Swimming Sideways (Cantos Chronicles Book 1)

by CL Walters

  The sun is rising. We are content to sit in one another’s company watching the spectacle of the rising sun and the artist palette of blues and grays on the seascape.

  “I was really drunk,” I say.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Seth says. “Unless you want to talk about it.”

  “I want to. It’s been a secret a long time.” I try to find a place to start, searching my mind for what is important to know but it all seems so ridiculous instead of meaningful. “It was last year, and I had this really bad crush on this boy. His name was Kanoa. He was a senior and all the girls liked him. He showed some interest in me.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Seth says.

  “He invited me to a party. I went with my friends and got wasted. I don’t blame him for that – I made the choice to drink.”

  “But he didn’t take care of you” Seth says. “And that’s why you were so uncomfortable at Jessie’s party.”

  I nod. “Yes. And you’re right; Kanoa didn’t try to help me. No, he cheered me on actually. What happened is fuzzy, really. I remember it in flashes: drinking, dancing and laughing with friends, having another drink, feeling relaxed, Kanoa pressed up against me for a slow dance. I remember he kissed me and I felt like the luckiest girl on the planet. I got another drink and another. Danced. Drank more, and then it’s really cloudy. I don’t know what is my actual memory or what I created by seeing the video. I think I remember the chanting and I just lost myself. Kanoa watched. Didn’t stop it. And someone recorded it.” I stop talking. We watch the ocean, which is easy to see now, a steel gray under a cloudy sky.

  “And your friends?” He asks.

  “Stopped being my friends,” I tell him. “I guess people don’t want to associate with the resident under-aged stripper, unless of course they want something from you.”

  I watch the ocean; can see the break of the waves and the way they are continually moving. I imagine that the weight of the secret is caught in the current rolls forward with them and gets smashed as it hits the shore. I’m clearer and relieved. And Seth is still here. I nestle myself deeper into the crook of his arm.

  “Thanks for trusting me,” he says.

  “I was afraid,” I tell him. “I didn’t say anything sooner, because-”

  “Because you thought everyone would do the same to you.”

  “Like they do to Gabe.” We are quiet, and I suppose Seth hasn’t ever considered Gabe’s situation from that point of view.

  Raindrops begin to fall, intermittent, forcing us to move. We laugh as we collect the items we’ve used to keep warm. The deluge hits as we race through the trees to the truck and by the time we climb in we are soaked through. I’m surprised that I’m finding joy, but the moment draws me out of my own turmoil. I look at Seth and am so grateful for him.

  Seth turns the heat on to warm us up. “We better get to school,” he says.

  “Yeah. Right. School.” I know that Seth is in my corner - which means the world - but I have to face the rest of the social scene at Cantos High.

  When we walk into the building a while later the atmosphere is exactly as I anticipated: people watch me as I pass, looks of condescension, judgement, and superiority. People talk behind hands while their eyes watch me. I’m positive that Seth’s presence is a temporary shelter, but it will get worse. Every social media platform has probably been hit and in a matter of time it will probably be a meme. Every one of those people watching me like I’m the plague congratulates themselves on not being me.

  When I get to my locker, Hannah is waiting - the routine temporarily unaltered until she has her time to say what she needs to, I suppose. She stops pacing when she sees Seth, her eyes darting between us that then she focuses on me and says, “I really need to talk to you.”

  "Really?” I say and move into my locker starting the combination on the lock.

  “Privately?”

  “I’d rather Seth stay.” It doesn’t open. I try again.

  Hannah leans against the locker next to mine, trying to catch my eye.

  I can’t look at her; if I do I will cry. The locker doesn’t open again. I sigh and try again.

  “Was that you? In that video?” She asks.

  "Yes. It's me.” A pull on the locker lever; it sticks. “Fuck,” I mutter and try again, finally opening it.

  “Maybe now’s not the best time, Hannah,” Seth says.

