by Cynthia Lord
Breaking the surface, my hair is plastered to my face. I tread water, pushing it away.
Kristi stands in the shallows, her hands tracing across the pond’s surface.
“Come on,” I say. “It’s not bad once you get in.”
She takes a step. “Are you kidding? It’s freezing.”
“Not once you get used to it. I’ll meet you at the raft.”
I love swimming in water over my head, cold emptiness under my feet, those sudden warm spots or icy underwater springs.
Almost to the raft, I flip to my back and give in to the lightness of floating. Held by the water, I watch the blue sky, waiting for Kristi to catch up. This is what I wished for — a next-door friend I could just come and go with.
She’s out of breath when she reaches me.
At the ladder I grip the sides and swing my feet up to the bottom rung. Water showers off me as I climb.
“About that big fish?” Kristi says, swimming closer. “What kind is it?”
The air makes me shiver. I sit on the raft and wrap my arms around my knees. “It’s probably just an eel.”
Her eyes widen.
“I mean it’s probably not an eel. Just a fish that looks like an eel.”
Kristi scrambles up the ladder. “Yuck!”
I tuck my soaked hair behind my ears, wishing I had brought my hair band. I know without asking, Kristi won’t want to touch the bottom. She doesn’t even seem to like the top of the water much. “Maybe we can lay out in the sun?”
We lie on our stomachs, and I peek between the slats to the darkness below. The slight rocking of the raft, the slosh of little waves slapping the boards beneath, and the sun drying my back makes me yawn.
“I have to find my other suit.”
I look over to Kristi fixing her shoulder straps.
“But if it’s not at Dad’s, I don’t know where it is.” She lays her chin on her arm. “I wish Mom wouldn’t give up so easy. It’s not like he had an affair.”
“Maybe they’re just taking a break for a little while?”
“Maybe.” Kristi sighs. “Do you think there really is a fish down there?”
The sadness in her voice makes me want to give her something, even if it’s only pretend. “What if he is down there,” I say, “but he’s magic like in that fairy tale ‘The Fisherman and His Wife.’”
Kristi squeezes the end of her braid, drops of water falling off the tip, beading onto the raft. “I don’t know that story.”
“This guy catches a big fish, except the fish says he is really a prince under a spell. The man lets the fish go, but his wife sends him back to get a wish granted.”
“I’d scream if a fish started talking to me.”
“Me, too. But what would you wish?”
“I’d wish my parents would get back together and be happy.” She turns to me, her eyes worried. “Do you think that’s two wishes or one?”
“One.”
“Your turn. What’s your wish?”
I look down between the raft boards and imagine my always-wish, my fingers reaching through the perfect top of David’s head, finding the broken places in his brain, turning knobs or flipping switches. All his autism wiped clean.
But saying that wish brings trouble. “All people have a place,” my third-grade teacher said firmly when I drew a pretend older brother in the “My Family” picture to be put out in the hallway for open house.
I tried to tell her it was still David — but I wanted him to be able to play with me, and since I was fixing things, I made him older so he could stick up for me. But I had to draw the picture over and visit the guidance counselor instead of going to music.
“Why is it in fairy tales, wishes always backfire?” I ask.
If you want to change the subject, confuse the other person by going off on a wild, chatty detour.
“Like in ‘The Fisherman and His Wife,’” I continue. “The fisherman’s wife keeps wanting bigger things, and by the end of the story —”
“Hey!” a voice calls. “Kris!”
I sit up so quick, I scrape my knees on the raft.
Ryan waves, standing on the sand at the shore. Behind him his bike rests propped against a tree.
Kristi waves back. “Hi!”
I hope she yells at him to go home, but she says, “Come on, Catherine,” and does a running dive, heading for shore.
I let her swim ahead of me. I do the breast-stroke, dipping my face in and out of the water, so I don’t have to see Ryan standing on the sand waiting for us.
