Half a Chance

by Cynthia Lord

  “It doesn’t say ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. Confetti and balloons could be for any celebration,” she said as Mr. Bailey waved to us. “I’ll bring my potato salad over there to the table. Do you want me to take your present?”

  “No,” I said. “I want Nate to give it to her.”

  Grandma Lilah and Nate’s parents were talking to some adults I didn’t know. Neighbors, probably? Aunt Pat was scolding Morgan and Mason for running with sticks in their hands.

  I looked around for Nate, and I tried to keep smiling when I spotted Megan sitting with him and Emily and some younger kids I didn’t recognize on their cottage porch.

  Megan greeted me with, “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming, either,” I said evenly.

  “I always come,” Megan said. “Nate, remember last summer when we played croquet with the kids who rented the Poules’ cottage? You hit the ball so hard, it made a big dent in the side of their porch.”

  Nate nodded. “Mrs. Poule was pretty mad.”

  “We should do that again. And remember the old guy who rented the Macleods’ cottage a couple summers ago? Mr. Tidal Wave?”

  Nate grinned. “He used to cannonball off his dock,” he explained to me. “And he was a really big guy, so the splash was ginormous!”

  I smiled, though I was pretty sure Megan was bringing up these old stories to make me feel left out.

  She glanced at me. “Who’s the present for?”

  “It’s for Grandma Lilah.” I knew the smartest, safest thing would be to leave it at that, but I couldn’t help getting back at her a little. “It’s a photo from when Nate and I climbed Cherry Mountain.”

  “Lucy is awesome at taking pictures,” Nate said. “She’s doing a photography contest and I’m helping her. It’s a scavenger hunt.”

  “It’s just for fun, really,” I said, not wanting Megan to see how important it was to me.

  “But if you win, you get money,” Nate said. “So it’s not just for fun, right?”

  “Hey, Lucy, how’d your photos of the baby loon turn out?” Emily asked. “I still want to make those posters.”

  “My photos didn’t turn out,” I said, not looking at Megan. “Every one I took of the chick got erased somehow, except the very first one of him on the nest when he’d just hatched.”

  “Oh no!” Emily said. “How’d that happen?”

  “I don’t know, because it was only those photos.” I slid my gaze over to Megan. Her face was red, but she didn’t say anything. I was pretty sure she’d done it on purpose. Because when someone wrecks something by accident, they say sorry.

  “Don’t worry,” Nate said. “We can do Loon Patrol tomorrow and take some more photos. It’s Dad’s turn to go, but I bet he’d be glad to give it up.”

  “And maybe there will be two chicks now,” I said. “That would make for even better photos than the ones that got deleted.”

  “That would be great!” Nate said. “We’ll go tomorrow. Then we can go to town and get poster board and stuff.”

  Megan shot me a look as friendly as poison ivy.

  But I just nodded. “The sooner we get the posters up, the better.”

  After supper and s’mores and my first-ever game of flashlight tag, which was really fun even though I was “it” a lot because Megan tagged me every chance she could, Nate whispered excitedly to me, “Let’s give Grandma Lilah the photo now.”

  “You do it,” I said, all tingly with eagerness. “It’s from both of us.”

  The adults were talking, but Nate walked right into the middle of their group and laid the present in Grandma Lilah’s lap. “Lucy and I have a present for you,” he said. “We made it — well, sort of. You’ll see!”

  Grandma Lilah ran her hand over the balloons and confetti wrapping paper. “How lovely! I didn’t know it was my birthday,” she said, sliding her finger under the flap.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That’s the only wrapping paper I could find.”

  “It’s a rectangle,” Morgan said, running up beside her. “Maybe it’s a book!”

  “Or a game!” Mason said.

  Grandma Lilah pulled the framed photo out of the paper.

  “It’s us!” Nate said. “Lucy and I climbed Cherry Mountain and we brought you with us. See?”

  “Isn’t that wonderful!” Mr. Bailey said. “How did you manage this?”

