I envied her. It was great watching her have fun. She raced back to the shore, splashed water on me, then raced out, and dived into the surf. When she was tired of that, she took her shirt from me and put it back on. We went back to the shade to rest and I noticed that certain parts of her shirt were wet.
We made it back to the cabin before my battery gave up. Dad plugged it in to recharge it while we had lunch. It would need a long recharge during the night but after lunch, it would be okay if we stuck closer to the cabin.
After we ate, I got into my bathing suit and put on lots of sunscreen. Everyone went this time. Lindsey walked beside me as I motored over the boardwalk and onto the thick sand. I drove the wheelchair up to the edge of the water. I was anxious to go into the gulf after having watched Lindsey.
With my dad around, I was not as worried about being stuck so I edged the wheelchair into the water.
Dad strapped a life belt around my stomach, the kind that skiers use, and then he helped me get out of the wheelchair and carried me out to deeper water. When he put me down in the water, I floated. The life belt did a great job of holding me up. I moved my arms and dad let me go. I began to swim. The waves scared me at first because they would come rolling in and if I did not get set up right, they would crash over me! I nearly swallowed half the ocean until I learned to get into the rhythm of the waves.
Lindsey loved having me out of the wheelchair. We could swim together. She had a noodle that she used for flotation so she didn’t get tired having to swim all the time just to stay out where I had to be so my feet didn’t crash against the gulf bottom.
Lindsey pulled me out into deeper water. We challenged the bigger waves, floating up over them when we could and putting our heads down and trying to swim through them when we could not. The water was so clear that we could see fish darting beneath our legs. We floated for a while and Lindsey pointed to something on the surface of the water a few dozen yards away.
“What’s that?”
I peered through salt-stinging eyes. “Looks like a bag.”
“Let’s go see,” Lindsey said.
We paddled in the direction of the bag floating on the water. It was easier for me to put my face down when I swam because it helped my legs get into the right position. I suddenly pulled up. “Lindsey!”
She followed my finger. There were more than a dozen of those “bags.” They looked as if someone blew bubbles and dropped them in the water. Only these bubbles were big! “Oh, my,” she said.
“I think we should go the other way,” I said. “Those might be jelly fish!”
“Is that bad?” She asked.
“It is if they sting you.”
Without waiting to see if she believed me, I turned and began to pull toward the shore. Lindsey did not hesitate; she followed me and soon passed me. When she could walk on the bottom, she stopped and waited, jumping with the waves as they came toward her. Our parents saw us coming back fast. My dad came out to see what was going on and I told him about the jellyfish.
“Here, let’s get you out of the water,” he said.
He loaded me back into the wheelchair and I motored up to where my mom and the Andersons were. Lindsey wrapped herself in a towel and sat down in the shade. We told them what we had seen and Mr. Anderson pulled a pair of binoculars from his bag and peered into the water.
“I think they’re right,” he said, handing the glasses to my dad.
Dad looked through them for a few seconds and said, “Okay, I guess the beach is closed today.”
“Why?” Lindsey asked.
Her step dad leaned back in the sand. “Those look like Medusa Jellyfish,” he said. “They won’t kill you but if you get under them, those long tentacles that hang down will make you think you’re on fire.”
Everyone looked at her dad in awe. “How do you know that?” Lindsey asked. She wasn’t being impolite, she was curious.
“I got stung by one of them when I was about your age. It’s not something you forget!”
Dad pulled a Frisbee out of the bag mom brought. “Want to play catch?” He looked directly at me.
“Yeah, sure.” I was not sure I could catch one.
Lindsey popped up and unwrapped from her towel. “Me too!”
Dad waited until I backed up about ten feet before he tossed it. I missed it and had to use the wheelchair to retrieve it. I reached down and got it. I tossed it back and it barely got there. Dad picked it up and tossed it to Lindsey. She tossed it back. After the fifth toss, I was getting frustrated. Finally, I caught one! After that, it was easier and I figured out how to maneuver the wheelchair in such a way that I could throw the Frisbee a long way.
It was fun until the battery died.
Dad pushed me back to the umbrellas where the others were. Mom had a picnic laid out and I got out of the wheelchair and sprawled on a blanket. Lindsey came and sat down beside me. We ate, talked, and listened to the sounds of the beach and surf. It was fun. I fell asleep on the blanket. It was almost evening before we went back to the cabins for supper.
The next day we woke up to the sound of crashing surf. The wind was so strong that palm trees were leaning. Dad anxiously dialed up the weather channel and found that it was just a storm, not a hurricane.
After breakfast, we stayed on the porch and talked, watching the clouds gather. When the rain came, it came hard, lasted a couple of hours, and then was gone. In just a few minutes, the beach was sparkling in the sunshine. It turns out that the storm cleared the water of the jellyfish so we were able to go back in.
