Learning to Swim Read online

  “Yeah, where is Missouri?” another girl piped up. She was dressed in shorts entirely too short for human legs and a tank top entirely too tight for human torsos. “I don’t even know where it is.” She snorted derisively, as if this somehow proved my inconsequentiality instead of her ignorance.

  “It’s between Kansas and Illinois …” I faltered at the blank stares I received. “Near Chicago.” That was a stretch.

  “Ohhh!”

  There was no need to explain the three hundred miles between the two cities, as the majority of the kids had already wandered away in boredom—with the realization that the new bird wasn’t quite as exotic as they had hoped. Even the Huston kid had hightailed it without so much as a nice-to-meet-you.

  The only ones left standing before my anxious eyes were Blondie, the bimbo and a boy who smirked at me, but stood like an Abercrombie model with his hands perched on his hips.

  “So why are you here?” Blondie asked.

  “Lay off her,” the Abercrombie model piped up.

  “What?” Blondie exuded innocence. “I’m just asking.”

  “My parents just bought a house,” I explained.

  “Which house?”

  My cheeks flared to match the words I was about to speak. “The Pink Palace.”

  Blondie chuckled. The bimbo flicked her head to shake her bangs out of her eyes. “That’s been deserted forever.”

  If I’d had any say, it would have stayed that way.

  “I hope you have plans to repaint,” Abercrombie said. I glared at him, but his smile was playful, not provoking.

  “It must’ve been really cheap,” Blondie cut in. “Like, a real fixer-upper.”

  I shrugged noncommittally.

  “It’s just weird to have someone new here,” Blondie went on. “We don’t really get new people.” She flicked her head in an exact imitation of her friend. Her blonde bangs whipped around and landed perfectly across her forehead. “These are all, like, real old families that have been summering here forever. We’ve all been neighbors since we were, like, born.”

  I don’t want to be here, like, any more than you want me here, you infuriating dimwit.

  “We don’t see a whole lot of people from Missouri.” The bimbo, though just as annoying, didn’t have the same vitriol in her voice that Blondie did. She just seemed … well, clueless.

  “People at home just don’t really think much of coming here, of all places,” I said.

  “Why?”

  Damn … that had been a complete lie. My friends thought it was über cool that I got to “summer” away from home. Time for my finest bullshitting.

  “I guess there’s just not, like, a lot of people in Missouri who can afford summer houses,” the bimbo answered for me. She seemed to regard this as some critical shortfall of Missourians.

  “Most people’s summer houses are on the lake,” I corrected, gathering steam from my anger. “You know, on the lake there’s a ton of skiing and night life and stuff. Usually the only people who come out here are, like, old people.” I hated myself as I groped for approval from these kids, but I also couldn’t stop. “I tried to convince my parents to get a house on the lake instead, but, you know parents. Really boring. Wanted to come out here.”

  Abercrombie took a step forward. “It’s a shame you had to be banished to the ends of the earth with the rest of us.”

  Blondie feigned a smirk, but it turned out more like a grimace.

  Afraid of what else I’d lie about if left to my own embarrassed, wandering mouth, I excused myself on the grounds of needing to use the restroom. The Abercrombie model grinned stupidly at me as I hightailed it.

  I told my dad I wasn’t feeling well and skipped out of the waist-high white gate that enclosed the elite gathering. I congratulated myself on escaping the premarital introduction that my mother was undoubtedly trying to arrange with the famous Owen Carlton that very moment.

  But if I was being truthful with myself (which I wasn’t), I was a little lonely, too. I took my shoes off and walked in the sandy grass beside the boardwalk, the sun casting an orange glow over it all.

  Everything was just sand—it seemed to consume everything. It covered the landscape, as if smothering anything that tried to push out of the ground. Definitely a place where water spirits and ashrays—whatever they were—could thrive. And now, in the strong wind that hinted of a storm, the feeble grass whipped mercilessly at my legs.

