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just pretending to be normal.”
    “Don’t give me that shit. I used to be normal, and I liked it just fine.”
    “Did your mother seem normal?”
    I sigh, blowing out a huge whoosh of air, and close my eyes. I had been wandering around the loft, my cell to my ear, so I plop down on my real bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah, Mom seemed normal. It’s not like I had a second mother to compare her to, but she was great. She had fresh homemade cookies every Wednesday when we’d get home from school. And she loved coupons. Dad made more than enough money, but Mom was obsessed with couponing; she did it every night after the dishes were washed, while we did homework. She seemed happy, maybe a little detached from Summer and Trent, but as normal as anyone else.”
    “Detached? Explain.”
    “She was always hugging me, wanting to talk about my day, coming up to my room to spend time with me. With Summer and Trent, there wasn’t that show of affection, she didn’t seem eager or interested in spending time with them. It was almost like she was afraid of getting close to them.”
    “Think back, Deanna. Was there any hint of what was to come?”
    I close my eyes, concentrating on the question, flipping back through the past. But I already know the answer; it was a question I had asked myself for four years. “There were times she was moody or quiet, and times when we knew to give her space, but that’s ordinary behavior for any person, right? And sometimes she would fly off the handle for no reason—just go ballistic on us over some little thing.”
    I roll over, playing with a seam on my comforter. “Something happened in the past, when I was young. I overheard Mom and Dad talking about it one day, something that caused Mom to be sent away for a bit. I asked Dad about it one day, and he just said she was sick, and I dismissed it as nothing. Honestly, even if she did fly off the handle at times, what happened seemed to come completely out of left field. The only clue I can think of, looking back on it, was that she had sent me away that day.”

    I climbed the steps of our big white Colonial-style home, an impressive structure that screamed upper middle class, and threw open the red front door. Dropping my book bag at the base of the stairs with a heavy thud of educational oppression, I hollered, “Mom!” trying to find her in the big house.
    “I’m up here, sweetie.”
    Her voice had come from upstairs, and I bounded up the steps two at a time, out of breath by the time I reached the second-floor landing. I trotted down the hall, glancing in bedrooms till I saw her in mine. I blew in the open door. “You would not believe what happened today.” I stopped in my tracks, looking at my bed. “What are you doing?”
    She had my suitcase open on the bed—a purple suitcase I hadn’t seen since last summer when I had made the horrid decision to go to volleyball camp. She must have pulled it from the attic. She had stacks of folded clothes on the bed and was in the midst of packing a pair of jeans when I asked the question.
    She glanced at me, smiling. “You’re going to your grandparents’ for the weekend.”
    “What? Why? Jennifer has a party at her parents’ lake house this weekend—you already said I could go!”
    “I know, sweetie, and I’m sorry. But you haven’t seen them in ages, and when they called and asked, I couldn’t say no.”
    I frowned at her. This was so completely out of character. “Are Trent and Summer going?”
    She hesitated, folding a gray cardigan. “No. I don’t want to burden your grandparents with all three of you. Plus, it will be good for you to get one-on-one time with Papa and Nana. Once you go off to college, you won’t be seeing them as often.”
    I walked over, looking at the clothes she had picked out. It was way too many clothes for two days at my grandparents’. But Mom had packed the right stuff. She knew what went with what and what was currently stylish. Missing