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CHAPTER ONE

I first became famous when I was eight years old and my dad took me skiing at Lake Rochester with his old-lady boss. My picture was on the front page of all the newspapers for miles around. Heck, Aunt Clem said she even caught me on the national news. And it wasn't because I was such a hotdog skier. The real story was that I took a dive out of the ski lift chair. Broke my right leg so bad they had to cut it off.

It wouldn't have been such big freakin' news if it was just some poor kid falling out of a lift. But I didn't just fall. The newspaper said I laid a hundred-dollar bill on the kid next to me, lifted the safety bar, and then bailed right out. From forty feet.

Funny thing is, I don't remember jumping-I only remember the landing. Man, I thought snow would be way softer.

I spent a lot of days in Sacred Heart Hospital near Lake Rochester. My mom flew in and stormed around the hospital with a look on her face that made the security guards nervous. And the patrol dogs kept their eyes glued to her. They could smell the Mama Bear rage that burned off her like a fever.

After that day, The Jump became the main event in our lives. And no matter what anyone said to Mom-Aunt Clem, the shrink, the family court judge-it was always and would ever be HIS FAULT: Richard Hudson III, my ex-father, her ex-husband.

Even though they'd doped me up pretty good at Sacred Heart, I remembered the big fight Mom and Dad had outside my room. Mom grabbed him by the shirt and screamed at him that I was just a little boy and not a goddamn jock for him to show off. She shook him like a rag doll and he kept just trying to hug her whenany idiot could see she was not in the mood to cuddle.

And now, five years later, my mother the traitor was sending me to go stay with the jerk who ruined our lives. I swore at the suitcase that sat next to my bed. Then kicked it over with my fake foot on a stick. As far as prosthetics go, it was the cheapest model on the planet. I picked it out myself. Mom and pretty much everyone else wanted to buy me a better one, but I wouldn't let them. What's the point? You can dress it up all you want, but a stump is a stump is a stump. I hated even putting it on, but Mom insisted. And she didn't think it was funny at all when I took off my leg at school, put it in my locker, and then tied a rag around my stump with fake blood on it.

After that, though, the kids at school pretty much knew that if anyone was going to be cracking jokes about my leg, it was gonna be me.

I heard Aunt Clem clomp up the stairs in her hiking boots and pause at my door. After a moment she knocked.

"Hey! You decent?" she asked.

"Oh, like that would stop you," I said as she swung open the door.

"Always the big wise guy," she said, coming over and plopping down next to me. She crooked an elbow around my neck, pulled me next to her, and laid her face in the top of my hair.

I unhooked myself from her arm. "I'm not going," I said.

"Yes, you are," she said matter-of-factly. "It's the deal."

"I won't like it. I won't like California, and I won't like Skylight or whatever her name is. Mom can send me, but I'm coming back."

She pulled off her glasses and started cleaning them nice and slow with the front of her T-shirt. The shirt had a big rainbow on it-not like a Wizard of Oz rainbow, but the gay-people kind of rainbow. When she took her glasses off to clean them, it usually meant I was in for a lecture. There's nothing worse than getting a lecture from a lesbian who never had any kids of her own.

Aunt Clem was not my real aunt, but she was a real lesbian and a big-shot professor. She was my mom's first AA sponsor, but a few years back she decided Mom needed a tougher one than her. She resigned and took the job as Mom's best friend instead and a stunt-double mom for me. She jumped in when something needed to be done that Mom couldn't handle. Aunt Clem had been sober for ten years. My mom had been sober about ten days this time.

"Alastair-" she started.

"Why can't I go with you two for the summer? I could help cook and carry stuff-"

"Because you are a guy," she said, sighing. "Even if you're only thirteen. And the whole point of the Wild Women in Recovery Project is for us to get in touch with our personal power. That seems to work best for most in a man-free zone."

"I think it's a big scam for all the lesbians to hit on the straight ladies," I snapped. "You've got the whole summer to try to convert them. I swear, Aunt Clem, if Mom comes back gay, you're going to have to answer to me."

