Up for Air

by Laurie Morrison

  For my mom, Elizabeth Morrison, with so much love and gratitude

  Chapter 1

  The loudest kind of quiet filled the classroom. Pens scratched paper, erasers squeaked, and desk legs groaned as the clock on the wall tick-tick-ticked. Faster and faster, it seemed, even though Annabelle knew that was impossible.

  She was almost out of time.

  And the thing was, she got extra time. She and the four other seventh graders with “learning accommodations” got forty-five minutes longer than the rest of the kids, who’d already pushed in their chairs and turned in their exam booklets and burst into the hallways to celebrate the start of summer. But forty-five extra minutes didn’t do Annabelle any good when her brain had gone as hazy as the harbor on a foggy day.

  She ran her fingertip across the skinny blue lines in the booklet where she was supposed to be writing her essay. The essay that counted for 25 percent of the history exam grade, as Mr. Derrickson had told them over and over. She traced one, two, three lines across the page and wished she were staring down at the thick black lines along the bottom of the pool.

  She didn’t need those black lines to guide her from one end of the pool to the other anymore. Her body always stayed straight, and she knew exactly how many strokes to take before it was time to flip underwater and push off the wall, propelling herself back the other way. But she still liked knowing they were there, as familiar as everything else about swimming. The glint of sunlight on the pool’s pale blue surface. The mingled scents of sunscreen, chlorine, and greasy snack bar food. The splash of diving in and the cool welcome of the water.

  The learning specialist, Ms. Ames, put her hand on Annabelle’s wrist.

  “Just write down anything you remember, okay?” she whispered. “Like we talked about. That way Mr. Derrick-son can give you credit for what you know.”

  So Annabelle took three deep breaths, the way she always did before a race, and tried to tune out the clock’s echoing tick and the other kids’ frantic writing.

  She managed to fill up half the page . . . but she knew exactly what Mr. Derrickson would do when he read what she’d written. He’d scrawl question marks in the margins with his green pen. He’d write, “Irrelevant,” and “Please answer the question,” and “Where is your thesis?”

  She flipped through the rest of the test. All those multiple-choice questions with all those choices that sounded right. The fill-in-the-blank section Mr. Derrickson had insisted was “easy-peasy.” “Automatic points for anybody who’s studied at all.” Right.

  “Okay,” Ms. Ames said from the front of the room. “Put your pens and pencils down, please. And congratulations! You’re officially done with seventh grade!”

  Two kids whooped and high-fived each other. Annabelle looked at the essay she’d barely started, barely holding back tears as she gathered up her things.

  She managed to echo Ms. Ames’s “Have a good summer” before stumbling into the hallways that had emptied out almost an hour ago. When Mia and Jeremy and everyone else had all gone to lunch without her.

  The other four extra-time kids were all boarding students, so they told Annabelle they’d see her at middle school closing ceremonies and headed to the cafeteria or the dorms. Annabelle pushed open the side door, stepping into the bright June sunshine.

  She gulped in the island air—a little bit salty if you really paid attention, even this far from the ocean. It was over, anyway. Seventh grade was finally done, and summer stretched out ahead of her, full of adventures with Mia and Jeremy and summer swim team practices at the pool, where most of the kids didn’t go to the Academy and she got to be Annabelle the star butterflyer, not Annabelle who could never finish her work on time at school.

  Mom’s car was waiting at the curb, and she rolled down the window. “Belle! How’d it go, honey? Did we study the right things? Did you feel ready?”

  “I’m never ready for Mr. Derrickson’s tests.”

  Annabelle plopped down onto the hot front seat, tossed her things on the floor, and slammed the door closed.

  Mom’s eyebrows folded in, forming that tiny worry line right in the middle. That was how she used to look at Dad, back when things got really bad. And it was how she looked at Annabelle now, way, way too often.

  “Well, you worked so hard,” Mom said. “I’m sure all that effort paid off.”

