Rules (9 page)

Monday morning my heart jumps to see the minivan in the driveway next door when I wake up. I get dressed and eat my breakfast in little bites so if Kristi calls I won’t answer with a mouthful of cereal.

At nine o’clock the phone rings. “I’ll get it!” I yell in the direction of the kitchen where Mom and David are still having breakfast.

Please don’t let it be one of Mom’s clients. Or Dad calling from work. I wait two more rings so it won’t seem like I was waiting next to the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, Catherine? It’s Kristi.”

I mouth “yes!” to keep from squealing. “Hi.”

“I was wondering if you want to do something? I don’t have to be at the community center until noon.”

“Sure. That’d be great.”

“Could we hang out at your house? Mine is crazy today,” Kristi says. “Mom forgot to tell me the plumber was coming, and now I can’t even have a shower.”

I’d like to say, “You can shower at my house” to be nice, but with David home, the embarrassment chances are too risky. “Want to go swimming?”

“There’s a pool?”

“It’s a pond, but it’s not far. There’s a raft and a little beach that anyone can use.”

She hesitates so long, I ask, “Are you still there?”

“I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

In my bedroom I tug open the top drawer of my bureau to pick a bathing suit. The blue one-piece is good for swimming but not pretty. I love the purple-and-white bikini that looks like batik, but the top slides when I dive. So I’m left with the last suit: green with gold flowers, swimmable and not ugly.

Though I’m hurrying, I take a couple of seconds to stroke on cherry lip gloss and pink eye shadow, and comb my hair. Maybe I’ll try my hair loose today, parted a little on the side.

With jean shorts over my bathing suit, my favorite beach towel draped around my neck, sunscreen lathered, and flip-flops on, I’m ready.

Mom’s still in the kitchen with David. Kneeling beside a pile of wet paper towels, she’s cleaning a milk puddle from the linoleum. At the table David swings his legs, eating his cereal.

“Kristi and I are going to the pond,” I say. “I’ll be back by lunch.”

Mom looks up from the spilled milk. “I’m heading to the store. Would you like me to drop you girls off on the way?”

“No, thanks. We’ll walk.”

She gathers the wet paper towels. “David, when you’re finished, get your shoes on. We need to go to the grocery store and buy something for lunch.”

He looks up from his bowl of cereal at the table, milk drops clinging to his chin. “And a video?”

“Okay, but just this time.”

David bolts from his seat, pushing past me to drop his bowl in the sink. “Watch out, Frog!” he cries, bits of cereal splashing on the counter.

“Say ‘Excuse me,
Catherine
.’” When he doesn’t say it, Mom gets up to block the doorway. “Excuse me,
Catherine
,” she repeats, looking over her glasses at David.

The doorbell rings.

“See you later!” I squeeze past David and under Mom’s arm. Though my name’s part of the conversation, it’s got nothing to do with me.

I race down the hallway to the front door, but as soon as I see Kristi, I wish I’d picked the purple-and-white bikini. She looks pretty in a long T-shirt and sandals, her hair hanging over her shoulder in a single braid. “Can I borrow a beach towel?” she asks. “I couldn’t find mine.”

“Sure, I’ll go grab one.”

When I come back to the living room with my second-favorite beach towel, Kristi giggles. “There’s a
duck
in your fish tank.”

Behind her, the aquarium cover juts out at a crooked angle. In the tank David’s rubber duck bobs along the surface, a goldfish mouthing his tail.

“Come on.” I fake a smile, handing her the towel. “Let’s go.”

Outside the air smells summery, of mown grass and warm tar, and from somewhere high in the trees I hear a woodpecker rapping.

David is gone with Mom and I’m free, walking down the road with Kristi.

“I’ve never been swimming in a pond,” Kristi says, “only in pools and the ocean.”

“It’s fun.” I make sure to keep in step with Kristi. “Much warmer than the ocean — at least in Maine. It’s gooey at the bottom when you’re out a ways, but that’s only old pine needles and leaves. Once you get in, you probably won’t notice a big difference from a pool.”

She doesn’t look so sure.

Approaching the corner, I can’t believe how ordinary the bus stop looks in the summer, only another bend of sidewalk. Kristi slows, staring at Ryan’s empty yard.

Was I her second choice?

“Are there fish in here?” Kristi asks, kicking her sandals off on the sand.

I follow her gaze out across the pond to the fringe of pine and white birch trees on the other shore. “Only minnows come near the shore.”

On our side of the pond there’s a strip of sandy beach, but the far side has a steep, scooped-out bank, tangled with bushes and the roots of trees. “Once I overheard Ryan tell someone that there’s a big fish that lives under the raft,” I say, still smarting from Kristi’s long look at his house. “But I’ve never seen it, so he might be lying.”

Kristi wraps her fingers around her braid. “Is it deep?”

“Over my head, but not so deep I can’t swim down and touch. Sometimes we dare each other to bring back muck from the bottom.”

Her knuckles whiten on her braid.

“But
we
don’t have to do that,” I say.

“Good.” She walks to the shore, pulling off her T-shirt. Seeing her candy-red bikini, I wish again I’d worn my purple-and-white one, even if I had to hold the top when I dove.

I undo my shorts. “I like your bathing suit.”

“I wanted to wear the new one my aunt gave me. But I think it’s with my laundry at Dad’s.” Kristi points her foot, skimming the water with her toes.

Standing in the pond, my ankles look crooked, cut by the water’s surface. I study the waterline’s ripple of distortion, wanting to capture it in my sketchbook.

