Absolutely Truly

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  My father had turned abruptly to Aunt True. “I owe you an apology,” he said stiffly. The stiff part was because apologies aren’t easy for Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy.

  “For what?”

  “For what I said earlier. You were exactly the right person to leave in charge.”

  My father had been especially thrilled when he learned that she’d managed to do everything on a shoestring, and we all had basked in the glow of his approval. Especially Aunt True. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, and the two of them soon returned to their bickering.

  Which was what they were doing this morning.

  “J. T., can you take Memphis upstairs?” Aunt True asked, thrusting her cat at him. “He’s hissing at the toddlers again.”

  Memphis did not like toddlers. Or Story Hour.

  “Blasted cat,” grumbled my father, as Memphis hissed at him, too. Memphis didn’t like the bionic arm either. “Can’t Truly do it?”

  “She’s got her hands full,” Aunt True told him, pointing to the tray loaded with little kiwi-grape bullfrogs that I was carrying to the children’s room.

  “Like I even have two hands to be full,” my father muttered. Aunt True shot him a look. He heaved a sigh, somehow managing to corral Memphis, and the two of them disappeared upstairs.

  Story Hour was a big hit, but what happened afterward was even better. Some fairy dust from this morning’s backyard magic must have settled on me, because my father finally agreed to let me try out for swim team.

  I brought the subject up as I was putting away the craft supplies in the office storage closet. “Please, Dad?” I begged. “Tryouts are Monday. You saw that last test—my grade has come way up!”

  “Yes, it’s come up, but there’s still room for improvement,” he insisted.

  Aunt True came in just then. Hearing this exchange, she put her hands on her hips and glowered at my father. “Jericho Lovejoy, wake up and smell the coffee!” she said. “Look at how hard your daughter is working! She’s done exactly as you’ve requested: She’s been here every day for tutoring after school, right on time and without complaining. And she’s gone above and beyond to help us here in the store—including working on weekends. Don’t you think you could cut her a little slack?”

  “I’ll thank you not to tell me how to raise my own child,” my father replied.

  “Haven’t you heard?” countered Aunt True. “It takes a village to raise a child—which is an actual fact, by the way, because I’ve been in many villages in many countries—”

  “I don’t need a travelogue, True.”

  My aunt grabbed him by his good arm and towed him out into the store. I followed at a safe distance—I didn’t want to get caught in the brother-sister cross fire.

  “Have you seen our front window this week?” said Aunt True. “It’s all Truly’s doing.” She gestured at the sign I’d made that read WELCOME TO WINTER . . . BIRDING. I’d found a little fake evergreen Christmas tree downstairs in the storage room and placed it on the display table, which I’d covered with a white cloth, and hung some of Gramps’s carved wooden birds from the tree’s branches. Then I’d scattered birdseed underneath it, and propped a pair of binoculars alongside a stack of field guides from the shop’s birding section, a couple of life-list journals, and a copy of Owl Moon, of course.

  “It’s brilliant!” Aunt True continued. “She’s a born bookseller. I’ve sold out of the journals, and I’ve had five orders for Owl Moon this week alone. Five!”

  The muscles in my father’s jaw worked. Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy doesn’t like being told what to do. Especially not by his big sister. Aunt True must have been a star debater in high school, though, because in the end she managed to broker a deal.

  “How about you let her try out for swim team, but she continues with the tutoring until you’re satisfied with her grade?” she said.

  Please oh please oh please oh please, I thought as my father pondered her suggestion.

  “I suppose that could work,” he said finally, and I started jumping up and down and squealing.

  A nearly six-foot-tall person with size-ten-and-a-half shoes makes a whole lot of noise when she’s jumping up and down. Especially on wooden floors. And that’s not even counting the squealing.

  “Enough!” said my father. “There’s a condition, Truly.”

  “Anything,” I promised.

  “No backsliding. If your math grade slips, you’re off the team.”

  I nodded. I could live with that. I could live with anything, as long as it meant getting back in the water.

  CHAPTER 28

  Water is my natural element.

