The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth Page A

said. “That sounds great. Um, I need to talk to you about something.”
    She shifted instantly into concerned mode, which comes more naturally to my mom than any other mode. “What is it, sweetie?” she said.
    “I don’t want to ride home with you anymore,” I said. I wasn’t even looking at her, but everything suddenly felt different, and I knew I’d hurt her badly.
    “I just… no one else rides home with their mom, you know?” I said. A long pause.
    Finally she said, in a voice almost entirely devoid of inflection, “So how does everyone else get to school?”
    “They get rides with other kids,” I said. “Or they take the bus.”
    “I’ve always said you can get a ride with someone else’s mom,” she said. “That was the whole point. And if there was a bus for you to take, believe me, I’d be more than happy for you to take it.” I didn’t say anything. “Do you think I like spending an extra forty-five minutes every morning and forty-five minutes every evening in the car?”
    I remained silent, partly because I had believed that she did enjoy it. She always seemed happy to see me, and happy to be drivingalong listening to the radio, just the two of us. I wasn’t sure if she’d never liked it at all, or if she was pretending because I’d hurt her feelings. We drove the rest of the way in silence, except for the radio: “More Than Words,” “Justify My Love,” commercials for local mattress stores. Of course there was no way for me to get to school without her.
    My mother parked on the street and I shadowed her into the house. She put her handbag heavily down on the kitchen counter and, still in her coat, began grabbing cans of food out of the cabinets. I skulked past her and into my room, where I took off my shoes and sat on my bed with my knees tucked under my chin. For a long time I played out the conversation we’d just had in different ways: sometimes I said,
Thanks for driving me to school, Mom, I really appreciate it;
other times she said,
Well, we’ll just have to move somewhere closer to a bus line
. After running both versions half a dozen times without much satisfaction I gave up and reached for my backpack. I had a few new pieces of information to add to the notebook: Danielle Orr had said hi to me in the hallway, and Rebecca Castillo seemed to have dumped Steve Papp for Dave Breuer, a definite trade-up. I unzipped the bag and flipped through the items inside: my ring binder, my chemistry textbook, my paperback copy of
Stranger in a Strange Land
. I couldn’t see the notebook at first, but this was not unusual because it was smaller and thinner than most of the books I carried to and from school. I went through the bag’s contents again, more systematically, and felt an abyss of panic open beneath me. I pulled the books and folders out of the backpack one by one. I held each upside down by its spine to allow anything hidden between the pages to drop onto the bed. I reached my arms into the empty backpack and ran my fingers over the interior’s nylon surface, peering inside and taking in the rubbery scent. I unzipped the small pocket on the front of the backpack, although the notebook wouldn’t have fit inside, and removed my wallet, my calculator, the house keys Icarried in case of an emergency, two black pens, a green marker, two Jolly Ranchers, a Jolly Rancher wrapper, and a dime. I stopped and looked at the pile of objects on the bed. None of them was the notebook.
It’s probably in my locker at school
, I thought.
Or if it’s not I can always kill myself
.
    It wasn’t in my locker. I unpacked the contents—textbooks, binders, two sweaters, returned homework—and scrutinized each item before setting it on the checkerboard linoleum in a pile that Ron Nathorp, at the locker next to mine, kicked over with the back of his heel. Kids packed the hallway, bumping and shouting, and I expected each one who passed to say something like,
So, Danielle really likes Guns N’