No Passengers Beyond This Point (2 page)

Mouse is jumping around like Tigger, and India is picking at her zits. At least my sisters are acting normal.

Mouse snuggles next to Mom on the sofa bed. I sit in the overstuffed chair with Henry curled at my feet. Henry is part German shepherd, part who knows what else. The shelter said she was a boy, which is why we named her Henry. You would think the shelter would know the difference.

India doesn’t sit anywhere. She wants to be able to make a quick exit. Quick exits are her specialty. “I have homework,” she announces. “How long is this going to last?”

“I didn’t tell,” Mouse whispers to Mom.

“Good girl.” Mom squeezes her hand, but her voice sounds as if it has been pounded flat.

“Didn’t tell what?” I ask.

“About the moving boxes,” Mouse says.

Moving boxes!

My mom’s eyes dart to me. She takes a ragged breath. “I should have told you sooner. I kept hoping I could make it go away.”

India scowls. “Make
what
go away?”

“We’re moving to Colorado. Fort Baker, just outside of Denver. We’re going to live with your uncle Red.”

“WHAT?” The question explodes out of India’s mouth.

My mother clears her throat. “We’re losing the house.”

“What do you mean
losin
g?” India demands.

“The bank is taking it.”

The words enter my brain, making me feel distant, as if my ears need to pop. My mom couldn’t have said we are losing our house, could she?

“Banks don’t own houses,” Mouse says. “Otherwise our mailbox would say BANK OF AMERICA and it doesn’t, it says TOMPKINS. That’s how the mailman knows where we live. Five-four-one Morales Street, Thousand Oaks, California.”

“Shut up!” India hisses.

“India,” Mom warns, her fingers automatically forming bunny ears, which is her school’s hand sign for quiet. “Mouse is just trying to understand in her own way. Now hear me out, all of you.

“This house isn’t ours anymore. We can’t live here.” She waits, letting her words sink in. “You can’t believe how hard I tried to work out a deal with the bank. I kept us here through the holidays. We had Christmas in our own house, but—”

“We always have Christmas in our own house,” Mouse interrupts. “Where else would we have Christmas ?”

“But why are we going to Colorado?” I manage to speak through the wind tunnel in my head.

My mother’s left eyelid begins to twitch. “Uncle Red has a lot of room and he really wants us to come.”

“Uncle Red? I hardly remember Uncle Red,” India says.

“You liked him. Both of you did.” Mom nods to India and me.

“I liked him when I was six. What difference does that make? I’m not moving to some stupid hick state,” India snaps.

Mouse raises her hand, waves it in front of my mom. “Did I like him? What about me?”

“Just let me finish, all right?”

Mouse climbs up on Mom’s lap. “Bing doesn’t remember Uncle Red. He’s worried Uncle Red won’t be nice. But I told him Mommy’s going to be there. Mommy is nice.”

Mom runs her tongue over the edge of her teeth. “I will be there . . . but not right away.”

The room is suddenly quiet. Not even the clock is ticking. We all stare at her.

“Where will you be?” I ask.

“I’m going to stay with Aunt Sammy and Uncle Tito. I have to finish the school year. If I leave them high and dry mid-semester, I’ll never get another teaching job—not only that, I’m not accredited to teach in Fort Baker. In the summer I can take the classes I need to get credentialed in Colorado.”

“You’re shipping us off by ourselves to some uncle we hardly know?” India asks.

“Look, I’m not going to lie to you. This is going to be hard on everybody. But Uncle Red is happy to have us coming. He’s been calling every day full of ideas for how we’ll get settled in with him. He’s putting up a basketball hoop.” She tries to smile at me. “He’s found a poster of the planets for Mouse and a place where the teenagers all go.”

“A poster and a hamburger stand . . . that’s supposed to make us feel better?” India asks.

“India, do you think I did this on purpose?”

India’s eyes register the break in my mom’s voice. “No,” she mutters.

My throat is so tight I can hardly swallow. “When exactly are we leaving?”

My mom takes a deep breath. “You’re flying out tomorrow night. Uncle Red has arranged to have you picked up at the Denver airport.”

Now we all talk at once—pelt her with reasons why this is impossible. The game next week, battle of the books, outdoor ed, the oath I signed for Coach P.’s team. Some party India’s going to with Maddy. Bing doesn’t have time to pack. We need to stop the clock so he won’t have to hurry.

Mom lets us wind down.

“Tomorrow night,” India squeaks. “That’s a joke, right?”

Mom shakes her head slowly as if she doesn’t want to jiggle her brains.

“Look, this makes no sense.” India’s voice is suddenly reasonable. “We can’t leave in the middle of the school year, any more than you can. We’ll all stay with Aunt Sammy and Uncle Tito.”

My mom shakes her head, harder this time. “No room.”

Aunt Sammy’s house is tiny; one room on top of another, each one smaller than the last. All the boys sleep in one room, Aunt Sammy and Uncle Tito in the other. But if I can’t stay in my own home, I’d rather be at Aunt Sammy’s house than any other place in the world.

“I can sleep in the boys’ room on the beanbag chair. I do it all the time,” I tell her.

“I’m staying with Finn on the beanbag chair,” Mouse announces.

“Thanks a lot,” India snaps.

“Finn’s nicer than you are,” Mouse tells her.

“Stop! This is hard enough without you two fighting. Finn, you can’t stay at Aunt Sammy’s. You will all three stay together, no matter what.”

“You heard them. They don’t want me. I’ll stay with Maddy,” India insists. But she must know Mom will never agree to this. She won’t even allow double sleepovers.

“Mouse needs you,” Mom says.

“Mouse can’t stand me.”

“She’s right. I can’t stand her,” Mouse agrees.

