Lost Children of the Far Islands (3 page)

“I’ll call Anna’s mom,” her dad said. “But, Gus, you have to promise me that you’re not going to talk to Anna, or Anna’s parents, about Mom being sick.”

“I already told her Mom was sick,” Gus said irritably. “She’s my best friend!”

“Well, please don’t tell her any more about it,” her dad said. “It’s just a family matter, and I don’t want you talking about it with anyone outside the family.”

“But—” Gus began.

Her father interrupted her. “You need to respect your mom’s privacy, Gus. If you can’t promise me, then I can’t let you go.”

Gus wasn’t even sure she wanted to go to Anna’s house anymore. She and Anna told each other everything. And her dad was making her feel weird, like she shouldn’t be having an overnight at all, like her mom was really sick or something.

But all she said was “Fine. I promise,” and stomped off to her room.

Then Friday the strangeness at the swim meet happened, and Gus forgot all about her overnight at Anna’s. Gus and Leo were both fast in the water, although Gus won more races than Leo. Leo wasn’t really interested in winning. He got distracted easily, and was always getting disqualified for diving in before the start.

Gus’s last race was the hundred-meter breaststroke, which she won easily. Gus’s secret goal was to swim in the Olympics someday. No one knew that, not even her coach. He had told her he thought she could win the individual medley at States the next year if she kept working hard, and she had, but she had bigger things in mind than States.

Gus and Anna wrapped themselves up together in Anna’s giant beach towel and stood at the side of the pool to watch the boys’ race. They arranged their feet so that underneath their towel it was white foot, brown foot, white foot, brown foot. They always did this, and it always made them giggle.

The race began, and this time Leo dove in at the right time.

“Good start!” Anna shouted, clapping. Gus laughed, but Anna was serious. Anna had a crush on Leo, a fact that Gus did her best to ignore.

Leo was neck and neck underwater with David Lee, who was the fastest swimmer on the boys’ team. But
when David’s head broke the surface, he was alone. Gus thought Leo must have fallen behind, but then she saw the dark blur under the surface, out in front. A few of Leo’s friends were screaming his name, but most of the spectators didn’t seem to realize that there was a boy under the water, leading the race. They were screaming David Lee’s name.

“What in the world is he doing?” Anna said into Gus’s ear, but Gus had no answer.

The crowd was now shouting Leo’s name as he touched the far wall and turned without coming up for a breath. Anna was screaming too, jumping so vigorously that the towel fell off, leaving the two of them wet and cold in their racing suits. Anna didn’t notice because she was too excited. Gus didn’t notice either, but it was not out of excitement. She was watching her brother intently. Leo’s head finally broke the surface as he touched the wall, breathing hard, his hair sleek and wet.

He won, but of course he was disqualified for not swimming the right stroke. That didn’t stop his teammates from swamping him, yelling and cheering and slapping him on the back.

Leo glanced up from the huddle around him and caught Gus’s eye. His expression was that of a rabbit surrounded by hounds. So Gus waded in and hauled him away by one arm, past teammates begging to know how he had done it and when he was going to show them how to hold their breath for that long.

“Late for family dinner,” Gus said loudly, keeping a firm grip on Leo.

“Thanks,” he said as they hustled out to the hallway, dodging other swimmers. Gus saw their coach heading their way. His expression was purposeful and not at all pleased.

“Quick,” she told Leo. “Outside.” So they ducked out a side door into the parking lot of the school, their bare feet slapping the blacktop. Gus pulled sweatshirts out of the canvas bag that held their clothes. They yanked them on over their wet suits, and then hopped into blue jeans, Leo tugging his awkwardly over his suit. Their feet were too wet for socks, so they just shoved their sneakers on.

They walked the few blocks home without speaking. Gus was waiting for Leo to say something, to explain what had happened back there, but he seemed lost in his own world. This was not unusual for Leo, but it was irritating. Finally, as they reached the driveway, Gus couldn’t stand it.