"I just want your mom coming back healthy, sober, and excited about her work, okay? If she doesn't get her act together with her business, she's going to lose all her biggest clients."

"No kidding," I said. "I saw the letter from the Hallmark Company. It was in her trash. They said her valentines for next season were 'late, sloppy, and depressing.' They're about ready to can her."

Which would be terrible. Next to me, my mom loved her art best. She could draw anything and was bust-a-gut funny. Since Dad left us, she'd pretty much supported us by making cards. Dad sent money because the court made him, but she always squirreled every cent of that into a college fund for me.

"Did you see the birthday cards she wrote for 'the other woman'?" I asked. "Man, those were mean."

"Yep, they were," she said, pulling me to my feet. "Though the sad thing is that they'll probably sell off the shelf."

She smacked me on the rear. "You've got five minutes to say goodbye to her. She's in her room trying not to cry. And I mean it about the five minutes, and then we're out of here. Otherwise you'll miss your plane."

I looked at her, hopeful, with a grin that grew.

"Don't even think about it. I swear to God, Alastair, I'll put you on Greyhound. If you want to sit on a bus for three days, fine by me. Maybe we can even get you next to some hormonally toxic teenage girl who can, like, tell you, like, how, like, she, like, totally understands, like, what it's like totally to be an amputee."

"You play dirty," I said.

"Yep. Now, like, go!"


Mom was lying on her side on the bed resting-at least I hoped to God that was what she was doing. Every time I saw her with her eyes closed, my heart started pumping like I'd just run a four-minute mile. I'd be scared to death that she'd jumped off the wagon and was passed out drunk. Or, worse yet, tried to kill herself because she couldn't be a better mother to me. Even though she blamed Dad for what happened in Lake Rochester, I knew she blamed herself for not being there on the trip. And for being the kind of mom that nobody asked to drive on school field trip day.

"Mom?" I whispered, scrooching down next to her on the bed. I touched a wavy piece of her hair lying on the pillow.

A blast of cold water shot me right in the face, blinding me. "Whaa-! Hey, no fair!" I said, grabbing my Super Soaker water gun from her.

She giggled, which sounded like her old laugh, just kinda more tired. "Got ya!"

I jumped off the bed, gave the Soaker a few quick pumps, and popped off a fast load at her, being careful to mostly miss.
"Stop! Stop!" she said, waving her arms. "I surrender."

"Good," I said, blowing imaginary smoke off the gun's end. "God, where'd you find this old thing?" I sat down next to her.
"I was out in the storage shed and I found it in a box of your old toys." She reached under the pillow and pulled out a stuffed white cat. "Look what else I found, Alastair! Remember Boo-Boo Kitty? Do you want to pack her for the trip?"

I grabbed it and gave Mom a soft thump on the head with it. "No!" I felt around on Boo-Boo Kitty's stomach for the button to press that made her purr. I smiled as she began to vibrate.

"Hey, wait a second!" I said, narrowing my eyes. "I thought you told me that you tried to wash Kitty and she fell apart during the spin cycle."

Mom pulled her back from me. "I know, sweetie, sorry! You wouldn't go to kindergarten without her, and the kids were teasing you. It seemed the kindest thing at the time."

She tried to move the hair out of my face and I jerked back like I always did. "Oh, Alastair. Let your poor old mom see that face of yours before you go, huh? I forget what you look like. Well, that's not entirely true," she said. "I do recall that you are bodaciously handsome."

"I look like a girl," I said, my tone flat. "Bo-da-cious-ly?" I repeated, rolling my eyes. "Is that a real word?"

"Isn't it great? It's from the sixties. It's such a robust little sucker, don't you think?"

"Totally groovy," I said.

Mom pulled my hands toward hers. "And you do not look like a girl. You are extremely pleasing to the eye."

"Right," I said. "P-r-e-t-t-y," I spelled.

"Not pretty-handsome," she said. "You look a lot like your dad."

"Oh, great!" I said. "That cheers me right up."

"Alastair." She shook her head. "Let's give the guy a chance, huh? He says he's got a good job now, and his wife sounds nice on the phone. Your dad seems to think you and Skyla are really going to hit it off for some reason."

