The Accidental Book Club by Jennifer Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

being invisible.
    She put both hands on the jar, picked it up, felt the heft of it. But her mom’s blank face was right there, and the sight of it hurt Bailey’s heart too much. She returned the jar and stepped away from the counter. She knew it was best to stop before she did something stupid. These days it seemed like she specialized in stupid. It seemed like her whole life specialized in stupid, and none of it made her feel any better.
    She stood awkwardly between the counter and the bed, staring at her mom, willing her to open her eyes and be normal again. Willing her to stop this nonsense and care about things and be a mom. She stared so long, her eyes ached and tears streamed down her cheeks. But the longer she looked on, the more her mom slept, the more Bailey realized that this was real and her mom wouldn’t change, not for a messed-up wrist and a little embarrassment of a hospital visit. It would take more.
    She heard a shuffle in the hallway and a woman’s voice. “Mr. Butler?”
    “Hold on, Ted,” she heard her dad say, and then, “Yes.”
    “I’ve got the phone number for the rehab center for you . . .”
    Bailey looked up. Rehab? They were sending her mother to rehab? Nobody had said anything to her about that. What would happen to her if her mom was locked up? Would she have to go with . . .
him
—her dad? The deserter? No way. Never.
    She wanted nothing more than to go home, grab her book, sink into the beautiful Prince Edward Island farmland where drunk moms and ghost dads and embarrassment didn’t exist. She wanted nothing more than to escape this messed-up family, and the fact that she wanted to made the anger that had been percolating inside of her burst to a boil.
    Bailey wiped her cheeks on the back of one arm and turned to the counter. In one swift motion she picked up the jar of cotton balls, held it high over her head, and threw it to the ground with an ear-shattering crash.
    She’d dashed out of the room, out of the ward, laughing and crying until her belly hurt.
    Her father hadn’t been amused. Not in the least. And after they cleaned up the glass, he’d yelled at her for, like, a million hours, but somehow it had kind of been worth it. Even if her mother didn’t remember any of it this morning.
    And now her mother was in rehab, and her father was looking for Runaway Bailey, and she was behind the chair with a book—
There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person
—listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the whoosh of the air conditioner kicking on and off, and underneath all of that, a faint buzzing of flies in the kitchen. Or maybe she wasn’t really hearing those. Maybe she only thought she was hearing them because she knew they were down there, swarming the trash.
    Three times the phone rang. If she closed her eyes and imagined it, she could hear the pounding of her mom’s feet toward the phone, the beep of the TALK button being pressed, her mom’s voice starting low and steady and ending high and shrieky as she took on yet another battle. Who would it be this time? Work? The mortgage company? Maybe it was the phone company, and the ringing would at last be turned off for good. Peace. Peace would be good. She once knew peace. She once knew what it felt like to curl into her mom’s chest, touch picture book illustrations, mouth memorized stories along with her mom. That was peace. But it was so long ago, it didn’t even seem like a real memory anymore. Like that girl was a fictional character Bailey had once read about and loved.
    She wondered where her dad was now, if he was still looking for her. Or maybe he’d gone off to the rehab to make sure her mother didn’t detour into some bar along the way. Had it really gotten that far? Was her mother frequenting bars now, begging for brews, belching and tipping sideways off barstools, only to fall into the waiting arms of some trench-mouthed troll? She