Sheâs stopped asking for the phone when Iâm talking to my mom, and we donât discuss my home life anymore. As for Mom, Iâve tried to smooth things out between us, but I think she still wonders if I secretly hate her.
âI think Iâve almost got the song nailed,â I tell Frank. âI mean, I know itâs probably not very tough, but when you first showed it to me, I thought I could never do it.â
âOf course you can!â he says, getting up from his wooden lawn chair. âCome on. Letâs get this show on the road.â
We settle around the canoe, and Iâm about to open my case when he says, âHey, before I forget, I went to the address you found in the envelope.â
âYou did?â
âNo news, Iâm afraid,â he says. âThe people there just moved in a few years ago, and the family before that was only there for a few years too. No one in the neighborhood seems to have been there for more than a few years.â
âYou asked other people in the neighborhood too?â
âOf course,â Frank says. âThatâs what a good sleuth has got to do, right?â
I nod. âIâve done a bit of sleuthing too.â I tell him what Iâve learned about Andrés and Caterinaâs son, Facundo GarcÃa.
Frank goes very still. âSo now what?â
I shrug. âI wanted to look up the son on the Internet, but I ran out of time at the library on Saturday, and I havenât been back since.â I donât add that Jeanette seems to be keeping me away from the libraryâand emailâwhenever she can. She stops short of forbidding me to go on my own or with Sarah, at least. After our conversation about Momâs message, Jeanette and I were silent for a long time, but itâs impossible to stay mad at Jeanette for long. By suppertime, we were teasing each other and laughing again, and before going to bed, she came to my room to apologize for meddling. Weâve been spending all our time together ever since, hiking, cherry-picking or going to the lake for a swim. This morning I had thoughts of going to the library, but she invented some desperate need to find a set of electric massaging slippers that she knew were in the basement somewhere, and she made lunch so late that I had to rush to my lesson.
What she doesnât know is that Iâm not interested in emailing Mom anyway. Our last few conversations have left me completely exhausted, and afterward I go to bed only to stare at the ceiling. At about midnight the night after my fight with Jeanette, I pulled out the book on mental health and started reading. The common warning signs of mental illness looked uncomfortably familiar: sleeplessness, changes in appetite, extreme highs and lows, irritability, negative thoughts, excessive worries and anxieties.
And then I found this:
Researchers believe that, in most cases, genetics and environmental factors, such as stress, play a role in mental illness. The sooner one recognizes the warning signs, the better. Itâs never too early or too late to seek professional help.
I slammed the book shut, shoved it under my bed, snapped off the light and smacked my head down on my pillow. No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, though, sleep wouldnât come.
And my thoughts wouldnât go away.
Nothing Iâve done has been enough. Listening to my parentsâ problems. Thinking up ways to make their lives easier. Getting good grades. Trying to be the perfect daughter. What difference has it made? Theyâre still miserable.
Part of me knows Jeanetteâs right about Momâs mental health, and Iâm starting to feel like an idiot for not seeing it before. All my talk of supporting my family, and I didnât even know my own mother was sick. The next day we had another shift at the soup kitchen, and that freaked me out even more. If Mom can develop mental-health issues without me even