She disappears into the back. I wait, trying to recall what happened to my junior yearbook—did I even pick it up during the last week of school? I know I ordered one; I distinctly remember my dad writing a check last fall, insisting we try to carry on, promising I’d be thankful for the memories one day.
Doubtful, I think as my phone starts to ring. I pull it from my pocket to silence it, expecting my dad, or maybe Lucy.
But—no.
Isaac.
My heart stutters as I stare at his name on the screen, as I hurtle back to the first time I saw him with my sister, a warm afternoon last June. I’d just pulled into the driveway after an intense swim practice and an epic finals study session, frazzled, sure my family would be gathered around the table, Mom tapping an impatient toe as dinner grew cold.
I’d almost missed him, sitting on his house’s front porch swing.
With my sister.
I abandoned my things and made my way over. Isaac was wearing jeans, a Padres T-shirt, and a sheepish smile. Chloe was in spandex shorts, a fitted workout tank, and her favorite sneakers, which kicked the planks as she kept the swing moving. She’d let her hair free of its usual ponytail; it was dampened with sweat along her hairline.
“Hey, Cal,” she called as I stepped up onto the porch.
“What’s up? Good run?”
“Always.”
I glanced at Isaac as I leaned against the porch railing. There was a foot of space between the pair of them, but all I could see was him, next to her. I felt dizzy and terribly left out.
“Enjoying your summer break?” I asked. It was weird, pretending he and I were casual acquaintances.
“Couldn’t be better,” he said, eyes flashing surreptitiously.
“I can’t wait for summer,” Chloe said. “Three more days until school’s out!”
“Can’t come soon enough,” I agreed, wondering if my irritation translated at the same potent level with which it coursed through my veins. Mostly, I hoped not. It was silly to be jealous of my sister. Ridiculous to doubt Isaac. It was senseless, speculating about the two of them, but a small, petty part of me wanted them—him—to realize how awful I felt.
Chloe raised a hand to push her hair from her face. Her top drifted up.
I stared at Isaac, silently daring him to look.
His eyes stayed glued to mine.
I smiled.
He was a good guy.
“Mom’s going to want us home for dinner any minute,” Chloe said, a hint that we should both be on our way.
“And Dad’s going to kill you for running around the city in those clothes,” I countered.
She hopped up, leaving Isaac to swing alone. She launched into a twirl, showing off the attire that would likely send our dad into cardiac arrest. Her arms came up and her stomach peeked out and her hair haloed around her. She was two parts angelic, one part vixen, and in that moment, I loathed her.
“See you at the house,” she said. She blew me a kiss, then scampered down the porch steps, legs disproportionately long, sunset hair swishing against her back, provoking a startling shift in my perception.
She wasn’t a coquette; she was an awkward kid with big dreams and questionable focus.
Chloe was my sister, not a threat.
Green was hideous on me.
“Callie,” Isaac called as I’d twisted around to trail after her.
“I’ll talk to you another time,” I’d said, too ashamed to turn back.
I can’t talk to him today, either. Not after so long. Not after the reckless night we spent together last winter. And not while whatever went on between him and Chloe—the truth of it—remains an empty void. I can’t ask him about my sister, the two of them, because I don’t trust that he’ll be honest. And I definitely can’t ask Chloe.
Which means I live, every day, with questions, with doubts, with irrepressible guilt regarding the part I played.
I leave the call unanswered.
As I’m shoving my phone back into my pocket, the librarian comes out of the back room, arms laden with a stack of yearbooks.
“1996 through 1999,” she says, dumping them on the counter. “If you don’t find what you’re looking for, let me know and I’ll pull some others for you.”
Forget about him, forget about him, forget about him.
“Thanks so much,” I tell her, pushing my shoulders back, deleting all thoughts of Isaac from my head.
I heave the stack of yearbooks off the counter and carry them to a table well away from the circulation desk, in need of space, room to breathe. I get started searching the 1999 yearbook, but it’s empty of Annabel’s name and photo. I grab the 1998 edition, thumbing to the senior class, and then to the students with last names that begin with T.
