Half a World Away Read online

  He also filled eleven Ziplocs with his favorite granola from the kitchen and zipped them into his suitcase. After that he sat on the bed with nothing to do. Then his heart skipped a beat: He was feeling that strange tingly sensation he used to get when he wanted to start a fire. He took a few deep breaths and tried to concentrate on electricity, the way Dr. Wilder had taught him. Dr. Wilder said thinking about electricity was a positive and thinking about starting fires was a negative.

  So. The Greeks had known about the existence of electricity since 600 BC.

  Electricity flows freely through metals because metals have electrons that separate easily from their atoms.

  What else? Jaden tapped his fingers over and over on the bed. Then he thought about sitting on a plane for more than twenty-four hours, not counting layovers, and that made him jump up and head for the front door.

  He went outside to do what Dr. Wilder called his “aggressive running.” The rain was still pouring. Jaden closed his eyes and leaned his head back, letting water wash over his face. Then he started to run as fast as he could around and around the house. It was hard to reach maximum speed because the ground was wet and slippery. When he felt he was running as fast as he could, he threw himself forward onto the wet ground.

  Unhhh. A rock ripped into his palm. He stared at the slash of blood, at how bright it was. He sank into the wetness, resting his cheek in the cool mud. Lying there made him realize he was still sleepy, so he went back inside and lay down on the bed for once. He idly watched blood drip onto his quilt.

  When he woke up, there was a white bandage around his hand, a spot of blood seeping through. It was hard to disturb him when he was sleeping, because when you’d lived with eleven other people, you could sleep through anything. He unrolled the bandage, each layer bloodier than the previous one, until finally he reached the rip in his palm. He studied it calmly. It was jagged and about two inches long but no longer bleeding. He tended to bleed a lot when hurt, so Penni had bought bandages that helped clot blood. She kept some at home, carried some around in her purse, and always made sure he had some in his backpack. He wrapped the bandage around his hand again.

  He yawned and pushed himself up. There was blood and mud on the quilt. One o’clock—he’d been more tired than he realized. Their flight was at eight p.m., and they were leaving home at three. They lived two hours away from O’Hare Airport, but Penni and Steve wanted to get to the airport extra early.

  The house was silent. “Mom?” Jaden called. Nobody answered. He walked through the house, but it was empty. He didn’t see Steve and Penni’s suitcases. Had they left for Kazakhstan without him?

  Back in his bedroom, he checked his cell phone. There was a text from Penni: BE RIGHT BACK. BANK HAS FRESH 100S. Penni had been worried about those perfect hundred-dollar bills for weeks, because she and Steve wouldn’t be able to adopt without them.

  There was another text from the girl at school who liked him. He wasn’t sure if he liked her or not, but he’d given her his phone number. She’d texted, HAVE FUN IN KAZAKHSTAN!! SEE YOU WHEN YOU GET BACK!!!!! She was into exclamation points. He texted back, SURE, SEE YOU THEN.

  Jaden opened up his suitcase again. Threw in an extra hoodie. He was supposed to bring the suit they’d bought him for when they went before the Kazakh judge to get their baby’s adoption approved. But he didn’t want to wear it. It looked stupid.

  The front door opened, and Jaden heard Steve’s heavy footsteps moving quickly through the house. “Sorry I’m late! Penni? Pen?” When nobody answered, Steve moved from room to room. Jaden could picture him, the way his feet turned out as he walked. When he reached Jaden’s room, he paused. “Where did your mother go?”

  “She found some crisp bills.”

  “Excellent! Say, what’s that on your hand?”

  “Uh, I hurt it.”

  Steve stared at him for a moment. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, it was nothing.”

  Steve tapped his fingers against the door frame and cleared his throat. “I know we’ve been busy with the adoption, but if you ever want to talk to us or hang around with us, you know we’re there for you, right?”

  “Right,” Jaden replied.

  Steve paused. “So did you want to talk?”

  “No. I tripped in the mud. I’m okay.”

  “Were you doing your aggressive running?”

  “No.”