  Suddenly my big toe caught on something hard and cold, and I jumped.

  Get a grip!

  I reached down to pry the thing from where it was lodged in the sand. To my relief, it was just some sort of musical instrument. I brushed it off with my dress; it was long and silver with six round holes. It looked like a small flute.

  My first instinct was to blow into it, see the sound it would make, get the sand out, but I was too wary of its previous owners. And I was reminded of the disgusted way in which I’d heard the word “locals” pronounced by numerous people in the old houses.

  I was also afraid to draw attention to myself from the crowd of families that still laughed and played in the yard behind me. I gave the hubbub one more glance over my shoulder before dropping the flute into one of the big pockets on the front of my dress and moving off with a renewed desire to get away from the Ritz estate.

  The Pink Palace was silent. I meant to relish the quiet in my room, but as I moved through the kitchen, an envelope on the table caught my eye.

  There was a messy pile of mail there, obviously left to be read later, but one was addressed to me in our housekeeper’s curly handwriting. Deep in her seventies, Joan avoided computers and so it wasn’t unusual for me to get letters from her while we were away. But we’d left less than forty-eight hours ago and this particular envelope bore a same-day delivery stamp.

  I ripped it open. Inside was another envelope, this one with a post-it stuck to the front. A note from Joan.

  “Honey, this came for you just after you left. Made sure to camouflage it so you could read it first. Love, Joan.”

  A smile crept onto my face. She knew my mother too well. Mom would assume that any important mail addressed to me was surely also meant for the woman who had spawned me eighteen years ago.

  I crumpled up the post-it, lest my mother should find it, and looked at the hidden envelope. The return address was the admissions office at Western University.

  And there, I faltered. My hands trembled. My fingers left little sweat fingerprints on the envelope. How long did I stand there, contemplating the feel of the paper beneath my fingers?

  The envelope was still sealed. Joan hadn’t read it. I could let everyone believe I’d been rejected and run away to Europe. Or to California. Or Mexico. Or New York City. The simple act of running away was something I ached to do with every fiber of my being. End the struggle that was school and tests and studying. Find something else to define me. My thumb brushed across my name printed on the envelope.

  Cora Manchester.

  It was no use. Inside me, deeper than the desire to run away, was a little part of me that wanted to be accepted, too. Needed to be accepted. For my own self-respect.

  I took a deep breath and ripped the envelope open; I unfolded it with shaking fingers.

  “I regret to inform you …”

  My stomach slid to my feet. Apparently that form dismissal wasn’t an urban legend. Those words did exist in real life. And they hurt more than any book or movie could portray.

  I stopped reading. I didn’t need to read that my GPA had been too low. That other kids were smarter than me. More talented than me. Could play basketball or softball without tripping.

  The threat of tears stung my eyes. Why does this hurt so much? I hadn’t even thought I cared! I was furious with myself. Had I been harboring this secret fantasy of going to Western all along? Going to the school my parents wanted me to go to, going to school with Josh Watson and lusting after him for another four years? Or was I just afraid of the looks I wo
uld get when my parents found out?

  The last thing I wanted was to be caught crying by my parents. It was a habit very much abhorred by my father. I crumpled the letter and threw it in the trash. Then I pulled on a sweatshirt and left.

  I needed to put as much space as possible between me and that horrible letter, those hurtful words and that shockingly pink house.

  I walked quickly, without much care for where I wandered, and I soon found myself amid that mess of red cabins again.

  The cabins were all uniformly painted—red with white trim—and seemed to be chipping and fading in unison. People buzzed in and out of the little cabins. Several fathers bearing beer and mothers with children in tow swirled around me.

  My eyes stinging with those unwanted tears, I nearly bounced into an old man with a metal detector. He gave me a scornful look, but I quickly lowered my gaze and strode on.

  Eventually the activity and cabins died away, too, and I came to an unkempt area of beach with seaweed strewn about. There were no people here, and behind the beach the dunes had given way to rocky hills.