At the shore I cross my arms over my stomach and walk to my shorts and towel.
“Your mom said you were here,” Ryan says to Kristi. “Did you ask Catherine yet?”
Ask me?
Kristi smiles. “Catherine, you know how the community center’s holding a dance on Saturday?”
I nod.
“They asked me to help decorate,” Kristi says, “and I was hoping —”
“I could help you decorate,” I say, grabbing my towel off the sand. “I’m good at making posters.”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d like to go?” Kristi glances at Ryan. “Me and Ryan and you and somebody. It’ll be so much fun. Please say yes.”
I wrap my towel around me, tight as I can. “I don’t know anyone to ask.”
“Ask Jason,” Kristi says. “That boy you drew. This is your chance to ask him out.”
I open my mouth, but Ryan’s smirk makes me close it.
But that’s not the only reason I don’t tell.
“I don’t dance.” I slide my feet into my flip-flops.
“I’ll teach you,” Kristi says.
“My dad works late a lot so I don’t think I could get a ride.”
“My mom can drop us off and pick us up.”
On the walk home, Kristi has an answer for every one of my can’ts. She’ll even loan me clothes and do my hair.
“Ask him,” she says.
By the time she’s heading up her driveway, Kristi has cornered me into a stuttered, “Hmm. I’ll think about it.”
In my room I peel off my damp bathing suit and put on the first clothes I pull from my bureau, an old shirt and shorts that don’t match.
I comb wet snarls from my hair and watch Kristi’s minivan backing out of their driveway. Did Kristi call me because she can’t go to the dance with Ryan unless I go, too?
The minivan disappears from view. I turn to my bulletin board and the postcard from Disneyland tacked on the top. I wish it wasn’t so expensive to call California. I want to tell Melissa everything and hear her say, “It’s okay, Catherine.” But it’d take too long to explain and maybe she’d be mad I cared so much about Kristi being my friend.
In my sketchbook I try to draw my ankles distorted by pond water, but they don’t look warped and interesting. They look broken.
I write words in the white space beside the sketch, but after ‘pond’ and ‘icy’ the only ones that’ll come are: ‘guilty,’ ‘complicated,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘weak.’
I close my sketchbook.
I look over the top of my sketchbook at Jason’s mother standing alone.
Before I can ask where Jason is, she opens the door and he comes into the waiting room — on his own!
He has a new wheelchair with a joystick on the armrest. His fingers circle the joystick, and the wheelchair whirrs past the front windows, across the carpet, right up beside me.
“Wow!” I toss my sketchbook on the waiting room couch.
“How wonderful!” Mom says.
“He never wanted a motorized chair before.” Mrs. Morehouse smiles at Mom. “But lately he wants to do lots of things for himself. He’s even doing his hand exercises again.”
Jason reddens, flipping open his communication book.
“And since his birthday is this weekend,” Mrs. Morehouse continues, “his father and I knew this would be the perfect present for him.”
“This is cool.” I lean close for a good look. �
�How’s it work?”
Jason positions his hand on the joystick, and the chair surges — a foot forward, then back. Catherine. Walk. Outside. Me, too.
“You want to take a walk? Outside?” I glance at his mother. “With me?”
“Take my cell phone.” She opens her purse. “Call here if you need help. The phone number is on those business cards at the reception desk.”
The receptionist circles the phone number on the card. But even with the number, the cell phone, two blank cards, and a pencil in my pocket, I don’t feel prepared. What if I can’t help him? Or he needs something, and I can’t understand him?
I hold the door open and on his fourth try, Jason makes the turn around the door frame. All the way down the ramp, I hold my breath, repeating slow, slow in my head like a prayer, so he doesn’t go too fast and tip or fall.
At the bottom of the ramp, I let my breath go in a relieved whoosh. “Where to?”
