Swimming Sideways (Cantos Chronicles Book 1)

by CL Walters

  Dad and I climb out. It’s too cold to linger on the beach, so we return to the car, drying off and climbing inside to turn on the heater. “How was it?” Dad asks.

  I don’t know how to say it, and can only find the word “good” as my teeth chatter.

  Dad chuckles. “Yeah. Different, but good.”

  “Kind of like praying,” I say.

  Dad glances at me, the corner of his eyes curling into a smile. “Perfect.”

  Looking at him, now, I realize I don’t need to hide anymore. Maybe I did when things were so screwed up, it was survival, but now, I don’t need to carry my burdens alone anymore. Do you ever feel lonely?

  I look back at the ocean out the front of the car. “Dad?”

  “Yeah, hon.”

  “I need to tell you something, but it’s kind of hard.”

  He turns toward me. “Yeah?” His brows have come together with concern.

  “Last year, something happened that I didn’t tell you and mom.”

  He waits for me to continue, and though it is difficult, I find the words there despite my trepidation. “Things got bad after Poppa died,” I start. He doesn’t interrupt, just lets me talk, and when I’ve spent my last word, I struggle to look at him. I do though, somehow instinctively knowing that now is not the time to go back into hiding.

  He’s watching me, his mouth thinned out with anger.

  “I’m sorry for disappointing you,” I say.

  “I’m not disappointed with you, Abby,” he says turning to face forward. He grips the steering wheel. “I’m angry, but not at you. I pissed at myself for not being there for you. I pissed that you had to go through that alone both there and here.” His voice catches and he swallows down his emotion and then he looks at me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the dad you needed,” he says.

  I throw my arms around him. “You are the dad I need right now,” I say.

  He wraps his strong arms around me and holds me until I don’t need it anymore.

  “I’m glad you told me,” he says.

  “I feel better,” I say. “Clean.”

  He smiles though it lacks the energy of earlier. “I know the feeling.” He starts the car. “Time for school?”

  I nod.

  I cling to my lesson from surfing as school moves forward. I reach for the equilibrium I’d found but seeing Seth weights my guilt. He’s has become a shell, and I find that despite my feelings for him don’t just shut off like a valve. The strength of those feelings certainly isn’t the same, but our shared history and my initial love for him still exists. The biggest emotion, however is that guilt. The barrier I’ve become to any kind of healing for him, for Gabe. I’ve tried reaching out to him but he’s rebuffed any attempt and avoided me at all costs. Even in art, when he did finally return to the classroom, he’s isolated himself though sometimes, when I look up I’m able to catch his eye because he’s watching me or Gabe. When he realizes I’ve noticed him, he retreats.

  In the meantime, Gabe and I continue to nurture our friendship. While my feelings for him have exploded into a cosmos of light and colors, I have maintained my distance. It’s the guilt, of course, and my insecurity that keeps me caged. I realize however, that the cage isn’t in the name of self-preservation that it once was. It isn’t in the purpose of losing who I am but instead, it’s because I need to make the responsible choice. I must walk humbly as to not hurt someone else. And that someone is Seth.

  I voice my concerns about Seth to Gabe after school one day a couple of weeks later. We sit at the kitchen table with fresh cookies, a routine established for nearly a month now, and Martha humming from her craft room. She’s planning her menu for Thanksgiving next week.

  “Won’t you please just hear me out,” I ask Gabe..

  He cocks his head to the side and smirks. “As if I have a choice,” he says, smiles and dunks a cookie in the milk. “You know how I feel about him. I don’t know that I can ever forgive him,” he says and takes a bite. “And I don’t really feel sorry for him.”

  “I know. I know. He’s just not himself.” I struggle to put into words what I feel in my bones. There is more to it than the failure to face his awful choices and deal with them. The thing is, Seth could easily slip into the routine of who he once was, but he hasn’t. He’s going through the motions, but that’s it. I see it in the falter of his smile, the way he fades when he thinks others aren’t looking. He’s diminished, in a way. The social butterfly has spun a chrysalis and there he hides. Now that soccer season is over, it’s worse.

