Breathing

by Cheryl Renee Herbsman

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgements

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,

  Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the U.S.A. by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009

  Copyright © Cheryl Renée Herbsman, 2009

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Herbsman, Cheryl.

  Breathing / by Cheryl Herbsman.

  p. cm.

  Summary: With a new boyfriend, asthma attacks that come when least expected, and a pesky younger brother, fifteen-year-old Savannah’s summer vacation takes many unexpected twists and turns.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-02244-3

  [1. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 2. Asthma—Fiction.

  3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H4311Br 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2008023262

  .S.A.

  Set in Minion

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Oded,

  for always holding the dream.

  And to Maya and Jonah,

  our dreams come true.

  1

  Strange feelings come over me sometimes, kind of like déjà vu, only before it happens. It’s sort of like I know what’s heading my way, but not really. I reckon some folks would find that peculiar, but I’m used to it by now. Up out of nowhere came the feeling this very morning that this’ll be the summer I remember as the one when everything changed.

  But first off, let me loop back around and start at the beginning. Savannah Georgina Brown is the name my mama chose for me, according to her family’s tradition. At the moment I came slithering out of her body, she cut on the radio and named me for the first word she heard—as if it was a sign from above. That’s how her kin have chosen their babies’ names going back for generations. Apparently, when I was born, the newsman was going on about a tornado that was hitting Savannah, Georgia. But Mama thought naming me Savannah Georgia Brown would be tacky. So it’s Savannah Georgia Brown. Like that’s so much better.

  I’m just relieved I didn’t come out one second sooner, or my name might have been Tornado Brown. Or what if that durn storm had been headed towards Augusta or worse yet, Macon! Alls I can say is thank the Lord it was a tornado and not a hurricane—’cause them hurricanes always end up with old lady names like Henrietta or Pearl.

  My daddy gave me my last name—after himself, of course—Brown. That’s about all I got left of him, that and a pair of lungs that quit on me every time the wind blows. The way Mama tells it, my asthma started the very day he left us. Supposedly his name is Booker Bo Brown III, and those who know him call him Trip. Sadly I can’t count myself among them, seeing as how he tripped right on out of our lives when I was barely out of diapers.

  “Savannah!” Mama’s hollering at me now.

  “Yes’m?”

  “Where in the you-know-what is your brother at?”

  “How should I know? Am I his keeper?”

  “Damn right you are! Now hustle on down to the beach and tell that boy to come do his chores like I asked him. I’ve got exactly ten minutes to get my butt to work ’fore they fire my ass. I haven’t time to be chasing him all over tarnation!”

  “Like I do?” I mutter. “Why’s it always me has to be on him?”

  Mama’s been fired from near about every job in town. Aside from being consistently tardy, which she just can’t seem to help, she has to miss work a lot. They don’t take too kindly to that. It ain’t as if it’s her fault.

  “Did you hear me, girl? Now quit running your mouth and go on after your brother!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I guess I’m headed to the beach. Least I can take my bike. By the time they’re going into the tenth grade, most girls think riding a bike is dumb or babyish, but not me. I love riding fast and free, wind blowing in my ears. I could ride all day if Mama would let me. It don’t take but five minutes to get down to the beach the back way.

  Anyhow, like I was saying, my daddy cut out on us when I was three, right after Dog was born. Dog’s my little brother. Mama named him Dogwood after the tree that was blooming outside her window when he was born. After my close call with the tornado, and with my daddy on the verge of leaving, that’s how scared she was to see what sign the heavens might send. Personally, I think the radio would have been a better bet. I mean, dogwoods are pretty and all with their tender white flowers reminding you that spring is nigh, but nobody calls my brother anything but Dog. Can you imagine? He thinks he’s got the coolest name on God’s green earth. I tell you what—I feel sorry for him come fall when he hits the seventh grade and comes to find out it’s one big joke. What kind of sane person wants to go about with a name like Dog? At least he ain’t a girl.

  I’m almost down to the beach. We live in an itty bitty town on the Carolina coast. Hardly nobody even knows it’s here—unless they need some gas or a bite to eat, and get a little lost. Not like one of them tourist towns where all the beachgoers end up.

  Summer is about the only time of life worth discussing around here. The rest of the year is one big blob of boredom getting in the way of summer vacation. Our town is so dead in wintertime you’d have thought the whole lot of us had got up and took off for some revival meeting or something. Dead as a dang doornail.

  I get to the beach, and there’s Dog wrestling in the wet sand like a young’un half his age—I swear! “Dog! Get on up outta that mud! Mama says you best get on home and do your chores.”

