Annabelle sighed. Whether she wanted to talk to Mia right now or not, she couldn’t keep Janine waiting. She’d promised Mom she’d be on time. So she sent Mia a string of hearts and then dropped her things into the basket of her bike and started off toward the library.
But a few minutes into her ride, her phone buzzed with another text, and this one was from Connor.
Hey HB.
Below that, three dots showed her that he was typing.
She pulled to the side of the path to wait for his next message.
We’re getting a ride with Jordan & eating at the pool. Be at your place in 15?
Fifteen.
Fifteen minutes? That’s when her tutoring session started. It would take her almost that long to ride back home and get her things for practice.
She swatted away a bug that buzzed close to her cheek, but as soon as it flew away, another one buzzed over.
It was too late to cancel tutoring. Janine would have left already to meet her at the library. And Mom would completely freak out if she didn’t go.
But what could she do? Tell Connor she couldn’t leave that early and then have to miss practice, when she needed every chance she had to prove herself before the next meet? Give up the chance to ride to the pool with him? Tell him the reason she couldn’t—that she wasn’t smart enough to pass eighth grade by herself next year, so she needed someone helping her all summer?
Janine would still get paid since it was too late for a cancellation, so she probably wouldn’t mind that much. And Annabelle would think of a way to make it okay with Mom. She’d do extra work all weekend or something.
She sent Janine an apology text and texted Connor a quick sounds good before pedaling home as fast as she could. She didn’t have any choice, she told herself.
Chapter 12
Annabelle had barely finished shoving all her stuff into her swim bag when a blue minivan pulled up in front of her house. The girl who was driving had long, highlighted hair and olive skin kind of like Mia’s, and Jordan sat in the passenger seat with a blue baseball cap pulled low. The back door slid open.
“Hummingbird!” Connor said. “This is Natalie, Jordan’s sister.”
Connor wore a dark green Gray Island High lacrosse T-shirt that made his eyes even greener than usual. He pulled his swim bag toward him so there would be plenty of room for Annabelle, even though it wouldn’t have been in her way, and her breath caught at the chivalrous gesture.
Of course, then he and Jordan spent most of the drive talking about some Red Sox trade that might happen while she just sat there. But eventually he turned to her and said, “You like baseball?”
Annabelle felt the way she did at school when a teacher called on her and she wasn’t expecting it. She wanted to think of something interesting to say, something right, but words tangled in her brain.
Finally she shrugged. “It’s okay.”
The truth was, she’d loved to watch baseball with her dad when she was younger. But her dad was a Yankees fan, so she’d been one, too. And she knew better than to admit that in Red Sox territory.
She and Dad had gone to Yankees games every once in a while. One time when they drove to the stadium in the Bronx, there was so much traffic that they missed the first three innings. As they sat there in the car, inching forward and listening to the game on the radio, she gnawed on her bottom lip until her teeth cut through the skin, afraid her dad would be upset about being so late. But it was a good day, so he cheered and high-fived Annabelle when one of the Yankees hit a home run, and they listed all the foods they were going to buy when they got to the stadium: hot dogs and ice cream and soft pretzels and popcorn. And then he really did buy all of that when they finally arrived. They could barely carry it all to their seats.
They’d been supposed to go again at the end of fourth grade, for her tenth birthday. Dad had said that was her present, to go to a game and bring any friend she wanted. So she’d told her old New Jersey best friend, Gabriela, because Gabi was the biggest Yankees fan she knew.
But then after that awful swim practice, Mom didn’t want him driving her anymore. He never brought up the game again, and Annabelle was more relieved than disappointed because it would have been horrible to listen to her own father admit that he couldn’t take her to the game because Mom wouldn’t allow it after how badly he’d messed up. To see him shrink down like a kid getting yelled at by a teacher. It was better to forget about the whole plan and hope Gabi would forget, too.