  Then she nodded. As if she could nod those words into being true. She patted Annabelle’s knee and reached up to grip the steering wheel, her silver bracelets clinking. Mitch had given her one of those bracelets for each of their wedding anniversaries. She had three so far, and she wore them all the time.

  “Where to?” she asked as she pulled away from the curb. “My next meeting isn’t until two. We could go out for a special lunch. Do you want to call Mitch to see if he’s free? I know he’ll want to celebrate with you, too.”

  Annabelle watched out the window as they drove along the school’s winding driveway, past dorms and fields and high school kids who sat on the grass, laughing as they signed each other’s yearbooks. Past the gray-shingled office where they’d come for her admissions interview two years ago—the summer before sixth grade, when she and Mom and Mitch had first moved to Gray Island.

  The Academy was a boarding school, mostly, for sixth-to-twelfth-grade students from the mainland. But Mom had read on their website that they “strive to be a community school” and set aside financial aid for “qualified day students” who live on the island. So she’d filled out an application for Annabelle, and somehow Annabelle had gotten in.

  Because barely any other island kids had applied, probably. Because most island kids thought everybody at the Academy was snobby.

  “You must be hungry, huh?” Mom said.

  She was, but if they went out to lunch in town, Mom and Mitch would know everybody and everybody would ask about school because that’s what everybody always asked about. And anyway, after this morning, her whole body ached with the need to swim.

  “Actually can you drop me off at the pool?” she asked. “I can eat there.”

  “But you don’t have practice today,” Mom pointed out. “Yeah, but we did yesterday,” Annabelle reminded her, as if she needed to be reminded. “And I really need to swim today, since I skipped it.”

  Mom had made Annabelle stay home from summer team practice to squeeze in a few more hours of studying, not that those extra hours had done any good.

  Mom sighed, and Annabelle sort of wished Mitch had been the one to pick her up. Mitch would have agreed to take her to the pool in an instant because he got it—how important it was for Annabelle to train. How good she was, and how great she could be.

  “You probably have lots of work anyway, right?” Annabelle said. “With all the summer people wanting you to plan all their parties? Could we do takeout from Lombardi’s tonight instead? I’m in a gnocchi mood.”

  Mom hesitated at the stop sign, but she turned left instead of right, toward the pool instead of back to town. Annabelle’s shoulders relaxed for the first time since she’d sat down to start her test that morning.

  “All right, Belle. You deserve to celebrate how you want. The pool and Lombardi’s it is.”

  Mom probably wouldn’t feel that way if she’d seen how little Annabelle had written for her essay, but Annabelle kept her mouth shut and watched all the giant vacation homes they passed, mostly occupied again now that summer was finally starting.

  When they got to the pool, Mom said the same exact things she always did: to be safe and reapply sunscreen and drink plenty of water. Then she leaned over to give Annabelle an extra-tight, extra-long hug.

  “I’ll come back to get you after my two o’clock meeting,” she said into Annabelle’s ear. “And, hey. I’m proud of you no matter what.
You know that, right?”

  Annabelle nodded as she pulled away from Mom’s hug and then stepped out of the car. But did that even count, the kind of pride you didn’t have to do anything good to earn?

  Chapter 2

  After Annabelle ate lunch at the snack bar, she changed into her new black racing suit and lowered herself into an open lap lane between two grown-ups. One of them was swimming a smooth, quick freestyle, and the other bobbed up and down in a slow breaststroke.

  She pushed off the wall and started to swim, feeling the familiar pinch of her goggles and watching bubbles stream ahead of her as she blew out air.

  Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

  Once she reached the other end, she flip-turned and pushed off, her strong quad muscles launching her forward. Her mind cleared, just like always, and her arms and legs took over. Each time she came up for a breath, she heard a burst of noise—people chatting, little kids shouting by the baby pool—but then her head was back under where she couldn’t hear anything other than the swish, pull, and kick of her own body. By the time she reached the wall again, her muscles itched to speed up, and it felt so good to pick up her pace.