  Just a little farther on, I spotted a tiny run-down pier. It was a short wooden thing raised on piles, with a wide walkway of wooden slats. But it also looked old, the dark piles rising along the sides like crooked teeth. It extended into the ocean a few yards, the end sloping and shifting ominously in the waves.

  I sat down in the sand before the pier, tired of walking but not courageous enough to test the strength of the pier itself, and wrapped my arms around my legs. The angry ocean waves roiled and crashed into each other, spraying my face with cold droplets. And here, quite alone, I dared to cry.

  The tears came in a torrent. The last two days had been the longest of my life, cramped in the back of the car with three months’ worth of junk and a worrisome dog that thought every car ride ended at the vet. My mind had been boiling with the last year’s buildup of thoughts as we stopped at antique store after tiny store along the highway. But here on the beach, I felt far away from everything I’d left at home. The best friend. The best friend’s new boyfriend. The almost-but-never-was-mine boy friend. Not to mention school.

  It had all felt so far away for a few hours. But that letter had followed me. That was it—my one reserve. Gone. Still, that familiar feeling of waiting wasn’t gone yet. That vague but completely familiar feeling followed me all the way to this beach, so far away from my blue room in the suburban house where I cried myself to sleep when I got wait-listed at every private college in the Midwest and when Josh Watson declared he didn’t like me and where I sat alone weekends when Rosie went out with Steve.

  And just when I had managed to sort through all that, I saw it. Something in the water.

  My thoughts raced immediately to ashrays. In my mind, they were big blue things that resembled sharks. But this seemed too round to be anything menacing, perhaps a sea lion. I got up to take a few steps closer and squinted my eyes. And then a wave pushed the head above water, and it became clear that the creature wasn’t a seal at all.

  It was a person. A very wet, very puffy person.

  I screamed.

  Ag Troid le Anam an Gheimhridh

  Battling the Spirit of Winter

  The next morning I woke up when the house was still silent. It had stormed as soon as we’d gotten home, but the storm had died in the night. It wasn’t usual that I woke up before my parents, or even before noon. But last night had been one unlike any other, and I couldn’t fall back asleep. So I slipped into my flip-flops and thwapped out to the back porch.

  Princess followed me as I marched off, confident I could find my way back to the pier.

  But when it came into sight, it was empty. I don’t know what I was expecting. Perhaps a few lingering gawkers, maybe some police tape. But the local police chief, Captain Harville, had called just around midnight to tell my mom that everything was wrapped up—the body belonged to a man who lived a few miles south of the city—and to make sure I was okay.

  I had insisted I was fine, the old man with the metal detector had arrived quickly and ushered me away too fast for any lasting mental images. It had all ended so quickly. It was … anticlimactic. I couldn’t believe I was saying it, but there it was. Finding a dead body hadn’t been nearly as exciting as one would think.

  It wasn’t a horror movie. The dead man had been a sailor. A ship had gone done a few towns over and several men had disappeared; not all the bodies had been accounted for yet. It was unusual for a body to drift this far, they said. They hadn’t been searching so far north. But because of the tides, they could continue searching for weeks.

  A very cut-and-dry event for me. It had all been cleaned up nicely, as horrendous as it had started out. Still, I was curious.

  But the pier was empty.

  And in the bright sun and calm waves of the early morning, it definitely didn’t look the stuff of horror movies. Princess pranced happily to the end of the pier and back. For all its looks, it could have been the site of a children’s swimming lesson. A swimming lesson.

  A chill ran through my body involuntarily.

  You’re insane, I thought. Dead body, no sweat. But swimming lessons? The stuff of nightmares.

  My inner conversation died away as I slowly became aware of a figure in the water a few yards out. And this was not a dead body. This was a very alive person. A young man.

