Counting to Perfect

by Suzanne LaFleur

  She nodded. Her mouth was tight like maybe she had a lump in her throat. She looked out over the water.

  “And you know all these…things I don’t know. I feel like you’re always moving ahead, learning these new things and getting these new people, and I’m the one who’s always, always the same.”

  “Really?” She sounded surprised. “You’re growing, too. Like you’re a terrific auntie. You’re always doing better at swimming and you have all these friends. You’re moving up a grade. Which maybe didn’t used to seem like a big deal, but now we know it is.”

  But only some of those things were true. I’d just run away from swimming. I didn’t know if things were going to be okay with my friends. I didn’t know how much I wanted them to be.

  “Things seemed…different between us…after I was pregnant. Like you were so mad at me.”

  “Well, I guess, I had wanted you to tell me.”

  Julia was silent for a minute.

  “You’re right, I should have told you. I should have had the courage to tell you.”

  “It’s me. Why would you need courage to tell me something?”

  “It’s a scary thing to say. I had to tell Mom and Dad because, well, I had to. But you…you had always looked up to me. Always thought I was perfect. I was about to throw all of that away. I was afraid of what you would think of me.”

  “Well, it was worse ’cause you didn’t. I thought you didn’t care enough for me to know. I thought Dad just told me because it was family business and I had to know because I lived in the house.”

  We were quiet again.

  “I’m sorry,” Julia said finally.

  But I knew she was.

  Because it was me she picked to come with her.

  Because she hadn’t wanted to leave me behind.

  Because she’d given my name to the little baby in my lap.

  Like, even though I was the little sister, there was room for her to look up to me, too.

  We sat until Addie whimpered and stretched and woke and cried because she was hungry.

  “My legs fell asleep! I can’t get up!” I said.

  Julia laughed and unbuckled the straps of the carrier. She lifted Addie to her and started to feed her.

  “I’m going to go…over there.” I pointed higher up the beach. “I want to take a nap farther from the water.”

  “Sure,” Julia said. “Just don’t leave the beach. Stay where you can see us. Where I can hear you if you call. Okay?”

  “Yep.”

  I dragged my towel up the sand to the little ridge of grass under the trees. I lay down and stared up at the leaves and the gray clouds beyond them.

  * * *

  —

  When I woke up, Julia was still sitting with Addie.

  I walked down to the water at one end of the beach, went in to just above my ankles. The sand at the bottom was thick and smooth, full of clay. Nice on the toes.

  I headed toward Julia. She and Addie were both laughing. Then Julia pulled Addie close against her, and hugged her tight, for a long time.

  Like Addie was the only person in the world.

  Instead of going to them, I went back to my own towel.

  Took my phone from my pocket.

  Tapped Dad’s name.

  * * *

  —

  It rang, but only for a second.

  “Hi Cassie.”

  He didn’t sound mad.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, honey….Go ahead.”

  “I think I’m ready to come home.”

  Julia wasn’t.

  You’d be surprised how far you can get driving around aimlessly for six to eight hours a day over the course of a week.

  Julia had to take me to an airport.

  I’d never flown alone before.

  I was a minor, so that was complicated.

  Dad bought me the ticket with the airline on the phone. And explained to them that I would be alone so I got a special badge and there would always be a flight attendant nearby to help me.

  Julia got a special badge, too, and she and Addie got to come to the gate with me.

  So Julia was officially my adult to my being a minor. I giggled at how the airline was treating her as my special grown-up safe person, when they didn’t know that actually she was my kidnapper because she had taken me away from my parents without asking them. Julia looked at me sideways, but maybe she understood; she shook her head and put a hand on my shoulder.

  We looked out the window at my plane. It wasn’t big, because we were in the middle of nowhere at a small airport.

  I turned to Julia.

  “Just, if you do ever want to come home, make sure you count ahead the days of driving and the gas money.”

  “Yes, Mom,” she said.

  “And I’ll get birthday money this summer I could send you, if you tell me where.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And don’t order the lumberjack. It’s too much food. You don’t need all that food by yourself.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And—” My voice caught. “Please come back?”

  “Yes, Mom!” But she looked more serious. “I promise I will.” She raised her right hand. “Lumberjack’s honor.”

  “Julia? I’m sorry, too.”

  “I know.”

  “And…Julia?”

  “Yeah, dummy?”

  “I love you.”

  “And I love you. I love you so much, you’ll never even figure it out.”

  But I had.

  I had all the reasons.

  We held each other for a long time.