And … top, left corner … Annabel Tate.
Her face is framed in a rectangle, and she’s smiling at me like we’re old friends. She’s beautiful and healthy and alive, dirty-blond and bright-eyed, the kind of girl who sweeps homecoming selections and gets cast in skin-care commercials. She looks like fun, like someone who makes her friends laugh, who makes boys take a second look, who makes the people around her strive to be better versions of themselves.
She reminds me of Chloe.
22
All night I lie in bed, in that weird in-between state of sleep and awareness. Every time I start to drift off for real, I hear the phantom trill of Isaac’s call and end up thinking about Chloe and my regrets. Annabel and her regrets. I’ve been up more than once, opening my nightstand drawer to look over its contents: my sister’s swim cap, goggles, notebook, and pen. A’s letters.
She was caught between two boys.
Chloe and I battled for the same boy.
The link makes my stomach jittery. My hands clammy. Sends my mind spinning.
I want to smoke, but I’m running low. I’ve got no one to buy from here in Bell Cove, and it seems prudent to maintain a reserve for emergencies.
I flip onto my back and stare at the ceiling, considering a different anxiety fix, the activity that used to calm me the way smoking has over the last year.
When dawn colors the sky, I climb out of bed and, without allowing myself to think too hard about what I’m about to do, dig the single swimsuit I packed from the bottom of a pile of clothing in the wardrobe. I pull it on, the black Lycra hugging my body, then slip sweats and a sweatshirt over top. I retrieve my backpack and double-check the front pocket for my swim cap and goggles, nearly identical to Chloe’s. With a few quick keystrokes on my laptop, I locate the local pool and jot directions onto a scrap of paper.
Last summer, when we visited Bell Cove, Chloe was in serious training mode. She convinced me that the ocean was where we needed to swim; she’d benefit from the added challenge of waves and currents. Lucy was hesitant about our going to the beach at first—the water is cold—but it didn’t take much in the way of cajoling to get her to drive us to Portland for a pair of wet suits. Chloe loved swimming in the Pacific; she’d run at the waves screaming “Freedom!” with such exuberance, flocks of seagulls were scared into the sky.
I prefer pools—treated water and measured laps and safety—but I’d follow Chloe anywhere.
Silent as a shadow, I tiptoe into the hallway to the closet where Lucy keeps beach towels and add one to my backpack.
I peek into her room before I go. She’s sleeping, curled into a corner of her California king, wild hair fanned out across her pillow. The lamp on her nightstand is still on, a copy of Anna Karenina facedown on the mattress beside her. When she lets out a deep sigh, I fight the urge to wake her, to tell her everything, to confess to the weed and the shame and the ghost, Tucker and my opposed feelings, and how, maybe, I’m not so okay at all.
The urge slips away as quickly as it arrived, and then all I want is to be in the water.
The sun isn’t entirely up, but the sky is gorgeous, like someone blended pink and tangerine and violet chalk across the heavens. I wheel a bike out of the garden shed
, hoist my backpack onto my back, and take off down the hill. Once I’m on the outskirts of town, I pull the directions from my pocket. The pool is part of a larger park, out on Pine Street. I follow Bell Cove’s empty roads to the address, apprehension building with every rotation of the bike’s pedals.
When I see the chain-link fence, a rectangle of turquoise water sparkling beyond, my heart ramps into high gear. Parking the bike, I heave countless memories of swimming with my sister out of my head.
A groundskeeper walks the deck, sweeping the pool for debris. “Morning.”
I give a curt wave, too high-strung to play at friendly.
“Don’t see many people out this early,” he says, rounding the pool. “New to town?”
“Visiting.”
He nods. “I’m done here, but I’ll be around the park if you need anything.”