Every day dad helped me get into the water and then Lindsey took over. She loved to swim. We had such a good time in the water that we hated to come out. I felt like a normal kid while we were there. Back on the beach, Lindsey collected seashells and put them in my lap as we toured the deserted, private sand. We went often to our little oasis of trees to talk and enjoy the cool ocean breezes. I felt at peace.
After supper, we would play board games. A small rivalry developed between us. Lindsey and I won so many games that our parents kept demanding rematches. It was great! After the games were over, our moms and dads sat in the living room and talked while Lindsey and I took over the porch.
“I really like it here,” Lindsey said one night while we sat on the porch alone. “No school, no hassles…” she looked over at me. I had my eyes closed because I was trying to remember where Cassiopeia was in the night sky. “…Jimmy?”
I opened my eyes. I remembered. I squinted but could not see it. Then I realized she was talking to me. I looked at her.
“I said I like it here.”
“I do too. Can you see Cassiopeia?”
She gave me a look but walked out the screen door and looked into the sky. She knew her stars and constellations as well as I did. We had studied them together using an old Boy Scout handbook from my scouting days. She came back in. “It’s too early.”
Mom brought two cokes out then and put them in front of us. She smiled at me and went back inside without a word.
“It’s so great living on a beach!” She said, continuing where she had left off as if I had not asked about the stars.
“Yeah,” I had to agree. I sipped the coke.
“Jimmy…” She flopped down on the porch swing a few feet away and put her feet up on it. It creaked, made a squeak, and then moved back and forth from transferred energy. “…Someday I’d like you to bring me back here. Just the two of us, okay?”
I frowned. I looked at the door of the cabin and saw through the screen that mom and dad and the Andersons were talking in the living room. They would not have heard that comment. Then I looked at her face. “What are you talking about?”
She studied me earnestly. “When we get married,” she said. Her face did not break into giggles and laughter.
I was startled. My face must have revealed how amusing I thought she was being because she bridled.
“I’m serious,” she warned.
“Married?” I was in
credulous. I could not believe she would say such a thing. My voice revealed my amusement and consternation. I did not want to take her seriously because it was so weird. I wheeled to the small, round table and put my coke down. As I did, I saw her face contort and put out my hand to stop a torrent of whatever might be getting ready to erupt. “Wait!” I said. “It’s just that you’re thirteen and I’m seventeen. It’s weird to talk about marriage now, that’s all.”
She bit her lip. I read the look on her face. She thought I was putting her down because she was too young to know her own mind regarding anything as important as that. But as I watched, her face lightened and she grinned at me. “Just remember I want to come here for our honeymoon.”
When I did not continue the conversation, she seemed disappointed. I did not know what else to say. A lot could happen before she was even old enough to get married. Moreover, maybe I would not wait for her to grow up! Yeah, I had prospects out there—dozens of them, all dying to marry a cripple. I looked at her tomboyish figure and tried to calculate the future bumps and curves.
She was looking at me speculatively when I looked up at her face again. I blushed. Her statement about wanting to marry me had knocked me completely off my safe, comfortable, oblivious perch.
Two days after that, another strange thing happened. The cabin had an outside shower so people coming back from swimming in the ocean could get the salt off their clothes. It happened to be outside my bedroom window. The shower was below the level of my window because the ground sloped. If people were taking showers and I looked out my window, I would see the tops of their heads almost six inches below the windowsill, depending on how tall they were. That morning I got up late and Lindsey went to the beach without me. I heard the shower running and wheeled my chair to the window to see if it was Lindsey so we could eat breakfast together. I saw the top of her head, long brown hair hanging to the middle of her back, which was toward me. Her body had tanned nicely with all of its exposure to the sun last week and this week. She was holding something in her hand. I leaned, about to tap on the window to get her attention, when I saw that she was holding her bikini top in her hand. The twin cups dangled from the thin, green straps. My breath caught hard in my throat and I could feel my pulse in my temple as she began to turn to face the water. I ducked back from the window with my heart racing.
The rest of the time, I wondered if she did that deliberately because of what I said to her on the porch, that she was just thirteen. I told myself over and over that she must have just forgotten that my room was above the shower. If she did know, she probably thought I was still asleep. Still, my heart thumped whenever I thought about it.
Chapter 7
With our birthdays being close together, we decided to celebrate during the in-between time. She turned fourteen and I turned eighteen. The age gap would have been insurmountable except that she was smart, kind, and my best friend. I knew without a doubt that she liked me—especially after what she said at the beach house. In many ways, we complimented each other. We actually finished sentences for each other or did not even have to complete them. I knew her and she knew me so well that when we picked out presents neither one of us was surprised. We were both pleased.
Shortly after our birthdays school started. It was my senior year and I was grateful, thankful and excited. I wanted to graduate. I had learned so much about life over the last two years that I no longer felt angry. Life was about choices. I made the choice to be satisfied with my lot in life and that allowed me to move on. I could make of my life whatever I chose instead of remaining locked in a prison of anger and pain.
The best part of school was that Lindsey and I rode together every day. Ever since we took vacation together as families, I felt more protective and possessive of her. I enjoyed picking her up in the morning and again after school. I loved watching her run to the car, excited and happy to be getting back together with me again.