"Hit it off?" I said, feeling my lip curl. "If the two of you are so hot that he and I play father and son this summer, he should at least send her off to camp or something."

"Honey, this has nothing to do with her. She's not a home wrecker, you know. Your dad was single. She had every right to marry him."

"But she's barely old enough to be my big sister," I said. "What? She's like eighteen and a half?"

Mom chewed on her thumbnail. "I might have been exaggerating just a teensy bit on that. She's in her mid-twenties, I think."
"Well, whatever she is, this is not a good time for me to be leaving. Could we put this on hold for a year or two? I want to be with you, Mom. You need me; you just won't admit it."

She unballed the fist in my lap, then ironed out my fingers. "What I need right now is some time for me. And my counselor says you deserve a chance to get to know your dad so you can make up your own mind about him."

"What's there to know? He's a loser. End of story. He left us without a word. What kind of guy leaves a wife with a crippled kid? The jerk probably still thinks I stole that hundred bucks I supposedly gave the kid on the ski lift. I can't believe he told the cop at the hospital that."

Mom sighed. "Well, he didn't exactly say that, Alastair. He just couldn't figure out where the money came from. He said he hadn't given it to you."

I took my hand back and looked away. Mom didn't say anything else, but I could hear the quiet plop of the imaginary welcome mat being put out. Like, "I'm ready to listen whenever you're ready to tell me." It had always been the same way with the shrink.

I decided it was time to change tracks.

"I think I'm right on the brink of puberty. Do you really want to miss this? I'll probably come back with a mustache and a very deep voice."

She laughed. "The mustache I can handle. You come home with hair on your back, though, and we're headed right over to Salon Patine for electrolysis."

"You can send me, but I'm won't stay," I threatened.

"Well, if you come back to Taombi Springs, you're not going to have a place to live," Aunt Clem butted in from the doorway.

"What do you mean?" I said, looking from Mom to Aunt Clem and back.

"God, Clem, you can't hold water, can you?" Mom said, an edge to her voice.

"I just like to live in the land of truth," she replied, folding her arms across her chest.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Mom put her hand on me. "I can't afford to pay rent for three months if we're not here. We're going to pack up and move out this weekend. But I'll get another place before you even get back, and your room will be all ready for you. You'll hardly notice the difference."

Just what I needed. Another move. But at least that explained why she'd been out rummaging around in our storage shed. I'd had a flash of panic that she'd been out there hooking up with a bottle.

"Cool!" I lied, not wanting her to feel bad. "Just make sure I get the big bedroom next time." I swallowed hard.

"Please behave with your dad and Skyla," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

"For me, will you? And if you really don't like him-"

"We'll simply rent another ex-husband. LA is full of them, I hear," Aunt Clem said. "Look, I hate to break up the party, but I've got to get this guy on a plane, Nan. I'll go throw the stuff in the car and meet you there. You two have sixty seconds, got it?" She backed up toward the door. "Fifty-nine-I mean it, you two-fifty-eight," she said, her voice fading as she went down the stairs.

Mom propped herself way up on her pillows. "Come here," she said, pulling me toward her.

I laid my head in my regular place; right under her chin. We didn't say much. We hadn't been apart for more than a couple of days since I went to space camp in fifth grade. Since Dad moved out five years ago, we'd been the center of each other's worlds.
"Did you remember to pack your bathing suit?" she asked.

"I dunno-I just dumped the dirty clothes hamper into my suitcase. If it was in there, I got it."

"Smarty-pants!" she hissed right next to my ear. "That's not what good mothers like to hear."

"Okay, Alastair," Aunt Clem shouted up the stairs. "I'm calling Greyhound!"

Mom gave me a quick and fierce hug. "Have a bodacious summer, sweetie!" she said, her voice choking at the end.

I nodded and pulled myself off the bed. Gave her one long last look. Stored her up behind my eyeballs, which were already pretty busy trying to hold back a flood of little-boy tears.

"Right on, Mom," I whispered.