I wait for him to duck into the storage shed before kicking off my flip-flops and peeling my sweats away. After unearthing my cap and goggles from my backpack, I leave it and my clothes on a lounge chair, then walk across the smooth concrete to the edge of the water. It’s a lap pool, twenty-five yards, with floating lane lines stretched across its surface. The water’s clear, reflecting the deepening colors of sunrise. It washes gently over the grated gutters, inviting.
I sit, dangling my legs. My last swim was with Chloe, in the ocean, two months before the triathlon she never got to compete in. I close my eyes, releasing a breath with thoughts of my sister and the many, many dreams she never had a chance to see through. Then I stretch my cap on, twisting my hair so it fits beneath. Goggles come next, tiny windows that remind me of what life used to be: simple, happy, privileged.
I ease into the water. It’s cool, but not so cold I lose my breath. Sinking to the bottom, I release a stream of bubbles and look around. I could be in the Caribbean. I could be in the Arctic. It’s so quiet, just me and the water, the weight of it pressing against me, holding me together.
With a burst of exhilaration, I push off the bottom, long and streamlined. A torpedo. I surface almost halfway down the lane, kicking hard, propelling myself forward with alternating pulls of the water in my cupped hands.
I swim freestyle to the far end of the pool, then roll into a flip turn. When my feet hit the wall, I shove off, stretching my arms over my head, shooting through the water as unbound and graceful as a dolphin. And then I’m kicking again, crawling through the water with long, powerful strokes, energized by the freedom of it.
Holy hell, I’ve missed this.
* * *
I’m only about five hundred yards into my workout when there’s a splash in the lane next to mine, down near the wall I’m swimming toward. I slow, watching through my goggles as a million silver bubbles form around the person who’s interrupted my solitude.
He sinks, reaching his arms over his head, bowing his back in a way that makes me do a double take. His shape is familiar: tall, muscles cut across his abdomen, expansive shoulders. But it’s his hair, shining in the warm morning light, that’s unmistakable.
Tucker waves, eyes invisible through dark goggles. I wave back, then continue my swim. He stays in the lane next to mine, powering through his sets, kicking past me more times than I can count. He must rack up eight or nine thousand yards by the time the sun’s fully risen.
When I hoist myself out of the pool to sit on the gutter, my legs are Jell-O, and my arms are about as useless. Breathing hard, I remove my goggles and strip the cap from my head. Shaking out my damp hair, I stare unabashedly as Tucker glides to the wall. Placing his hands flat on the grate, he lifts out of the water, twisting around to sit next to me. He flings his goggles onto one of the chairs behind us.
“Hey,” I say, weirdly shy about my suit, my wet hair, and my skin, pink with exertion. “Don’t you get enough exercise pulling weeds all day?”
“Pulling weeds isn’t gonna do me much good when water polo picks up in the fall.” He runs a hand through his dripping hair. My eyes follow tiny water droplets that streak down his cheeks, his neck, his chest. Lower. He’s wearing a black training suit, jammers that cover his thighs but sit perilously low on his hips.
I shake my head in a futile effort to clear it. “I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
“I could say the same.” His expression is drawn, wounded. “You didn’t tell me you swim.”
“I don’t. This morning was a one-time thing.”
“Huh. ’Cause it looks like something you’ve been doing your whole life.”
“I haven’t been in a pool in ages. More than a year.”
“How come?”
I splash water over my legs. “I needed a break.”
“Why?”
“God, Tucker. I don’t know. I just did, okay?”
He draws back. “Yeah. Okay.”
He hops up and walks to the chairs circling the pool. Grabbing a towel from his bag, he rubs himself dry, then scrubs the terry cloth through his hair. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even look at me.
I sit on the grate, dumbfounded and sort of annoyed, the same emotions I experienced the first time I upset Isaac. I’d dropped the news about my trip to Bell Cove on him like it was no big deal, like I up and left boyfriends regularly, and he’d said, dismayed, “The whole summer?”
“It’s a couple of months,” I replied, as if he’d blink and I’d return.
“But … why?”