  “Has she left for work?”

  “Yes! Now git!”

  “Then how’s she gonn’ know what time I come in?”

  He has a point. “Just see to it them chores get done ’fore she gets home.”

  He’s already back to wrestling with his sidekick, Davis Wilson,
AKA Dave. It ain’t exactly a fair fight, since Dog is big for his age and thick like a football player, while Dave is more of your basic runt. Dog and Dave have been best friends as long as I can remember. They’re like twins, but from different mothers. They were born one day apart and have spent near about every day since then together. Mama and Gina, Dave’s mom, have traded off babysitting since the very beginning.

  Once we got big enough not to need a grown-up looking after us, it became my job to watch Dog and Dave in the summers. But this year, Mama and Gina are letting them be out on their own, long as they stay out of trouble. I reckon they’re hoping the boys will keep each other busy enough that they won’t find their way into too much mischief. Some of their friends go to day camps, but others are in the same boat as us—not having enough money for such things. So they’ve got plenty of kids to hang around with.

  I’m fixing to sit down on the dry sand and enjoy the sun on my face when I spy this surfer I’ve been keeping my eye on the last couple weeks. He’s got short-cropped hair and sea-green eyes. He is so cute.

  He looks right sad, though, standing by his board near the shoreline, staring off like there’s something waiting for him out there in the water. Lord have mercy, he must have sensed me watching him. He’s looking right at me, his eyes connected to mine like he knows me, even though we’ve never spoken a word. I’m getting all flushed, like I’m the one who’s been in the sun all afternoon without protection instead of my stupid brother.

  Goodness, I’m smiling at him. How can you not when someone looks at you like that, his eyes all shiny like he’s glad to see me? Whoa man, I’m getting worked up. My face must be red as a hornet’s hairy behind. I’ve got to turn away. Not that I want to—I don’t—but I mean, I have to. John Brown it, where is my bike? Okay, I caught my breath, I’m going to look back at him. Hell in a handbasket, he’s gone.

  I think I’ll head down the beach a ways, see if I can’t see where he got off to. “Dog, I’m warning you!” I yell. That ought to suffice. Anyhow, as I was saying, Mama and Gina have been friends ever since they were both working at the Piggly Wiggly. They kept on trading babysitting even after Mama got fired and started working at the Hardee’s. That was quite a few jobs back. Now she’s at the Family Dollar Store, which is two towns over. They’d have made her a manager by now if she was more dependable. But like I said, it ain’t like it’s her fault.

  I got serious asthma, and sometimes it gets real bad and I need to go to the hospital, which is a ways from home, and when it’s real, real bad Mama’s got to carry me clear out to Wilmington for the right doctors. She may leave us alone at home near about every day, but she don’t never leave me at the hospital by myself. Mama don’t trust them folks any further than she can throw them. When we go in, her little notebook comes out, and down go all the doctors’ orders and nurses’ names, all to make sure nobody gives me the wrong medicines or nothing.

  Maybe her bosses would be more understanding if she’d just tell them why she’s not coming to work. But she says she don’t want nobody pitying me, that she’s had enough pity to last her a lifetime and just can’t take no more. Course she won’t ever explain what pity it is she’s speaking of, no matter how many times I ask her.

  Since my asthma started the day my daddy left us, Mama always used to say as soon as he’d come back I’d be free of it. She don’t say that no more, though. For a long time, I dreamed about trying to find him. What father could refuse a daughter who can’t breathe without him? But in time, I came to find out that this here’s a mighty big world. And even if I did track him down, he ain’t coming back. He don’t care nothing about me, and he never will. He’s been gone twelve years with nary so much as one single solitary phone call. No matter. I’ll find my own cure. I don’t need him for nothing.

  The swells are mighty high today. My heart’s beating real fast ’cause I see my surfer up ahead. He’s new around here and seems to be older than me and my friends. He looks real smart, like he’s always thinking about something important. I heard some kids at the snack shack say he’s kin to the Channings, which explains why he’s always hanging around with them. They live over by the old railroad station. There ain’t no trains anymore, though. That area has been developed to look real clean and pretty, so the rich folk have taken it over.

  Shoot, he’s met up with his cousins. They’re a couple years ahead of me in school, super snobby, and mean as one-armed paperhangers with the hives. I guess I best get on to work anyways.

