Swimming Sideways (Cantos Chronicles Book 1)

by CL Walters

  Later, my mom finds me. “We didn’t get to finish our conversation this morning,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” I say from my bed where I’m reading The Great Gatsby for English.

  “Are you sure?” she asks. “You seemed like you needed to talk,” she says.

  I wish I could. I wish that I could tell her everything: about the video, about the last year and how difficult that was, about the move, about Seth and Gabe and how confused I feel. I can’t, though. I don’t want to disappoint her and I know it would because I’m so disappointed in myself. “No. I just wanted to make sure you and dad are okay,” I tell her a truth, but not the whole truth.

  She looks at me a little too long as though reading between some lines I’ve provided. I have the sense she wants to say something, to offer words of wisdom or give me platitudes that there’s nothing to worry about, but she doesn’t. Instead she says, “Okay,” and backs out of the doorway. “I’m here if you want to talk,” she says and shuts the door.

  I wish I could, but I’m afraid I would only add to the volatility of a family that seems to be imploding.

  19

  NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

  I’m waiting just inside the front door when Seth’s struck pulls up in front of my house. I see the headlights of his truck and hear the familiar rumble when he turns onto the street. I grab my school bag, dart through the front door and down the steps before anyone can tell me I can’t go. I haven’t asked my parents but can’t drive a broken Brutus, so I rationalize that I have to go to school anyway - what’s the harm in going a little early? I left a note and the twins can ride the bus or catch a ride from mom.

  Seth turns off the truck and looks at the house. He restarts the truck, smiling as I open the passenger door and climb into the seat.

  “That was easy,” he says.

  "Ready," I say sitting inside the warmed-up cab. I look back at the house. I think about Dad sleeping on the couch in the family room and had thought the opening door might wake him, but it doesn’t look like anyone is stirring in the house yet. It’s dark and uninviting. I hope I haven’t instigated another strike, but I’m willing to risk it for the ocean, for the sunrise, and for Seth.

  Seth drives the truck away from my house. The darkness is comforting as we ride through town that is still asleep. It is as if we are the last two souls in the world. Though we are silent, it is like shrugging into a comfortable sweatshirt. I shudder from a chill and see Seth reach over to the truck’s heater console and turn it up. Suddenly, I’m warmed up from the inside and look at him. He glances at me and I smile. He reaches out and takes my hand in his, interlocking his fingers with mine as town disappears behind us, the road stretches out with possibility in front.

  When we do get to the beach, it is breathtaking. “Wow,” I say. It is so different from the Hawaii shoreline. The wet sand stretches out like a crisp bedsheet and the somber gray ocean rolls over it, its roar a vibrant soundtrack. While the sky is still dusky, the sun is making a play for the sky. Streaks of orange and pink reach toward us, but leave us in the haze of twilight. Tall grassy dunes roll back from the shore, and I follow Seth down a sandy path situated in between them until we’re on the beach. “You’re right,” I say. “This is amazing.”

  Seth takes my hand with his free hand, the other holding his surfboard. I carry the backpack. He takes me to the edge of a dune, a tiny cliff face with several large rocks. I unfurl a towel, a perfect spot sheltered from the breeze to watch the surf.

  “I'm sorry you aren't going to be in there with me,” Seth says and pulls off his sweatshirt. While the light is still dim, I see the way he moves to one side as though hiding. I notice the way he draws in his breath. I leave the towel and the bag and go to his side.

  “Don’t,” he says when he realizes I’ve come over to look.

  “What the fuck,” I say. Angry bruising runs up his side from his hip to his chest around to his ribs and spreading to his back, dark purple in this light.

  “From the game, yesterday,” he said.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me.” I touch him; My dad is in my voice, the profanity flowering the words to give them color. “You didn’t get hit by a fucking truck during the game. This could be broken,” I say.

  “Don’t Abby. Leave it alone. It isn’t.”

  “This isn’t okay,” I say and tears slip from my eyes. “It isn’t. You could live with us or someone else. It’s against the law.”