  Nate grinned. “I held the old photo and Lucy took the new photo standing behind me. It was hard to line it all up. We had to try and try, a whole bunch of times. My arm was dying.”

  “We climb Cherry Mountain every year,” Grandma Lilah said. “We should do that.”

  “You went up there with Nate and Lucy this year,” Mrs. Bailey said. “There you are right at the top of the mountain, Mom!”

  I thought Grandma Lilah would be happy and touched that we did this. But she looked confused. “We could go tomorrow. What day is it today?”

  “At the lake, it doesn’t matter, does it?” Mrs. Bailey said kindly. “It’s summer, let’s leave it at that.”

  “What’s the weather report?” Grandma Lilah asked. “Is it a good day for climbing?”

  “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” Nate said. “We can’t hike in the rain.”

  “Anyone for another s’more?” Mrs. Bailey asked, too brightly. “We have plenty of marshmallows. Mom, can I make you one?”

  “We’ll climb Cherry Mountain tomorrow,” Grandma Lilah said firmly.

  “It’s going to rain, Mom,” Mrs. Bailey said, sounding tired. “There’s no view in the rain.”

  “We need the rain,” Mr. Bailey added. “It’ll be good for the gardens and the grass.”

  “It’s best to get an early start,” Grandma Lilah said. “Wear some good shoes.”

  “Lucy, I think we should go. It’s getting late,” Mom said.

  “Must you go already?” Mrs. Bailey asked, but she was watching Grandma Lilah, not us.

  “We’ve had such a nice time, everyone,” Mom said. “Thank you for inviting us.”

  Nate followed me to the edge of the driveway. “I’m sorry. Grandma Lilah gets a little mixed up when she’s tired,” he said. “She got up with the loons this morning and she didn’t take a nap.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, even though I felt like crying.

  “I’ll show her the photo again tomorrow morning,” he added. “She’ll like it then.”

  I nodded. “Sure. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

  But all the way home, I thought about how my photo had ruined the cookout.

  On a gray, calm day, the lake becomes a mirror, reflecting other things: trees, cloudy sky, the ghostly outline of the mountains. It matched how I felt. Upside down and not really myself.

  When Mom and I came home from the cookout, she told me she thought something was wrong with Grandma Lilah. Not just the ordinary kind of getting older and forgetting a few things, but maybe something bigger.

  “I think she might have dementia,” Mom said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s difficult to explain,” Mom said, “but it’s a brain disability that happens to some people when they’re older. When I was your age, my aunt had dementia and we used to visit her sometimes. She had a hard time doing certain things and understanding and remembering — even things she’d done her whole life. No one really knows why it happens.”

  “You never told me about your aunt,” I said.

  Mom shrugged. “As a child, I didn’t like visiting her. It was always sort of confusing and sad. She didn’t even seem like the same person anymore.”

  “Did she get better?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “My mother stopped bringing me when my aunt didn’t know who we were.” She put her arm around me. “Lucy, I just don’t want you to take it personally, what happened. The photo was a lovely idea, and if Grandma Lilah were completely herself, I’m sure she would’ve loved it.”

  Nate had to
ld me they were doing all Grandma Lilah’s favorite things this summer, and it had seemed nice when he said it. But now, I could see that maybe it was more than that. Maybe they were doing those things because she was still “her” enough to enjoy them.

  I wanted to apologize to Nate, but I didn’t know how. So the next morning I texted him.

  Will we go on LP if it rains?

  It seemed like a safe topic to start with, and I was relieved when my phone chimed almost immediately.

  Yes, unless it thunders. But E has 2 watch M&M.

  At ten o’clock, I met him on their beach. I had thought maybe it’d be easier to apologize to Nate without Emily. But I still didn’t know what to say.

  “Is Grandma Lilah coming down to see us off?” It felt weird not to have her on the dock with us as we left.

  “No,” he said.

  I couldn’t look at him, so I watched the zipper of my life vest as I pulled it up. “I’m sorry about last night. I thought she’d like the photo.”