  Steve took a big, tired breath. Jaden knew how tired he made Steve and Penni. In fact, when he first got to America, they had a lot more energy.

  “Okay,” Steve said. “Okay.” His eyes moved back to the bed. “You know, your mom paid six hundred dollars for that. It’s a vintage Amish quilt.”

  Jaden didn’t know what “vintage Amish” was, but seriously? Six hundred dollars? Jaden eyed the quilt as Steve came in and gathered it up. Six hundred for that? He didn’t even know you could buy a blanket for that kind of money. He did know they’d bought him a lot of nice things before he got here, the same way they’d bought a lot of nice things for the baby’s room.

  Steve rushed away with the quilt.

  Jaden went to stand at the window. It seemed like the hardest rain he’d ever seen, a legendary rain, the drops beating on the window as the wind blew harder. Hard rain always reminded him of something, but he could never remember what. It was something from long ago, before his mother gave him away. He stood at the window, staring, then took a picture. When he saw Penni pull into the driveway, he stepped away from the window and checked the clock. Two thirty. His heart sped up. A lot of things were going to change. He wondered whether Steve and Penni might give him away. Sometimes Americans did that when an adoption didn’t work out. But he’d been with them for four years. Could they still give him away? He didn’t know how that worked.

  The front door opened, and Penni called out, “I got the bills! I got the bills!”

  She and Steve talked excitedly. Jaden stepped back in front of the bedroom window. The rain was like a magnet for him. A fuzzy picture of his mother was trying to take shape in his head. But he couldn’t quite see her.

  Chapter Six

  At the airport the security lady frisked Jaden because he was wearing a baggy hoodie and baggy pants. She made him empty his pockets, which were filled with bread. “Bread?” the lady said. “Why is there bread in your pockets?”

  “Uhhh.” Jaden thought a second while the woman glared at him. “In case I get hungry. . . .” He felt his face redden.

  “He’s not going to hijack a plane with bread,” Steve said impatiently.

  The lady gave Steve a withering look. “I’m just doing my job,” she snapped at him.

  When they were walking away, Jaden heard Steve mumble, “Nitwit.” If there was one thing that Steve didn’t like, it was nitwits.

  As they sat waiting for the flight to Frankfurt, Penni and Steve kept giving each other meaningful gazes, sometimes smiling and sometimes not. Once in a while Penni would give Jaden a smile, and even kiss his hand.

  And he felt it again, that thing that wasn’t love. It was more just that he felt safe. But it wasn’t unlimited. If he had really succeeded in burning down the house, even Penni probably would have been willing to send him away to wherever adopted kids like him got sent to. There were special homes.

  They alternately wandered and sat for the next couple of hours. Once, after they’d been sitting in the same place for an hour, Steve pulled Penni up and they started waltzing through the rows of chairs. Jaden felt curious about—just really interested in—their happiness right then. They were bright, very bright, their electricity on full blast.

  When boarding finally started, Steve stuck both his hands behind him, and Penni let him pull her forward. “You too, Jaden,” Steve said.

  Jaden took the hand stuck out at him as Steve pulled. Penni took Jaden’s other hand and held it. He kept almost tripping, an
d he was glad when they all needed to let go as they entered the plane.

  “I’ll arm-wrestle you for the aisle,” Steve said to Jaden.

  “Me?” Jaden asked. “I want the window.”

  “Good, because I want to sit between my two favorite people in the world,” Penni said happily.

  They sat in the back row of the plane. They’d bought the tickets from a travel agency that specialized in international adoption, so the tickets were discounted and quite possibly the cheapest on the plane. After they got situated, Steve leaned over and kissed Penni with a big mmmmm noise. Yesterday that would have embarrassed Jaden, but now he watched curiously. Here, now, on this plane, what would have embarrassed him yesterday didn’t matter. He was entering a new world, the way he’d entered a new world when he came to America.