  Gabe takes our plates and milk cups into the kitchen and rinses them. He walks back and grabs his backpack. He walks into Martha’s craft room and I hear him tell her “Thank you, Ma.” I know he’s kissed her because he does it without fail every day. I follow him up into his room. He hung the map I got him for his wall which makes me smile, otherwise the room looks much the same. I toss my bag on the floor near the end of the bed and sprawl out on my stomach and then lean up on my elbows. Gabe sets his things on the desk and sits in his chair. He looks down at me. “Seth always rebounds,” he says.

  It’s something that I have learned about Gabe since we’ve become friends that I really, really like. Even when he doesn’t respond and he’s quiet, he’s thinking. I just have to be patient for him to eventually tell me what is on his mind. It reminds me of Poppa. I roll over on my back and look up at the rafters. I know that Gabe doesn’t like to talk about Seth, and I don’t blame him, so I drop it.

  “Let’s do it,” Gabe says referring to our after-school game. “You first.”

  “Fine. The good: Martha’s cookies.”

  “You can’t use that one,” he says. “You always use that one.”

  “There’s no rule that I can’t use that one!” I roll to look at him before resuming my supine position on the floor. Tilting my head back, I look at him. “You look funny, upside down,” I observe.

  He flips me off. “So do you.”

  “The bad,” I say, “Gabe Daniels flipping me off.”

  He laughs. “No points for you. Totally unoriginal today.”

  “The ugly: Gabe Daniels saying that I’m unoriginal.”

  I roll back over on my belly laughing. “Your turn,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says. “The ugly-”

  “That’s the wrong way,” I say. “We start with the good.”

  “You aren’t the rule maker, Miss Repeater. I want to change it up and go backwards today,” he says. He swivels in his desk chair.

  “Damn, your bossy.” I smile at him.

  “Look who’s talking,” he looks at me and then continues. “The ugly: Connor Liu cut his finger so bad in metals today, he had to go to the hospital. There was so much blood, a bunch of people had to leave the room because they thought they might get sick.”

  “Oh my. That’s what the ambulance was for? How awful,” I say sitting up.

  “Yeah. It was pretty gross. I think he’ll be okay.” He pauses momentarily and then says, “My bad: Abby Kaiāulu brought up Seth Peters today after school.”

  It is my turn to cock my head to the side and thin out my lips with impatience.

  He smiles.

  “Okay. Okay. And the good?” I ask.

  “Right now,” he says, he looks up from his hands to my face.

  Like usual, a current rushes through my system when I’m near him, all it takes is a look like that one, and it sobers me. And like usual, I take it as my cue to leave. Responsibility. Guilt. Humility. Each rush through me like reminders right after one of those looks. “Same time, same place tomorrow?” I ask. I’m running from my feelings. I know it.

  He stands and helps me up, holding his hands out for me to use. I glance up at him and he’s looking down at me still holding my hands. The electrical current spins its web.

  I let go and pick up my bag. I’m running not because I’m afraid of him, but I’m afraid of being the girl between them. Of hurting one or both.

  “I’ll walk you out.�
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  “I think I can do it,” I say. “No trouble. I know the maze now.”

  “No,” he says clearly annoyed, his tone clipped and his face passive. He leads the way down the attic stairs, out the living room door, down the other set of stairs, but before we turn to go into the shop, he turns and faces me. “Why are you doing that?” He’s angry, and I’m not sure why.

  “Doing what?” I ask. I’ve stopped on the bottom step.

  “Tell me what to do? Run from me like that? Did I do something wrong?”

  I’m surprised by his vehemence. “No! Of course not.”

  “If I want to walk you out, then I want to walk you out,” he says his arms coming out to his sides.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Gabe turns away from me, runs his hands through his hair and sighs. He walks forward into the shop.

