Read Online Escape Velocity by Robin Stevenson - Free Book Online

none. Kristina and Anneke head off on foot, and I follow my mother to her car.
    â€œGood turnout,” she says. Her voice is flat.
    â€œReally good,” I say, even though I have no idea what would be considered good or bad. We walk in silence, ducking our heads to avoid the rain, and get into her car. She drives fast through the dark streets. I expected her to be excited about the reading, but she seems distracted.
    â€œWho was the woman in the back?” I ask.
    My mother doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “What woman?”
    â€œThe one who went on clapping after everyone else stopped. Long gray hair.”
    She doesn’t answer.
    â€œMom?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDo you know her? You looked sort of shocked to see her.”
    My mother says nothing. Then, just as I decide she isn’t going to respond, she turns and looks at me. “No one important,” she says. “She is no one important.”
    It is an obvious lie, but she doesn’t say anything else and something in her tone warns me to drop the subject.
    I can’t though. I can’t leave it alone. “I wondered…”
    She sighs. “What. What did you wonder?”
    â€œWho she was. Why she was there.”
    My mother is quiet for a long time, maybe a minute, and I start to think she isn’t going to answer at all. “She showed up once before,” she says at last. “A few months ago she came to an awards gala and tried to talk to me. She was drunk and smelled awful. It was embarrassing. I told her I didn’t want her there and, to be honest, I thought that would be the end of it.”
    â€œSo she’s like some kind of celebrity stalker or something?”
    â€œI’m hardly a celebrity. But stalker? I guess we’ll see.”
    â€œShe looked like she was maybe homeless or something. Didn’t you think? I mean, everyone else was all dressed up.”
    My mother shrugs. “I wouldn’t know.”
    I don’t believe her. I don’t know why I am so sure about this—I don’t know her well enough to be so sure— but I am certain that my mother is lying.

Nine
    Z oe and I stay up late and watch one of the movies she rented. It is artsy, slow-paced and subtitled, and I’m tired, my mind too full to follow the story. I let my attention drift while keeping my eyes fixed on the flickering images, and hope my mother won’t want to discuss the movie afterward. She doesn’t. When the credits are done, she goes to bed without saying more than good night. I think she rented the movie so that we wouldn’t have to make conversation.
    The next morning I end up sleeping until almost noon, despite the time change, and when I wake, the room is bright and the apartment is still and silent.
    I lie in bed, with no real desire to get up or do anything. Tomorrow I start school here. I am nervous, as I always am when I have to go to a new school, and I don’t like the reminder that I might be here for a long time—weeks? months?—but I feel a stirring guilt as I realize that I am also excited. Back in Drumheller I could see the future stretching out in front of me like a dusty road, straight ahead all the way to the horizon. No surprises. No friends. That line from my mother’s first book slips into my head: The future was closing in and setting around her, as gray and hard as cement . That’s how I felt too. Trapped.
    Here in Victoria, I don’t know what to expect. It feels like anything could happen.
    Eventually I make myself get up. Zoe isn’t home, and I can’t be bothered showering. I pull on the same jeans I wore yesterday, pour myself a glass of orange juice and snoop around my mother’s apartment some more. It’s sort of creepy, how little clutter there is, how little there is that is personal. No photographs, no scrawled notes, no diary. Even laundry is neatly folded in the hamper in her closet—what