Up for Air

by Laurie Morrison

  Over by the pool, Colette handed Annabelle one end of the first lane line, and Annabelle hooked it in on the near side of the pool while Colette went around to the other side to hook the end she still held. Then Annabelle walked around to take one end of the next line from her.

  “Did I ever tell you the story of my first college meet?” Colette asked.

  “I know you were an all-American,” Annabelle said. Mitch had told her that.

  Colette laughed. “Eventually, yeah. But I’m surprised I ever got to race in another meet after my first one.”

  She handed Annabelle the end of the next line and raised her voice so Annabelle could hear as she carried it back across the pool.

  “It was against Stanford. Big rivalry for Berkeley, where I went. I was the biggest recruit. Pressure was on. And you know what I did?”

  “What?”

  “Lost my balance off the blocks on the 200-meter free and fell right in the water. Talk about a humiliating DQ. I didn’t even get to swim my race.”

  Annabelle was kneeling down to pull the second line straight enough so that she could hook it in, but that made her pause. She’d seen swimmers lose their balance and fall in before, obviously, but it was usually only the least experienced swimmers who did it. Colette had done that when she was a Division I swimmer in college?

  “At least you didn’t swim your whole race as hard as you could and convince yourself you’d actually done great,” Annabelle called across the pool. “And somebody else didn’t have to swim her whole leg even though she knew it wouldn’t count.”

  Colette came back around toward Annabelle, and she didn’t bother to bring the third lane line with her.

  “You did do great,” Colette said. “You swam your heart out on that leg, and you kept pace with a girl who’s three years older than you and twice your size. There wasn’t a single person at that meet who wasn’t impressed watching you.”

  Annabelle pictured the way Kayla and Ruby had stood there, barely cheering for Elisa. And the way they’d all tried to make her feel better after the race because they’d felt sorry for her. They definitely hadn’t seemed impressed.

  “My swim didn’t even count,” she pointed out.

  Colette shook her head. “Nine times out of ten, that early entry doesn’t get called, and maybe we win that relay and you’re the hero of the day. Next time you will be. I know it.”

  And even though Annabelle’s timing was all messed up now, there was something about the way Colette said it that made it seem true.

  They would race South Shore again in August. If they did well between now and then and beat them next time, the Invitational was still a possibility. Maybe it wasn’t realistic to think they could win the medley at that giant tournament, but getting there could be enough for her first year on the team.

  Colette clapped her on the shoulder. “Go finish your lunch, and don’t let your dad get you too freaked out about your entry into the water, all right?”

  It usually made Annabelle happy when somebody thought Mitch was her dad. She and Mitch looked like they could be related—they both had fair skin and dark blond hair and eyes somewhere between blue and green.

  But now, thinking of that unanswered letter buried under her school stuff on her desk, it felt disrespectful to her dad, or something, to let people think Mitch was her father. And unlucky—as if something terrible might happen to him if she pretended he didn’t exist.

  “Mitch is my stepdad, actually,” she said.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Colette said, even though it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know.

  It would have been easier if Mitch really was Annabelle’s biological dad. He always showed up when he was supposed to. He made her feel safe and loved and taken care of, like her own dad should have. Like he had, at some point. She was sure for a long time he had. But then everything had gotten so messed up.

  She hadn’t thought about that awful day for ages. But as she walked back to the table where Mitch was finishing another phone call and Jeremy was polishing off his last mozzarella stick, the memory came flooding back.

  It was at the end of fourth grade, and her dad was picking her up from practice. She hadn’t seen him in a while—he was supposed to see her every Saturday, but sometimes he didn’t call and didn’t show up. She was excited he was coming that day. She’d perfected her flip turn and she wanted him to see. But then everything was wrong when he showed up.

  “Annie!” he shouted, too loud for how close he was. “I’ve missed you, peanut. How’s my girl?”

