The Six Rules of Maybe

have anything you want. If you thought positively and set your mind to it, anything was possible .
    “Mom,” I said. “Do you hear yourself? You have to believe in your own power to make things different. You told us that! What about conviction? There’s proof , I’ve read about it—thinking positively, setting goals, believing in yourself—people can cure their own cancers! You’re the one who said we could do anything we set our mind to … we could have what we wanted if we believed and worked hard .”
    “Optimism can get you into a lot of trouble. You can put your belief in places it doesn’t belong. You can work hard to fix things that you can’t fix. I’m not sure that kind of optimism is always the best thing. Positive thinking, hope—it needs better guidelines. It needs rules .”
    Something had changed in her, and I wasn’t sure what it was or when it had happened. But I didn’t like where this was going, not at all. Hope and belief were the good guys . Weren’t they? If you went to the other side, if you left persistence and optimism in the dust, what could happen? Could Dean Neuhaus happen? What would fate do, what would you do, if you set down those Laws of the Universe, the capital T Truths? Because maybe in the old days you weren’t supposed to say the world was round, but now you didn’t mess with determination and willpower and reaching goals and thinking positively. What she had said—it was a modern sort of burned-at-the-stake heresy. Everyone knew that those things were the right things .
    “God, Mom. Cynical .”
    “Maybe I’m getting my period,” she said. “Or having an epiphany. Does this look awful?”
    “You’re only wearing one shoe.”
    “You’re right.”
    “What is this? Big date?”
    “Dean’s taking me out to dinner. He has something important to ask me.”
    My stomach dropped. It was beginning to make sense, the clothes, the strange talk, the resignation. Please, no. It wasn’t possible, was it? Was she giving up hope of something better? She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t marry him, would she? She couldn’t. Maybe I’d been watching the wrong disaster in the making. Maybe it was Mom I should have been saving all along. “ What does he want to ask you?”
    “I don’t know, Scarlet. It could be anything.” But when she looked at me, I saw the lie on her face. It sat there plainly. It was as obvious as spilled red wine on a white tablecloth.
    I didn’t know what to say. Dean Neuhaus would shatter us. When she finally spoke, it was more to herself than to me.
    “Oh, the power of imminent loss,” she said.
    I went to my room, folded about eight paper cranes, fast. Four for me, four for Clive Weaver. It was sort of like praying, only in origami. The ceiling of my room was getting full, a purple and red and yellow and green sky of swaying paper birds. I stood on my bed, taped these up with the others. Let that keep all of the badness out.
    If Dean Neuhaus moved in with us, I would move out. I would find my father, maybe. I imagined this—a phone call, an invitation. Or else, Hayden would appear in my doorway. He’d look straight atme. He’d say something simple, but charged. Let’s get out of here. I’d grab a few things, follow him out to his truck. The fantasy got a little hazy after that, except for a long highway and the feel of his jeans under my hands. It was stupid the way a fantasy could actually make you feel better for a while, even if it wasn’t real. You had a few minutes when you could really just feel it, and it was actually terrific.
    The paper sky was crowded. Like the rain forest canopy that protected all of the delicate living things underneath. We needed protection. Right then, we had no canopy, no ozone, no anything. There were only the straight, hot, poisonous rays of the sun beaming down.
    My phone rang. Nicole.
    I stared at her name on the screen until the very last possible moment when I finally answered. A part of me was ready for just one more thing to go wrong. It was that sick piece of me that says, go ahead. Bring it on. You feel disaster building and you push things a little further.
    “Do you have a minute?” Nicole said. Her voice was everything cold. Icicles and the arctic and vast, empty polar regions.
    “Go ahead. You might as well get mad at me too, since everything else is turning to crap now.”
    She ignored this. But of course she ignored this. When did she ever actually listen to me ? When did she