  At least that’s what my father always says. He says that I was swimming practically before I learned to walk. Mom says I did a cannonball in the baptismal font, which I know is a Texas tall tale, but I’m never quite sure about the one she tells about bathtime. She says I used to get so excited splashing around in the tub that she had to put floaties on my arms.

  What I know for sure is that I’ve always loved the feeling of being in the water. Plus, it doesn’t matter where you live or how often you move, there’s always a pool and the water is always the same. Water doesn’t care how tall you are either.

  Right now, I couldn’t wait to dive back in.

  “Swimmers on the block!” shouted the coach, and my toes curled automatically over the edge of the starting block. The 50 Freestyle was the first of several hurdles here at tryouts that would determine whether I’d become a member of the Pumpkin Falls Youth Swim Team. I just hoped I wasn’t too out of shape from not having been in the water for several weeks.

  “Take your mark!”

  I moved into the track start position, placing one foot behind me and grabbing the block on either side of my forward leg, focused like a hawk on its prey as I waited. At the sound of the buzzer, I arced forward, launching myself into the air. For a brief moment I heard the shouts and cheers of the onlookers from the bleachers, and then the water closed over my head and the world fell away.

  A current of pure joy coursed through my body. Swimming is probably as close as I’ll ever get to flying.

  As for being out of shape, I needn’t have worried. It was like I’d never been away. I quickly fell into the familiar rhythm as my arms and legs sliced through the water, and I hit my pace after just a few strokes. A quick flip-turn at the end of the lane, push off and glide, and I was in the home stretch. I cranked up the tempo, pouring it on until I practically flew the last few yards. I slapped the edge of the pool and glanced up at the clock.

  Not my best time, but not bad, either. Especially if you considered the fact that I hadn’t been in the water since we moved to New Hampshire. Plus, I was the first one at the wall by a long shot.

  The coach looked at me in surprise over the top of his clipboard. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  I smiled. No one ever is.

  The thing is, I don’t necessarily look like a jock. Most people figure girls my age who are as tall as I am and have feet as big as mine (helpful brother that he is, Hatcher calls them “flippers”) are uncoordinated, like maybe we’ve sprouted too fast or something. Although I’m not always supergraceful—especially not on the dance floor—I’m not a total klutz, either. But put me in the water and it’s like my body has found its reason for existence.

  “You’ve got mermaid DNA,” Dad used to tell me.

  I glanced over at the bleachers and waved to him. He gave me a brief two-finger salute in return. Aunt True was next to him with Pippa and Lauren. She’d sprung them from after-school daycare so they could come watch. Well, Pippa was watching. Lauren had her nose in a book, as usual.

  Cha Cha and Jasmine had come to cheer Lucas and me on, and my mother was going to try and make it for the last bit too. She had a late-afternoon history class with Professor Rusty. Danny and Hatcher were both at wrestling practice.

  “Go, Truly!” my aunt shouted.

  I grinned at her and hauled
myself out of the pool. Grabbing my towel from the nearby bench, I looked over to where the next batch of hopefuls was lining up. Lucas Winthrop was among them. Lucas in a swimsuit was not a sight for sore eyes. Skinny as a whistle and pale as milk, he was easily the sorriest excuse for a seventh grader I’d ever seen. He had determination, though. When the coach blew his whistle, Lucas was the first one in the water, and if he churned his way across the pool with more grit than grace, he still ended up with a respectable time.

  “Way to go, Winthrop!” I called, and he looked over, startled, then smiled shyly.

  Behind me, some of the moms were talking in the bleachers.

  “Swimming is the perfect sport for Lucas,” I heard Mrs. Winthrop say. “My son was delicate when he was younger, you know, and contact sports are far too dangerous. Plus, he comes home from the pool so wonderfully clean.”

  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the other mothers exchange amused looks. Mrs. Winthrop rattled on, oblivious.

  Maybe Lucas and I had more in common than I thought. The pool was probably the one place he could go to get away from his mother. It’s always been my refuge too. Being underwater is the ultimate form of stealth mode.

