room.

The difference there is almost as shocking as anything I’ve seen so far. If you knew my parents, you’d understand what I mean.

The condo that’s always so ordered, so neat and tidy, with nothing ever out of place, is
littered
with clothes, toys, blankets, scrunched-up tissues, dirty plates, half-empty glasses, plastic bottles, congealed food on plates around the dining-room table, unwashed dishes filling up the sink.

This is not my family’s condo. It is absolutely one hundred percent the wrong place. I’ve walked into the wrong condo — simple as that. It’s the only explanation.

I’m about to turn around and walk straight out when someone speaks.

“Jenni, thank goodness you’re here,” Dad’s voice says. I wonder if that’s how
everyone
greets each other in this strange new world. I also wonder why the furniture spoke to me with Dad’s voice.

And then his head pops up from behind the sofa. “Give me a hand, will you?” he says. “Your mom’ll be here any minute. She’ll kill us if it’s like this when she gets back. You know what she’s like.”

Do I? I’m not sure I know what anyone’s like. I don’t think I know anything about
anything
anymore.

Dad grabs a bowl of congealed goo from the floor in front of the sofa, picks up a few tiny items of clothing off the floor, and nudges me on his way past. “Jenni, come on. She’ll be back any minute.”

I want to ask so many things. I want to ask who all these tiny clothes belong to, since the last time I looked, any baby in this family was still firmly inside Mom’s stomach and not going anywhere for at least another month. But then if I really do have amnesia, I suppose things have moved on from then.

I want to ask if we’ve been ransacked and burglarized since I went out — but I don’t want to offend, just in case we haven’t.

And I want to ask where Craig is — but after what’s happened to Mikey, that question turns into a hard knot of iron and gets stuck in my throat.

So I do the only thing I can: I wash the dishes.

“Thanks, love, you’re a star,” Dad says, bringing more plates and bowls with congealed mess in them to the sink and giving me a kiss on my shoulder. “Let’s get this place as tidy as we can. I don’t think I could cope with another of your mom’s meltdowns today — you know what I mean?”

“Mm,” I say. No, I don’t know what he means. Mom’s meltdowns? Mom and Dad don’t do meltdowns. They talk reasonably and calmly, and they work everything out efficiently and sensibly.

I’m still trying to figure out what Dad could have meant by this when a bloodcurdling scream fills the air. I leap about a foot in the air and drop three plates in the sink in the process, splashing soapy water all over my T-shirt.

“What on earth was —?” I begin.

“Oh, no — will you get her?” Dad says as he wipes the dining-room table. “She’ll probably need changing.”

I turn to stare at my dad. I have soapy water all down my front, I have a best friend whose life is in tatters because the most awful thing — which I have no recollection of at all — has happened to her brother, and now I am being asked, perfectly casually, to “change” someone I have no idea exists. How on earth am I meant to respond to that?

“Sure, Dad,” I say with a smile, and head upstairs in the direction of the howling, which has now increased to a glass-splitting siren wail.

I check the door to the bedroom I share with Craig. The sight of Dirty Boy’s jeans and piles of cars and diggers scattered everywhere makes me sigh with relief. At least some things haven’t changed.

The sound is coming from Mom and Dad’s room.

My heart is pounding ridiculously heavily in my chest as I gently turn the doorknob and go in. There’s a crib in the far corner, mangled sheets hanging over the side, and a teddy bear lying facedown on the bedroom floor next to it.

I pick up the teddy bear and put him back in the crib. As I do, the source of the screaming — a tiny, red-faced, wet-cheeked image of Craig when he was a baby — turns its bright-blue eyes on me and breaks into a smile that feels like the sun coming out from behind the heaviest cloud in the sky. The pink onesie with a fairy on it confirms that Mom was wrong about the baby being a boy.

I smile back, instantly in love with this little person whom I presume is my sister. “Hello, you,” I say, lifting what is admittedly a very smelly baby out of the warm crib, and clearing my throat to get beyond the emotion croaking into my voice.

