Wrecked (13 page)

“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey!” One was holding up the binoculars, but he was facing the other way.

So I started swimming toward my father. If I could get close enough, I could remind him just to tread water and rest, or I could get a board from someone for him to hold on to. I was a good swimmer. We all were. But I couldn’t swim fast
enough. I saw my father’s head go under and then pop back up, and he was spluttering. Why wasn’t he staying calm, like he’d told us to do? Why wasn’t he realizing he was in a riptide?

“Dad!” I yelled. “Dad!” I stopped to rest and waved my arms in a crisscross again for the surfers, for the lifeguards. For anybody who would notice. Nobody did. I scanned the horizon for my mother on the raft, but I couldn’t even see where she was. I looked back at my dad. He was still trying to swim straight in. “Stop!” I yelled. He went under again, and I was furious. How could he be so stupid?

I swam as hard as I could. “Hey,” I breathed, kicking my way to the first surfer who might hear me. “Hey! Help!” I pulled at his leg the second I was close enough.

“What?” He was a teenager, and he looked annoyed.

I pointed to my father, who was going under again. “He needs help,” I said. “He needs your board.”

My father was flipping his head up and out of the water. His eyes were wide, mouth round, and you could see how hard it was for him to lift his arms.

“Hurry!” I yelled to the teenager.

He did. He paddled fast.

By the time I caught up, my father was clinging to the board, just outside of the rip.

“You scared me, dude,” the surfer was saying.

My dad was breathing really heavy The vein in his forehead was pulsing.

“Got a little rip going there, man,” the surfer went. “Listen, when you get in those, you want to relax, you know?”

My father gulped in air and wiped his mouth. He didn’t
even notice me there, treading water behind him. He didn’t notice me following as the surfer paddled and then pointed his board straight in to shore while my dad hung on. I was right behind them.

I’m okay,” my dad breathed. “Thanks.”

“You sure?” the teenager asked. ‘You seem kind of tired.” My father nodded and let go of the board. He started swimming. I swam after him. He was going slow. His arms looked heavy. We passed my brother.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked me.

“Dad almost drowned.”

Jack followed me following my father. I watched my dad climb onto the beach, his dripping body bent, drooped. On the sand he wobbled, like he was drunk, and he kept wobbling all the way back to our blanket and umbrellas. Jack and I followed.

“What happened?” my mom asked. She must have swum in without anybody noticing her.

My father flapped his hand back toward the water and didn’t answer. He was still breathing really heavy.

“You look ill,” my mom went. “What happened?”

“He almost drowned,” Jack told her.

“I did not almost drown.” My father sank down hard onto his chair, making a smacking sound, and rubbed a towel over his head and face.

“Yes, you did,” I insisted. Why was he lying?

“I’m fine,” my father told me.

“I saw you.” I remembered his face. The way it had kept going under. The way his eyes and mouth had been so round. I started to cry.

“Harvey?” my mom said. Jack was looking back and forth at my father and at me, all worried. I couldn’t stop crying, and I was waiting for my dad to yell at me for it, which made me more mad and more scared.

“He did,” I sobbed. “I saw it with my own eyes. He almost drowned.”

My dad didn’t yell. He pulled me to him and onto his wet lap.

“It’s okay,” he said, real gentle. “I’m all right.”

“You’re remembering Dad, right?” Jack asks me now.

“Yup,” I say.

“Was he really drowning?”

“Yeah.” I sit up and look out toward the brownish horizon. There’s a ship way off in the distance. And a hang glider above us. “It was so weird, with all those people around.” The hang glider is bright yellow and orange. It’s peaceful to watch it.

“You saved his life,” Jack tells me.

“Not according to him,” I answer.

Now Jack sits up. “Isn’t it interesting how you and I deal with what a pain in the ass he is?”

“What do you mean?”

“I get so into my music and movies. You know? I get so into it, he could be yelling or being a jerk right in the same room, and I’d barely hear him.”

“Aren’t you just that way naturally?” I ask.

“And you,” Jack goes on, ignoring me and standing up on the trampoline. “You get so uptight you skim the surface of everything.”

“What do you mean, I skim the surface?”

“You get nervous so quick you forget to stop and breathe.”

“Breathe?” I snort. “That definitely came from Cameron.” Then I smack my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

Jack starts jumping. “That’s okay,” he tells me. And half of his face smiles while the other half cries. “It did come from Cameron.”

