Swimmers

by Amy Bright

  After I’d pulled on my trunks, I went out and found an empty free-swim lane. Aunt Lynne was pretending that she couldn’t see me over the top of her magazine. She was looking, though. Her eyes flittered all around, making sure they never let me out of their sight.

  I put my arms up over my head. My shoulders were stiff. It was the first time I would be going under since going out on the ocean with Niall. The water was sloshing lazily up and over the lip of the pool. I tested it out with my toes. Warm as stepping into a bath. But when I jumped in and all the water rushed over my head, it was ice cold.

  My chest went tight. I held on to the last breath that I’d taken and refused to let it go. The feeling of the water wasn’t the same, swimming in a pool. Even though I was letting myself sink down to the bottom, there was still a bottom, and I could see it clearly even without goggles. I could make out the four easy borders of the pool, the walls that were keeping me inside.

  It was a different feeling, swimming in the ocean. That’s what I would have told Poppy the other day, if I had been able to make up a sentence on the spot. If I had been ready for her question. Because when I jumped into the ocean that day with Niall, there were no boundaries. I could’ve chosen to swim a mile in any direction, and I still wouldn’t have hit a border. There was no way to tell when an end was going to come.

  The chlorine was starting to burn my eyes, but I made myself stay down for another full minute. One slow count to sixty.

  I finally launched myself off the bottom of the pool and exploded out of the water. The ledge of the pool was close enough to touch. I hadn’t even gone that far out. I anchored myself to the side of the pool and waited to catch my breath.

  Up on the observation deck, Aunt Lynne had dropped her magazine. She was on her feet, stick straight, looking right at me. The look on her face. I’d never even seen my parents wear a look like that. I’d disappeared under the water for longer than I was supposed to.

  I lifted my hand in a wave to let her know I was okay. That Queen Elizabeth II that I used to exchange with Bridget on a daily basis. Just a quick turn of the hand, the way the Queen did it from her car to acknowledge the peasants.

  Aunt Lynne lifted her right hand to her temple and gave me a quick salute. It was the most unexpected thing. Like she was recognizing my decision to come back up to the surface. Respecting that it had been a choice to do it. She returned to her magazine. This time she didn’t flit her eyes over the top again. This time she trusted me.

  I breathed in another quick breath and then went straight into a front crawl. I’d forgotten what it felt like to swim for fun. Arms and legs going at the same time, but working on opposite tasks. One kicking, one pulling at the water. It was like the patting-your-head-and-rubbing-your-stomach thing, but way more natural than that. My limbs just knew what to do, which meant I could zone out. My body moving independently of me, taking me from one end of the pool and back again.

  It was real exercise. I’d been going on walks with Poppy, but walking like that wasn’t a workout. It didn’t make me sweat or breathe heavy. Swimming hard was real exercise. I was gasping for my breath after twenty laps.

  I flipped over and started on my back crawl, using the lane dividers to keep me guided in the right direction.

  I lost myself in that swimming. I did it for another hour, only vacating the lane when the pool was closing.

  Aunt Lynne’s piano students had been practicing Christmas carols since the end of November. It was every combination of those classics that you could think up: "Frosty the Snowman." "Jingle Bells." "Silent Night." "All I Want for Christmas Is You." A whole house full of them on repeat, the only difference between them the quality. I was sick of them all by the start of December. Heard them all about fifty times each.

  Even writing out Math equations in semi-silence was better than sitting at Aunt Lynne’s house with eardrums bleeding Christmas music.

  "How many do you have left?" Poppy asked me, the second week of December, near the end of our semester.

  I counted them up in my book. Calculus was the worst. I had completed maybe two full equations in an hour.

  "Uh, like, all of them," I said.

  Poppy shut my Math book, slamming down the front cover.

  "Want to go to the mall?" she said.

  "Not really."

  "Mom wants us to go."

  "And do what?"

  Poppy pulled two twenty-dollar bills out of the pocket of her jeans.

  "Spend this," she said. "It’s like an end-of-the-semester present."

  "You’re serious?" I asked her. "We’re not going to leave the house and spend your mom’s money and then get back here and have her be all pissed?"