I think of all the times that Mom’s called me and Craig her little angels. She always wanted three of us, though. She thinks that’s the perfect family. She says that’s why cars have two seats in the front and three in the back. That’s how it should be; that’s nature’s way. I always found myself wondering whether car designs and nature have really got that much to do with each other, but I knew there’d be no point in saying anything. When Mom gets something into her head, she can find a million signs that prove she’s right.

And now she’s got her third little angel.

The baby gurgles and drools onto her chin. I lean forward to kiss her head, breathing in her soft scent as I do.

“You’re the best thing that’s happened to me today,” I whisper into the fluffy wisps of blond hair scattered on her little head.

Clutching her tightly, I fish around in the bag next to her crib for a diaper. Then I lay her down on the bed, tickling her and making her giggle as I remove the cause of the smell, clean her up, and put a fresh diaper on her. I used to do this all the time with Craig. I was only about seven then, but it’s still the same now. He’d stare at me and giggle all the way through diaper-changing time, then reach out for me to lift him up afterward, just like my brand-new little sister is doing now.

I hold her close and kiss her plump little cheeks, blowing raspberries on her face to make her giggle even more, and we head downstairs together.

Dad’s somehow managed to transform the living room while I’ve been gone. It looks much more like the Green family household again now. Nothing strewn across the floor. No dirty dishes anywhere. Calm restored.

“Hello, my little pumpkin pie,” Dad says to the baby whose name I’ve suddenly realized I don’t even know. It’s not exactly the kind of thing I can ask, either.
’Scuse me, Dad, what’s my little sister’s name again? I’ve momentarily forgotten; you know how it is.
No, I don’t think so. I guess I’ll have to call her Pumpkin Pie for now as well.

She reaches her little arms out for Dad, and he takes her from me and kisses her neck with big squishy kisses that make her giggle so much she hiccups.

I smile as I watch them, and for the first time since this nightmare started, I’m almost happy to be here.

Then Dad says something that reminds me why I could never, ever be happy in this new reality.

“Were Autumn and her parents doing OK?”

Once again I have no idea how to answer this.
Oh, yeah, you know — her dad’s off drinking, her mom’s like a zombie, Autumn’s like a ghost of her former self, and Mikey’s in a coma. They’re fine!

Luckily, I don’t get the chance to reply, as the front door is thrown open and there’s a bustling noise in the hallway.

“Phew, just in time, huh?” Dad says to me with a wink. “Now, don’t upset your mom, OK?”

Upset my mom? Why would I do that?

“We’re home!” The front door slams, and Craig bursts through the door. An elongated version of little Craig. He’s shot up. He must be a full head taller than when I last saw him — a few hours ago! His face has thinned out, and he’s got two big front teeth where he used to have a gap.

“Guess what?” he says, bursting into the room. “Mom was talking to the new man, and he said we can ride in the front of the train and I can help drive it, ’cause he knows the driver and he said he’ll talk to him especially for us.”

He plonks himself down an inch away from the TV and switches it on.

“Hi, hon,” Mom says to me as she follows Craig into the living room and automatically turns the TV down. Her face is tired and more serious than usual. Her hair is tied up in a neat bun — and she looks as thin as a rake compared to this morning. Well, this morning she was eight months pregnant!

It’s only when she goes over to Dad and takes Pumpkin Pie off him that she looks anything like her old self again. It’s as though looking at the baby flicks on a light behind Mom’s eyes.

“Did you have a nice time, darling?” Dad asks gently.

Mom’s busy rearranging the baby’s clothes. I must have put her pants back on wrong when I changed her diaper. “Lovely,” she says with a quick smile. “Have you changed her?”

“I did it,” I said.

Mom turns to Dad. “Did you remember to put the sides up when you put her to bed?”

“Yep,” Dad says.

“All the way?”

Dad’s voice tightens a touch. “Yes, darling, all the way,” he says.

Mom nods. “OK, who wants some juice?” she asks, jogging the baby on her hip as she goes into the kitchen. At the sink, she spins around, the baby on her hip, obliviously twirling mom’s hair around her tiny fingers. “Tom, what’s this?” she asks, pointing at the dishes that are draining next to the sink.

Dad joins her in the kitchen. “Er . . .”

She hands him the baby and starts gathering things up from the dish rack. “Knives, Tom? You left
knives
lying around?”