When Natalie pulled up to the curb in front of the pool, Jordan said goodbye and closed the door, but Connor said, “Thanks for the ride, Nat! Hope you’re not too bored without us the rest of the day!” And then he gave Natalie the same silly salute he’d given Annabelle, Kayla, and Elisa the other day.
“I think I’ll manage,” Natalie said, and Connor laughed, even though nothing was that funny. But it was nice that Connor had made a special effort to say thank you.
Mia’s cousin with the serious boyfriend had said that it’s good if the person you like is sweet to you, but it’s even better if they’re nice to everybody else, too, even when they don’t have to be. That’s how you know it’s in their true nature and they’re not just trying to impress you.
Annabelle wasn’t positive if Connor was trying to impress her, but he was definitely nice to everybody. As they walked up to the gate, he greeted the sign-in guy, Doug, and asked if Doug had seen the Sox game last night and what he thought of the trade rumors.
The pool was packed with moms and little kids wearing swimmies, plus a few older people swimming laps. Annabelle could hear Mitch inside her head, saying those swimmies caused more problems than they fixed because kids who wore them didn’t learn to swim for real, and then what happened if they ever jumped in the pool when their parents weren’t looking?
Mitch had said that in front of his daughters when they were visiting last summer, and they’d rolled their eyes. “We used to wear swimmies,” they’d reminded him. “You might not have approved, but you weren’t the one there watching us.”
Annabelle loved Mitch’s daughters, who included her in everything they did when they came to the island and talked to her about what was going on in their lives as if she were old enough to understand. But she didn’t always like the way they treated Mitch. They got annoyed when he gave them advice about capitalizing on opportunities and visualizing their success, and sometimes they made comments like that, about him not being around for stuff when they were younger.
But this was Mitch, who scheduled his meetings around Annabelle’s swim meets and called his daughters every Sunday and invited them to visit over every school break. Mitch was nothing like Annabelle’s dad, who had just disappeared.
Well, until the letter arrived, anyway.
Jordan went straight for the snack bar and Connor trailed a few steps behind him, but Annabelle stopped inside the gate. Connor had said they were eating at the pool—but did that mean all of them together? Was he expecting her to hang out with him and Jordan until practice? Or did he figure he’d done his job and now she was on her own?
But Connor came back to where she was standing and flicked the bottom of her ponytail. She knew the ends of her hair didn’t have any nerve endings, but it still felt like they tingled.
“You hungry?” he asked.
She smiled the closed-mouth, school-picture smile she used to practice with Mia and nodded. That was about all she could manage, standing this close to Connor. So close that he could easily reach out and flick her hair again, or touch her arm or her shoulder.
Together, they headed to the snack bar, and Annabelle wondered what those moms with little kids wearing swimmies were thinking—whether they assumed she and Connor were a couple, and what it would feel like to slide her fingers through his if they actually were.
Connor high-fived the pretty college-aged lifeguard as they passed, and then he high-fived Ruby, who was outside the snack bar talking to Jordan. Her reddish-brown hair was twisted
up into a clip, and pink bikini straps peeked out from the top of a tissue-thin T-shirt with some kind of band logo on it. She must have had a racing suit for practice in the locker room. Annabelle’s black suit didn’t feel quite so special anymore, in comparison.
“Fiiiiiinally,” Ruby said. “You’re here.”
Jordan pushed the door open for himself and then Connor swooped in to hold it for Ruby and Annabelle.
“Great shirt, Rubes!” he said. “Love their music!”
And he stood next to Ruby, not Annabelle, as they waited to order. Ruby went on and on about some concert she’d gone to, and Connor focused all his attention on her. Annabelle felt the same way she had when he’d commented on her monogrammed towel. Like he was so, so much older than she was and she didn’t belong here with him at all.
Once they’d ordered, Ruby took her Caesar salad to a table in the shade, and Connor and Jordan followed with their burgers. Annabelle waited and waited for her grilled cheese, which was taking forever. By the time she got to the table, Ruby was laughing so hard she made a big show of barely being able to breathe.
“Okay, okay, me next. Coach Colette or that girl Paige?” she asked.
