Canary (6 page)

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked around for Dad. There were moms and dads holding sleeping kids and frazzled businessmen using the time to e-mail even though it was after three in the morning. A few basketball players I vaguely recognized huddled together, bumping shoulders.

“Kate,” Dad yelled across the grass.

I weaved through the crowd, leaving Ali curled up on an empty bench near the front of the hotel as if she were a piece of luggage someone had dropped off. She'd thought to bring a comforter out with her, and I was willing to bet she'd be asleep in less than five minutes.

Dad placed a hand on my shoulder for a quick moment. “I'm glad you're here. We're missing four people, but I sent two of the boys to search for them on the other side of the hotel. I think we'll be fine. No one sees any smoke, but we have to stay out here until they let us go back in.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “I'll go wait over there.” I pointed to the parking lot where people sat on a rock wall that stretched along the hotel's edge.

Dad tapped his pen against his clipboard. “Sounds good. Just make sure to stay out here.” He walked toward a group of his players.

I balanced myself on the narrow wall. The cold seeped through my sweatpants. I wrapped my arms around myself and considered talking Ali into
sharing her blanket with me.

“You look like you're freezing.”

I jumped, startled by the boy's voice, and lost my balance.

A pair of hands wrapped around me. “Whoa, I got you.” He let go.

I hoisted my knees up and turned around on the wall. There was Jack, right there in front of me, pulling off his Beacon sweatshirt. His T-shirt stuck to his sweatshirt and came up a little. I caught a glimpse of his muscular stomach, and my heart raced. I could look at his abs forever. I considered grabbing his sleeves and tying them together so he could never find his way out.

“Hey,” I said and knew I sounded lame.

He tossed his sweatshirt at me. “You need to warm up. Put it on.”

“Thanks,” I said, obviously wowing him with my witty conversational skills.

“Kate, right?”

I nodded and thought I might start hyperventilating. He remembered my name. I ran my fingers along the inside of his sweatshirt sleeves. They were still warm from his body heat.

I tried talking again. “Yeah, my dad is your coach.” I winced. I sounded like a loser. Had I really mentioned my dad as a way to look cool? “I mean, I know you from the team. My dad's talked about you.”

“Oh, he has, has he? I hope it was good stuff.”

“I didn't mean just you,” I said quickly. “He talks about the whole team a lot.”

Jack grinned, and I relaxed a little.

“Actually,” I said. “He mentions you guys more than a lot. The team is almost all he talks about.”

“Well, I hope he mentions my name once in a while.”

“He does. Not as much now, because I think he realized I was sick of hearing about you. I told him you're not the only person on the team.”

Jack laughed, catching my joke, and we fell into a conversation about basketball, specifically Beacon basketball. I was afraid he'd leave to join his teammates, but it didn't happen. In the distance, sirens blared. We watched as the red trucks showed up and a bunch of firefighters went into the hotel.

They came out about fifteen minutes later, and we were all waved into the building. I waited for Jack to stand and head in, but he didn't. Instead, he moved closer to me. I casually bumped a shoulder into his. I could feel the heat through his sweatshirt. I tried not to freak out that his leg was touching mine. He wore plaid flannel pants; pajamas never looked so sexy.

“So how come I don't see you at any of the
practices?” he asked.

“I'm not sure. Maybe I'll start going.”

“I think you should.” He grabbed my hand, and my stomach dropped. “Come on. We better head inside.” He pulled me up from the rock wall and then let go.

I sighed, mad at myself for thinking he'd wanted to hold my hand.

We walked toward the hotel, but then he stopped. “Damn, this is going to be a killer for my game today.” He pointed in the distance. “The sun is coming up.”

I smiled at the light creeping upward in the sky. “Good morning, Jack.”

He grinned, and I thought, 
It is a good morning
.

I thought about my night with Jack the rest of the weekend. I held it with me deep inside, my own little treasure. Even when Ali asked why it had taken me so long to come back to the room, I never told.

Jack Blane.

I rolled his name around on my tongue like candy, tucking it in the corner of my mouth to preserve its sticky sweetness. His name left a taste in my cheek, a whisper on my lips, a thin thread floating around my head and then evaporating into the air.

Jack Blane.

The mere thought of what his name could do unnerved me.

The name of a boy I would've never had the guts to talk to at my old school. A boy other girls laid claim to, his name on their strawberry-glossed lips as they flirted with him. A boy a town cheered for and hung their hopes for victory upon. A boy who might never know anything more about me than my name and status: Kate Franklin, the coach's daughter.

But I would change that. I would find a way to make sure Jack Blane never forgot my name.

When Dad and I got home from the scrimmage, I waited until he was lost in work in his office before I pulled open the sliding door. It was cool out—too cool, some might argue, to be swimming—but this was the one place I could go and forget about everything. The place where I could let the inky water cover my head, surrounding me so I couldn't see or hear the outside world.

I kept the lights off and dove in, feeling the water rush past me as I pushed deeper. The pool was heated, but the air whispered cold across my face when I surfaced. I was the only one who used the pool anymore, and I liked to swim at night, as Mom had.

Back when she was alive, Dad had teased her: “You won't get any use out of a pool in the Midwest. Most of the year it's winter. You'll be lucky to get three months straight of warm weather. The other nine months, it'll be a big eyesore reminding us how cold it is.”

He and Mom loved retelling the story of her insistence on finding a house with a pool. They joked about it with us when we'd sit outside during the lazy days of September as the heat lingered and it seemed too hot to do normal things like homework, housecleaning, and cooking. Mom always said, “I guess you were wrong, Bob. It looks like you can use this thing well over three months.”

“True, true. That's why it was my idea to get a pool. Can you imagine how miserable these days would be without one? We'd all be running through the sprinklers or walking around naked.”

