Half a Chance

by Cynthia Lord

  “The wind makes you feel completely alive, doesn’t it?” Grandma Lilah asked, smiling.

  Nate leaned across to whisper something to me. I tipped my head toward him and braced myself in case he was still mad.

  “Thanks for this,” he said. “She’s having a great time.”

  “Nate, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I don’t like to think about her getting worse,” he said close to my ear. “I’m afraid she’ll forget me someday.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him it’d all be okay, but I didn’t know what would happen. And neither did he.

  “She remembers today,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “Today, she does.”

  In the cove, the water looked greener. As we moved, the clouds reflected in the surface of the lake appeared to be moving, too, racing with the spray off the sides of our boat. We saw a great blue heron, a Canada goose, and lots of ducks. “Where are our loons?” Grandma Lilah asked.

  I didn’t know what would happen when Grandma Lilah only saw one little loon. But I planned to go along with anything Nate told her.

  Dad slowed the boat until we were only floating. Waves echoed under the boat. “Does anyone see them?” he asked.

  And there they were: a trio of dark heads above the water.

  “Oh, they’re so beautiful,” Grandma Lilah said. “And there’s one of the babies! Where’s the other one? Does anyone see it?”

  I waited for Nate to say the second chick was hiding or diving, but he leaned toward her. “Grandma Lilah, something sad happened, and there’s only one chick now.”

  It felt like my heart stopped beating as Grandma Lilah said, “No, we have two this year. We wrote it down.”

  “There were two,” Nate said gently. “But a bald eagle came, and he took one.”

  “An eagle!” Grandma Lilah put her hand to her throat. “That can’t be right. We’ve never had eagles on the lake.”

  “I know,” Nate said. “But we had one this year. Lucy saw him.”

  “Our poor baby!” Grandma Lilah’s eyes filled with tears.

  I swallowed hard. This boat trip was supposed to make her happy, not make her cry. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “The loons tried really hard. They dove and dove, and I tried to scare the eagle, but he didn’t give up.”

  “I’ve never seen an eagle in real life, only in pictures. Was he beautiful?” she asked.

  Beautiful? I looked in her eyes, still wet with tears. The eagle had done something so awful that I hadn’t seen anything else. Was he beautiful? “I guess so. He was horrible and beautiful together.”

  She nodded, wiping her eye with the side of her finger. “Write that down, Nate.”

  “I will.” As Nate filled out the survey form, Dad steered the boat deeper into the cove. The male loon swam in the water on one side of the boat, the female and Baby One on the other. They didn’t seem at all upset that we were there, but they called to each other, checking in.

  “They’re saying hello to you,” I said to Grandma Lilah.

  She shook her head. “They’re telling me good-bye.”

  I opened my mouth to say no, but she stopped me. “Good-bye isn’t the worst thing in the world. Sometimes it’s simply time to go.”

  We stayed there a long time, just floating, watching the loons diving. Every time they popped up again, Grandma Lilah smiled. “There they are! Do you see them?”

  “I can get us a little closer, but not closer than one hundred fifty feet,” Dad said. “I saw that on a poster at the marina.”

  I glanced over to find him grinning at me.

  And my heart felt warm and full.

  When we finally headed back to the dock, I was tired of sitting sideways. So I turned around and knelt on the seat, holding on to the rail. Nate slid his hand along the boat’s rail until the side of his finger touched the side of mine. I expected him to move it, but he left it there.

  “Do you remember when we climbed Cherry Mountain, and said how we wished we could freeze a day and keep it that day always?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “This is my day,” he said.

  On the morning Nate left to go home for the winter, I stood in our driveway with Ansel in my arms and waved good-bye. I was trying to look happy, but my heart felt as empty as their cottage would be when their van drove away.

  “Bye, Lucy!” Nate said through the open window. “I’ll email and text you and stuff like that. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, though I knew when he got home, he’d be busy with his regular friends in his regular life.

  “Bye, Lucy!” Morgan yelled.

  “Bye, Ansel!” Mason added.

  I picked up Ansel’s paw and waved it to them. “Bye!”

  “Lucy of the Loons,” Grandma Lilah called out the window. “Don’t forget me when you go.”

  I didn’t tell her that she was the one leaving. And that I’d remember long after she did. “I’ll keep track of the loons until you come back, Grandma Lilah.”

  “I’ve never been here in the fall to see them leave,” she said. “Or seen them come back in the spring. They are always here when I arrive and they leave the lake after I’ve gone. Wish them a safe journey for me.”

  “I will,” I promised, waving and waving as their van drove away.

  At the end of October, after the red, orange, and yellow leaves had fallen and all the tourists had gone, it was so quiet you could hear the waves on the beach, even before you saw the lake. It was a nice sound, always there.

