Return to Me by Justina Chen Read Free Book Online Page B

biggie. We’ll figure it out.”
    “That’s my girl.” Dad shot me an approving smile before trotting jauntily out the door to our one car that only he could drive. He sped away.

    The idea of not making the most of a spare moment was about as appealing to Mom as stepping on a slime-yellow banana slug with her bare foot. Sometime between Dad’s heading for the airport and her cleaning up after breakfast, Mom realized that she, Reid, and I could get acquainted with our neighborhood and go for a run at the same time.
    “Why are we doing this, again?” Reid groused as he thrust his feet into his sneakers by the front door. I didn’t have ananswer to that question, or any of the other mysteries that were my mother’s unfathomable decision-making.
    “Speed Racer,” I muttered after Mom’s back as she ran well ahead of us. Wiping the sweat off my face, I wished I had swiped on another layer of deodorant.
    Not a single other person was jogging in this sweltering humidity. A familiar rumble caught my attention. Jackson? I spun around, giddy even though I knew my guy was back at home. Instantly, I felt silly for grinning at a white-haired man in his air-conditioned Mustang, who cast me a look that was snagged between amused and bemused.
    “Just look at that garden,” Mom called out, slowing to scrutinize the raised vegetable beds in a neighbor’s side yard. It didn’t require too much imagination to picture her transforming our lush, green front lawn into a self-sustaining, organic farm… and dividing our bounty between ourselves, our neighbors, and the local food bank.
    “I hope you like digging,” I muttered to Reid.
    My brother’s visualization powers must have been fine-tuned during our vision quest of a run, too, because he groaned, “Oh no.”
    “Oh yes.”
    “Okay, let’s head home!” Mom’s cheer wasn’t wind enough to blow Reid homeward. After one long block, he lagged so far behind us that I sighed like Mom, wishing again that Jackson were here in his Mustang to rescue us. But Mom had scanned the street, spotted a coffee shop at the corner, and asked, “Hey, kids, how about something cold to drink?”
    We hadn’t even begun to nod eagerly before Mom shepherded us inside to the welcome blast of air-conditioning. As I started feeling woozy from the aftereffects of the heat, we stepped behind a stylish woman with glossy black bobbed hair. Her son looked to be the same age as Reid. Mom asked me, “Green tea frappe?” while withdrawing a dollar and pushing the bill toward the cash register a scant second before the woman ahead of us discovered she was short some change for her iced coffee.
    “Are you sure?” the woman asked. Her cherry-red shoes made her look like a modern-day Dorothy, and when Mom handed her the calling card that Shana’s mother had designed as a bon voyage gift, I was positive the woman wished she could click her heels three times and be delivered far away from my mother.
    “Just promise to call me,” Mom continued breezily. “We’re new in town. I need friends!”
    Oh, geez, Mom wasn’t bribing a stranger to be her friend, was she? Mortified, I turned away, distancing myself from my mother. Before I knew it, she’d finagled the woman’s name—Angela—and arranged a playdate for Reid the next day, never mind that the boys didn’t even register each other’s presence. Never mind that Angela herself looked dazed, totally understandable since she had come for an iced beverage and left with an obligation.
    Soon after we gulped down our drinks, Mom hustled us toward an ATM machine. Not one to let any teaching moment pass, Mom made Angela’s empty wallet today’s lesson. As shefed her bank card into the machine, Mom told us, “Never leave the house without your phone, key, and wallet. And always carry an emergency twenty dollars. Oh, and a tampon.”
    “Mom!” Reid groaned. “Gross.”
    “Well, of course, I didn’t mean—” Mom started to say when the ATM rejected