  “It’s okay.” I look at him grateful for his help, but need to honor Hannah’s friendship. “Look, Hannah, if you can’t be my friend now, whatever, you know, I won't blame you. Who wants to be friends with a-?" Suddenly, my locker door slams shut, and Hannah is on the other side red-faced. I’m shocked by this emotional display by her.

  “You aren’t being fair.”

  “Me? Not fair?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Hannah says.

  I look at Seth, tears threatening. I knew I appreciated Hannah’s friendship, but I didn’t know how much it had meant to me. Now that it will be ripped from me, it’s as though it’s tearing through my skin with a dull knife. “Are you sure you want to walk me to class?” I ask him.

  He takes my hand.

  Hannah steps in front of us. “I mean, Abby, that you’re just assuming how I will feel about you. That isn’t fair, but I get it. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone does things they regret. And this” she waves her phone, “doesn’t make you who you are. You’re more than that to me," she says.

  Her words are beautiful and poignant in the moment, and I want to throw my arms around her and tell her how much she means to me, but I can’t. "You understand what's coming, don't you? Let me paint this picture for you. I'll be called all kinds of fun names: whore, slut, tease. Whatever else the population can think of. Since I'll be an outcast, no one will want to associate with me and by extension anyone else who claims to be my friend - you. Jerks will think they can say anything they want, and not just to me anymore, but to you too." I’ve lived this before. "You understand that, Hannah?” I ask. “Think about how Gabe’s been treated the last three years.” I pause. Hannah lifts her chin stubbornly. I see a strength in her that I have never noticed before and admire it. “Hannah, I get it if you don’t want to put yourself through that."

  Hannah holds her ground and then instead of stepping aside, she’s hugging me. “Abby, people are stupid and I won’t let them win by doing this kind of thing. That’s letting Sara win. In the whole scheme of things, who cares what they think because, you and I are bound for great things." She leans back and smiles at me.

  I wipe the tears from my eyes, knowing I can’t let any of these assholes see me cry. “Well, then. Let’s go.” Seth continues to hold my hand and with Hannah on the other side of me, I’m sheltered with two hundred percent more people than I ever had back home, and I’m so humbled. "Hey Abby. Can I get a lap dance?" Someone says with a laugh. "What about you, Fleming?" Another voice taunts. I feel Seth’s hand tighten and he turns to find out who said it, but I keep walking forward pulling him along with us.

  Things aren’t as horrible during class, at least the time is structured enough to keep stray comments at bay, except the ones the teachers can’t hear, the ones written on pieces of paper, or the looks and the gossip. By the time I walk into the cafeteria, I don’t think I can take anymore, but it gets worse.

  We sit at our usual spot near the windows and Hannah’s friends move asking her to join them. She replies, "No thanks. My real friends sit here."

  “Hannah. You don’t have to stay,” I give her an out.

  She glances around, shrugs and says, “This is the best table in the room – the best company.”

  Then suddenly, Matt is at our table. “Thanks a lot, Sis.” He is so angry that his brown skin is flushed and his eyes flash with temporary insanity. Nate is slightly behind him, looking down at the floor, but holding Matt’s arm to keep him calm. “You are so effin’ selfish,” Matt says. “No thought about how you affect any of us.”

  I hang my
head, so broken that they are affected. They weren’t affected in Hawaii, too young and at different schools. They had never known. Now they do. I’m so ashamed.

  Seth stands up and places a hand on his shoulder. “Matt. Hold up.”

  “Get off me, Peters.” He says this so loudly that even those who weren’t watching now are and shrugs out from under Seth’s hand. “What do you know about it? You just want to get into her pants anyway. I know all about you.” He swears and stalks away.

  Nate looks at me and shakes his head. “Kristin broke up with him. Said she didn’t want to associate with someone related to you.” Then he turns and follows his twin leaving me to deal with that guilt. I swipe at the tears in my eyes and attempt a bite at my sandwich but it is cardboard in my mouth.

  Well, she didn’t deserve you then, Mattie, I think. She’s a materialistic, social climbing bitch! I wish I could say that to him, but he’s gone. And then I’m angry. Mad that my brothers are affected. Angry that they are mad at me - even Nate, who could barely look at me.

