Deep Water by Jamie Sumner

Author:Jamie Sumner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Worst Day of My Life

The worst day of my life started out in the dark—

that middling part of night

when it is impossible to tell whether

you are closer to evening

or morning.

A hand shook me awake

at 1:03 a.m.

I shot up and almost fell out of bed.

There’d been wildfires in the area,

the smoke hanging low like fog over the lake.

I thought our house was going up in flames.

But it was Mom,

sitting by my feet,

fully dressed in running gear.

She smiled at me

with her usual smile,

and the salty sweet taste

of our banana splits

came back to me.

For months before that,

ever since she

went off her meds,

stopped seeing her therapist,

upped her hours at the club,

her smile had been a flattish line.

Tonight it quirked up at the end.

I felt lucky.

“Hey, T,

want to go on an adventure?”

she whispered.

I looked at the clock

and rubbed the sleep crusties from my eyes.

“Now?”

She nodded and tilted her head toward the door.

“Never a better time than now.”

“Where are we going?” I whispered back,

afraid to wake Dad

but also wishing

Dad would wake

and chase this secret-keeping feeling away.

Everything is equal parts scary and exciting

in the middle of the night.

“Wherever the road takes us, Tully!”

Mom said,

her words louder,

but her smile dimmer.

She was getting frustrated

with me.

A twinge of worry pinched my ribs.

I was already ruining the adventure.

What I didn’t understand until later

is that when Mom says,

“Never a better time than now,”

she means

“There will never be another time than now.”

I must have paused too long.

The mood inside Mom shifted,

and she stood.

“Never mind, kiddo.

We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said,

and closed the door.

When I woke

to the blip-blip, blip-blip, blip-blip of my alarm,

I blinked and thought it had been a dream.

Then I went into the kitchen.

Dad was at the kitchen table,

and Mom was not.

“Where’s Mom?”

His eyes

roamed the room

instead of settling on me,

and I knew:

she had gone on her adventure without me.

I looked around the kitchen—

her favorite blue coffee thermos

her cucumber lip balm

her jacket from the swim meet slung over a chair.

She couldn’t be gone!

Dad handed me a note,

slipped it to me

like you do in class,

like he was afraid to get caught.

He studied his hands on the table

instead of my face as I read

in Mom’s scratchy writing:

“Searching for me. XO”

That was it.

That’s how my mom says goodbye,

maybe forever.

My chest scrunches now

in this choppy mess of water,

like I can curl up and hide from the worst of it.

Because the worst of it is,

if I had been faster,

been ready

like Mom always tells me to be,

I could be there now

with her

wherever she is

on an adventure.

I did not cry.

We are not criers, remember?

And when Dad lifted his hands from the table,

I did not let them fall on my shoulders.

I did not want the weight of a hug

when I should have been

GONE.

I ran out the door,

and the sun blinded me.

The fires had moved west in the night,

and the haze had lifted,

and the sky was now a blue so clear

it looked like it went on forever.

I screamed at the blinding sun

and the stupid forever sky.

It wasn’t fair

that my worst day

had to be so beautiful.

Nine days later,

when we

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