  “Me, too,” he said, picking up his paddle. “But she talked so much about climbing Cherry Mountain last night that we had to hide both photos.”

  I winced, getting into my kayak.

  “Mom and Dad got into an argument about whether it was getting too hard to take care of her here,” Nate continued. “Dad thought it was and Mom thought it wasn’t.”

  If Grandma Lilah had to go home, Nate would go, too.

  And I hated the thought that the last thing they did here this summer would be a sad thing. Last times and first times shouldn’t matter more than all the middle times, but somehow, they do.

  I pushed off with my paddle from the shallow water and stroked hard to catch up to him. “Remember how if I won the contest, I’d get some money? Well, I’ve been thinking. If I won, maybe we could use the money to buy one of those rafts you talked about, the ones with the motor on them. Then we could take Grandma Lilah out to see the loons.”

  Nate dipped his paddle slowly. “Really? You’d do that?”

  “Do you think it would make her happy?”

  He nodded. “She’d love that.”

  “We’d just have to buy the raft and get it here,” I said. “But I might not win.”

  “You have a good chance, Lucy,” he said, smiling. “I think your photos are great.”

  Normally, it would’ve made me feel warm inside to hear him say that, but as we paddled our kayaks toward the nest, the secret I’d been keeping weighed on me. I wasn’t sure how to tell him, so finally, I just let it all out in a rush: “I do have one problem, though. My dad is the judge of the contest.”

  “What?” Nate stopped paddling. “Your dad is the judge?”

  “I read the rules really carefully, and there’s no rule against me entering,” I said. “So I don’t see how it could be cheating.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? All this time we’ve been working on the contest,” Nate said. “I thought we were good friends.”

  I couldn’t help liking that he said we were good friends. I had thought so, too, but it felt nice to hear him say it. “We are good friends. I should’ve told you, but it was fun taking the contest photos with you even if I didn’t enter. But now I want Grandma Lilah to be able to do Loon Patrol herself, in case — well, I just want her to go.”

  I felt like I was babbling. “The rules said the photos had to be originals, and they probably expect kids to use their real names, but it doesn’t say we have to. So I’ve been thinking. Maybe I could make up a name. If I use my real one, I think Dad would worry it wasn’t fair or be extra hard on me because he’d have to show everyone else that he wasn’t playing favorites.”

  From the corner of my eye, I watched the nose of Nate’s kayak come back into view.

  “One bad part of having a dad who’s famous is sometimes it feels like I can’t have photography as my thing, just because he got there first.” I peeked to see if Nate was mad.

  But he nodded. “I get tired of everyone lumping my dad and me together at school. Adults say, ‘Oh, you’re Mr. Bailey’s son!’ And kids say things like, ‘Don’t tell Nate, because he might tell his dad.’ And then I have to decide if it’s worse to be in trouble with the other kids or with Dad.” Nate pulled harder on his paddle. “But if you won, the prize money would probably come as a check. You wouldn’t be able to cash it if it wasn’t your real name.”

  I felt all the air let go from my lungs. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

  On the far side of the lake, a thick layer of mist rose like smoke from the water. Nate dug in his paddle to stop. “I can’t tell if the loons are on the nest or not,” he said. “But do you see that great blue heron over near the reeds? You can just make out his shape in the mist. That would make a cool photo.”

  I didn’t feel like shooting, but there was a wonderful moodiness to the mist and the heron stood so still and tall. It was a relief to do something I knew how to do. Normally I’d zoom in for a bird, but the heron looked so mysterious in that stripe of fog that I left the scene wide.

  “You could use my name and address for the contest,” Nate said.

  I opened my mouth to say no. Using the real name of someone else seemed more wrong than using a pretend name for me. But somehow the word got stuck in my throat. Nate and I had been working together on the contest. I was taking the photos, but he was giving me good ideas and helping me choose. We were a team, even if the contest only allowed for one name. It wouldn’t be cheating to simply choose his name instead of mine, would it?