  The plane began shaking hard almost as soon as it took off, and Jaden worried that maybe they were doomed to die while on their way to adopt this baby. Occasionally the shakes were violent, bouncing Jaden hard against his seat belt. His heart sank, and it must have shown because Steve said, “Take big breaths and breathe out slowly. Don’t worry, if there was a problem, the pilot would land. It’s just normal turbulence.”

  “I can’t stand it!” Jaden cried out, surprising himself. A couple of people twisted around to look at him, but he didn’t care. He felt trapped in this plane. He wanted out—now.

  “It’s a bit much,” Penni said. “I’ve never felt this much turbulence before.” Her forehead wrinkled with worry. “Maybe we should ask a flight attendant about it.”

  “They’re probably all buckled in,” Steve said. “Don’t worry. The pilot wouldn’t do anything unsafe. He wants to live.”

  “How do you know?” Jaden asked, but Steve didn’t answer.

  Jaden closed his eyes and tried taking big breaths and exhaling slowly. There. That worked a little. A big jolt shook the plane, and he squeezed his eyes tight. He opened his eyes and wrinkled his forehead at Penni, who put her arm around him.

  “Don’t worry,” Penni said. “It’s—uh—”

  Another big jolt stopped her from talking. Jaden wished there were a way to take a photo of turbulence. He saw Penni’s eyes grow scared. That worried him a lot. Then he heard another passenger crying. Jaden thought they were all going to die.

  “Mom?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I stole the thirty-dollar tip Dad left on the table at the restaurant last night.”

  She blinked at him, and for a second he thought she was going to be angry.

  “Oh, Jaden,” was all she said at first. Then she squeezed his hand. “Thank you for your honesty. Now is not the time for me to be mad.”

  Steve said, “For crying out loud, you two, stop acting like somebody’s on their deathbed.”

  Jaden said, “Dad?”

  “What is it?”

  But he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to confess to Steve. “Never mind,” he said.

  “Read—my—lips, you two,” Steve said loudly. “Everything—is—fine.”

  The PA crackled, and then a man started speaking. “This is your pilot, Captain Mattson. As you all can tell, we’ve encountered a bit of turbulence. As we reach altitude, the turbulence will settle down. In the meanwhile you all keep your seat belts fastened, and the flight attendants will begin serving drinks before you know it.”

  He sounded almost amused. Jaden tried to let that calm him down. He didn’t want to die, because he wanted to see his biological mother again, just to ask her, Why? Why did you give me away and keep your other son? He couldn’t think of a single explanation, not one, but maybe she had an explanation he hadn’t thought of.

  The plane rose through some clouds, so that Jaden couldn’t see any city lights or anything down below, like they were suspended in nothingness. He stared out at the nothingness for hours, “turning off,” as Dr. Wilder used to call it. At one point he could hear Penni say—as if from far away—“He’s turned off.” He stared outside. Once in a while he turned off for days. There was no predicting how long it might last.

  Chapter Seven

  He must have fallen asleep, because the flight attendant was announcing that they would be landing in Frankfurt and that everyone should raise their trays and bring their seat backs up. Relief flooded over Jaden, even though the shaking had resumed. When the pilot said, “Flight attendants, prepare for landing,” a few people applauded.

  Jaden smiled at Penni. He felt giddy that they were still alive. When the plane touched down, there was more applause. He briefly regretted telling Penni about the thirty dollars, but oh well.

  Jaden never wanted to get on another plane again, but he knew that in a few hours they would have to catch their flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan. He wondered if it would be possible for him to stay in Frankfurt for a few weeks. “Hey, Mom, do I have to go to Kazakhstan? Can I stay here?”

  “Jaden, of course you have to go to Kazakhstan. You can’t stay in Germany by yourself. Plus, you need to bond with the baby before we come home. The bonding period is not just for the parents but the whole family.”

  “I hate flying, Mom.”

  “How can you hate flying? You’ve only flown twice.”

  “Both times were awful.”

  “That’s it,” Steve said. “No more talk about flying. Let’s talk about the beautiful future. That’s what matters now.” Then Jaden knew what Steve was going to say before he said it. “A positive attitude equals a positive outcome.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Penni declared, as if that were the first time Steve had ever said that.