Clusters of people stand near the shops and the brick sidewalks look too bumpy and uneven for a wheelchair. I wish I could take Jason to Elliot’s Antiques and show him all the bottles and old things, but there is a long flight of stairs, and the aisles are too narrow for a wheelchair.
Water. Jason taps.
“You need a drink?”
Go. To. Water.
Between the buildings, waves glitter with sun diamonds. I scan the route for problems: down the parking lot (watch out for broken tar and the sewer grate), cross the street (easy), go to the driveway at Otis’s Hardware and use the little ramp to the curb (a sharp turn), down the sidewalk in front of Coastal Marine Supply (looks good from here). After that, smooth paths run all the way through the waterfront park (home free). I glance back to the clinic. Mom and Mrs. Morehouse wave from the window. “Okay, but we can’t stay long. Your mom will be mad if you miss speech.”
Whatever. Speech.
I walk beside his wheelchair and imitate Speech Woman, “WELL, JASON! I GUESS YOUR DAY STINKS A —”
Footsteps pound behind us, and two women jog by, one on each side of Jason and me. One of the women gives Jason a soft-eyed pity look.
Watching the soles of their sneakers running away, I push my hands into my pockets, touching my pencil, the business card, and the flat-topped buttons of Jason’s mother’s cell phone.
Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to go so far.
As we reach the crosswalk, a car stops for us. I stare at the curls of hair on the back of Jason’s neck as we cross the street.
An old couple stands at the curb, the woman hunting for something in her purse. “Excuse me,” I say. “We need the ramp.”
“Oh, sorry!” The man glances at Jason’s legs. They move on, the woman still searching her purse.
I walk ahead on the sidewalk, kicking away pinecones and rocks and sticks so his chair won’t get stuck on them. When I turn back, Jason’s coming up behind me, his fingers resting in sharp angles on his communication book, his eyes fixed on the water.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I say.
He nods. More than. Awesome! What?
“What word means more than awesome?”
Yes.
Looking across the sun-dazzled waves, I have no word. “I think after ‘awesome,’ you’re done with words.”
Make. Card. More than. Words.
Even though we’re blocking the sidewalk and people have to step on the grass to go around us, I take a blank card from my pocket and write ‘more than words’ across the top. Searching for something to draw, not even the ocean seems enough.
No. Picture.
In his book the card stands out against the others I’ve made, plain as a field of new snow. “You’re right,” I say. “This way it can be anything you imagine.”
The air smells fishy, a green-brown, deep-water smell. I choose the path winding along the shore, leading to a row of red-painted benches facing the ocean.
Down the shoreline a fishing boat pulls up to the dock at the seafood restaurant, and a man in a long white apron rushes down the gangplank to meet the boat.
Side by side, Jason and I take up the whole path. A girl bumps my arm rushing around us, walking two black poodles.
“Sorry,” she says over her shoulder.
I whisper to Jason, “She’s late for the dog show.”
Jason flashes me a grin.
“Maybe that bench by the wharf?” Usually I love listening to the pilings creaking, purring boat motors, and the sharp key-ow of gulls, but today my ears are full of the sound of Jason’s wheelchair and the silence of people who suddenly stop talking as we pass.
A man meets my gaze. He smiles but I can only nod back, unable to let go the clench of my teeth.
At the long town wharf, a seagull stands on twig legs, facing the wind, shaking his feathers dry. He reaches around to preen his wing as a group of preschoolers leans over the wharf railing, dropping rocks off the side.
I hear snatches of voices as we come closer to the wharf.
“You don’t even need this, but it’ll make you feel better.” Reaching down, a girl puts a bandage on a little boy’s elbow.
Her head is bowed but I know her hair, parted on the side, a strand separate from having been twirled. I fall to one knee on the path and dip my head to peer between the slats of an empty bench.
“Was that boy in an accident?” the child says, pointing at Jason. “Did he get hurt?”
I watch Kristi startle, looking at Jason. She turns away quickly and touches her index finger to the child’s lips. “Shh. It’s not polite to talk about people.”