  I felt a drop of rain on my arm. Within seconds, the lake around me had hundreds of circles, all of different sizes, in motion on the surface. The heron took to the air, and I was glad I’d taken that shot while I had the chance.

  “We should go back,” Nate said. “In case it starts to thunder.”

  I tucked my camera way down into my life vest so it wouldn’t get wet. We paddled steadily, racing each other for the dock as the rain came on. As I moved my paddle from side to side, I weighed the pluses and minuses of using Nate’s name. If we won we could use the money to help Grandma Lilah see the loons — and that was a big plus. Dip and pull. But on the minus side, if my photos won, I’d have to pretend the photos were Nate’s, and he was in one of the photos I was planning to use.

  Though it would be great to know for sure that my photos had won or lost on their own. Dip and pull. But I couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling that it wasn’t “right.”

  I wasn’t trying to make any other kids lose — just trying to give my photos a fair chance to win. Dip and pull. But Dad might get mad if and when he found out.

  He always said it’s about the photos, not the photographer. This would give him a chance to prove it. Dip and pull. But we might not even win.

  Though we’d never know if we didn’t enter.

  “Nate, how about this?” I suggested. “What if we use your name until Dad picks the winners. The portfolios will be mailed to my house, so I’ll be there when he chooses. I can ask to see the winners before he sends off the results to the magazine. If it’s us, I can tell him then. If he thinks it’s unfair that his own kid won, I could pull our portfolio.”

  “And if he lets us win?”

  “We’ll use the money to get Grandma Lilah out to see the loons,” I said.

  Nate’s phone chimed. He didn’t even look to see who it was. “If there’s any money left over, maybe we can build Ansel his super-swanky kid-and-dog house?” he said.

  I grinned. “It’s a deal!”

  As we got closer to the dock, I could see a splash of bright yellow ahead. Grandma Lilah was standing with an umbrella, waiting for us. “How are the loons?” she called.

  “Just fine,” Nate called back. Even though we hadn’t seen them.

  Every time someone in Nate’s family did Loon Patrol, they answered Grandma Lilah’s question of “How are the loons?” with “Fine” or “Good” or “They were teaching the baby to dive today.”

  But the secret answer
was that no one had seen them. A few times we’d heard them call and my heart leapt, but we couldn’t be sure if it was our loons we were hearing, or visitor loons just passing through.

  The next time it was my turn for Loon Patrol I could barely wait for ten o’clock. But first, Mom needed help unpacking the last boxes of Dad’s books and equipment. Then Ansel wanted to play, and I hadn’t been spending much time with him, so I threw his stuffed sheep toy and he brought it back, again and again, until finally he got tired. Then at ten o’clock, just as I was leaving, Dad called Mom on her phone. I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk to him, even though I had to wait for her to talk first and the connection wasn’t good. I kept asking “What?” and glancing at the clock, hoping Nate and Emily would wait for me.

  “No one’s seen the loon family for a few days,” I told Dad. “We’re worried.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “We haven’t seen the loons!”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’ll try calling again later, okay? I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. “Next time, try my phone!” But he didn’t answer, so I don’t know if he heard me or if he’d already hung up.

  By the time I arrived at the Baileys’, Nate and Emily had already left. Grandma Lilah motioned to the empty white wicker rocking chair beside her on the porch. “Come wait with me. Nate thought you weren’t coming.”

  She looked so hopeful that I couldn’t say no. “I didn’t mean to be so late. I had to do a bunch of stuff this morning, and then my dad called right when I was leaving.” I was shocked that my voice broke as I spoke.

  “What’s the matter, dear?”

  “I miss my dad. That’s all. I didn’t even really get to talk to him because he couldn’t hear me very well.”

  “It’s hard when people leave you,” she said. “And hard when you leave them, too.”

  I nodded. We were talking about sad things, but it made me feel a little better knowing I wasn’t alone.

  A hummingbird buzzed up to the hanging baskets on the porch, his tiny wings blurring with speed. From inside the cottage, I could hear Morgan and Mason making car sounds and Nate’s dad explaining something to someone.