  A little while later I was on deck again for the 100 Individual Medley. My mother waved to me from the stands. I was glad she’d made it in time, because the medley has always been my favorite race—twenty-five yards each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle.

  “Let’s see what you can do,” said Coach Crawford.

  At the sound of the bell I dove in, launching myself a few inches below the surface of the water into a streamline propelled by a mighty dolphin kick. Every muscle in my body zinged as I surged forward. The butterfly is my favorite stroke. I love that split second when I lunge out of the water and am almost airborne. It’s like flying.

  Thinking about flying made me think of my father. Would he be able to pilot a helicopter or plane again someday? Not commercially—he’d explained to us why that was out—but just for fun? I knew how much he hated being grounded. It was probably the same for him as not swimming was for me. I couldn’t imagine not ever being able to swim again.

  I would feel like a bird without wings.

  I finished the medley not too far off my own personal best time. When I got out of the pool, Coach Maynard shook my hand.

  “Welcome to the team, Truly,” he said. “I don’t need to see any more. Stick around for the rest of the tryouts if you want, but I’ll expect you here starting tomorrow afternoon. We practice every day from four until six.”

  I nodded happily. Glancing up in the stands again, I gave my family and friends an exuberant thumbs-up. Then I headed to the dressing room to shower and change.

  “Congratulations, honey,” my mother said a little while later when I emerged. She gave me a big hug. “Not that I had any doubt.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  My father gave me an awkward squeeze. “I expected no less from a Lovejoy,” he said. This was high praise coming from Silent Man, and I practically floated to the parking lot.

  Outside, snow was falling thick and fast.

  “Can you believe this?” Aunt True marveled. “It’s like something out of a Russian novel! I swear I don’t ever remember a winter like this when we were growing up, do you, J. T?”

  My father shook his head.

  Mom turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes. “Do you remember the part in Anna Karenina—”

  “You mean when—” Aunt True began.

  “Yes! Wasn’t that incredibly—”

  “Totally!”

  “Tolstoy is the best!”

  Aunt True and Mom are soul mates when it comes to books. They speak in this weird literary shorthand that none of the rest of us can understand at all.

  “Would you guys mind if I walk home?” I asked, spotting Cha Cha and Jasmine emerge from the swim center. The Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes needed to talk.

  “Not at all,” said my mother, sliding into the driver’s seat of our minivan. My sisters climbed in the back. “Are you coming, J. T., or are you heading back to the bookshop?”

  “I should head back to the shop,” he told her. “The accountant is dropping by in a bit to go over the end-of-the-month financials.”

  “I’ll keep you company,” said Aunt True, linking her arm through his good one. “And just because you’re my favorite brother, I’ll even make you dinner.”

  My mother laughed. “Now, there’s an offer you can’t refuse. I’ll see y’all later, then.” She waved at us and drove off.

  I said good-bye to my father and my aunt, then headed over to find Cha Cha and Jasmine, who had disappeared around the corner of the swim center. I followed and quickly came upon Calhoun stuffing snow down the neck of Lucas Winthrop’s jacket again, while Cha Cha and Jasmine tried to stop him.

  I ran over to help. “Knock it off, Romeo!” I hollered.

  Calhoun froze.

  I did too. I hadn’t meant to drop the R-bomb that way. Once again, I’d put my big foot in my mouth.

  Cha Cha and Jasmine and Lucas gaped at us.

  “Romeo?” said Cha Cha. “Who’s Romeo?”

  I pointed wordlessly at Calhoun.

  “Your name is Romeo?”

  Calhoun’s face flamed.

  “I always wondered what the R in ‘R. J.’ stood for,” said Jasmine. “I figured the J was for ‘James,’ like your dad, but I never would have guessed ‘Romeo’ for the R.”

  Calhoun abruptly let go of Lucas’s jacket. “I’m outta here,” he muttered.