  “Cassie Applegate?” asked a flight attendant. “It’s time to board.”

  I nodded and let go of Julia.

  I picked up my duffel bag and saluted.

  Julia saluted back.

  I pinched Addie’s bare toes and kissed her cheeks. “Bye for now, love bug.”

  What I really wanted to do was squeeze her and squeeze her.

  How much was I going to miss? How fast did babies grow? What if she got another tooth? What if she started crawling?

  I kissed her toes, too.

  And then I went to the doorway of the gate. I waved, and Julia waved back and blew kisses. She was crying, but she looked happy.

  And then I was off, headed home, by myself.

  But I felt less by myself than I had in a long time.

  Being in the same place had nothing to do with us being there for each other.

  As I found my seat, I thought how I was doing something that Julia had never done, flying in an airplane alone, and how even though we were going to be apart for a little bit, I felt closer and closer to her as the plane left the ground.

  And I knew that when I got home, Mom and Dad would be happy to see me.

  Even if we had to work some things out. Even if there was some yelling and I was in trouble.

  I knew they would hold me against them the way Julia had held Addie.

  The plane had maybe like thirty rows of four. They sat me right in the front. Nobody was sitting next to me. I stared out the window while there was something to see, and then it got dark. Sometimes there was another airplane zooming off to someplace else. We weren’t the only ones in the sky.

  Once the flight had gotten off the ground, and the flight attendants had handed out drinks, one of them came back to talk to me.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  “No, I’m good.” I turned back to the window.

  She stayed, watching me.

  No book.

  Dead phone.

  Nothing to do.

  Nothing to do but think about what my parents were going to say.

  The flight attend
ant sat down in the empty seat next to me. She didn’t look that much older than Julia. “I’m Jen. You can let me know if you do need anything, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you heading to or returning from?”

  “Going home.”

  “Were you visiting family?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, I was with family. My sister. We ran away.”

  Jen looked surprised. And worried, like suddenly the small talk was over.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah….” I thought about it harder. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “And your sister is okay?”

  “Yeah. She’s great.”

  “You must have gotten pretty far if you have to fly home.”

  I nodded again.

  “Did you have dinner?”

  I shook my head.

  “We have these little sandwich boxes. Do you want one?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “I can comp you one. I’ll be right back.”

  She brought another little can of Sprite and a small cardboard box. Inside was a turkey-and-cheese sandwich, a couple condiment packets, a little bag of potato chips, and a cookie in a wrapper.

  “Thanks.”

  She sat in the empty seat again. I was about halfway through the sandwich when she said, “I ran away once. I only made it about three hours. I just went down the road to the woods, set up a little camp with sticks and my raincoat, in case it rained. It didn’t. I brought a whole loaf of peanut butter and jelly.”

  “A loaf?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “Like I took a whole loaf of bread, made PB&Js, and put them all back into the bread bag.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I don’t know, nine maybe. I thought I could live on that for a few months. By then I would have made enough arrows that I could hunt deer. I think I made five arrows or so in the three hours.”

  “Why did you go back?”

  “To see if people had noticed I’d gone. They hadn’t. I was always playing outside.”

  “What did you do with all the sandwiches?”

  “My brother and sister ate them during their Monopoly marathon. My brother always won. They never let me play.” She sat for a moment, remembering, and I finished my sandwich. “So…everything okay at home?”

  I thought about it as I unwrapped my dessert.

  Probably a lot of other kids did have it bad at home. Like they weren’t safe there. That was probably what she was asking.

  “Yeah.”

  Jen was quiet, but didn’t get up. Like she was waiting for me to think through why I had left, even though it didn’t seem like she thought I would tell her. I was going to have to talk to Mom and Dad about it in an hour anyway.

  I put all the empty wrappers and bags and soda cans into the cardboard box.

  “I’ll take that for you,” Jen said, back to her flight attendant voice. She stood up and moved to the aisle. “When we land, sit tight, and I’ll take you to meet your parents at the gate.”

  When we started our descent, I could see things again, the even night-lights of suburbia. Was one of the lights my house, or was ours dark because my parents were coming to get me?

  It was a little bumpy on the way down.

  And there they were, standing right by the rope at the gate.

  Mom’s hair in a sloppy ponytail. She never wore it like that. Purple circles under her eyes.

  Dad also looked worried, but when he saw me, a hint of a relieved smile came to his lips.

  Jen took her hand off my upper back, where she had placed it to steer me through the other passengers. She lifted the lanyard for the unaccompanied-minor ID badge from around my neck.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  I ran.