Jason backs his wheelchair up the path toward me, and I lean so his chair is between Kristi and me. He stops, struggling to look over his shoulder at me. “I’m coming,” I say.
He taps, but I can’t see his communication book from the ground and I’m too scared to stand up. My shoelace is tied but I hold the loops in my fingers, knowing when I let go, I’ll have to do something. Why can’t I just stand up and say, “Hi, Kristi?”
“Okay, grab your partner’s hand, everyone,” a woman yells. “Time to get back to the bus.”
I peek, enough to see Kristi take the child’s hand. She follows the line of children, stuffing bandage wrappers in her shorts pocket.
I stand slowly. “I’m all set.”
At the empty bench closest to the wharf, I sit on the very edge of the wooden seat and watch Kristi growing tinier the farther she walks down the pathway.
Jason taps, and I tear my focus away from Kristi passing the last streetlight at the edge of the park. Catherine. Pretty. Today.
I nod. “It’s a very pretty day.”
Jason touches my arm. Catherine. Pretty.
My neck feels prickly. I rub it, looking down to a frill of seaweed, bits of rope, and a broken lobster trap caught between the huge rocks at the water’s edge. What does he mean? Is he being nice or telling me he likes me?
When things get confusing, make a joke.
“No.” I cross my eyes at him. “I’m a dork.”
Jason doesn’t smile.
“We should get back. Speech Woman will be coming out to get you.” But Jason doesn’t circle his fingers on the joystick. He turns to a new page in his communication book. My birthday party. Do you want to come?
The cards sit alone on the page, new and homemade. My birthday party. has red and blue balloons and a chocolate-brown cake.
I don’t know why, but I feel jealous that his mom made him nicer cards than usual. But that feeling mixes with sadness that he had to ask her to make these words so he could invite me to his party.
I tell myself it’s a simple invitation to a birthday party, not a date. “Sure. When’s your party?”
Saturday.
My breath catches. “This Saturday?”
Jason nods. Is? Good.
“Yeah, it’s great! No problem at all.”
Walking back to the clinic, a woman reading on the grass stares over the top of her book at Jason. I stare back.
&nbs
p; Even though I told Jason it was great that his party is Saturday, it’s more than great — it solves everything.
Almost.
“Six!” David calls as a gray pickup drives by on the road. “And thirty-six minutes twenty-seven seconds.”
I wish I could just walk up Kristi’s porch steps and ring the doorbell like nothing happened today at the park. But I can’t get my feet to move.
“Seven cars.” David holds out his watch. “And thirty-five minutes fifty-five seconds.”
“Remember the rule,” I say absently. “Late doesn’t mean not coming.”
Beside me on the porch swing, David rocks, bobbling the swing. When I first agreed to sit with David so Mom could call clients, I tried to draw, but David keeps jogging the swing out of rhythm, wobbling my pencil lines.
What’ll happen in September? Will Kristi stand with me at the bus stop or with Ryan? And what’ll happen when I don’t see Jason every week? Will our friendship disappear?
The front door opens and Mom steps onto our porch. “Catherine, Kristi’s on the phone. David, let’s go in the backyard.”
The walk through the living room and down the hallway to the phone feels extra long. Did Kristi see me at the park?
“Hi, it’s Kristi,” she says when I pick up the phone. “I just got home from the day camp, and I signed up to make two posters to use at the dance. Want to help?”
“Sure.” I twist the phone cord around my finger. “Um, about the dance —”
“Did you ask Jason?”
I twist the cord tighter, my fingertip turning purple with backed-up blood. “We can’t come to the dance. Jason invited me to his birthday party that same day.”
“His birthday party?”
“Yeah, he’s having a birthday party on Saturday.”
“How about after the party?”
“I really can’t,” I say, my finger throbbing.
Kristi exhales loud and long in my ear. “Will you still help me make posters? I promised to make two big ones.”