  He was talking funny, as if he had marshmallows inside his cheeks. She’d heard him talk like that a few times before he’d moved out of the house, when she woke up in the middle of the night and found him sitting on the couch with a glass of amber liquid in his hand. But it was scarier now, under the fluorescent lights of the hallway at the Y, than it had been at home in the almost-dark when no one else was there to see. Here, it was impossible to ignore how wrong he sounded, and he was sort of swaying, too.

  Annabelle’s old coach, Danielle, took him aside and made Annabelle wait outside the locker room long after everyone else had gotten rides home. She sat there on the shiny wooden bench for ages, holding her old purple swim bag in her lap and running her fingers over her initials, which Mom had gotten monogrammed on the top. She shivered in the air-conditioning and watched the second hand of the clock on the wall. Every time it got close to the twelve at the top, it paused and swung one notch backward before it finished its circle.

  Finally, Mom hurried in, squeezed Annabelle tight, then told her to hang on for a minute and rushed into Coach Danielle’s office.

  Annabelle watched one minute tick by, then two, then three. She heard bits of the conversation that carried past the closed door. Danielle’s voice, serious.

  “He said he took some kind of new medication.”

  “A drink or two—not a lot.”

  “Some kind of interaction with the medicine.”

  “Not okay to drive.”

  “Couldn’t let him take Annabelle.”

  Then Mom’s voice, too high and tight and squeaky. Thanking Danielle too many times. Apologizing over and over, even though she hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Annabelle didn’t hear Dad’s voice, though. He was gone already. He must have slipped out the other door before Mom got there, without even saying goodbye.

  And the thing was, she was relieved he was gone, not sad. Relieved she hadn’t had to watch him go.

  Soon Mom was back, guiding Annabelle to the car, where Mitch waited with Annabelle’s favorite music all cued up. And as they drove away, she felt the same kind of warm relief she felt when she was snug in bed while rain poured down outside. Relief that she was here with Mom and Mitch, so she was okay.

  After that day, Mom only let Dad see Annabelle if he came over to the house, but he barely ever did. And Annabelle felt that safe-and-warm-at-home-during-a-rainstorm relief every Saturday he didn’t show up because, if he was never there, then she didn’t have to picture that ashamed look on his face or think about what it meant that he went weeks without calling.

  But he was better now. That’s what his letter said. And as easy and comfortable as everything would be if Mitch were her biological dad, Mitch wasn’t, and she had an actual dad who wasn’t that far away now. Who wanted to see her, so she should want to see him, too. Shouldn’t she?

  “Everything okay?” Jeremy asked when she reached the table. He’d finished his food and was reading one of those super-thick fantasy novels he liked so much.

  She nodded.

  Mitch ended his call. “You ready to get back in the water, Bananabelle?”

  For now, she tried to blink away everything except the thought of diving back into the pool.

  “Yes,” she said, and after three deep breaths, that image of Dad’s ashamed face was gone. “Let’s do it.”

  Because she was a swimmer, just like Colette. DQ or no DQ, this was who she was. She could figure out
all the more complicated stuff later.

  Chapter 11

  When it was time for practice, Jeremy took his book over to the shade to read and Mitch went back to the office.

  Annabelle joined Elisa and Kayla at the side of the pool. Elisa was only wearing her suit, but Kayla still had on a T-shirt and gym shorts. She usually kept them on until the last second and then left them with her towel instead of in the locker room. If it had been anybody else, somebody might have said something. But everybody knew where Kayla had been last summer, so maybe everybody understood that the bathing suit thing might be hard.

  “Hey! I hear you got Jeremy to swim when he wasn’t required to,” Kayla said, tucking her pin-straight light brown hair behind each ear.

  She had the exact same hair as Jeremy, and the same shade of fair white skin and pale brown eyes. Their features were different, but if someone were painting them, they’d use all the same colors. They looked so much alike that when Jeremy had started at the Academy, the older kids had called him “Boy Kayla.”

  “Well, there were mozzarella sticks involved,” Annabelle said, and Kayla laughed.

  “That’ll do it.”

  “I’m sure it helped that Annabelle was the one who asked,” Elisa said, nudging Annabelle’s arm.