  Poppy pocketed the money and pushed away from the table.

  "Come on," she said. "I don’t want to be the only person on the bus."

  One of the first things I’d really noticed about Lethbridge was that the bus service was seriously crappy and underused. Pretty often, you’d look through the window of a bus heading downtown and see it empty, except for the bus driver. It was the saddest when there was just a single passenger sitting mid-bus. Staring out the window. Looking lonely. So I knew what Poppy meant by not wanting to be alone. And twenty bucks was twenty bucks.

  We walked to the end of the street and waited for the first bus to come by. I didn’t want to walk through the snow to the mall. I’d never got around to getting a pair of boots and the powder stuck to my shoes and got into my socks. Poppy was bundled up for the weather. Complete with pom-pom hat.

  The mall was a depressing place. People sat out on the front steps, smoking and looking sketchy. Poppy walked right past them, holding the door open for me like I was her kid. She switched roles on me, making me out to be the younger, less experienced one.

  "You want to split up or something?" I asked her.

  She was examining the mall, her eyes flitting to the corners. I’d seen her do it before. In public places, she always surveyed the space first. She finally gave me a shrug and we stuck together.

  I bought us two smoothies from Orange Julius and we had a Cinnabon, too. It was a good thing I was swimming again. Aunt Lynne had taken me three more times. I was feeling less like the sack of potatoes I was becoming back at home.

  Christmas season meant the mall was packed. It was hard to find a table in the food court and we ended up finishing our smoothies on a bench in front of the movie theaters. And, surprise, the Christmas music was streaming through the entire mall, following me everywhere.

  "What do you do for Christmas at home?" Poppy asked me.

  Sometimes I thought she was playing a game with me or asking me a random thing just to fill up the silence. But this time she seemed genuinely interested. Her straw was poking up out of her smoothie cup and resting on her lower lip.

  "Not too much," I told her. "We usually open a present each on Christmas Eve, and it’s almost always pajamas or a movie that we all watch together. Me, my parents, and Bridge. We make a big breakfast on Christmas morning. That’s about it. Probably this year it’s not going to be much of anything. My sister’s spending Christmas in Australia. It doesn’t make sense for her to zip home for the holiday. And it looks like I’ll be spending Christmas here."

  "You’re not going home?"

  "I don’t think so," I said. But, really, I wasn’t sure. Christmas had never come up in my phone calls home. Mom and Dad liked to keep it in the immediate present. Not too far forward and definitely never backward. But I realized I’d be fine if it was just me and Aunt Lynne. That didn’t sound bad at all.

  "What about you?" I said, turning it back to her.

  Poppy bounced the straw between her teeth. There were tiny chew marks all over the place. I used to hate it when Bridge did that to the straw of the drink we’d share at a movie. She’d chomp it all up like a piece of gum until it was too gross to use. Poppy bit down again.

  "Nothing," she finally answered. "Christmas sucks at my house."

  She to
ssed the rest of her Orange Julius in the trash and headed down the mall.

  "You gotta stop doing that," I said, catching up with her.

  "What? You wanted to sit on the bench all day?"

  "No," I said, matching her pace. "Just don’t jet off. I don’t magically know where you’re going."

  She stopped where she was. She was so much shorter than me, which made her seem even more like a little kid.

  "Fine," she said. "Lead the way."

  "Look," I said. "If something’s wrong, tell me, okay? I can’t guess."

  "Nothing’s wrong," Poppy said.

  Something was. The look on her face was killer.

  "Let’s go spend your mom’s money," I told her.

  We walked through the mall with our arms touching. I didn’t even mind the Christmas music.

  "Hunter!"

  Aunt Lynne was calling downstairs, trying to get my attention. I put my head around the doorway to yell back up at her.

  "Give me a sec," I said. "I’m just on the phone with Bridge."

  "Play through," Aunt Lynne said, as if we were on a golf course. Ducking those round white golf balls. Dodging a dodgy swing from a club.