  This wasn’t like school, where she was always aware of what everybody else was doing: who finished tests early, who wrote so much that they had to ask for extra paper, who hissed a “Yes!” when a teacher handed back an assignment. In the pool, she could sense where other swimmers were without wasting any focus on them. She was only vaguely aware that the distance between her and the freestyler in the next lane stretched longer and longer as she swam faster and faster. She barely even noticed when the two other lap swimmers finished and got out.

  After her fingertips touched the wall at the end of her last lap, she was surprised to see an older girl standing over her, clapping.

  She pushed her goggles up her forehead. It was Elisa Price, dressed for the fourteen-and-up team’s practice in a navy and yellow team suit. Annabelle was used to seeing Elisa with a swim cap on, so it took a second to recognize her with her thick brown curls loose around her freckled face.

  “Well if it isn’t the girl who broke all my under-fourteen fly records!” Elisa said, and Annabelle grinned.

  “I still have to shave off some time to beat your freestyle ones, though,” she replied as she pushed herself out of the water.

  Elisa laughed, showing the little gap between her front teeth that made her look friendly and unintimidating, even though she was so tall and strong and finishing her sophomore year at Gray Island High.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem, judging by what I just saw,” she said.

  Other high school swimmers were here, too, which meant it was later than Annabelle had realized. Her friend Jeremy’s older sister, Kayla, waved from across the pool, and two guys—Connor Madison and Jordan Bernstein—were over by the lifeguard stand, yanking off their T-shirts and pulling on swim caps as they laughed with the new lifeguard.

  Thick clouds had covered up the sun, so Annabelle wrapped her arms around herself to stop shivering.

  “Go dry off,” Elisa said. “But good to see you, Annabelle. And I’ll try to emotionally prepare myself for seeing my name erased from the rest of the under-fourteen record boards this summer.”

  She swiped at her eyes as if she were tearing up and then gave Annabelle’s shoulder a squeeze.

  Annabelle passed Connor and Jordan on the way to get her towel, and when she walked by, she heard Connor’s low voice.

  “Wow. Looks like Hummingbird’s all grown up,” he said. Quietly, but not that quietly.

  And when she glanced up, his green eyes were on her, laser focused. As if she were more interesting than any of the high school girls who were always giggling at his jokes and finding reasons to touch his arm.

  As if he definitely didn’t see her the way everybody used to—as the little girl who was fast enough to swim with the bigger kids but had to move her arms and legs hummingbird-quick to keep up.

  As she wrapped herself in her towel, her belly went as warm as if she’d chugged hot chocolate. Her new black suit fit differently than her other racing suits did. The straps were thin and the front dipped low enough that she could see the freckle in the middle of her chest—the one most of her shirts covered up. Her other racing suits flattened her out, but this one didn’t. And the leg openings were cut extra high, which meant her legs looked extra long.

  Connor Madison had noticed.

  Connor Madison, who was finishing his freshman year at the high school and was so funny and charming that even the seniors flirted with him. She couldn’t wait to tell Mia. The other day, she and Mia had agreed that Connor was the cutest boy at the pool.

  Right now, Annabelle didn’t feel at all like the girl who had barely written anything on her history exam essay.

  She felt powerful. Unstoppable. Extraordinary.

  Chapter 3

  By the next week, Annabelle had convinced herself her grades wouldn’t be that terrible.

  After all, she had worked really, really hard. She’d gone to every extra help session. She’d reviewed with her tutor every day during lunch and with Mom every night at home. She’d definitely failed Mr. Derrickson’s final, but exams didn’t count for that much of the overall grades. And anyway she’d turned in all that extra credit.

  On the morning that grades were scheduled to be posted online, Mom sat next to her at the kitchen table as she opened up her laptop and logged into her school account.

  Her hand shook as she tried to click on the link that read, “Annabelle Marie Wilner. Seventh Grade Report Card.”

