808 Miles Away From Home Chapter 05
Mom’s hand froze in midair, her nails digging into the seam of her phone case.
Mrs. Tillman’s voice was still coming through the receiver.
“Paige took her SATs in June. She got a total score of 1,580, putting her in the top 1% of the state. That’s one of the best results our school has ever produced. I even gave her a special mention in the class group at the time. Her acceptance letter was mailed out in mid-July. You didn’t receive it?”
Mom opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Mrs. Sumner? Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
Her voice sounded like it had been scraped out from the bottom of her throat, dry and raw.
“Mrs. Tillman, are you sure you’re talking about my Paige? Paige Sumner?”
“Yes, Paige Sumner. Homeroom 3-B. She was always quiet, but her grades were solid. She placed top three in her class on the last practice exam. You really didn’t know?”
The disbelief in Mrs. Tillman’s voice had shifted from shock into something closer to accusation.
Mom did not answer. She hung up.
When she lowered the phone from her ear, the call summary was still glowing on the screen. The whole conversation had lasted 47 seconds.
Dad saw her expression and set down his drink. “What’s wrong?”
Mom turned to look at him. Her lips were trembling.
“Paige took her SATs this year.”
“What?”
“Paige already graduated. She scored a 1,580. She’s in the top one percent in the state.”
The color drained from Dad’s face in stages, moving from confusion to blankness to something so tangled he could not have named it himself.
“That’s impossible. She doesn’t test until next-”
“She finished in June!” Mom’s voice shot up, ragged with panic. “Her acceptance letter arrived in July! We didn’t know any of it!”
The room went silent for a few seconds.
Bria’s voice came through the wall from the next room. “Mom? What are you two yelling about?”
No one answered her.
Mom threw herself off the bed and ran barefoot to the suitcase, digging for a charger cable. Her fingers shook as she dialed my number again.
It went straight to voicemail. She dialed again. Voicemail. She dialed a third time and got the same thing.
“The number you have reached is not available. Please try again later.”
“She blocked me.” Mom sank to the floor, and her voice dropped to almost nothing. “She blocked all of us.”
Dad stood beside her and did not speak for a long time.
When he finally did, his voice was unsteady. “Where’s her acceptance letter? Did she say where she was going?”
Mom looked up at him, her eyes rimmed red. “She didn’t say anything. When we left, she was just standing in the doorway. I told her to take out the trash and water the plants. She said, ‘Okay.’ One word. That was it.
“And I had Bria tell her to try for a decent state school next year.”
The sentence hung in the air, and Mom went still the moment it left her mouth. A decent state school next year?
Her daughter had already scored in the top one percent of the state and received an acceptance letter from one of the best universities in the country.
The last thing her family had said to her, standing right there in their doorway, was to try for a decent state school next year.
Bria pushed open the door and stepped out, still wearing a cartoon-themed headband and a sheet mask.
“Mom, seriously, what’s going on?”
Mom looked at her and asked a question that seemed to come from nowhere. “Bria, did you know your sister took her SATs this year?”
Bria tilted her head. “What? Isn’t she supposed to take it next year?”
Nobody had known.
Four people lived in that house, yet three of them had no idea that the fourth had sat the most important exam of her life, earned a score higher than any of them could have imagined, and left.
Mom stood up slowly, gripping the edge of the bed. Her legs were barely holding her up.
“We need to go home.”
“Right now?” Dad glanced at the clock. “It’s 11:00 PM. The earliest flight out isn’t until six in the morning.”
“Then we fly back at six.”
Mom’s voice had stopped shaking, but what replaced it was worse. It was the suffocating, pressed-down calm of someone who had just realized that something could not be undone.
She walked to the window and stared out at the dark ocean.
The waves rolled in one after another, steady and low, like some muffled heartbeat in the distance. Then, she remembered something.
At the graduation party, Uncle Keith had asked Paige how her exams went.
What had she said?
“Paige won’t take the SATS until next year.”
She had said it herself, out loud, in front of every relative at that table and in front of Paige.
Her daughter had been sitting in the corner, having just received a score in the top one percent of the entire state. Meanwhile, her own mother had smiled and told everyone that she was not even taking the test until next year.
Mom closed her eyes.
The ocean wind outside was strong enough to send the curtains snapping against the glass.
She felt cold. It was the kind of cold that seeped outward from the marrow of her bones.