  Annabelle’s cheeks burned, and she glanced over at Jeremy to make sure he hadn’t heard that, even though he was too far away and, anyway, he never heard anything when he was reading.

  Then she changed the subject. “Hey, do you think your mom could drive me to practice tomorrow?” she asked Kayla.

  Mitch had reminded her twice that she needed to find a ride, since he and Mom were both busy.

  “Aw, I actually have a doctor’s appointment, so I’m coming late,” Kayla said. “Any other day, though!”

  “I could pick you up,” Elisa offered, but then she smacked herself in the forehead. “Oops, no I can’t. I’m working at the coffee shop and coming straight from there.”

  And then there was Connor, right behind Annabelle. “I can give you a ride if you need one.”

  He didn’t touch her this time, but all of her skin sizzled, anyway.

  Elisa and Kayla exchanged a weird look, but Annabelle didn’t have room in her brain to think too much about that or anything else, other than the fact that tomorrow she would be in the same car as Connor Madison. They’d pull up to the pool together. Walk in together. It was almost too amazing to visualize.

  At the end of practice, she wrapped herself in her soft purple towel and waved to Mia, who stood over by the snack bar with some other middle school girls. She was about to go over to say hi when Connor called out, “Annabelle! I need your number for tomorrow.”

  And Mia stared, her mouth partway open, as Connor jogged over to Annabelle and plugged her number into his phone.

  “Thanks again,” Annabelle said, and Connor grinned. He grinned wider than most people, as if he had more to be happy about.

  But then he said, “Cute towel.”

  Oh no. All the giddiness that had filled her up a moment ago rushed out. She’d forgotten to hide the babyish sea-green monogrammed letters that spelled out her name along one end.

  There was Connor, all tall and muscly, looking about twenty years older than she felt, and here she was wrapped in the towel her mom had gotten personalized with her favorite colors, as if she were a six-year-old. She retwisted it so her name was covered, but it was too late.

  “Oh. It’s from a long time ago,” she lied. “Nothing else was clean.”

  Connor laughed. Because he didn’t believe her? Because the towel was so babyish? She wasn’t sure. But then he gave her a hand-sizzling high five and said, “See you tomorrow.”

  He jogged away to meet up with Jordan by the parking lot, and she walked over to Mia, trying to let the sensation of Connor’s palm against hers block out any towel-related embarrassment. Mia was too far away to have heard that part, at least.

  The other middle school girls had gone into the locker room, so Mia was waiting by herself.

  “Good practice?” she asked. Cheerfully. Casually, as if she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

  What?

  Annabelle was supposed to dissect every detail about the way the random guy at the Creamery said the words “Enjoy your ice cream,” but Mia wasn’t going to say anything about what had just happened with Connor?

  Mia knew Annabelle was into Connor, and she’d watched him take her phone number. There was no way she didn’t realize that was a big deal! But still . . . nothing?

  “Practice was great!” Annabelle told her, just as cheerfully and casually.

  “Oh good.” Mia lowered her voice to a whisper. “I felt so bad after the last meet. That was so terrible with the DQ.”

  The words were like a giant wave that came out of nowhere and spun Annabelle under, tossing her to the ocean floor. It had been terrible, but Annabelle didn’t need to hear somebody else come right out and say that, especially when she wasn’t thinking about it at all.

  And okay: Maybe Annabelle shouldn’t have left the meet without saying anything to Mia when Mia had stayed to watch her, and maybe she should have included Mia earlier today. But Annabelle knew Mia was only commenting on the DQ now to make herself feel better and Annabelle feel worse.

  “Oh, thanks,” she said, ordering her voice to stay steady. “But you really don’t need to feel bad. Every-thing’s good! Have a fun practice!”

  With the other middle schoolers, she wanted to add, to rub it in that Mia wasn’t the one who’d been called up to swim with the high school team. But she stopped herself before she said it.

  As Mia went into the locker room, Annabelle’s phone buzzed with a text, so she pulled it out of her bag.