  He reaches over and wipes the tears away from my cheeks with his thumbs. “And what about my mom? Should I leave her with him?” He lets go of my face and slips his hand into the wetsuit hiding the injuries.

  “What do you have to do, die?”

  “I’m okay,” he says though I know that he can’t possibly be okay.

  “You can’t surf. Not like that,” I say. I know the rigors of the ocean, the way the fight out into the break strains the body. “You could get hurt worse, or drown.”

  “It’s the only thing I can do after,” he says and zips the wetsuit. “I promise, Abby. I’ll be okay. It has been worse. And I need the water.” He leans over and kisses me gently on the lips, pulls away slightly and says, “I promise.”

  Then he leaves me there on the sand to find solace and healing in the surf which I understand. I do, but I’m a mess watching for him. While the shore break at many beaches on Oahu are relatively close to shore, this beach’s break is so far out. Either that or the heavy panic I feel in my chest makes it seem that much farther. I don’t know what I could do if he went down: the water temperature is frigid, hovering between fifty and fifty-five degrees all year, I wouldn’t make it to him without a wetsuit even if I wanted to save him. But then I see him. He’s sitting on his board, but he doesn’t sit for long and disappears behind a wave, until it crests and I see him riding. I expel a breath.

  He surfs for another twenty minutes. I watch him, the beauty of him against the gray water as the sun crests over the mountains to the east, touching the horizon with gold. Robert Frost’s poem comes to mind “nature’s first green is gold...her hardest hue to hold…” as I watch him in the golden light and shake my head of the thought as the last lines echo in my thoughts, “as dawn goes down today… nothing gold can stay.” No, I think. I don’t want to linger in sadness, but I can’t get those bruises out of my mind.

  I see him coming back in, climbing from the froth of the Pacific Ocean, and I bring him a towel. Surfboard on the sand, he’s pulling the wetsuit off of his arms and it folds over at his waist. I hand him the towel.

  “Thanks. We need to get you a wetsuit,” he says.

  My eyes dart to the horrific bruising on his side. He dries off his body covering it. Tears spring to my eyes again. I can’t help but imagine what that must have been like to live through. I look back at his eyes. He’s watching me and I know he’s more affected by my reaction as though maybe he thinks I will think less of him. So, I nod. “Yes.” I clear my throat. “I don’t know if I could surf in this water.”

  “You get used to it.” He rubs the towel against his hair. When he’s finished, it’s sticking up, as though he’s been electrocuted.

  I smile and run my hands through it, styling it, so that it sticks up in the right places. It takes me a moment to realize how intimate a gesture it is. Seth has stepped closer and looks at my mouth. I want him to kiss me and glance at him just as the light from the sun brushes the skin of his face, and realize that he has a bruise on his cheek under his eye. I touch it softly and he winces.

  He looks away, picks up his surfboard and walks across the sand to where we left the backpack. “Soccer ball,” he says. I realize that all the times he’s blamed soccer, falling from the treehouse, tripping and bumping a piece of furniture - none of those excuses were true.

  I take his hand and he looks at me: “You don’t need to lie to me,” I say.

  Everyone else at school buys the lie about the bruise on his cheek being an accident with a soccer ball. We’re sitting
in our usual place Seth and I on one side of the table, Hannah on the other. She is busy working through a community service project she’s planning for Halloween. “I’m thinking about a literary character for my costume,” she says.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “I was thinking about a character from a Jane Austen novel, like Elizabeth or Jane.”

  “You want to trick-or-treat with little kids in one of those dresses?” I ask eyebrows raised.

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Hannah’s nose is scrunched up. “But you know,” she says always the optimist, “those women wore them on horses, side saddle.”

  “How about a character from a video game,” Seth suggests and bites a carrot.

  “Not the kind you play. No, thank you,” Hannah says. “I don’t want to scare kids.”

  Seth laughs and takes a bite of his sandwich.