  My summer job is at the public library. It ain’t but fifteen hours a week, and they only pay subminimum wage, seeing as I’m a student and all. But at least I get to choose my own hours. My main task is reshelving books. Plus sometimes I have to read stories to the little kids, but that’s only for twenty minutes or so. Then they leave—not like with babysitting, where you’ve got to entertain them for hours on end. I don’t mind story time when the young’uns are real cute and clap their hands like I did an amazing magic trick just by reading to them. But some days those children give me a headache, when they act like they’re sitting on ant hills, screaming and jumping about.

  It may sound dorky, but I love books—the feel of the paper, the old, musty smell, and especially the way the words roll over you and take you somewhere altogether different. They’ve been my escape long as I can remember. Whether I need a break from schoolwork or my brother or just life in general, there’s always a book that can take me someplace far away.

  “Hey, Miss Patsy,” I say to the librarian, after locking my bike out back.

  “Hello there, Savannah. We’ve got quite a few carts waiting on you, and story time starts in forty-five minutes.” Her poofy gray hair is standing up rather taller than usual today. She heads into the back room, her weight causing her to go slowly, the silver bangles she wears on her wrists jangling.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I reply. Miss Patsy has been recommending books to me since I first started reading. Sometimes when a new book comes in, she’ll set it aside for me to borrow before it even gets shelved.

  It’s dead quiet in here today, so I get busy putting up the books. After finishing the children’s returns, I start shelving in the young adult section. I come across a copy of Stallion of My Heart and flip it open to somewhere in the middle. Before long, I’m hunched down in a corner rereading it. I only meant to look at a page or two.

  “Savannah Brown,” Miss Patsy scolds, “you are not getting paid to read.”

  I can usually hear her coming from the clanking of her bracelets as she meanders down the rows. Somehow I managed to miss it today.

  “Sorry.” I blush, hating getting caught at anything.

  “The children are waiting. Then you have two more carts to do.”

  I hadn’t even noticed the hustle and bustle of kids and parents coming in for story time. I scoot into the children’s area and sit in the chair up front. There are about fifteen preschoolers bouncing off the walls. It seems more like fifty, they’re making such a racket. I start reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Kids usually love that one. Personally, I think they just like to imagine themselves being able to eat all that junk the caterpillar gets. No sooner do I read the title than five little hands go up in the air.

  “Do all of y’all have questions?” I ask.

  “I got that book at home,” one boy says.

  “Me, too,” says another.

  “Me-maw read it to me,” says a little girl.

  “Okay, lots of you have heard this one. Let’s be quiet now, so everybody else can hear it, too.” That seems to shut them up, at least temporarily.

  But then, after only two pages, another boy raises his hand and without waiting to be called on says, “I caught me a callapitter. It was fuzzy and it felt funny when I touched it.”

  While he’s yakking, a couple of boys start fighting. Their moms don’t even pay attention. So I just continue on with the story. Next thing I know, one of those boys throws his tennis shoe at the other, only it misses a
nd hits me right upside the head!

  “Ow!” I yelp.

  Then all hell breaks loose. Everybody is taking off their shoes and throwing them at each other and laughing like it’s some kind of party.

  Miss Patsy rushes in to save the day. “Children,” she commands, and they all sit right down cross-legged on the rug. She takes the book from my hand and starts reading in this dramatic, dreamy voice, and the darn kids are transfixed.

  I slink out to go finish shelving books, my head still stinging from that boy’s shoe.

  When I’m fixing to leave for the day, Miss Patsy comes over and says, “It’ll get easier with the children. You just need to know how to hold their attention.”

  I nod, feeling embarrassed that things got so out of hand. The kids have been chatty and restless before, but it’s never been this bad.

  She hands me a copy of Stallion of My Heart. With a sly smile, she says, “I checked it out for you. If you’re going to read it, may as well do it on your own time, though I’d prefer to see you reading something a little more challenging.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” I say, taking it from her. Then I head out back to get my bike. Not my best day at work.

  I spy Surferboy playing basketball on the court behind the library with his cousin Junior. The other cousin, Billy Jo, is sitting up in their red pickup, wearing the Carolina Mudcats baseball cap that never seems to leave his head. He’s blasting hip-hop so loud on the stereo the bass makes me woozy. While Junior is distracted with swiping his long, brown hair away from his eyes, Surferboy knocks the ball out of his hands and it flies my way. Next thing I know, he’s running right straight towards me. I try to look busy unlocking my bike, make it seem like I wasn’t just sitting there watching him.

  “Hey,” he says, picking up the ball.

  “Hi,” I reply, but then I hop on my bike and act like I’m busy closing up the lock.

  He keeps looking at me.