“You’re very good at this,” my mom tells me quietly. “Thank you for sharing your gift with me.”
Her eyes are a little bloodshot, though she smiles happily. Is that a new symptom? She seems like she’s feeling pretty good, just . . . off. I guess that’s chemo at work, and I hate that I don’t know her experience with it better.
“What’s with the stare?” Rachel asks. “Lake time. Suit up.”
“My bathing suit isn’t here.”
“Then swim in your clothes. Or your bra and undies. Oh, don’t look so scandalized. We both used to change your diaper.”
“Rachel,” my mom says. “You’re embarrassing her.”
“Jenkins,” Rachel says. “That’s the point.”
While Rachel changes into her suit, my mom nudges her shoulder against mine. “I’m swimming in my clothes too. Can’t get too much sun.”
“His name is Henry.” The words splat out, sloppy. “We mostly call him Jones, his last name.”
My mom presses a finger against her lips, taps it a few times. She’s pleased, considering this new information.
“I didn’t tell you because it’s honestly so stupid—like, nothing will ever happen. And I know I shouldn’t even have a dumb crush right after breaking up with Lukas, but—”
“Oh, Bird.” She cups her hand on my cheek. “You’re only seventeen.”
I flinch. I’m not too young to know my own heart. Sure, it’s terrain I’m still learning to map, but I know the landscape better than anyone. I know the unexpected dips and the paths that were not meant for me. “What does that mean?”
“It means that everything changes so fast. It’s okay if you change too.” Seeing that I still don’t quite get it, she smiles ever so slightly. “It means, good for you. Crush away. Get crushed, even. Feel it all, okay? Show up for it.”
“I will.” The words land like a promise, sealed between us. Maybe they are, come what may.
“Hurry up, you little gossips,” Rachel calls. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re telling secrets in there.”
We emerge from the bathroom, conspiratorial. My mom gives her a haughty look. “Chill out, Byers. It’s not like anyone’s dying.”
This makes Rachel laugh again, and I barely disguise my horror.
On the way out, my mom jams a fistful of crumbly chips into her mouth and tucks the bag under her arm. “Chips. My real best friend.”
At the water’s edge, we survey the lake—our holy ground, our promised land.
“All right, swim team captain,” Rachel says. “Let’s see a running dive.”
“I’m not a seal. I do not perform on demand.”
“What if I give you a chip?” Rachel digs her arm into the open bag.
“Hey!” my mom says.
I plow into the water, up to my knees. Then I turn back to them, bark, and clap my hands together. Rachel pitches a chip, which I try to catch with my mouth. On my third try, I fall into the water, much to their delight. I give in and pull my arms into a neat, even stroke.
“Look at us,” I hear Rachel tell my mom. “Not bad for our midforties after a couple o’ kids, eh, ?Jenkins?”
I wade in farther, walking forward as seamlessly as I would on land. It’s not like the ocean, chilled and pushing, pulling. It’s bathwater, still and cool. I tip backward, letting the water catch my shoulders and support me. My curls splay out around me, and I think of all the summers spent pretending to be a mermaid.
Pushing my arms out like I’m making snow angels, I almost thank the Lord in my mind. I am grateful for all this, for the feel of water and sun on my skin. For all the years spent here, happy. But with my mom nearby, and her chemo-inspired hair, I’m not quite ready for a truce. He knows what He needs to do.
Nearby, Rachel takes a deep, gasping breath and plunges under the water. Her bare feet pop up, balanced in a handstand, and my mom laughs. That’s why she did it, of course—to make my mom laugh. Or maybe because Rachel can still touch the magic of wanting to be a mermaid. She can still play. How can I be seventeen and already feel it slipping from my grasp?
“Still got it!” Rachel announces, wringing out her hair.
My mother dips her shorn head back, eyes closed. When she stands back upright, a bemused smile crosses her face as she runs one hand over her scalp. “How strange. To not have the weight of wet hair.”
I should feel like I’m intruding here, a kid with two grown-ups. But I don’t. Under duress and ancient trees, I feel older—no, ageless. Three women in waters that have baptized and held so many, including me at all previous ages of my life. In water, I can almost feel cradled by the universe, in the palm of God’s own hand. And we float.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When I get to the rec room after lights-out, Jones is already there. His trumpet is disassembled across the coffee table, and he’s dutifully snaking some kind of cloth into the valves.
“Hey,” I say, plopping onto the couch beside him. “Is your trumpet okay?”
“Yep. Just routine maintenance.”
“Impressive. I couldn’t tune a piano to save my life.”
“That,” he says, picking up the mouthpiece, “would be a weird murder attempt. ‘TUNE THIS PIANO OR DIE. DO IT NOW!’?”
When I recover from laughing, I watch his careful hands wiping each delicate bend of metal. It’s methodical, and a little hypnotic to watch. He glances up, a quick smile at my undivided attention. When he smiles, the apples of his cheeks carve two little lines above his mouth. It’s like they’re framing that semicircle grin of his.
He looks up again, and I realize I’ve just been sitting here, staring at his face.
“I like your glasses,” I announce. Which is true, of course, but I say it mostly because I’ve been gawking for a solid thirty seconds longer than is socially appropriate.
“Yeah? Thanks.” He adjusts them a little on the bridge of his nose. “My grandpa calls them my Malcolm X glasses.”
“Are you close with him?”
“Malcolm X?”
I stick my tongue out. “Your grandpa.”
“Yeah. See him every Sunday, for church and then brunch after. He’s a trip.”
“So, your family goes to church?” I try to say this as if it is any old topic and not fundamental to who I am as a person.
He does this thing—a quick glance-away—when he’s trying to deflect his amusement. Apparently I’m not as casual as I thought. “Every Sunday. And we do a kind of church here at Daybreak, you know.”
“Really?” I mean, of course I wouldn’t know that. I’m always gone at sunup and with my mom until after lunchtime.
“Yeah. In the meeting hall. We do some songs, talk about feelings. Sometimes kids share their traditions. But Bryan also takes some of the kids into town Sunday morning for church.”
“Huh.”
“You thought I was a heathen,” he says happily. “You thought we were all heathens.”
“I don’t think of people as heathens.” If I did, I might be one at this point. It’s a sobering thought, and Henry notices my fallen expression.