  It’s Connor. Hey there.

  That’s all Connor had said, but while Annabelle waited for Mitch to pick her up, she drained the battery on her phone reading those four words over and over.

  It was like Mitch always said: She couldn’t control how other people acted, but she could control how it affected her. And she wasn’t going to let Mia’s fake-sympathetic words bring her down. Not today.

  The next morning, Mom kissed Annabelle’s cheek on her way out the door to work.

  “Tutoring at—”

  “Eleven,” Annabelle finished for her. “And Janine’s money is on the kitchen table. I know. And when I wait for you to get me after practice, I’m supposed to read the next chapter of the summer reading book and then review Spanish note cards.”

  Mom smiled. “I’m proud of you. For going for what you want with the high school team and keeping up with everything else.”

  Annabelle let Mom kiss her cheek on the way out and mumbled “Thanks.” But it still seemed like she hadn’t done anything that impressive for Mom to be proud of. Like maybe Mom’s expectations were sort of low.

  After Mom was gone, she pulled out the letter from her dad. She read it again even though she knew it by heart, and she tried to imagine whether her dad looked different now and where he’d been sitting and what he’d been thinking as he wrote it.

  What would Mom say if she knew he’d written? Back after Dad had first moved out, Mom had acted like it was a huge priority for Annabelle to see him.

  “Your time with your father is important,” she’d say, making Annabelle turn down invitations to friends’ houses on “Dad days.” One time she’d said no when Mitch invited them to go away for the weekend with him and his daughters.

  “Annabelle needs to have a relationship with her dad,” she’d told him. “I can’t be the reason that doesn’t happen.”

  But then after that awful swim practice, Mom had stopped objecting when things came up on Saturdays. She’d decided it was fine to move all the way to Gray Island, even. That was after Dad had stopped calling completely, but still.

  Would she want Annabelle to have a relationship with her dad now, or did she think it was too late?

  Would she believe that Dad was really better?
Or would she make a big thing of only letting Annabelle see him if he came to Gray Island and she and Mitch supervised?

  Dad’s letter was the biggest thing Annabelle had ever kept from her mom. But she wanted to figure it out herself—how she felt about it and what she wanted to do. She didn’t want Mom’s opinions drowning out her own.

  She was reading Dad’s words one last time when a text came in from Mia.

  Saw Mr. Derrickson at the Bagelry and he and my dad talked for ages about some new whaling exhibit in Boston. My dad thinks he’s “such a great guy.” Little does he know!!!

  And for the first time in ages, a text from Mia made Annabelle smile for real.

  Yeah well he doesn’t have to take Mr. Derrickson’s tests!! she wrote back, and Mia’s next text came immediately.

  Ugh I wish I could force him to as punishment for leaving AGAIN. He’s going to NYC today. He’s like never here anymore.

  Annabelle sent back an ugh I’m sorry and checked the time.

  She really had to leave for tutoring, but she really wished she could call Mia.

  Mia had complained before about how much her dad traveled but not for a long time. This last text felt like the most honest thing either of them had told the other all summer, and Annabelle wanted to capitalize on it. Letting it go felt like wasting a strong start to a race with lazy first strokes.

  She thought maybe she could even talk to Mia about her dad if she called her right now. She didn’t like talking about him, so she usually used Mom’s “He’s not in the picture” line. Mia had pushed it one time and asked why not, and Annabelle had said the other thing Mom sometimes told people: that he “had some things to work out before he could be in her life.”

  But maybe she could tell Mia the rest. Mia didn’t know her dad, so she wouldn’t get upset or protective like Mom. Maybe Mia could help her figure out whether she wanted to write back or not, and what she wanted to say if she did.

  Or maybe Mia would be so busy getting texts from Reagan that she’d barely pay attention and she’d give Annabelle some too-fast, too-definite response. Like “Of course you should see him, he’s your dad.” Or, “Isn’t your life fine without him? Why would you want to risk messing everything up?” Or, “Why don’t you just ask your mom?”