  “You okay?” Mom asked, and Annabelle knew without looking that the worry line had formed between her eyebrows again. “I can leave the room. Do you want to check by yourself?”

  Annabelle shook her head. The grades would be mailed home, too. It’s not like she could keep them a secret. She took three deep breaths and clicked.

  And then she jerked her hand back as if the trackpad had burned her finger.

  B+ in science. B− in math. C in Spanish. C in English. C− in history.

  Mom gasped when she saw the grades, then covered her mouth as if she could force the gasp back in.

  Three Cs. After all that work.

  Three Cs on her final seventh-grade report card was the absolute best she could do.

  “Oh, Belle.” Mom reached out for a hug, but Annabelle ducked away and stood.

  “I’m . . . I’m meeting Jeremy and Mia. I have to go.”

  Mom’s worry line was etched in so deep that Annabelle thought it might get stuck there, the way kids used to say your eyes could get stuck if you crossed them for too long.

  “You did your best, honey,” Mom said. “That’s what matters.”

  Right.

  Annabelle hurried to the front hall to grab her things. “I’ll be back by three,” she called.

  “Be safe! Love you!” Mom called back.

  Annabelle bolted for the door so Mom wouldn’t have to come up with any more lies to make her feel better.

  Or to make herself feel better. About having a daughter who could only get Cs, no matter how hard she tried.

  Outside, the sky was bright and cloudless—the same blue as the hyacinths in bloom all around the island. Annabelle fastened her helmet, dropped her bag in the basket of her bike, and started to ride.

  She was meeting Jeremy and Mia at Bluff Point, their favorite summer place. It was right off the bike path, so they were allowed to go by themselves, and far enough away from the fancy neighborhoods full of vacation homes that it was never crowded, even once summer people took over most of the island.

  Annabelle usually loved riding her bike. She loved that she made her own breeze, even when the air was hot and still like today. She loved the soft buzz of her tires against the worn pavement and the way she knew just how hard to pedal to get through the patches of sand that sometimes covered the ground. Biking was almost as good as swimming for clearing her head and ma
king her feel completely in control.

  But today, she couldn’t stop thinking of those Cs on her report card and that look on her mom’s face. The shock that Annabelle couldn’t do any better. There was something else behind that shock, too. Shame? That Annabelle was her daughter, and she was this bad at school?

  And how many more Cs would it take before the school decided that she wasn’t a “qualified day student” who deserved special financial aid after all? And what would Mom do then?

  Bike tires spun on the ground behind Annabelle, and then there was Jeremy, pulling up beside her. Jeremy would know the right word for that look on Mom’s face, if Annabelle told him about it. He knew the right word for everything.

  “I saw you from way back by Brambleberry Street, but I didn’t think I’d catch you,” he said.

  “I guess I’m slow today.” She forced herself to smile.

  Jeremy grinned back. “You? Never.”

  He’d gotten a haircut since school had ended, so the longish light brown pieces that usually hung out the front and sides of his bike helmet were gone. He wore one of his dad’s GREEN CONSTRUCTION T-shirts, and the baggy sleeves hung to his elbows.

  “Did you check your grades?” she asked, because it was better to get the topic over with.

  “Yeah, I saw them.”

  And they were probably all As and A-pluses, because that was Jeremy. He had the same kind of “qualified day student” scholarship Annabelle did, but he actually deserved his. He had probably never even considered the possibility of getting a C. He’d be shocked by an A-minus.

  “You checked yours, too?” he asked.

  “Yep,” she replied, then scrambled for something else to talk about. “Hey, any news on Bertha?”

  “Yes!”

  A man with a little kid on the back of his bike rang his bell to pass. Jeremy fell in behind Annabelle as the man sped by. A summer dad, riding the kind of bike they rented out at the shops in town.

  Then Jeremy caught back up, his pale brown eyes wide with excitement. “She pinged near Montauk, and she’s heading our way!”