Leap (2 page)

Three cheers and one groan met Lisa's announcement.

“Claire? What the hell? Was that you?” I said.

Claire lay next to Lisa, looking like an Olympic diver in her sporty one-piece. Every year, coaches try to recruit her for the soccer and basketball teams, but she has always chosen to dance instead. She hid her face in her hands. “I didn't want to tell you now and spoil the party. But … I'm not doing the summer school this year.”

We all turned to her. “Why not?”

She uncovered her face and let her arms flop wide. “I got a job at The Ice Cream Place. When I'm not working, I just want to swim, camp, bike, and play volleyball on the beach.”

No one said anything.

“We'll still see each other! You can come by the store anytime.”

“It won't be the same.” I pulled at a frayed thread on my towel.
Why do things always have to change?

“Lighten up,” Jamie said. “It's only dance team.”

Sasha cleared her throat. “I don't know about you guys, but I'm still recovering from the show. How 'bout we trade massages?”

“Great idea,” Lisa said. “Cramming for finals put a few kinks in my neck, too.”

We formed a circle like a seated conga line. Behind me, Sasha found knots of spasmed muscle I wasn't even aware of. When she pressed, the pain stabbed. After a while, it dulled, and the tension in my shoulders, neck, and back eased off.

Jamie wriggled in front of me. She was wearing a tank top—or,
muscle shirt
as she likes to call them—and shorts. She spends her share of time in leotards and tights, but outside the studio, she shuns “girly” clothes, even bathing suits. I was kneading her neck with delicate, circular motions of my fingertips. “More pressure!” She slapped her hands on top of mine and flattened them. In partnering class, she digs in too hard and leaves finger-shaped bruises. Apparently, she likes the same technique in a massage. Poor Claire: she ended up in front of Jamie.

During our massage session (coincidence? I think not!), Sasha's older brother sauntered down to the pool and smirked at us. I remember him best as the skinny, pimply thirteen-year-old who would dangle a rubber rat over our shoulders when Sasha and I were trying to do homework, but he has filled out into a buff guy with curly black hair, five-o'clock shadow, and just the right amount of chest hair. He wears a plain silver chain around his neck, and he's always chewing something—gum or a piece of grass or a toothpick. Today, he was drinking a glass of lemonade and crushing ice cubes between his teeth. “How old are you now, Natalie?”

“Fifteen.”

“Sweet fifteen and never been kissed!” Jamie offered.

Kevin laughed, but only with his eyes. “I'll bet she's not as innocent as she looks.”

“
Na-
ta-lie
Fer-
gu-son
has-
n't been
kissed!
” Sasha said.

Someone always had to revive the limerick issue. In Grade 8, my English teacher pointed out that my name had perfect dactylic rhythm, which means it sounds like a waltz:
one-
two-three,
one
-two-three,
Na-
ta-lie
Fer-
gu-son. She instructed the whole class to make up rhymes about me. (Technically, they were
reverse
limericks, as if that helped.) I've never lived it down.

Claire chimed in. “
Went
to the
doc-
tor to
see
what she'd
missed
.”

After a long pause, during which I hoped they would give up, Kevin pitched in.

“
Lie
down right
here
, I'll
breathe
in your
ear
.”

Jamie wrapped up (with great originality): “
Na-
ta-lie
Fer-
gu-son
has-
n't been
kissed!
”

There should really be a law against parents humiliating their children with weird names, though I realize that my own case pales against someone like Moon Unit Zappa or Lourdes Leon.

I flipped onto my stomach, head turned away from them. This position only drew more attention to my biker's thighs and chunky calves. (Why can't I have long, slender legs like most dancers?) To make matters worse, my bathing suit was crawling up my bum. I kept pulling at the elastic, but it's too small for me this year. Guys get to swim in their shorts; why do girls have to expose themselves like this? I'd just decided to sit up and wrap the towel around my waist when Kevin passed by on his way back inside. I swear he murmured something under his breath. It sounded like, “Wanna play doctor?”

Did I hear him right?! After his contribution to the limerick, it certainly
sounded
like a come-on.

I watched him lope back to the town house. His spine bisected his long, bare back and arched gently before it disappeared into the khaki shorts that hung loose from his hip bones. I forced myself to flip towards the other girls in case he looked back and caught me gawking.

What is wrong with me? Kevin is off-limits! I don't just mean his age—nineteen, a grown man—but what he did to Sasha. Two summers ago, when I was visiting my dad in Ontario, Sasha made friends with one of her neighbors, a girl named Gina. For a few weeks, they spent all their time together. Gina was trendy, confident, and older—somewhere in between Sasha's age and Kevin's. Sasha practically idolized her, as she let me know in the late-night e-mails she wrote after Gina had gone home.

Then Gina ditched Sasha and began a hot affair with Kevin.

According to Sasha, Kevin moved in on Gina specifically to spite his sister. He had fallen out with his own friends, and he couldn't stand to see Sasha happy when he was lonely. He just had to steal her friend. Furious, Sasha refused to speak to either of them for the rest of the summer. After I got back from Toronto, she practically moved in with us. She didn't even say good-bye when Gina's family left the town house complex in the fall.

Sasha has never forgiven Kevin for the Gina Incident. Since then, the slightest interaction between him and any of her friends upsets her. I don't mention him at all in case she thinks I'm interested and plotting to betray her.

I just hope he doesn't hang around too much this summer. He is getting harder to ignore.