He jumps lightly, the bottoms of his feet just barely leaving the rubber on each ascent. Really it’s more of a bounce.

“I’m not nervous,” I say cautiously.

“Not nervous exactly.” Jack bounces. His face readjusts back to normal. “Just … not relaxed.”

“That’s not true.”

I stand up.

“It’s not a criticism,” Jack says. “It’s a constructive observation.”

He bounces for a while, facing me. The hang glider is circling over us. I’m thinking about a lot of different things all at once.

“Will you ever stop being sad?” I ask him. He doesn’t stop bouncing, and his face flashes to that half-crying-half-smiling mask and then back to normal, and then he shoves some of the dark, damp hair out of his face.

“No,” he says. “I don’t see how.”

Back on the beach Ellen says, “Sea-rene.”

“What?” I squeeze my hair to get the water out and lie down on my towel.

Jack’s spreading his at my feet.

“Everything looked so serene,” Ellen says. “You guys out
there on the trampoline. That ship way off on the horizon. That hang glider. It was like watching a silent movie.”

“Do you like silent movies?” Jack asks her.

“Jack says I’m superficial,” I interrupt, “and I only skim the surface of things because of my father.”

“She’s not superficial exactly,” Ellen tells Jack.

“Oh, thanks,” I say.

“She’s just scared.”

“I know.” Jack squirts sunblock onto his hand and starts to rub his arms and chest with it.

“I’m not scared,” I say. They’re pissing me off. I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Besides, Ellen is supposed to defend me. “I’m dumping you for the Ashleys,” I tell her.

“That’s what I mean.” Now Jack’s rubbing his legs.

“What?” I say.

“You’re the only one who calls them the Ashleys,” Jack tells me.

“That’s not true.” I look at Ellen through my sunglasses. “Everyone calls them the Ashleys.”

Ellen rolls her eyes.

“What?” I say. “You call them that.”

She shakes her head. “You came up with it.”

“Maybe, but you use it.”

“Actually,” she says very carefully, “I don’t.”

I stop to think about it. I’m sure I’ve heard her say “the Ashleys” before. I’m sure of it. I watch Jack get rid of the excess sunblock by wiping the webs of every two fingers onto his chin.

“Do you know that Ashley Jasper has a little brother who’s retarded?” Ellen asks me.

“Is that Ashley One or Ashley Two?”

“See?” Jack says to Ellen.

She won’t look at me.

“I’m not superficial,” I argue at them. They don’t argue back. “I’m not scared, either,” I say. “The Ashleys are bitchy snobs.

What would I be scared of?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Jack lies back on his towel.

“Like you know so much,” I tell him.

“I just see more of the big picture,” Jack says.

“So you’re better than I am,” I say.

“Could you guys stop it?” Ellen asks. Her voice is off Raggedy somehow.

Jack and I both squint at her. She’s staring up at that hang glider, biting her lip.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“It doesn’t matter what you were scared of before,” Ellen says. “You’re scared now, and it’s messing you up.”

“I’m okay,” I tell her.

“No, you’re not.” Ellen’s still gazing at the sky. “My mother was right. Shell shock. I think she’s right about all three of us. But especially about you.”

“What do you mean?” I say. “You were in the car too. You got hurt way worse than I did. And you’re tired constantly, even when it has nothing to do with your leg or your ribs, so don’t even say that’s it, and you space out and get bored all the time. And Jack.” I look at him, lying on his back with his eyes closed. “Jack’s going to be sad for the rest of his life.”

Ellen answers in this really gentle voice that’s not like her at all. “Jack and I can sleep, and—”

“You sleep too much,” I interrupt.

She waits for more than a second before she speaks again, and when she does, her voice stays soft, careful. “And we can drive. Well, I’ll be able to as soon as my leg heals. Plus, we can concentrate usually.”

“It’s all of us,” I argue. “It’s bad for all of us. Jack cries all the time. I see him.” He doesn’t move. On his back, with his eyes closed, tanned skin glistening in the sun, anybody who didn’t know would think he was dozing. “I see you,” I tell him. He starts to hum.

“What are you humming?” Ellen asks him.

“Guid Merge.”

“I see you crying sometimes, Jack, when you don’t think anybody is looking or can tell. And I hear you in your room at home. I heard you two nights in a row last week.” He keeps humming, eyes closed.