  Then Sara stops at the table and matters go from worse to awful. "Didn’t I tell you that video was amazing.”

  “Why the fuck are you standing here?” Seth asks. “Go away.”

  “Some people are just so desperate, they’ll do anything for attention. You should come sit with your real friends, Seth.”

  "Who? You?" He asks and the look on his face, though I can’t see it, even causes Sara to step back. "My real friends can sit with me anytime they want."

  Her smile fades and she levels her cold stare on me. “Now we know how you keep your guys.”

  I don’t know how she didn’t know it would come. Maybe mainland girls deal with things differently, but I launch at her so fast, that I catch her off guard, connecting with her face. She falls backward clutching her cheek. “You bitch,” she squeals like a frightened pig. “You hit me.”

  “Abby,” Seth says holding onto me. “Don’t do this. She deserves it, but don’t give it to her.”

  I settle hearing Seth’s words, but I point at Sara who suddenly looks like a pile of refuse huddled up on the cafeteria floor, “Stay the fuck out of my way. You want to go, we can, but I’ll teach you how we deal with it where I come from.” She looks up at me, her green eyes suddenly caked with black mascara. “Then when we’re sitting in the principal’s office, I’ll own that I beat the shit of you, and then I’ll show him the video you shared with everyone here at school. I’m pretty sure that’s called cyberbullying, bitch. Then we can see what happens.”

  Seth is pulling me away for some reason.

  “Abby,” Hannah calls.

  “I got her,” Seth tells Hannah.

  I shake Seth off of me, and we walk through the hallway until we’re through the school doors out into the rain. We end up in the parking lot, in his truck. It would seem that I got away with smacking Sara, which makes me feel both guilty and buoyant simultaneously, but the anxiety and pressure have taken their toll and I know I can’t walk back into the building. I can’t fake it through English and discussions about Gatsby. I can’t get through art. “I need to get out of here,” I say.

  “Skip the rest of your classes?”

  I nod. “Would you take me?”

  “Sure." He starts the car and drives through the lot toward the entrance of the school.

  “I let her get to me. I shouldn’t have.”

  “I think it’s understandable given the circumstances," Seth says.

  He drives us back to the spot we went to that morning, I cautiously eye the now muddy terrain, but figure he knows what the truck can take. When he parks it, we are in a copse of trees, and the gray ocean is visible through their trunks.

  “Seth?” I ask as I remove the jacket I’m wearing. I turn in the seat to face him, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. My back rests against the door and isn’t the most comfortable position, but I’d rather be able to see him. “Do you think things happen for a reason?”

  “Like fate or something?” He sheds his jacket in the now warm truck.

  “Yeah.”

  The rain sprinkles on the exterior of the vehicle creating a beautiful percussion.

  “I don’t know,” he says and then looks at me. There’s a measure in his look and he replies, “Maybe.”

  “I think you did,” I say.

  He continues to watch me. “Did what?”

  “Happened for a reason. Like, you and I being friends all those years ago. And finding each other, right now. Like it’s fate.” I smile but then remember this same conversation with Gabe on that drive to town. Like me bumping into you, he’d said.

  “I wonder if that’s a little like dreams,” Seth says drawing me back.

  “In what way?” I ask.

  “Like having dreams that mean something or help us see reality more clearly.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I had a dream like that about you,” he says.

  “You’re dreaming about me?” I smile and wiggle my eyebrows.

  He laughs and reaches for my ankles grabbing them. Then he’s pulling me and I’m sliding across the bench seat toward him, laughing. He wraps his hands around the back of my knees and then his fingers in my belt loops and his hands around my waist, continuing to pull until I’m pressed up against him, one leg bunched under me, the other over his lap. I’m not smiling anymore, but feel as though I must be panting. I’m out of breath with wanting. “Yes, Abby. I dream about you.” He wraps a hand around the back of my neck, brings my face closer to his and says, “I don’t know why things are the way they are but if this moment were to disappear because something in our pasts changed, I wouldn’t take it.” He searches my face.