  I take the final step off the stairs and follow him, but he does an about face. I walk into the wall of his chest. His arms come up around me to keep me from falling backward. I look up into his light blue eyes and feel that electric sensation. My heart is racing in my chest and I try to breathe.

  He searches my face and pulls me closer. “You didn’t upset me. It’s not your fault,” he says quietly. “I’m just so-” One of his hands drifts to the back of my neck and he runs the tips of his fingers through my hair.

  My skin is electrified and the butterflies in my belly are fluttering furiously. My mouth drops open as I try for a breath that comes more like a pant. I acknowledge the way I feel: I want him so much. I want his arms around me. I have wanted that from the moment we ran into each other in the hallway. There it is: The truth. “Frustrated?” I whisper. I’m afraid to meet his gaze, but when I raise my eyes to his, I see my feelings mirrored in his look.

  He glances at my lips and my lungs seem to constrict and dislodge from my chest cavity falling into the bottomless pit of my stomach. The tension of his arms around me releases but his hands drop my waist. With deliberate steps, he walks me backward until I’m against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. “Fuck it,” he says and then his mouth connects with mine.

  His hands move from my hips to frame my face.

  I bunch up the back of his t-shirt in my grip, clinging to him because I don’t know if my legs will support my weight he has me so shaken.

  He pulls away, but places his forehead against mine. His breathing sounds like mine, ragged and moved. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” he says.

  My heart bounces in my chest and then takes flight. Me too. And then it comes crashing down. Me too. I see Seth in my mind. “I’m afraid,” I whisper.

  “I know.”

  With my hand in his, he walks me out to Brutus. He leans into the car like usual, but instead of telling me a joke this time, he kisses me, and I know that this has changed everything.

  32

  CHOOSING SIDES

  “Seth?” I try again to reach out to him, a few days later. We’re in art and I corner him while he’s slapping a canvas with paint.

  He glances at me, clenches his jaw and then says, “What?”

  “Can we talk?” I ask.

  “No,” he replies and adds, “There’s nothing to say.” He glances at Gabe.

  I glance back and Gabe across the room. He’s watching me and his eyes shift to Seth. He’s not pleased that I’m reaching out at all, but I think he understands. “You surf this morning?” I ask trying to find common ground. “I finally got my wetsuit.”

  He shakes his head, swirls a fat brush in paint and slaps the canvas with it. He looks at me again. I feel his anger and desperation grips me. I’m suddenly afraid, not for me but for him. This isn’t the Seth I know. “Look, I don’t want to do the small talk, chit chat with you,” he says dismissing me.

  “I thought we were friends enough to do at least that,” I say.

  “Friends?” he sneers the word at me. “Friends. Yeah. Whatever.”

  Guilt nudges me and says, you did this.

  “Abby?” Mr. Mike’s voice intervenes. “Seth? You focused on your projects?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mike," I reply and leave Seth to his painting for my own project. I glance at Gabe. I think he sees the tears I feel, even if I haven’t shed them. I concentrate on my own canvas until the end of class.

  Gabe puts his arm around me as we walk from the building. It’s drizzling that cold persistent wet, not really drops, but like walking through mist. “I’m sorry,” he says and bumps his shoulder against mine. “He’s a dick.”

  “I just feel…” I don’t say guilty, even though that’s what jumps into my mind. How do I tell Gabe that? That would imply he’s equally guilty and that somehow, we manipulated this situation. I know that isn’t the case, but it doesn’t calm my sadness for Seth - that loss of a connection to an important person who shaped the beauty of my past. We cross the parking lot toward Brutus.

  “Daniels!” Seth emerges from the building. His eyes are wild, consumed. He weaves his way through the cars toward us.

  Gabe turns around at the sound of his name, completely calm, scary calm. “Peters,” he replies. He hasn’t removed his arm from my shoulders, so I’ve turned with him as though conjoined twins. “Is there something I can help you with?” I feel Gabe tense next to me, but his voice, his face appears placid.