“What were you doing?” she said. She stopped and pulled on Leo’s sleeve, so that he had to face her. “How did you do that?”

Leo shrugged. “I dunno.” He tugged his arm free and started up the driveway.

“Have you been practicing?” Gus persisted, following Leo. “Have you been, like, holding your breath in the tub or something? Tell me, Leo!”

Leo stopped and spun around. His face was pale and
angry. “I don’t know!” he said. “OK? I have no idea what happened. It just did. And to tell you the truth, it freaked me out a little. I wanted to come up, Gus. I started to level out, you know, to come up for air, and I
couldn’t
. I just … couldn’t.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t? Leo, what do you mean, you couldn’t come up?”

But Leo pulled free, and taking the three steps to the porch in one jump, he yanked open the front door and was gone into the house. The door banged shut behind him.

Gus followed him in. She felt a bit frightened, and a bit annoyed as well. Honestly, wasn’t it enough that their mom was acting so weird? Did they really need Leo to be weird as well? She slammed the door behind her.

“Don’t slam the door!” her mother called from the kitchen. She sounded so normal that Gus relaxed a little bit.

In the kitchen, Ila and her parents were sitting around the old farmhouse table eating pizza.

“I thought you were going to Anna’s,” Gus’s dad said to her.

“Oh shoot!” Gus had completely forgotten that she was supposed to go to Anna’s after the swim meet. “I’ll call her right now.” She went to the living room to grab the phone, saying over her shoulder, “Save me some plain slices!”

Gus called Anna and apologized. She dodged her
questions about the swim meet by saying simply that Leo had been practicing holding his breath for months, and it was just a prank.

Back in the kitchen, she slid into her chair and grabbed a slice of plain pizza. Across the table, Ila was picking the pineapple off her pizza and giving it to Leo, who was adding it to his slice. Ila never ate the pineapple pieces, but she always chose the pineapple slices of pizza, and would turn up her nose at any other kind. It was a mystery to her family, like so many things about Ila.

“Did you tell them?” Gus asked.

Leo shot her a look.

“Tell us what?” their dad said. “You two won everything and are leaving us to train for the next Olympics?”

“Ha ha,” Gus said. “No, about swimming underwater.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Leo said through a mouthful of pizza.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” their mother said automatically.

Leo swallowed noisily. “It was stupid.” He stuffed another bite of pizza into his mouth.

“You mean
weird
,” Gus said. “Leo swam the entire one hundred underwater,” she explained to her parents. “He just went under and stayed under until the end. It was actually kind of amazing,” she admitted.

“What do you mean, underwater?” their mother said.
She didn’t sound amazed. She sounded upset, almost angry. “Leo, what happened?”

“Mahthong,” Leo said, and then chewed and swallowed and started again. “Nothing. I just—I just stayed under, that’s all. I didn’t even want to, really. I mean, I didn’t do it deliberately or anything. It just happened.”

“You didn’t need to breathe?” Their mother had risen to her feet and was standing with her hands flat on the table, leaning toward Leo. “Not at all? Think carefully, Leo. You never needed to breathe, the whole time?”

“No,” Leo said, sounding a little frightened. “What’s the big deal?”

Their mother looked at their father, and something unspoken traveled between them.

“Why don’t you sit down, Rosemaris,” their father said gently. And very slowly, she did.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she said to Leo. “It sounds funny—I’ll bet your teammates were surprised!” Her voice was light, but her face looked drawn and strained.

No one said anything for a long moment. Their mom stood up again. “I’m just going upstairs for a bit,” she said, and without another word, she left the table.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, and then their dad sighed and stood up also. “Plates in the sink when you’re done, kids. I’m going to check on your mom.”

They heard his heavy steps on the stairs. Leo said, “Well, I guess we can eat as much as we want,” and went back for thirds. “Ila, do you want another piece?”

Ila shook her head.

“Let’s do jammies and teeth, Ila,” Gus said. She pushed away her uneaten second piece of pizza.

