Leaving Home: Short Pieces by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online

away again.” He shakes his head. “You can’t force a wind to blow the way you want it to, Jenna. You have to hope it gets there on its own.”

    He leaves me sitting in the dark, and I guess I fall asleep there, because I dream about my mother. She is in the circus, wearing a sparkly bodysuit, her hair pulled back into a ballerina’s bun. I see the cloud of chalk rising from her palms as she climbs a ladder hung on the rungs of real stars. I think of what it must feel like to fly.

    And then, I can see the rest of us. We’re all miles below, looking up. We’re connected to her by the thinnest of strings – spider-silk, gossamer – nearly invisible, unless you happen to be the ones tethering her to the ground.

    #

    The second week after my mother leaves us, I start missing appointments. My father is at work, and although Devon is supposed to drive me to my orthodontist appointment, he forgets and stays late at Yak’s house writing a heavy metal ballad.

    Instead of relying on Devon to pick me up after soccer practice, I take my bike and ride home five miles every night. I have never been so strong, or in such good shape. I imagine my mother looking at me when she comes home, and being impressed. It’s all because of you , I will say.

    Don’t think she’s neglecting us. Every night at seven o’clock, she calls. We talk like ordinary mothers and daughters, as if it is perfectly normal for her to be living in a hotel thousands of miles away. She tells us all about San Francisco. She talks about the hotel: slippers left beside the bed during turndown service; about the exercise room staffed with people who bring you cups of cold water while you’re on the treadmill; about how, when you call the front desk, they say, Yes, Mrs. Hamilton, what can we do for you , as if you are the only guest in the entire hotel.

    “Wow,” I say. “It sounds amazing.”

    “Tell me about your day,” she’ll say. “How was your French test? Did you win your soccer game?”

    I answer, and then I ask her when she’s coming home.

    On the sixteenth day, she says, “Why don’t you come get me?”

    #

    It really shouldn’t be this easy to slip away. Flying is out of the question, of course – even if I had the money or means to get to an airport, I couldn’t get on a plane as an unaccompanied minor. But here’s an interesting fact – you only have to be fifteen to travel alone on a bus. And I can get to San Francisco in twenty-two hours.

    I know where my father keeps his spare cash – Devon let me in on that secret two years ago. It’s in the left dress shoe he wears when he puts on his tuxedo, which is never, which is why it’s a good place to store money. I feel guilty taking it all ($546.93) so I conservatively borrow two hundred dollars. The Greyhound ticket only costs $88.50. No matter how expensive the cabs are in San Francisco, I’ll still have enough to get to the Ritz.

    On the bus I sit next to an old woman who seems convinced I’m a teenage runaway. If only you knew , I think. I make up this story about how my mother and father are divorced; how my mom is sick and needs my help and I have a crippling fear of planes and have to travel this way. There is so much garbage coming out of my mouth that I might as well be littering the whole bus. But, amazingly, the woman buys it. She even gives me the potholder she’s crocheted on the journey, as a special gift to boost my mother’s spirits.

    I’m tired when I arrive – number one, it’s 4:30 in the morning; number two, I’ve had to transfer buses twice – and I’m sure I look worse than I did when I had the stomach flu for a whole week, but the doorman still opens the door of the taxi as if I am royalty.

    “Checking in, Miss?” he asks, and he directs me up the elevators to reception.

    The lobby is a marble palace; an arrangement of flowers I have never even seen in books before rises like a fountain spray from a table in the center. Somewhere,