  Whatever Aunt Lynne needed me for, it was going to have to wait. The doorbell rang through the house, signaling the arrival of another piano student. One more week and Aunt Lynne would be on her holiday hiatus until the New Year. Until then, it was lessons every afternoon after school got out until nine o’clock at night. Aunt Lynne always missed the best shows on cable. I had to Tivo them for her to watch right before she went to bed.

  "So, like I was saying," I continued telling Bridget on the phone, "Mom and Dad haven’t said anything about Christmas. So I’m pretty sure it’s going to be just me and Aunt Lynne. Maybe we’ll all conference call you into Christmas morning. It could be a real party."

  "Do not do that," she said. "I don’t want to be depressed on Christmas."

  "Your loss."

  Bridget snorted. She sounded far away when she spoke, not a bad connection but a weak one. She was using an outdated pay-as-you-go phone. It didn’t even have the Internet. She couldn’t send pictures through text message.

  "So you’re done homeschooling for the semester?" You could hear the derision in her voice. Making total fun of the fact that I was a homeschooled student.

  "Yeah," I said. "Guess so."

  "When do you know if you’re staying for the whole year? I mean, shouldn’t you figure that out? If you have to get back home and register for the second semester of school, or if you’re just going to keep doing what you’re doing in Alberta?"

  "Bridge," I said. "I’m in the dark on this. Complete black-out on information."

  "I’ll see what I can find out," she said. "I’m calling Mom and Dad next."

  "Let me know."

  "Is that girl next door still bugging you?" Bridget asked.

  "Poppy," I said. "And it’s ‘girl across the alley.’ Her backyard’s right behind Aunt Lynne’s house. And, yeah, I see her mostly every day."

  The first time I talked to Bridget on the phone, I had led in with the fact that Poppy was a little strange. I think I said a couple of not choice words about her that I couldn’t take back. They’d colored Bridget’s entire perception of her.

  "Be careful, okay?" Bridget said. "She sounds a little strange."

  "I know. But she’s all right."

  We left a silence over the phone. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a silence that I didn’t want to immediately fill up. Except for with Niall. Those were easy silences. And maybe Poppy had the potential to leave some good ones, too.

  "I better go," Bridget said. "I don’t want to use up all of my credit on you."

  "Don’t get sunburnt," I told her.

  "SPF 50," she signed off.

  Upstairs, a student was banging out a clumsy "Joy to the World." I waited for him to finish before I knocked on the wall of the piano room. Aunt Lynne swiveled her head like an owl.

  "Did you need something?" I asked her.

  "Poppy called. You should go over there if you’re not doing anything."

  Poppy was at the front of her house, shoveling the driveway. The schhh schhh of the plastic on snowy cement was the winter equivalent of that droning sound that plays in the background of televised golf. Background noise that sounds exactly like the season.

  "Hey, Pops," I said. "My aunt said you called."

  "Mom asked me to shovel the driveway and the sidewalk before dinner," Poppy said. "Want to help?"

  Poppy hadn’t made more than a dent in the shoveling. There had been a fresh dump of snow the night before.

  "You got an extra shovel?"

  "In the garage," Poppy said.

  I found the shovel, purple plastic at the end of a long wooden handle. I almost wanted to borrow a pair of snow boots at the same time, from where they were all lined up on a boot rack. The mysterious boots from Poppy’s backpack were there, too. They seemed like the least likely item to be stolen out of Poppy’s garage. Questions were pretty one-way with that kid. I didn’t think I’d get another chance to ask about the boots. Not without her getting mad at me. Storming away.

  I left my questions in the garage and walked out with the shovel. Between the swimming and the shoveling, I was getting kind of ripped. Friends in BC would hardly recognize me.

  Poppy took care of the sidewalks while I did most of the driveway. Maybe monotonous workouts were the ones for me. Lifting. Shoveling. Swimming. Zoning-out activities.

  I tried to figure out what the time spent shoveling here was allocated to in Victoria, where shoveling almost never happened. Probably in raking up the leaves in the fall. They crunched underfoot from October until November. Crunched before they turned soggy from the rain.

  "Mind if I get some water?" I asked Poppy. I was sweating under my winter coat. Dress to impress for the weather and you ended up sweating right out of your clothes.