Ila brushing her teeth was a mixture of boring and infuriating. She had to do the toothpaste herself, and it had to be an exact amount that stretched from one end of the bristles to the other. If the squeeze of toothpaste fell short, or if she squeezed out a bit too much, then she started the whole thing over. And she brushed each tooth separately. Gus’s mom said that she probably learned it in kindergarten. Gus didn’t care where she learned it. It was annoying.

“Please, Ila, not again,” she begged as Ila held the toothbrush at eye level and scrutinized the toothpaste, which extended beyond the edge of the brush by just a hair. Ignoring Gus, Ila scraped the offending toothpaste into the sink and began again.

“Argh!” Gus said. “And, Leo, cut it out!” she yelled into the hallway.

Leo was in his bedroom, practicing his trumpet. Leo loved his trumpet and practiced every day, but in spite of that, he was a terrible player. Gus saw their father come out of the master bedroom and walk down the hall toward them. She figured he would ask Leo to torture them all another time, but he walked right past Leo’s room and came into the bathroom.

“Gussy, can you get Ila into bed tonight?” he asked. His eyes were red, as if he had been crying.

“Sure,” Gus said quickly. “Just make Leo stop the squawking.”

“Of course,” he said absently. “Of course. Thanks, honey.”

He kissed Ila, who was finally finished with the interminable brushing, and then patted Gus on her shoulder and drifted back out of the room.

“OK, Ila, story time,” Gus said, trying to sound cheerful.

Gus lay awake for a long time that night. She could hear Ila across the room, snuffling in her sleep under a pile of bears. She didn’t know what time it was, but the moonlight had traveled across the floor and gone, which meant it was very late. She thought about the day, about the swim meet and their mother’s increasingly strange behavior. The two things were not connected, of course, but for some reason it felt like they were. She sighed and turned over, trying to get comfortable.

She must have drifted off to sleep, because she was awakened by the creaking of the bedroom door. Footsteps, very light and quick, crossed the floor and stopped by her bed. Gus cracked one eyelid open and saw her mother. She was about to sit up, but some instinct made her close her eye and lie still instead. Her mother put one cool hand on Gus’s forehead, as if she were feeling for a fever. Then she traced her thumb over Gus’s skin, first in the shape of a cross, and then a circle around that. She
did it three times, murmuring something that Gus could not hear. Then she said loudly enough that Gus heard the word clearly, “Shield.”

Gus’s eyes popped open. “Mom?” she said.

Her mother stepped back quickly. “Oh, Gussy,” she said. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“What are you doing?” Gus asked her.

Her mother said lightly, “Just visiting my chicks. Just making sure all is well. Now back to sleep with you.” She bent low over Gus and kissed her on her forehead, the same spot where she had been tracing the circle.

Gus wanted to ask her more questions, but her eyelids were flickering and she was too tired to form more words. She drifted back to sleep as her mother slipped out of the room.

In the morning, she remembered her mother coming into her room, but the rest was hazy, and she couldn’t be sure she had not dreamed the whole thing.

At breakfast, she said casually to Leo, “Did Mom come into your room last night?”

“I don’t know,” he said reasonably. “I was asleep. Why?”

“Nothing,” Gus said.

Ila looked up from her oatmeal and stared at Gus, the green in her eyes sparking inside the soft brown.

“What?” Gus said, knowing that Ila would not answer her. And she didn’t, of course. She just looked at
Gus for another moment and then dug back into her oatmeal.

Gus shrugged and buttered her toast and did not say out loud what she was thinking, which was that her family could really be a bunch of weirdos sometimes.

A few days later, when the children got home from school, they were surprised to see their father’s car in the driveway. Inside, the house was silent and still. The afternoon sunlight coming through the windows lit up dust in the air. In fact, the whole living room seemed dusty and close, as though no one had cleaned it in months. Gus opened her mouth to call for their father, but Leo stopped her, gesturing up the stairs and holding his finger to his lips. There were voices coming from the second floor, very faintly.