  “Hi guys.”

  Sara is standing at the end of the table wearing a look that suggests she knows something the rest of us don’t thereby making her more superior. There’s that shark, I think. I’d like to punch the look off of her face.

  She sits at the table with us across from Seth, forcing Hannah to move over or get pushed. Hannah moves over clearly annoyed at the rudeness by the curl on her lips and the way she rolls her eyes.

  I stifle a laugh.

  "What are you guys doing? Planning a date?" Sara asks. She takes a carrot from Seth’s plate and takes a bite. Her tone belies friendship, like a siren.

  "What do you want, Sara?" Seth asks. I know he’s irritated when he looks at his phone, dismissive of her.

  "I just came over to say ‘hi.’" She looks at Seth her eyes hooded and inviting.

  Then she looks at me, the green of her eyes flat and without luster - cold - and says, "Seen any good internet videos lately?"

  At first, I don’t understand her, and then she smirks and I know. She’s found it. She knows and it is only a matter of time before everyone else does too.

  Sara cocks her head to one side and smiles brightly, straightening her shoulders and looking back at Seth. "I just saw this one, but you should see it for yourself. I'll send you both the link." Her gaze darts between Seth and I. “I’d send it to you, Hannah, but you’re such a goody-goody, I don’t think you’d get it.” She stands. “Then again, maybe you would find it amusing.” She moves as though she’s going to leave but turns back around and leans toward Seth. “You know, Seth. You should really be careful who you hang out with."

  “Good thing you’re leaving then,” he says and looks away from her. “You were saying, Hannah?”

  “Whatever," Sara says and leaves, sauntering as if she owns the world.

  I’ve lost my appetite. Worst case scenario has happened. I glance around the room but no one is staring at me. There aren’t any taunting comments. Yet.

  We’re screwed, Bad Abby says. See. Could have just lived by my rules. Didn’t matter regardless.

  "She’s so awful sometimes," Hannah says. “I don’t know what you saw in her,” she says to Seth.

  Your rules would have gotten us here week one, good Abby retorts.

  "I wish I had a good excuse."

  "She still likes you," I say absently looking from table to table unsure how I can keep their conversation clear with the one raging in my head. I need to get out of here. The burning begins behind my eyes. I really have to get out of here.

  "What's wrong?" Seth asks.

  I look at Seth and realize that I shouldn’t have. My eyes fill with tears. I don't want him to know. I don’t want to lose him, and I’m pretty sure this will solidify an end. I look at Hannah. Her too. I’m drowning.

  Swim sideways, Tita, I hear Poppa in my memory.

  How!? I think. There’s no way out of this current.

  I’m not sure how I make it through the rest of the day. Mr. Bilson has us writing about dreams, and we discussed the part when Gatsby finally reconnects with Daisy and shows her his house, the dream he’s built for her. I couldn’t stop replaying the observation made in class about the quotation when Nick says that “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusions” because the illusion of me is about shatter. And everything will be ruined. Seth. Hannah.

  I spend art secluded with earbuds in my ears, so when Seth is driving me home he says:

  "Please tell me what's wrong?"

  "Can we just let it go?" I say.

  He nods and continues to drive, but then says, “this morning you told me that I never had to lie to you. I want you to know that you can tell me anything, Abby.”

  I could tell him. Yeah. So here’s what happened: During my sophomore year I got so wasted that the only reason I remember giving this senior I had a crush on a nude lap dance was because it was filmed and put on Twitter. So that means it will be on the web FOREVER. No. There is no euphemism to tame that beast. “I would, Seth. This is just-” I stop unsure of my words and change course. "Thanks for everything. The beach, lunch, the ride home.”

  I turn from him to open the door and then stop. This could be the last time he’s in my life. The last that he sees me like this, like someone he wants to be with. I want to turn around and plead with him, to find a way to tell him, but I can’t. The shame is so heavy. I leave it at that and open the door.