“Disgusting,” Brett would yell.

I'd plug my ears and make a show of singing loud enough to block out 
all noise and images created by Dad'
s comment.

Mom would splash water at Dad. “Yeah, yeah, it was your idea. It's always your idea until the cold sets in and you can tease me again.”

On days like that I'd lie next to them, one hand dipped in the water, listening with my eyes closed, the bulb of the orange sun impressed on my eyelids. We wouldn't head inside until it had sunk low and pulled down some of the heat with it.

Mom was officially diagnosed in early March when the days were warm in the teasing way that
encouraged you to wear short sleeves or flip-flops. A day when you opened all the windows in your house and wanted to submerge your feet in the pool but the bare branches and muddy brown earth made you think otherwise. The water would be cold and biting when you peeled back the cover, not yet warmed by a summer sun. It was the time of year when you were taunted by hot days that could easily roll into freezing ones.

Life around us continued the year Mom was diagnosed: the seasons progressed, the weather warmed, but that year the pool remained hidden under its thick plastic shell, a reminder.

Mom retreated into a shell of her own.

Outside, she seemed to be trying to stay the same. She joked and laughed.

There were days she didn't have to try hard.

Days she had to try really hard.

And days she didn't seem to want to try at all.

We all continued to do normal things, even though they seemed anything but normal because Mom was dying. Stuff like shopping at the mall, game nights, and trips to restaurants where we didn't have to order because the staff knew our usual dishes.

There were things we did that we hadn't done before: firsts Mom wanted to experience, such as visits to museums, nights watching classic movies, and family photos in funny poses with Dad and Brett as James Bond and Mom and me as Bond girls. Firsts we knew would also be lasts for Mom, lasts for us as a family.

We tried to make memories and cram it all in. We tried to pretend time wasn't running out. We tried to be a family, but there were some family
traditions that stopped.

Like the swimming pool.

For months, late into the summer, the cover stayed on, the water still. Until one night when, in the late hours, something woke me. It was that time between the night and the morning. The time when light inched up in the sky and you could almost call it dawn. The air was calm, the house quiet, the world still.

I moved my curtains to the side, turned the metal knob along my window, and cranked the screen open to watch the neighborhood, lights off, houses slumbering.

Then I heard a noise. It was slight. If I had been sleeping, talking, or even moving, I wouldn't have noticed it. If I hadn't stopped to catch it again, I might have dismissed it as the creaking of the house, someone rustling in bed—the usual sounds.

I looked outside at the pool where the noise had come from.

The lights outside were off, but the cover was folded to one side.

I saw the water moving before I saw Mom. There were dark ripples, disappearing in the areas the moon's light didn't touch.

Mom swam laps soundlessly, back and forth, turning her head slightly to draw in breaths, making small gasping noises.

She swam from end to end, in what seemed a continuous line of movement to nowhere.

I watched, far away, until she climbed out and wrapped her frail, thin body with a towel.

I looked the next night, and she was there.

Each night I watched her as she navigated the same path, and each night the tears fell, leaving their own slippery tracks down my face.

She was always there when I woke and went to the curtains. It was an automatic response, and after the first few nights, my body didn't need an alarm clock.

She swam constantly, urgently. She swam on rainy nights when lightning crackled through the sky and lit her up for brief intervals. She swam on nights when the air was thick with heat and you could hardly breathe. She swam on nights when the wind shrieked so loud you didn't know if it really was the wind or yourself, calling out for someone to hear you.

She swam all through the summer, her path shorter and shorter.

She swam until she had to stop sometimes, clinging to the side of the pool in a short respite.

She swam until, instead of the length of the pool, she swam the width.

She swam until she could only sit on the edge of the steps and stare into the water.

She swam until she was too weak to make it outside and only saw the pool through the large guest room windows that faced it.

She swam until she could no longer stay in her own house and we had to move her to a hospice and it was not her body swimming but her mind, her body slowly pulling her down into the choking waters of her illness.

Now that she was gone, I swam to find her. It was my way of coping. I moved through the water, remembering moments I spent with my mom: the ice cream sundaes she bought for Brett and me when it rained because we needed something happy on a gloomy day, the nights we pitched a tent in the living room and curled up in sleeping bags, the movie marathons with popcorn and root beer floats. I remembered it all as I swam and vowed I wouldn't forget any of it.

But as I slid through the water that night, after we got home from the scrimmage, I didn't think of my mom. Instead, I thought of Jack.

I replayed our conversation outside the hotel over and over again. I held on to the words he had said, the feel of his hands on my back, and the warmth of the sweatshirt he offered. I held tight to all of this and let myself believe Jack could be something.

www.allmytruths.com

Today's Truth:

If you don't learn to survive, you will drown.

The day after Mom died

.survive to laps swimming started I

I swim toward the deep end, dropping the days that follow into a dark abyss.

.was once Mom what feel to, past the touch to end shallow the toward swim I

I swim through the water

.strokes strong, strong strokes

I swim back and forth,

.forth and back

I swim until I am exhausted

.more some swim to myself push and

I swim to feel the pain in my arms, my legs, my thighs.

.being my, heart my, head my in pain the numb to swim I

I swim toward the shallow end to reach for images of Mom and me.

.death of, loss of feeling the away kicking, end deep the toward swim I

I swim back and forth,

.forth and back

The day after Mom died

.survive to laps swimming started I

Posted By: Your Present Self

[Saturday, September 14, 10:13 PM]

The Monday morning after the scrimmage began two hours before my alarm usually went off. I had set my cell phone on vibrate to wake me, afraid Brett would hear my regular alarm and wonder why I was up so early. I'd never live it down if he knew I was trying to impress a guy.