  Past the rope and right at Mom.

  Wrapped my arms around her middle. Hers wrapped around me. And then Dad’s around both of us.

  When we broke apart, the why was there again.

  * * *

  —

  Even though it was after ten at night, there was a restaurant still open in the airport. Dad asked for a table for three and we sat down.

  “Maybe you want to get a sundae or something?” Dad asked. “We never did get out to celebrate your report card.”

  “I don’t know if I feel like it.”

  But when the waiter came, Dad ordered waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, and, for me, a brownie fudge sundae.

  When the waiter had walked away, Dad said, “Not to decide for you. You can ask for something else, too, if that’s not what you want….I just know you like them.”

  I did like them.

  Dad was trying to show he was listening, on two counts.

  I looked from one to the other. They were both looking steadily back at me.

  No eye-conversations without me.

  They looked almost a little afraid, like they didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing and have me get upset.

  Finally Mom said, “What happened?”

  “I was invisible.”

  They both waited.

  “You stopped coming to my swim meets. I missed so much last year. You never asked if I minded. You didn’t notice or care that Piper and Liana don’t come over anymore. I don’t even know if they’re still my friends. But I’m sure you don’t care about that, either.”

  Mom’s eyes were getting watery. “Of course we do. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I looked at Dad instead. “You didn’t care about anything until that stupid science grade.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have been paying attention to the other stuff, too,” Dad said. “I wish you would have told us about all those things that were bothering you. We can’t know if you don’t tell us. But maybe you wanted to and we weren’t listening, or weren’t making you feel like we would listen. Maybe we should have asked more.”

  The waiter set our food on the table.

  I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to act like the sundae was just right, so I took just a small bite. But it was really good, and I went back for a bigger one.

  Dad hadn’t touched his waffles yet. He was looking at me.

  Finally I said, “I don’t want to tell you everything. I don’t want your help with everything. I just want to feel more like…sometimes…the day I’m having is important, too. Like, the day I’m actually having. Not the one you want me to have.”

  They both nodded like this made sense.

  Dad picked up his knife and fork, but put them back down. Then he lifted his plate, offering it to me. I scooped off a whole bunch of strawberries and added them to my sundae.

  “Thank you for explaining all that,” Mom said.

  We all started eating.

  Dad was right, the sundae made me happy.

  And they didn’t ask me to explain about or for Julia.

  They let the three of us, for once, be just that—the three of us.

  I woke up in the morning surprised by how bright and quiet and still it was. I rolled over. I stretched. I stared at my ceiling.

  It was the first morning in months I had woken up on my own, when my body just felt like it was time to get up.

  I missed Addie’s weight on me.

  I missed Julia. Wanting to see me, to include me.

  But this was going to be my own day, one of my own invention.

  A Cassie-centric kind of day.

  * * *

  —

  It didn’t last very long.

  First of all, it was noon.

  Second, when I slid into a chair at the counter with my bowl of cereal, Dad said, “You’re grounded.”

  “What?”

  I looked between him and Mom.

  “Uh-huh,” she said fr
om the sink.

  “What does that even mean?” I’d never been grounded before. I figured it meant I had to stay home from social plans. I didn’t want to see my friends just yet, but I would have to see them a little at practice anyway.

  “No friends. No phone. No swimming.”

  “No swimming? For how long?”

  “Two days.”

  “What? I’ll never catch up!”

  “You didn’t seem to be worried about that when you took off for a week without telling us,” Dad said.

  Ouch. Good one. I winced.

  “Two days,” Mom agreed. “We can spend the time together.”

  She grinned. With extra emphasis.

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Phone.” Dad held out his hand.

  “It’s charging.” I pointed. “But can’t I just text Liana to say I’m back? Please? Even prisoners get one phone call.”

  After a brief eye-conversation with Dad, Mom said, “Okay.”

  I quickly texted Liana: I’m home. Can’t swim today or tomorrow but I’ll be back the next day.

  I returned to my cereal, which was getting soggy, and stirred it around.

  My phone pinged.

  All three of us looked at each other. Mom shook her head at me and went over to check it. “She says, ‘Good, that’s time trials!’ ”

  “What?” I leapt to my feet. “I’m going to go to time trials without practicing almost at all?” I slumped back into my chair.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said. “We won’t let you be out of shape. We’ve made a list of feats of strength that need doing in the yard.”

  He slid me a sheet of paper with writing all over it. I gagged at the word mulch. Dad grinned. With super-extra emphasis.

  I glared at him.