“Because my aunt just moved to Oregon and she needs help fixing up this house she bought. She’s cool, and Chloe’s going, too, and it’s going to be a chance for us to all bond.”
“When are you coming back?”
“Middle of August.”
He gaped at me. “I leave for San Diego at the end of August. That gives us, what? A couple of weeks?”
I’d been looking forward to my Oregon trip, but seeing how stricken he was had me second-guessing my plans. We hadn’t been together long—what if we didn’t survive a summer apart?
Following on the heels of vacillation, though, was irritation. Did I really owe him an explanation?
“I have to go,” I said, though actually, I wanted to go.
“You don’t even seem bummed.”
“I am. But I’m excited about seeing my aunt and hanging out with Chloe.”
We’d been holding hands, and that was when he let mine go. “Aren’t you going to miss me?”
“Of course. I’ll be busy, though. And so will you.”
He tilted his head, considering me with his dark eyes. “What if I come down for a visit?”
That seemed a reasonable compromise. Anything to get him to stop looking at me like I’d taken a mallet to his pride. “Yeah,” I said, reclaiming his hand. “That could be fun.”
He smiled then, showing off the dimple that never failed to charm me.
Shaking the memory off, I leave the gutter to retrieve my towel, wrapping it like a toga. To appear impervious, I pull a paddle brush from my backpack and go about detangling my hair while Tucker winds his own towel around his waist, then digs into his bag. He’s being all huffy, shoving clothes and an extra towel out of the way until he unearths a pair of board shorts.
I can’t stand the quiet or his obvious aggravation. “Are you seriously mad?”
“No,” he says, still not looking at me.
“Are you sure?”
“Callie, I don’t know enough to be mad.”
I have no idea how to respond to that—if I even should. He strips his suit from beneath his towel, tosses it onto the chair, then pulls the board shorts on. He zips the fly before yanking the towel away. He reveals nothing.
Impressive.
I zone in on the art embellishing his bicep, constricting with his movements. It’s a circle containing three undulating lines, beneath three curling waves, done in neat black strokes. I try to picture him in a tattoo parlor, clenching his jaw as a brawny, heavily inked man marks his tanned flesh. It’s a difficult image to conjure.
My voice is a stri
king contrast to the quiet when I ask, “What’s with the tattoo?”
He glances at it, then pulls on a T-shirt, letting its short sleeve cover the art. “Nothing.”
“I like it.”
He’s in the midst of stuffing gear into his bag, but he pauses to tell me, “I had it done when I got to Pepperdine.”
“You’re into the water. It’s cool.”
“I guess.” He shrugs, zipping his bag, preoccupied, and it occurs to me, suddenly and startlingly, that he’s keeping something from me.
He straightens, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder, then looks toward the gate leading to the parking lot. It’s clear he’s hurt by my swimming omission, and if only I could tell him why I didn’t mention it, why it was so hard for me to come here this morning, why I feel hollowed out by the awareness that, for the first time in a year, I swam.
Without Chloe.
And then, with certainty that alarms me, I realize I want to tell him these things.
More than that, I want him to stop looking at me like I’ve betrayed him.
“Do you come here every morning?” I ask.
“Pretty much.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again.”
“I thought swimming was a one-time thing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. It felt good to be back in the water.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed it.”
“Funny how that happens,” he says, smiling at last. “What’re you up to now? Lucy cooking you a four-course breakfast?”
I shrug. “Not that I know of.”
He drops his gaze, toeing the deck a second, like he’s collecting courage. When his eyes find mine again, they reflect the clear green-blue of the pool water; he looks so eager, so hopeful. “If you’re not eating with her, maybe you and I can grab something. There’s this place down by the beach.… It’s kind of a local secret.”
I’ve sidestepped this moment, the one where Tucker gets direct and asks me out, a few times. But this morning my choices are clear: the honest but risky: Yes, Tucker, I’d like to have breakfast, you and me, or the deceitful yet safe: No thanks, Tucker, I’m not interested in you.
How the Light Gets In Page 10