  The depth of his words are a salve and the longing in them only deepen my need to lose myself in him. I place my hands at the nape of his neck and intertwine my fingers in his hair. In that moment, as close as we are, I feel like I’m so far, tragically far. I close my eyes and meet his lips with my own. He runs his hands down my back and finds the bare skin above the waistband of my jeans which lingers in my bloodstream like a drug and I strain toward him.

  “Abby,” he worships my name between kisses.

  “What?” I ask and am surprised by the breathless quality of my voice.

  “What your brother said. I-”

  But I don’t let him finish the ridiculous thought. I press myself against him until I can feel his mouth, his tongue and his hands. Gabe’s face materializes in my mind. I pull back.

  Seth looks at me. “What is it?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I shake my head, and kiss him again, but Gabe’s smile intervenes again. I pull away.

  “Now, you’re frowning,” he says. He searches my face, looks at me longingly as though memorizing every detail.

  “It’s me,” I say. “Stuck my head.”

  He disentangles himself from me in the compact space of the truck cab and helps me disentangle myself from him until I am on the bench seat beside him. He places a chaste kiss on my cheek and lingers there, breathing me in.

  The tumult in my mind rattles me, and doesn’t make any sense. “We better get going. School’s out." I tap the watch hanging from the rear-view mirror. “And you have practice.”

  He slides back in front of the wheel and starts the truck. “I'm going to have to think of an excuse for coach. He'll know I missed my last two classes. Maybe he’ll cancel it with all this rain." Seth moves the truck through the mud with skill and eases us out onto the road. He reaches for my hand and I take his. My belly is unsettled, slightly nauseous. Why would I be thinking of Gabe while kissing the boy my dreams?

  We don’t talk on the way to my house. Instead, we both seem to linger in the spaces of our own thoughts. My thoughts are in a tangle.

  You’re broken, good Abby has decided and I think I’m in agreement with her. Who makes out with the hottest boy in school and then ruins it by thinking about the Outcast?

  It’s hōʻailona, a si
gn, bad Abby says.

  Don’t be ridiculous, I think, but the thoughts remain as my belly feels more and more unsettled.

  “I’ll call you later,” he says after he pulls to a stop in front of my house. He leans over and kisses me again. I welcome it, but the heaviness of mismatched emotions at war in me aren’t enough to settle my thoughts.

  You just want to get into her pants anyway. I know all about you. Matt’s words echo in my mind.

  Trust your naʻau, Poppa always said, but it is a jumbled mess.

  21

  ANGER EQUALS ANGER

  Mom is home when I walk into the house. “I got a call from the school this afternoon." She says and snaps the jeans she is folding, the crack of the denim like a distant gunshot. Neatly folded stacks of clothing litter the living room. She's obviously been working on the laundry for a while.

  I set my bag down, join her at the couch, and pull one of the twins' khaki pants from the basket.

  “What bothers me, Abigail, is that I had to find out you weren’t in school from the school. You should have been here." She works on the sleeves of the shirt making sure they are creased just right.

  “Sorry,” I say. It sounds lame in my own ears. I set the pants on a matching pile and then pull out a wrinkled shirt, blue and white striped.

  “Sorry?” She asks and then points at another basket with other wrinkled clothing. "Ironing there." She slaps another pair of jeans against her legs. "Sorry, huh? You dig out the last two mornings without asking, then ditch school and you don’t come straight home. Where were you?"

  I consider lying to protect Seth and myself, but I’m sure she saw that he dropped me off. I wish I could tell her the truth, all of it, but I can’t get the whole truth past my lips. I say instead, “I left a note both mornings, and I was with Seth." I don't look at her and focus on lining up the seams of black pant legs.

  “Oh. Seth. Again." She cracks another pair of jeans. "He really seems like a bad influence."

  “I-” faced with telling her that he saved me from getting into a fist fight or making something up, I panic and lie. “I didn’t feel well.”