Saturday, June 26th

How I ended up at the public library's annual book purge, I mean sale, on the first Saturday of summer vacation still baffles me. The last thing I remember, I was daydreaming about Kevin in the back seat of Mom's green Volvo, otherwise known as Kermit. (I'd given up the front seat to Paige so I could tune out.) As Mom cranked the steering wheel, all I heard was, “—just stop in for a minute.”

You might think that on the first day of her own vacation, a teacher would find something better to do than head for the public building that most resembles a school and surround herself with old, musty books. But you would be wrong. Table after table, both inside and out, overflowed with the dog-eared items. They'd traveled into beds, onto the backs of toilets, and under the edges of plates, to be water-marked and food-stained. Their plastic jackets were cracked and peeling, and their sides were stamped in red:
Greater Victoria Public Library
. Like tattooed convicts, they could leave the prison, but they would never really escape their past.

Mom plundered each table with zest. She picked up a book, flipped it over to scan the back, opened the front cover to read the flap, then leafed through the middle. Sometimes she set the book back down, but with alarming regularity she tucked it under her arm instead. I found a bench by the outdoor tables and settled in with
Monday Magazine
to wait out Mom's scavenger hunt. Once, when I glanced up, Mom was chatting with another woman and waving her free arm around. As if she sensed my eyes on her, she spun around and beelined for me.

“Will you do me a favor and keep an eye on these books so I can keep looking?”

I made sure I sighed loud enough for her to hear. “If I have to.”

“Thanks. I won't be long.” She fumbled in the pockets of her cardigan and pulled out a barrette. She smoothed her hair back and clipped it into place. “Does that look okay?”

Her fuzzy hair did look better off her face. Tidier, anyway. “Sure.” I dropped my eyes to the paper again.

“Natalie?”

I snapped a page to turn it without looking up. “Mm?”

“Can you keep an eye on your sister, as well?”

I rolled my eyes, and Mom dove back into the fray. In a bright orange baseball cap, Paige was easy to keep track of. She was browsing in the children's section. At the age of ten, she still looks up to Mom and tries to copy her. I couldn't help thinking that she was going to find this experience a little more disappointing than most, but pretty soon she came over to stash her finds with me, like Mom had.

“Look at this one about girls in sports.”

The oversized encyclopedia featured a hockey goalie on the front, completely hidden behind face cage and body padding. The only way you could tell it was a girl was by the ponytail.

“Don't you think it's cool?”

“I guess so.”

My lack of enthusiasm didn't escape my sister.

“You're a spoilsport. Ha,
spoil sport
, get it?”

I mock punched her and she sparred in front of me, bouncing from one foot to the other, her arms tucked in, fists below her chin. Every so often she tilted her body horizontally and shot out her leg. I jumped up and mirrored her moves.

Paige shouted. “Look out!”

It was too late. An old lady had walked up behind me and my foot made contact with her ribs. I barely grazed her, but she dropped her books, shrieked, and stood there trembling. Mom heard the racket and rushed over just as a library clerk arrived to guide the shell-shocked woman to the bench I'd been sitting on. I picked up the lady's books and apologized, but the clerk waved us back. Mom and Paige gathered their books and headed for the cashier. I waited at a distance from my victim, hoping she would recover and forgive me. I didn't dare to approach again.

“I'm sure it's not serious,” someone said.

I started. It was the woman Mom had been talking to. “I saw the whole thing happen. You just gave her a scare.” Broad shouldered, she had the solid, reassuring air of a police officer, or a nurse. Her collared shirt could have been a uniform—except for the multicolored circles and lines that decorated it. “You must be Denise's daughter.”

I nodded. “Natalie.”

“I'm Marine. I met your mom at a creativity workshop for teachers.”

“Oh.”

I looked past her. Mom and Paige were returning from the cash register. They headed for the lady on the bench.

“Your Mom has a lot of hidden talent.”

I wrenched my attention back to this woman who seemed bent on conversation. Her name did sound kind of familiar. “Were you leading the workshop?”

“Yes, that was me.”

The details clicked. Mom had raved about Marine's workshop on freeing the artist within. She'd inspired the teachers to finger-paint like kindergartners. “So you teach art?”
Or should I say, Flakiness 101?

“That's right.”

Mom and Paige had stopped at the bench and were speaking to the lady I'd kicked. She lifted up her hands as if she was about to play the piano and shook her head. As soon as Mom came within earshot, I asked, “Is she all right?”

“She'll be fine,” Mom said. “Marine …” Her voice turned kind of syrupy to disguise how upset she was with me. “You've met Natalie?”

“Yes. I was just saying I could tell it wasn't serious, right from the get-go.”

“Right from the get-go, huh?” Mom chuckled. She herself is always using dorky, old-fashioned expressions like “get-go.” Maybe she and Marine speak the same language. “This is my younger daughter, Paige.”

“I found an encyclopedia of girls in sports,” Paige said.

“How wonderful!” Marine said.

Paige shot me a look to say,
I told you so.

“I'm doing a softball camp this summer,” Paige added.

Hands in her shorts pockets, Marine rocked back on her heels. “I love softball!”

“You should come see me play!” Paige said. “Can she, Mom?”

Mom put her hand on Paige's shoulder and tucked her chin to her neck in embarrassment.

Marine said, “I'd love to!” just as Mom said, “We'll have to see about that.”

There was an awkward silence.

“We'd better get going,” Mom said. She dropped her hand from Paige's shoulder.