  I watched curiously as the boy swam, his dark head ducking under the water every so often as he stroked. The water made his tan skin shine brilliantly. It was unusual to see someone swimming so diligently along in the ocean. I’d always associated the beach with kids splashing and teenage girls giggling in bikini tops. And of course, now, dead bodies, too. I wondered if that boy knew what had been in that water just last night.

  Princess whined at me and I shushed her so as not to draw attention from the swimmer. I was mesmerized, watching him as his rigid arms sliced through the waves. In the distance, he stopped to rub his eyes and shake his head like a wet dog before starting up again.

  It was like magic to me. The way he flew through the waves, bobbing with them, but stronger than them. So opposite of that bloated body with the soggy clothes. I had imagined glimpsing a pale face, but in retrospect, I knew my imagination had created it. The body had been too far out to make out its features.

  In the distance, the living boy reversed direction and came back toward us. I snapped myself out of whatever reverie was coming, and pulled Princess back to the beach.

  I didn’t want to disturb the seriousness about the ocean at this time of morning—or explain to a stranger why I was watching him swim. That was stalker material.

  “Are you lost?”

  I was. But I was also not going to admit it.

  “No, just looking.”

  “Really? Because you look really lost.”

  I managed a small, fake laugh and twirled around. “Well, yeah, I was trying to find Main Street. The map said it went right up to a dead end near O’Brien Resort.”

  The girl with the blond pigtails nodded. I noticed her eyes were puffy and red, as though she had been crying. “Yeah, you just passed it. It’s right back there.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder in the direction I’d come.

  I mumbled an embarrassed thanks and moved to go back the way I’d come, but she unconsciously blocked the boardwalk.

  “Are you staying in the resort?” she asked. She said it placidly enough, but she was one of those tall, leggy blondes that made me feel inferior in every possible way.

  I shook my head. “My parents have a house back down there.” I waved vaguely, and the girl’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. Her lips were a tight round O. Her red eyes flew over me once before she sniffed, nodded and walked on. “Cool.” It was a mutter meant only for pretension; I could hear the judgment behind it.

  And then I recognized where I was. Somehow I’d managed to find myself back near that old woman’s dumpy house!

  Of course she was sitting in the rocker, her d
ark hands a bundle in her lap. And of course she recognized me immediately.

  “Hello, are you lost?”

  Or didn’t recognize me, for that matter.

  “No,” I said. “I’m just—going that way.” Note to self: Practice excuses!

  “It’s nice weather today, isn’t it?” the little old woman said.

  I didn’t want to get roped back into her suffocating conversation but I had no way out.

  “Do come sit with me, dear. It’s such a nice day.” Her eyes flickered from the ocean to me and back to the water as she patted the empty rocking chair next to her. That damned creepy rocking chair that rocked itself to the beat of the ocean waves.

  I stalled, looking around for inspiration for a polite refusal.

  She patted the rocking chair again, her eyes still staring out at the ocean with a frightful intensity, almost as though blind, as though she was unable to focus her eyes on me. “Sit, sit. It’s hot out there, and I’m old and lonely.” She spoke slowly, giving authenticity to her claims.

  “Well, I have to take my dog to … um …” Shit.

  “Oh, I do love a kindred soul,” the old woman’s eyes lit up and left the ocean long enough to flit to Princess, who stood confused at my feet. She wanted clearance to go and greet the new human friend. “Please.” The old woman patted the rocking chair and clapped her hands absently. Princess looked up at me eagerly, asking my permission to give in to the excitement of the clapping.

  I sighed and resignedly climbed the stairs. Princess took off to sniff the old woman who finally pulled her eyes from the ocean to laugh and pet the Beagle. “What a dear creature. What’s his name?”

  “Princess,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, miss.” She was speaking to Princess, but she tapped the rocking chair beside her one last time.

  I gave in and sat awkwardly on the edge of the chair as Princess settled at the old woman’s feet, her tail going a thousand miles per hour.

  “And what’s your name, dear?”