  "Bring me one, too," she said. "Actually, I think I want a Coke."

  "You got it," I said.

  I knew Poppy’s house just about as well as Aunt Lynne’s. Spending almost every day over there made it back-of-the-hand knowledge. I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water from the sink. The Coke was in the fridge. I grabbed a can for Poppy.

  Normally the kitchen table was completely clear, except for when me and Poppy were doing our homework. But today there was a big cardboard box sitting right in the center. The flaps were open. It was out of place in the tiny kitchen. Old newspaper articles were folded at the top. The pages weren’t yellowed—they weren’t that old—but they weren’t the off-white of day-of-publication.

  A picture and a headline on the top article were clearly visible. A light crease through the middle. It was easy enough to flatten it out against the table.

  Brent Haynes. There was a photo of him with the article, a grainy black and white. Poppy was almost a spitting image of him. Same nose, eyes, and expression. So this was Poppy’s dad. He was wearing a sharp suit and carrying a briefcase. Snapped leaving a building downtown. The headline said the guy had stolen millions.

  "Jesus."

  I reached for another article. This one gave more background information on Poppy’s dad. He worked at an investment firm. He started taking more than he invested. A whole lot more.

  "What are you doing?"

  Poppy was in the kitchen. She had a look on her face that almost matched her dad’s expression in the newspaper picture. Sad and tired and sorry.

  "Getting your Coke," I told her.

  The look on her face was breaking my heart.

  "Get away from that," she said. "It’s not supposed to be down here."

  "Was your mom going through it?"

  "My mom is always going through it," she said quietly.

  She took the article from my hand. Even though I could tell she was mad, she took it so gently. As if not to rip it.

  "Is that why your dad’s gone?" I asked her. "Because he stole some m
oney?"

  Poppy put the folded article back in the box. She shut the flaps and overlapped them, sealing the contents inside.

  "Yeah," she said, monotone. "That’s why he’s gone."

  Poppy wouldn’t look at me. She took the box upstairs and didn’t come down again.

  Finally, I went back to Aunt Lynne’s house. Heat was creeping through my chest and up my face. You know when someone quiet talks in class, and that area where their necklace hangs flushes this horrible red? You feel more embarrassed for them than you ever have before. I had that in an all-over-body sensation.

  "Did you help?" Aunt Lynne asked.

  It took me a minute to understand. The whole reason for going over to Poppy’s was to shovel that goddamn sidewalk. Not mess everything up between us.

  "Guess so," I said.

  "Well, you can do ours next. The city slaps you with a fine if the walks aren’t done."

  "You’ve been here all morning," I said.

  "I didn’t have time. Besides," she tousled my hair, a weird, little-kid gesture, "that’s what I’ve got a tenant for. The shovel’s in the garage. Do that and I’ll bring a pizza home for dinner."

  She shrugged on her jacket. A purple pea coat. Her boots clip-clopped across the floor.

  Aunt Lynne’s car started up in the driveway. She had been darting out to elementary schools since the start of December. She was playing piano for the Christmas concerts. When she talked about visiting the schools, it made me kind of miss it. All that tinsel, and candy canes passed out in the bleachers. I almost wanted to tag along with her.

  She’d said, ‘I’ll bring pizza.’ That meant an ETA of around dinnertime. The afternoon stretched out long and tunnel-like.

  Shoveling was going to be hard with those tire tracks across the snow. I wouldn’t be able to get it down to the pavement. I drained a can of Coke from the fridge. Supplies in the cupboard were low. I found a box of Chewy granola bars, the ones with a big peanut crossed out in red, nut-free for the allergic types. I ate a couple of them. MTV was counting down the top hundred songs of the 90s in anticipation of New Year’s. Man, I was glad I didn’t grow up in that decade. All that plaid and loose, light jeans. Tom Cochrane came on singing "Life is a Highway" and, I swear to God, I’d never have guessed he looked like that in about a million years. Floppy blond hair and baggy clothing. Plus, you never see dudes wearing wedding rings in music videos anymore. They don’t want to advertise that shit.