  “But, Mom,” Jaden said.

  “Enough,” Penni answered firmly.

  The thought of more turbulence made Jaden feel like he was going to lose his mind. He gagged, but Steve and Penni didn’t notice. He hoped it happened again while they were watching. Then maybe they would understand how upset he was about flying.

  They strolled around the sprawling airport. On a whim Steve bought caviar and crackers at a food shop. Then they sat down, and Steve handed Penni a cracker topped with caviar. Penni said, “Mmmmmm,” and closed her eyes. Jaden felt his mouth water, but when he stuck the whole cracker with caviar into his mouth, he almost immediately spit it out, right onto the ground.

  But Penni was ready with a couple of napkins. She always came to the rescue. Still, he could feel that her mind was more on the new baby than on him. He was surprised to find he felt jealous. He wouldn’t have thought he cared, and he would never admit that he cared, but the fact was he did care at that moment. He’d gotten used to being her first priority.

  Finally the airline announced boarding. This flight was to be the longest of the trip—nine and a half hours. The flight attendants were tall, beautiful German girls.

  Penni’s face had grown radiant. Jaden had never seen her so pretty. He wondered if she’d been that way before he’d been brought home. They hadn’t gone to Romania themselves—they’d hired a Romanian man to bring him to America. The first time Jaden had heard Penni crying in bed was when he’d cut up several sweaters she’d bought for him. After that she’d cried a lot. She about had a nervous breakdown when he burned his teddy bear’s face. It had been the first thing they’d given him when they met him at the airport. He’d taken some charcoal lighter fluid and poured it on the teddy bear’s face, and then put the bear into a pot in the sink. Apparently, he put on too much lighter fluid, because when he dropped a match on the teddy bear, it half exploded—whoosh! The whole event left soot marks on the kitchen ceiling. Penni and Steve had been in bed already, and Jaden had gotten up only because he’d suddenly wanted to burn something.

  He took the scorched teddy bear to bed with him. It was weird, and kind of embarrassing, but he liked stuffed animals. Penni and Steve didn’t know that, though, so after he was ten, they never got him any again. He kept his stuffed a
nimals in the back of his closet.

  When Penni had seen the soot marks, she’d scolded him but also told him to never forget that she would always love him more than she loved anybody else in the world. Jaden knew that that was out the window now.

  As the plane sped down the runway, Jaden crossed his arms and fingers and put on his sunglasses so nobody could tell how scared he was. The liftoff was smooth, and even as the plane reached flying altitude, there was no turbulence. Jaden uncrossed himself.

  Steve leaned over Penni to ask him, “When are you going to take those sunglasses off?”

  “When our last plane lands in Kyzylorda.”

  “What is it, some sort of lucky charm?”

  “Yes,” Jaden admitted.

  He noticed three free seats in the middle section. He moved to there and lay down, feeling really happy that there was no turbulence. He played with his handheld Nintendo while lying on his back. He knew turbulence could happen at any time, but for the moment everything was fine. Then there was a touch of turbulence, but it went away. Maybe the sunglasses really were lucky. That is, he knew it didn’t make sense to think so, but he couldn’t bring himself to take them off. He did not want to die in an airplane.

  Chapter Eight

  The story was, Penni had seen his face on a waiting children list on the Internet, and she’d known immediately that she had to adopt him. She’d been married to someone else at the time. Jaden had been one year old in the picture but five in real life. Someone from his group home had lied and told the adoption agency that Jaden was still a baby. Then there was the divorce, and then Penni married Steve. So it had ended up taking three years to complete the adoption. That’s why he’d been eight when he came to the United States and why Penni and Steve had thought he would be four. Jaden could tell that the Kazakh baby would belong to both Penni and Steve, while he mostly belonged to Penni. At least, that was the way he saw it. It was weird because before he came here, he’d been thrilled to be moving to America. He’d had all sorts of fantasies about how much he would love his new country. But somehow that wasn’t the case. And that made him mad.