“We don’t shake,” Ellen tells me quietly. “We don’t have fake heart attacks every second and nightmares.”

“I have nightmares,” Jack says. No more humming.

“Okay,” Ellen agrees. “So do I. But we don’t wake up screaming and freaked out. We wake up sad.”

“I’m sad,” I say, and it sounds ridiculous.

“I know, Anna,” Ellen says as nicely as she’s ever said anything to me. “But also you’re really messed up.”

THREE HOURS AFTER I GET HOME, SETH IS ON OUR DOORSTEP.

“Anna!” Jack yells, even though I’m right there behind him.

“Hi,” I say to Seth.

Jack steps aside.

“Hi,” Seth says to me. “I like your shades.” He holds out his hand, palm up. M&M’s.

I don’t take any. My brother takes a few. “Are you going to invite him in?” Jack asks.

“Would you like to leave now?” I ask Jack back.

“Delighted,” Jack goes, and he nods his head at Seth and disappears up the stairs.

“Okay,” I tell Seth. “Come in.”

I lead him to the family room and plop myself down on the L of the couch. I keep my sunglasses on, even though I don’t need them indoors.

He stays standing. “Anna, I’m sorry I was such an idiot that night.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I go, even though it does matter.

He sits down, but as far away as possible. “I’d been wanting to say a lot of stuff to you about the accident for a long time,” Seth goes. “But … it’s … you know … I guess the way it came out was … well, stupid.”

“The truth is,” I tell him, “we don’t even really know each other.”

“We were starting to,” Seth says. “All of us, I mean. Jason and Lisa and Ellen.”

“Who did you used to hang out with?” I ask Seth.

He digs into his pocket and then feeds some M&M’s into his mouth. “Leo Feld and Rimi and Justin and that crowd,” Seth says, crunching. “We still hang out sometimes.”

“Ellen and my brother tell me I’m all messed up,” I say. “I don’t think I’m such great girlfriend material right now.”

“Maybe that’s just a way of saying you’re not into me,” Seth goes.

“Maybe.”

He looks bummed, and then he starts to smile a little. “You’re sort of a bitch,” he tells me.

“Screw you,” I tell him back.

“Okay,” he goes, and he scoots over next to me. Then he lifts the sunglasses off my face and holds my cheeks in his hands. He doesn’t kiss me. We just look at each other for a while.

“You got tan,” he goes.

It’s hard not to smile. His hands are big and warm.

“And your hair is the color of fire now.”

He has pretty eyes. Brown with black rings around the outside.

“You’ve got a cat’s eye,” he tells me. He pulls his head back and squints. “Your pupil is vertical.”

“I know,” I say. “It might never get round again.”

“Supreme.” He smiles.

He doesn’t let go of my face. My heart starts to beat fast. “My brother told me no girl can resist this move,” he says finally, his face inches away from mine.

I knock his hands away. “Your brother doesn’t know anything,” I lie. But I keep hold of one of his index fingers, between us.

“So, what’s going on?” I ask. He pulls a curl with his free hand. Then he pulls another one. I shake him off “What’s all this stuff you’ve wanted to say to me since the accident?”

“I really, really love your curls.”

“I’m serious,” I tell him. “What did you want to say?”

He sits up straight and scoots back a little. Shoves his free hand into his pocket and pulls out two M&M’s. A green and an orange. “I just … um …” He slips the M&M’s back into his pocket, and we listen to them click against each other. “I just feel … bad for you. Really, really bad.”

“Oh,” I say.

My uncle Buck is a gourmet cook. My aunt Jerry takes in foster dogs. Besides a Great Dane named Mamie they’ve had forever, there’s always a few greyhounds and a mutt or two.

We hear barking even before we’re out of the car.

“Welcome to the zoo,” my father mumbles. Which is what he says every year. My mom and I carry two pumpkin pies and a bowl of stuffing, but still the dogs jump all over my father. Dogs love him for some reason.

“Off, Cyrus!” Aunt Jerry yells. “Off, Nixon! Off, Lucifer! Off! Off!”

“Lucifer?” Jack asks her. Aunt Jerry grabs me and Jack at the same time. She’s the only one so far not too careful about my eye.

“I’m sorry, you guys,” she whispers to us. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Get away!” my dad’s yelling at the dogs. “Get away!”