  Seth steps right into Gabe’s face, and Gabe shelters me by shifting his body slightly in front of me. “Yeah. I’ve got a problem with you.” Seth swears more than I have ever heard him and uses his finger to poke at Gabe’s chest for emphasis.

  Gabe smirks, and turns, fully positioning me behind him. Fear nosedives from my brain into my body when I realize that this is it. This is the fight they’ve both longed for, the one they’ve been moving toward since the challenge started. “Please,” I say, but I go unheard. I know it as sure as I know that when I breathe, I will have air to fill my lungs. Nothing and no one is going to stop something what’s been certain between them for three years.

  “Such language, Peters. You ever heard what they say about people who use profanity?”

  “What?”

  “That they haven’t got much to work with up here,” Gabe says and taps his own head with his finger. He then removes his jacket.

  Even knowing what I know, it doesn’t stop me from stepping up between them, hoping rather than believing they might listen to reason. “Please stop.” My eyes dart between them. “Gabe. Seth. Please.”

  Gabe grabs me by the upper arms and gently moves me out of the way. He says, “No,” and looks at me, and I know he sees me because he hands me his jacket and then removes his sweatshirt giving that to me too, but he turns away. His focus is on the culmination of years of anger, blocked and organized into perfect building materials to construct this moment. It is like his fortress in the loft of the warehouse, only now he’s ready to take it down.

  Someone in the gathering crowd grabs one of my arms, drawing me backward when I try to step back in between them and holds tight.

  Gabe turns back to Seth and says, “You don’t want to fight me, Peters.” Though his words say one thing, his tone sounds edgy and mocking.

  The misty rain continues, unrelenting. Seth’s hair is beginning to hang against his face, dripping. “It’s all I’ve thought about since freshman year,” Seth says. The rage that consumes his features makes him look like a different person altogether.

  “I have occupied your thoughts, then?” Gabe replies, the sarcasm a defense mechanism. The water is beginning to make his black shirt stick to his torso.

  A crowd now perfectly formed around the two combatants, and the chant has begun: “Freak. Freak. Freak.” It’s the first time in months that a fight has broken out for Gabe, but this one is wholly different even if the crowd doesn’t know it. I have no doubt that today the crowd is going to get the show they’ve wanted. Gabe will finally throw that punch.

  Seth lunges at Gabe who sidesteps the charge. Seth’s shoulder slams into the car behind
Gabe, crunching the metal and then slipping down to the ground because of the rain. A car alarm begins blaring.

  “Stop!” I scream at them, but they don’t listen, and I knew they wouldn’t. I don’t know why I’ve tried. Tears pool in my eyes. “Please,” I say more to myself than to anyone else.

  “This isn’t a fair fight, Peters,” Gabe taunts having turned around and levels his resentful gaze on Seth who’s getting up from his slam into the car. I can see his face, his anger now leading him, his hair is also wet, and dripping. The car alarm continues to blast its fragmented sound.

  Seth straightens up and rolls his shoulders. His tee is stuck to him like a second skin. “I’m willing to find out.”

  Gabe lifts his hands. “Let’s go.”

  The crowd yells, pushes and tugs each other with excitement, the car alarm screeches in agreement.

  Seth yells and rushes Gabe tackling him. In a tangle of limbs, they both fall and tumult across the asphalt. A moment later, Seth has gained the upper hand with Gabe in a defensive position, his arms raised to protect his head. Seth unleashes punch after punch at Gabe’s core, but Gabe bends, deflecting them until he finds an opening and throws a hook that connects with Seth’s jaw and a follow-up jab that connects with Seth’s ribs turning the table.

  I scream again, but can’t be heard over the din of chanters now screaming frenzied by the show they’ve waited to see for three years.

  Seth, now off balance and dazed, provides Gabe with the opportunity to turn the tide to offense instead of defense. Scrambling after Seth, Gabe is on him and slams him with knee to his rib after unleashing a succession of body blows. The crowd goes wild. Seth, in defense opens himself to the blows but throws his arms around Gabe, wrapping his own around Gabe and pulling him closer countering the battering to restrain his punches.