  I leaned my brand-new bike against the side of Nate’s empty cottage porch. All around the lake were reminders of summer people. Cottages had their shades down, like sleeping eyes. Wharves and docks had been pulled up on the lawns. Rowboats were upside down, tied to trees or snug against the sides of cottages. Nate’s family’s kayaks lay piled up under their porch.

  Every afternoon when I got home from school, I’d checked for Baby One, always afraid he’d leave while I was gone and I’d miss saying good-bye.

  And every time I heard him, I was relieved.

  Still here.

  It made me as happy as every time I turned on my phone and there was another text from Nate. He’d sent four today already.

  I’m glad ur dad bought bikes. Can I borrow his next year? We can go on some trails.

  Cafeteria food stinks. I wish they’d serve No Mores.

  GL had the scrapbook open 2 ur photo 2day. How come summer takes so long 2 come back?

  Is the little loon still there? It must be getting cold.

  The late-day autumn sun was bright, throwing long shadows, but not strong enough to warm the air. As I headed for the lake, my own shadow stretched out over the sand: a small body with legs as long as a stilt-walker.

  The lake looked different in the fall, too. The town had opened the dam wide to drop the water level to allow for next spring’s melting. Suddenly there was new beach, soft and gooey with light-green pondweeds — the gucky things I touched on the bottom last summer. As I stepped closer, my foot stuck in the cold, squishy mud. I yanked it out, my footprint filling immediately with water.

  Please still be here, Baby One. I knew he had to leave before the lake froze, but he didn’t have to leave yet. Not today.

  I turned on my camera zoom so I could use it to scan the lake for that dark head, his neck snakelike above the water. There he was, out in the middle of the lake! I let my breath go with relief.

  His bill opened, calling, I’m here. Where are you?

  But no answer came.

  A few weeks ago, the two adult loons had taken to the sky, their wings flapping furiously as they circled the lake together.

  “They’re leaving!” I’d screamed to Baby One. “Go with them!”

  But he just kept swimming, calling, as the adults flew off over the trees without him.

  “Don’t worry,” the lady at the Loon Preservation Committee office had said when I called, barely able to get the words out to explain that he’d been left
behind. “The adults often leave for the ocean first. The young loon is on his own now. In a few weeks, he’ll go, too.”

  “But how will he know where to go?” I asked. “He’s never been to the ocean before.”

  “We don’t understand how they know,” she said. “But they do.”

  This time, watching him through my camera, I knew something was different. He kept stretching his wings, over and over. Getting ready.

  I could barely breathe as he started running on the water. Faster and faster his feet slapped the surface, his wings pumping.

  I took one photo and then put my camera down, wanting to share our last seconds without anything between us. He took to the air, pumping his wings hard.

  Leaving the water behind him, he circled the lake to gain speed. “Safe journey!” I called to him. “From Grandma Lilah and me.”

  And there was nothing but sky.

  Tears slid down my face. Would he really know where to go? And even if he did, so many miles and dangers stood between him going to the sea and coming back to find his own territory one day. Would he make it?

  Sometimes you don’t get an answer, though. Sometimes “I hope so” is the only answer you get.

  All the loons have gone, I texted Nate. Tell Grandma Lilah I wished them a safe journey for her. I’ll let the LPC know.

  But I couldn’t push SEND. That would make it over. As I stood next to Nate’s empty cottage, a whole winter stretched ahead. School was going okay and the kids had been nicer than I expected, especially a girl named Mattie from the other side of the lake who rode the bus with me. But just knowing I wouldn’t hear the loons or see them again for months — or maybe ever — made me incredibly lonely.

  I imagined Baby One in the sky, seeing the world as I’d seen it from the top of Cherry Mountain. Blue upon blue mountains ahead, a carpet of trees below, the long curling rivers between the lakes, and somewhere far ahead, that huge ocean.

  It must take some courage to fly, to trust the wind to hold you as it lifts you away from all you’ve ever known. To know inside that you’re heading where you’re meant to go — even if you’ve never been there before.

  And that “I hope so” will be enough to get you there.

  I’m here. Where are you?

  I typed, finishing my text, and pushed SEND. Turning toward home, I had barely walked my bike across our driveway when my phone chimed an answer.

  Just two words. But all Nate needed to say.

  I’m here.

  CYNTHIA LORS’S first novel, Rules, won the Newbery Honor and Schneider Family Book Award. She is also the author of Touch Blue, a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year. Lord is a former teacher, behavioral specialist, and bookseller. She grew up on a lake in New Hampshire but now lives in Maine with her husband and their children, two bunnies, a guinea pig, and a dog. Learn more at www.cynthialord.com.

  Copyright © 2014 by Cynthia Lord

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  First edition, March 2014

  Cover design by Nina Goffi

  Cover illustration © 2014 by Michael Frost,

  created from the following images:

  Lake, Finland: Kenneth Bengtsson/Naturbild/Corbis;

  Fair Weather Over Atlantic Ocean: Ocean/Corbis;

  Lake and Forest: John Bald

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-62083-3

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