“Colette,” Jordan said right away, but Connor glanced over at Annabelle.
“Oh, sorry!” Ruby said. “Should we stop? Don’t want to corrupt the youth!”
“It’s fine,” Annabelle said. She tore the crust off one side of her grilled cheese and then winced when it burned her fingertips.
She wanted to say something else, too, to prove she wasn’t so babyish that they had to worry about corrupting her. Except she wasn’t completely sure what they were doing.
Connor drummed his fingers against the edge of the table. “Yeah. I guess Colette.”
“You guess?” Jordan said. “It’s Colette!” He sighed in disbelief. “She’s amazing.”
“Sorry to break it to you, but I don’t think you’re her type,” Ruby teased, poking Jordan’s arm with her plastic fork.
“Yeah, yeah. I saw her girlfriend waiting for her in the parking lot after practice yesterday, too,” Jordan said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t admire her from afar. Or from up close. Anywhere, really. I’m not particular.”
Annabelle was glad Connor just took a bite of his burger instead of gushing about how gorgeous and incredible Colette was.
Ruby turned to Annabelle, and the smile on her face was way too sweet. Cotton-candy-sticking-to-her-lips-and-turning-the-corners-of-her-mouth-blue sweet. “The game is who you’d rather, like . . . spend an afternoon alone with.”
“I understand the game,” Annabelle said.
Jordan hooted with laughter, making Annabelle drop the piece of grilled cheese crust she’d been holding.
“Yeah. Who you’d rather spend an afternoon aloooone with.” He wiggled his eyebrows so many times Annabelle thought they might wiggle right off his face. “All right, my turn. Abby Goldberg or Emily Aarons?”
Annabelle had never heard of them, so they must have been from Gray Island High.
Connor made a face. “Emily, I guess.”
“Seriously?” Jordan asked. “What, you want to help her tune that trombone?”
This time Connor was the one who erupted in laughter, and Annabelle’s stomach turned. Ruby laughed, too, even though there was no way she knew Emily, since she was a summer person. Then she went again, even though she’d just taken a turn.
“Okay, Annabelle. I have one for you. What’s Kayla’s little brother’s name? Jesse?”
All three of them looked at Annabelle.
“Jeremy, right?” Connor said.
“Jer-e-my!” Jordan sang. “Somebody’s blushing!”
“No, I’m not!” Annabelle said.
Which was silly. She was blushing—she could feel how warm her cheeks were. But it wasn’t because they’d mentioned Jeremy, exactly. It was the intensity of all three of them looking at her at once and the whole idea of her and Jeremy . . . like that.
“I was going to say Jeremy or that funny kid, Scotty Gorman,” Ruby said. “But I think we have our answer.”
Annabelle shook her head. “Jeremy’s one of my best friends. It’s not like that.”
Connor reached across the table and put his hand on Annabelle’s arm for a second. “Leave HB alone.”
But Ruby kept going. “You and little Green would be adorable!”
Adorable.
She sounded like she was talking about babies or puppies. Like she had to remind Connor and Jordan that Annabelle was so much younger than the rest of them.
“I wouldn’t choose either of them,” Annabelle said, but then she pictured Jeremy’s just-out-of-the-pool spiky hair and the ketchup in the corner of his mouth the other day, and she felt awful. “I mean, not for . . . uh . . .”
Jordan squawked out a laugh that sounded like a seagull’s cry. “Alooooone time? Why not?”
Annabelle had to change the subject. She hadn’t wanted Connor and them to ignore her, but this kind of attention was all wrong, like an icy blast of air-conditioning instead of a nice, calm breeze.
“My turn! I’ll go next!” she said.
And now she had to come up with something good. Something that would convince them she wasn’t just some innocent little kid. Come on, think!
“What, are you going through the whole alphabetical roster in your head?” Jordan asked.
The two girls had to be equally matched in some way, she got that. Jeremy and Scotty both had close to the same color hair and were around the same height. Coach Colette and Paige, too. Maybe two of the girls on the freestyle relay team? Then she had it.