  Thinking quickly, I realized that I could use this to my advantage. “No, actually, you’re not,” I told him. “I’ve had to put up with ‘Truly Gigantic’ and ‘Truly Drooly’ for weeks now. You can deal with Romeo. Which,” I added, “we won’t tell a soul about, on one condition.”

  He regarded me warily.

  “Quit picking on Lucas. And while you’re at it, see if you can get Scooter to stop picking on him too. And on me.”

  Calhoun lifted a shoulder, then gave a reluctant nod.

  “Good. Your secret is safe with us.”

  “Promise?” he asked, darting a glance at me.

  “Cross my heart and hope to . . .” My voice trailed off. “Whatever. Our lips are sealed.”

  “Sealed,” said Cha Cha solemnly, holding up three fingers in the traditional Boy Scout salute. Then her dimple appeared and she grinned broadly. “Scout’s honor . . . Romeo!”

  I grinned back. “Guess what?” I told my friends. “I think I have a plan for getting us into the steeple.”

  CHAPTER 29

  With two weeks to go until Winter Festival, there was a change in the air in Pumpkin Falls.

  It wasn’t the January thaw. That still hadn’t arrived, even though the calendar now said February. It was more a sense of anticipation, a crackle of excitement you could feel around town, at school, and in the shops as people talked about “the big weekend.”

  Aunt True says Winter Festival is Pumpkin Falls’s answer to homecoming. She says people who grew up here or used to live here often come back for it, although if you ask me, which nobody ever does, I could think of better ways to spend a weekend than stuck in freezing-cold Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire.

  My math grade crept up a few notches, which pleased my father and made me feel a little more secure about my spot on the swim team. At practice, I did planks and push-ups and sit-ups and swam endless laps in preparation for our first race. The Pumpkin Falls Youth Swim Team always kicked off its season with a face-off against Thornton during Winter Festival.

  Everywhere I’ve ever lived, there’s always an archrival, and for Pumpkin Falls, Thornton is it. And everywhere I’ve ever lived, it’s always the coach’s job to get his or her team whipped into a frenzy over this rival. Coach Maynard droned on every day at practice about how we need to do our best and believe in ourselves and get out there and show Thornton what we’re made of, blah blah blah. I’d heard it all be
fore.

  Casting a shadow over all of this, at least for me, was the bookshop’s make-or-break deadline. I wished I could be more like Aunt True, who sailed ahead thinking positively and planning for the future, but the spike in sales after Carson Dawson’s TV feature on Pumpkin Falls had leveled off, and with no Charlotte’s Web in sight, I didn’t see how we were going to make it. I saw all the long hours my father still spent behind closed doors with the accountant, and how he worried constantly over things called “profit margin” and “overhead” and “cash flow.”

  The other shadow was Cotillion. I was so not looking forward to the exhibition dance, even though Scooter and I were doing marginally better in class. This was mostly because Scooter had stopped goofing off. He’d caught wind of Calhoun’s extra practice sessions—which he thought Calhoun was paying for—and that had lit a fire under his competitive streak.

  “Oh good, the kittens are here,” said Jasmine as she and Cha Cha and I took off our jackets and piled them on the bench by the bookshop door.

  Ever since the remodel, Lovejoy’s Books had become Belinda Winchester’s home away from home. She and at least one kitten showed up pretty much every afternoon now, right around the time that Aunt True took her mini pumpkin whoopie pies out of the oven. When Saturday rolled around, though, the treats—and Belinda—arrived earlier, for Story Hour.

  Cha Cha and Jasmine had volunteered to help Aunt True and me on this particular Saturday. Plus, my friends were eager to check out the new shipment of jewelry. They really liked all the new stuff that Aunt True had started to stock as part of her scheme to add more income streams.

  The three of us helped ourselves to some of the whoopie pies that were waiting on the sales counter. My father emerged from the office to grab one too. He still complains about the expense, but I’ve noticed he’s first in line when Aunt True brings them down from her apartment.

  “She never leaves,” he grumbled, casting a baleful eye on Belinda Winchester, who had settled into an armchair over by the front window with her latest paperback from the mystery swap. “And she never buys anything either.”