  Seth gets out and comes after me as I walk up the path to my house. "I wanted . . .there was something," He starts and then stops.

  "I don’t mean to be-" I pause, look up at the gray sky and the back to him. “It’s cliché, I know, but I promise with everything I am, it isn’t you.”

  "It feels like it is. Sara-" he starts.

  "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

  "Yeah." He looks down at the keys in his hand.

  "You and Sara slept together." I walk up the porch steps. Seth follows.

  "Yeah," He says. "It happened. We hooked up even though I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I hurt her. I feel bad about it."

  "And at the party.”

  “No. Actually, I went after you. I was just too drunk to know my left from my right.”

  I smile relieved to know that he came after me. It’s brief, the needle of the present popping that balloon. “I’m sorry. You don't have to explain. Really. I shouldn’t have brought it up."

  "Yeah. I feel like I do. I was a jerk. I've been a jerk a long time, Abby. And then you showed up, and suddenly I want to be better."

  "You are good, Seth. You always have been good. Even when we were little. It was you who included my brothers. It was you who helped my Nana Bev."

  Seth pulls me into his arms and holds me. It feels so right to be there and so unfair because everything will be different soon and I’m powerless to change it. "It's going to be alright," he says.

  “I wish I could believe that,” I say.

  "You have to believe that." He doesn’t let go. “I’m here to listen.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to tell you. I want this moment, right here. I want to remember it. I want to remember how perfect this was,” I say. I’m hesitant to let him go gripping his shirt at his back in my hands, but I know that he has practice, so I let go and step away.

  "Talk tomorrow?" he asks.

  I nod knowing full well that he won’t want to talk to me, and then walk into the house. I watch Seth start for the truck, turn back, hesitate and then go. After he’s gone, I walk up the steps to my room, shut the door, and climb in bed. There is a storm coming, and I want to be in the safety of my bed where I can sleep through it.

  20

  MISMATCHED EMOTIONS

  The ring of my cell phone pulls me from sleep. It’s dark and my clock says 5:30 AM. I knock something over on my bedside table as I grab my cell phone. “Hello?”

  “Come on,” Seth says. “I’m outside.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. Latent sleep confuses me and then I sit up. Why is he here
? Doesn’t he know, yet?

  “Taking you to the beach.”

  I’m confused but then say, “Hold on.” I get ready as fast as I’m able and grab my school bag. Once in the truck I ask, “What are you doing here?”

  “I already told you: taking you to the beach.” He pulls the truck away from the curb.

  “I know that, but why?” I watch him. Had he not seen it?

  He reaches out across the bench seat and takes my hand. “I saw it, and it doesn’t matter, Abby. We’re .... us.”

  I can’t find words my throat closing around them, so I squeeze his hand instead because it seems to be all that I can do. Seth takes us somewhere else that morning, turning off a side road into the trees and driving through ruts that jostle and bounce us until we stop. “We have to walk the rest of the way,” he says.

  Reluctant to lose the connection with him, I let go of his hand and get out. I meet him around the front of the truck where he takes my hand again. With a flashlight in his other hand, he leads me through the thicket. I can hear the loud sound of the surf so disconcerting in the darkness. We step from the trees out into the sea grass and follow a path to the shore where the dark form of the ocean is visible punctuated with the white wash of waves. Seth sets some clothes on the ground and says, “Here. Sit.” I sit on one of the sweatshirts, and he sits next to me.

  “You aren’t going to surf?”

  “Not today,” he says as he wraps the blanket around both of us. “I love it here,” he says. “I like to come here when I’m trying to stay away from home.”

  The sun hints of his arrival as the inky heaven changes shade and tendrils of yellow light streak the sky overhead. “I can see why,” I say finding refuge in the moment. I pull him closer, using both of my hands to hold his hand in my lap. I shiver not only from the cold, but from the nearness of him.

  Seth lets go of my hands and puts his arm around me, pulling me as close. “It calms me,” he says. “And on those extra bad days, I’m able to find peace here.”