“Coach Katherine or Elisa.”
Katherine was the old high school coach who left after last summer. She and Elisa both had freckles, bright blue eyes, broad shoulders, and muscular legs.
“Good one!” Connor said. But then Jordan chimed in.
“The manly girls!” he said in an extra-deep voice.
“No!” Annabelle said. “That’s not . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
“You guys.” Ruby shook her head, but she was smiling. Smiling, even though Elisa was her friend!
Connor and Jordan both picked Elisa, but Annabelle’s heart lurched.
It wasn’t hard to make guys laugh if you acted sort of mean—either about them or about someone else. But she didn’t want to be the kind of girl who had to be mean to make guys like her. And she definitely didn’t want to be mean about Elisa.
Before she could think of any way to fix things, Jordan puffed his chest out, and in an extra-deep voice he said, “All right, ladies. Me or Madison?”
Ruby threw a piece of lettuce across the table at him. It stuck to his gray T-shirt and left a Parmesan-cheese-flecked wet spot when he flicked it off.
“Hey!” He threw one fry that hit the front of Ruby’s shirt, and then a second fry, which bounced off her shoulder and hit Annabelle.
“Geez,” Connor said. “Maybe Hummingbird and I need to move to another table.”
He looked at Annabelle, his green eyes open a little extra wide and his mouth twitching at the corners. Expecting her to join in the joking.
Ruby would have come up with a funny, flirtatious reply. Mia, too. But Annabelle’s mind went as fuzzy as it did when she was taking one of Mr. Derrickson’s history tests.
Her phone buzzed with one text and then another, and she reached for it.
“Is it Jeremy?” Ruby teased, which set Jordan off into another round of shouting, “Jer-e-my!”
But it was Mom. Of course.
Chapter 13
Until Annabelle saw Mom’s name on the screen of her phone, she’d managed to keep her guilt about skipping tutoring at the edges of her mind. Like gray clouds in the distance, threatening a rainstorm far enough away that it wasn’t time to go inside yet. But now those gray clouds were ready to open up right over her head.
Where are you? the first text said.
And then: I just heard from Janine.
Th
ere was a missed call from Mom, too, which she hadn’t heard because the pool had bad reception.
Another text then. I need you to respond! I’m worried.
“I’ll be right back,” Annabelle croaked.
The texts and calls weren’t going to stop if she didn’t reply. But that word worried dug its way under her skin and made her want to scream.
Angry, okay. It would make sense for Mom to be angry, since she cared more about Annabelle’s tutoring than any swim practice or race result. But Annabelle had told Janine why she couldn’t go to tutoring, and she was sure Janine would have told Mom.
What did Mom think was going to happen to her if she got to the pool a little early? Did Mom think she’d get a blistering sunburn because she’d be too irresponsible to reapply sunscreen? That she’d guzzle caffeinated soda instead of water and end up dehydrated?
Did Mom think her chances of doing decently in eighth grade were so tiny that one missed tutoring session would doom her?
Whenever Mom said she was worried, Annabelle couldn’t help thinking of her dad. The hushed conversations she’d overheard at night back at the New Jersey house: “I’m worried about the drinking. I’m worried you haven’t started looking for another job. I’m worried you don’t seem like your old self.”
I’m fine, Annabelle texted back. My ride came early. I’ll pay for the tutoring myself.
It took a while for Mom’s reply to come through.
If I didn’t have a lunch meeting, I’d come get you right now. We’ll be having a serious conversation this afternoon.
Annabelle sighed. OK, she texted back.
She tried to push down the dread of that “serious conversation” as she shoved her cell phone to the bottom of her bag. She wasn’t going to let it sabotage her practice or her time with Connor.
When she got back to the table, she made herself focus all of her attention on him. His ears, which were no longer sunburned at the tips. The extra-blond strands in the front of his hair. Those peridot-green eyes. The string that had come loose at the bottom of his T-shirt sleeve.
Up for Air Page 7