“That’s a bad part of living in two places.” Kristi shudders, stepping into the pond with me. “I never have what I need at the right house. And Mom doesn’t get it. This morning she kept saying, ‘Just wear another bathing suit.’ like it didn’t matter.”

Watching her adjust the straps of her bikini top, I want to tell her I know how it feels to be split down the middle, too. Pulled between the regular world of school and friends, and David’s world where none of the same things matter. And how I don’t belong completely in either world, but —

Kristi takes a step farther into the water. “I hate this bathing suit. The straps are always falling down.”

I’m in water to my knees now. “I know what you mean. The top of my favorite bikini doesn’t fit perfect, and it slides. It’s never
shown
anything, but …”

Kristi smiles. “I had a bathing suit like that once. It drove me crazy.”

Stepping deeper, the cold tingles my thighs. I rub the goose bumps on my arms. “It’s always chilly at first, but you’ll get used to it. I promise.”

“Catherine, I’m sorry about the other day with the gum.”

I turn, but she’s not looking at me. Chin down, Kristi skims her fingertips across the surface of the water.

“David doesn’t get jokes sometimes.” The water feels warmer on my legs and I take another step.

“Ryan didn’t mean to upset him. He told me so.”

He didn’t mean to upset
you
. The tiny waves created from Kristi’s hands moving the water make a freezing tickle on my stomach.

“He said —”

“The bottom gets gooey here,” I say to change the subject. “If you dive in now, you don’t have to feel it.” Plunging forward, my chest and shoulders scream with the shock of cold. I go under, breaststroking, kicking hard, until my lungs ache and I can’t stay under one second more.

Breaking the surface, my hair is plastered to my face. I tread water, pushing it away.

Kristi stands in the shallows, her hands tracing across the pond’s surface.

“Come on,” I say. “It’s not bad once you get in.”

She takes a step. “Are you kidding? It’s freezing.”

“Not once you get used to it. I’ll meet you at the raft.”

I love swimming in water over my head, cold emptiness under my feet, those sudden warm spots or icy underwater springs.

Almost to the raft, I flip to my back and give in to the lightness of floating. Held by the water, I watch the blue sky, waiting for Kristi to catch up. This is what I wished for — a next-door friend I could just come and go with.

She’s out of breath when she reaches me.

At the ladder I grip the sides and swing my feet up to the bottom rung. Water showers off me as I climb.

“About that big fish?” Kristi says, swimming closer. “What kind is it?”

The air makes me shiver. I sit on the raft and wrap my arms around my knees. “It’s probably just an eel.”

Her eyes widen.

“I mean it’s probably
not
an eel. Just a fish that
looks
like an eel.”

Kristi scrambles up the ladder. “Yuck!”

I tuck my soaked hair behind my ears, wishing I had brought my hair band. I know without asking, Kristi won’t want to touch the bottom. She doesn’t even seem to like the
top
of the water much. “Maybe we can lay out in the sun?”

We lie on our stomachs, and I peek between the slats to the darkness below. The slight rocking of the raft, the slosh of little waves slapping the boards beneath, and the sun drying my back makes me yawn.

“I have to find my other suit.”

I look over to Kristi fixing her shoulder straps.

“But if it’s not at Dad’s, I don’t know where it is.” She lays her chin on her arm. “I wish Mom wouldn’t give up so easy. It’s not like he had an affair.”

“Maybe they’re just taking a break for a little while?”

“Maybe.” Kristi sighs. “Do you think there really is a fish down there?”

The sadness in her voice makes me want to give her something, even if it’s only pretend. “What if he
is
down there,” I say, “but he’s magic like in that fairy tale ‘The Fisherman and His Wife.’”

Kristi squeezes the end of her braid, drops of water falling off the tip, beading onto the raft. “I don’t know that story.”

“This guy catches a big fish, except the fish says he is really a prince under a spell. The man lets the fish go, but his wife sends him back to get a wish granted.”

“I’d scream if a fish started talking to me.”

“Me, too. But what would you wish?”

“I’d wish my parents would get back together and be happy.” She turns to me, her eyes worried. “Do you think that’s two wishes or one?”

“One.”

“Your turn. What’s your wish?”

I look down between the raft boards and imagine my always-wish, my fingers reaching through the perfect top of David’s head, finding the broken places in his brain, turning knobs or flipping switches. All his autism wiped clean.

But saying that wish brings trouble. “All people have a place,” my third-grade teacher said firmly when I drew a pretend older brother in the “My Family” picture to be put out in the hallway for open house.

I tried to tell her it was still David — but I wanted him to be able to play with me, and since I was fixing things, I made him older so he could stick up for
me
. But I had to draw the picture over and visit the guidance counselor instead of going to music.

“Why is it in fairy tales, wishes always backfire?” I ask.

“Like in ‘The Fisherman and His Wife,’” I continue. “The fisherman’s wife keeps wanting bigger things, and by the end of the story —”

“Hey!” a voice calls. “Kris!”

I sit up so quick, I scrape my knees on the raft.

Ryan waves, standing on the sand at the shore. Behind him his bike rests propped against a tree.

Kristi waves back. “Hi!”

I hope she yells at him to go home, but she says, “Come on, Catherine,” and does a running dive, heading for shore.

I let her swim ahead of me. I do the breast-stroke, dipping my face in and out of the water, so I don’t have to see Ryan standing on the sand waiting for us.