The chess club elected me president without a single dissenting vote. I put everyone on a regime of study and we drew diagrams of chess moves on the board during our meetings. We even invented a few new moves I thought, but later found that they were already part of chess lore. A couple of new kids joined the chess club and we ended up with twelve members. It meant we did not have to play as many games per person. We had the same results in chess club the first part of the school year as we had the year before but three other chess club members also became contenders that year. We beat the 3A boys with five members of our club instead of just the two of us. That resulted in an invitation to a championship match against non-division players.
Lindsey and I played constantly in preparation for the contest. We actually made it to the finals by defeating six opponents without a loss.
The finals were a big deal. People came from all over the country to watch. Both Lindsey and I were nervous as the bell rang to signal the final round. She was in a different class because of her age. I noticed that the Placerville principle was there. A bunch of the chess club members from his school were there too. I rolled over and said, “Hi.” They did not seem happy to see us.
Lindsey’s match was before mine because she was in a lower division. I sat nervously with my parents in the gallery as Lindsey, her long brown hair hanging over the back of the chair she was sitting on, waited for the bell to ring. She was playing the white pieces and had the first move. Her opponent was reputed to be very good. He was something of a child prodigy in music, playing three instruments flawlessly by age twelve. At age fourteen, he had mastered three languages. However, he had never come up against an opponent as determined and worthy as the girl that now sat across from him.
Lindsey began with Bobby Fischer’s classic opening. The kid countered with something I had never seen. Lindsey did not move until the first timer sounded and then she seemed to be nervous and frightened as she moved her pawn tentatively out to meet the unexpected move. The kid smiled and made another move that floored me. I was glad that I was not playing the kid because his moves made no sense to me. I could see the nervousness in Lindsey’s body. The kid made his third move and Lindsey sat back. She waited until the buzzer sounded and then leaned forward and moved her knight over to protect against the kid’s bishop. I saw that she was playing defensively and that was new. My heart was in my throat as the kid challenged her queen with his bishop and I wanted to scream “no!” when Lindsey captured the boy’s bishop and sacrificed her queen. Two moves later I sat back stunned. The loss of her queen did what she wanted it to do. It made the boy forget she had the knight in position to take his rook. It was, forgive the pun, a rookie mistake. She captured the rook and the boy bit his lip. He moved a bishop to cover and she swooped down from the other side with her bishop and hit the clock. “Checkmate,” she said softly.
The room exploded with cheers and laughter and shouting. I think I did all three myself! Lindsey stood up and the boy she had just beaten sat stunned. Lindsey earned a $1,000 scholarship and a gold medal. When his friends gathered around him to ask what happened he just said he had gambled and failed. I guessed we would see him again someday.
I won my finals match but it took everything I had. The kid I played was smart and he nearly beat me. We were both sweating. I was determined not to lose because Lindsey had won. I escaped by recalling something that Lindsey had shown me on the internet once. When I won, my parents, Lindsey’s parents, and the whole chess club gave me a standing ovation. I also won a gold medal and a scholarship for $1,000 to the school of my choice.
Looking up chess moves on the internet, a few days after the tournament, I accidentally typed in the wrong search word and found myself looking at a web site that specialized in chests. I quickly closed that screen and redid the search but a couple of the images stayed with me even as I studied some complicated moves by some new chess masters. I snuck a peek at Lindsey and caught her glancing quickly away.
“Sorry,” I said. “There’s so much crap out there if you make one little mistake, they get
you.” I felt compelled to apologize to her.
She did not comment so I went back to my task. I did find myself glancing at her profile as she did her homework and finally she said, “Stop looking at me like that.”
Not knowing if she was mad or not, I pushed my chair back from the table and asked if she wanted a coke. She did. I took the time going down the elevator to the kitchen to think. Why was I looking at her “profile” when it was senseless and could only lead to feelings of anger, depression, and the like? However, at the same time—her profile was intriguing. She had changed a lot in the two plus years since she survived meeting the mad-at-the-world fifteen-year-old, me.
How did I feel about Lindsey? I had to ask the question as the elevator doors opened and I wheeled my paraplegic self toward the kitchen. I liked her as a friend because…she was interesting…no, interested. She was interested in the same things I was and she challenged me without regard to my handicap. Now if I started thinking about sex and stuff like that, my handicap would get in the way and I’d make a huge mess of something that was going pretty well now—my…no, our lives. Besides, no matter how grown up she seemed to everyone, including me, she was only fourteen.
My mom was writing out a grocery list at the table when I zoomed past her and grabbed two cokes from the refrigerator. She looked up and smiled as I went by and then returned to her list. “Anything you need?” She asked.
“More cokes,” I said but she already had that neatly written on her list. I wanted to ask her about the thing that had just happened upstairs but could not think of how to start that conversation. I also knew the timing was wrong. I decided to put it off until later, if I could get the courage to talk about it.
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