Henry’s cowering under the coffee table. She hates it when we fight. I run my hand down her fur to the spot under her chin she likes me to scratch. “It’s okay, Henry,” I say as she puts her big paw over my hand to keep it there. That’s when my heart stops cold. “Henry! What about Henry?”

“She needs a ticket,” Mouse offers.

“You need a special traveling crate and shots, Mom. Remember when you had that kid in your class that moved to Hawaii? He had to put his dog in quarantine for three months. Remember?”

“I remember,” she mutters.

“We can’t just take Henry to the airport tomorrow night.”

“No, we can’t,” she agrees quickly—too quickly.

“Mom, have you even checked into this?” I ask.

“We’ll wait until Henry can go too,” Mouse suggests. “Then Bing will have time to pack.”

Mom’s chin sinks down below her shoulders. “It might be better if we found Henry a new home.” She croaks the words out.

We stare at her as if she’s just suggested we run over our grandma.

“Henry is a part of our family,” I say.

“Even homeless people have dogs,” India declares.

“India Jena Tompkins, don’t make this worse than it already is.” My mom’s voice rises.

“She’s our dog, Mom,” I whisper.

“Okay, okay . . . I’ll try and find a way to bring her,” Mom concedes, “but not tomorrow night.”

 

I can’t eat, can’t sleep after that. The truth is so much worse than anything I imagined. No home, no dog, no basketball, no Coach P., no more California. Not even my mother. This can’t be happening. It just can’t.

W
hat a joke last night was. That stupid family meeting—I mean, my mother land-mines our whole life, then she’s like
Okay, who wants egg rolls
? I wish I had it on video. I’d post it and get a million hits. What would I call it?
Psycho Mom and the Moo-shu Pork, episode one.

She’s going to change her mind. Of course she is. We’re not leaving tomorrow—oh, excuse me,
today
. . . that just can’t be.

I can hear Finn moving something heavy out in the hall. This is so crazy . . . we can’t move all our stuff in twenty-four hours. I get under the covers and pull the pillow over my head. All last night Mom was like: “Colorado is so beautiful. The mountains are incredible ! ! ! You’ll love the outdoorsy lifestyle!!!”

She has brochures from the travel agency. We’re being kicked out of our house and she’s playing tour guide? I wish she’d get a grip.

But when I call her on it, she gives me the same stupid old line:
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

What if I don’t like lemonade? What if I’d rather drink cyanide?

There’s always a cute saying from Mom. Something teachery and ohmygod so corny.

The woman doesn’t get it. All she cares about are grades, saving money, and a clean stovetop. When Finn was little he gave her a sponge for Christmas. And she loved it! Is that sad, or what?

Finn totally kisses up to Mom, which makes me want to puke. Mouse would too if she weren’t so clueless. Mouse is like a mutant child from the Nature Channel. Where did she come from?

Thank God for Maddy. She totally gets what it’s like to live here. She calls Mom “Rules,” Mouse “the Demon Child,” and Finn “Mr. Personality” because he’s so quiet.

Mom left me alone last night, but this morning she’s been all over me. She tried sending Mouse in to drag me out of bed. That didn’t work, so now she’s coming after me herself. “India.” She raps her knuckles on my door.

I bury my head under the pillow.

“India, this is happening whether we like it or not.”

I take the pillow off. “Mom, call the bank. That guy. Remember, you said
that guy
would help.”

A few weeks ago I heard her and Aunt Sammy talking about the problems she was having with the house. She said she was getting help from some company person guy. I figured she had it covered, but apparently not.

Mom opens the door, walks in, and sits down on my bed, looking at Mouse’s side of the room, which is a disaster area. She probably lost her stupid planet book again.

It isn’t possible that this room will no longer be ours.

My mom is talking again. I try to concentrate on what she’s saying. “And then he took our money and ran.”

“Call the police then, Mom. Don’t
move
.”

“Call the police.” She shakes her head.

“You paid money to some guy’s company to restructure the loan, right? He’s the one who should be taking care of this.”

“Look, I shouldn’t have trusted him. I got scared and . . . that made everything worse, but this probably would have happened anyway. I need to explain it all, every last thing clear down to the fine print—especially the fine print, but I can’t now, honey. Now we’ve got to move.”

“Why’d you wait until the last minute to tell us? You’d kill me if I did that.”

“The last minute . . .” She sighs. “This has been going on for six months. We’ve had four hundred last minutes. Every time, I patched it back together again. I didn’t want you and Finn and Mouse to live with this hanging over your heads. Can you imagine how Finn would worry? He’d have been a wreck.”

“Oh yes, poor Finn.” I get so tired of hearing about Finn and how he worries, and Mouse and how hard it is for her to be a child genius.

“It’s not just Finn, it’s you too, honey. I didn’t want any of you to worry, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. Yesterday morning we lost the house. It’s final. This is the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.”

“We’re never going to live here again?”

“We’re never going to live here again.”

“But what about Ariana’s party? We’ll be back for that, right?”

“India, honey, don’t you understand what I’m saying?”

“Sure I understand.” I snort. “Why do you always think I’m stupid? One C in French and all of a sudden I’m an idiot.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid. I just think sometimes you believe in your own wishful thinking.”

“Mom, I totally get it. You’ve ruined my life.”

She pulls at the small hairs that are sticking out of her ponytail. “I know this is hard, India.”

“Why do we have to live in Fort Baker? We could get an apartment here. Did you ever think of that?”

“At Uncle Red’s we won’t have to pay rent. It will give me a chance to push the reset button.”

“I’ll help out more. I’ll get a job. You made this decision without even talking to us.”

“If I’d known six months ago what I know now, I would have done things differently. But I didn’t know and I wasn’t about to drag you kids into it . . .”

“I’m not a kid, Mom!”