Learning Not to Drown (27 page)

When I get home, there's a gift from Peter, a letter from Luke, and a card from my parents on my bed.

I unwrap Peter's gift first—the Speedo swim watch that I was eyeing over the summer. I can't believe he was paying enough attention to know that I wanted it.

Then Luke's.

Clare,

Please write. It is so hard in here, and I
need
your letters. Write back soon, okay? Please.

Love,

Luke

I'm a little surprised he didn't even acknowledge my birthday. Not knowing what to think, I toss his letter to the side and open the card from my parents. It's generic
with a kitten on the front, and the only thing in their hand is
Happy Birthday, Clare. Love, Mom and Dad
. And a Post-it note:
You can have your birthday gift when you write a proper letter to Luke.
Apparently Mom is back to hating me. Christmas could still be on. Birthday, not so much.

I don't care about the gift. The truth is, part of me wants to write Luke so bad that it hurts. In two days it'll be New Year's. While the rest of the world is celebrating a fresh start, he's in a holding cell waiting for a trial that will decide his future. I can't help but feel sad for him. Feel how lonely it must be. It's confusing, because at the same time I'm scared. Scared that if he's found innocent, he'll hurt someone again. Maybe that someone will be me.

The trial should be soon. His preliminary hearing is a week after New Year's. It's out of my hands. But writing him, that's something I could do. I look down at my new watch on my wrist. What would Peter think if I wrote Luke? Peter, who trusted me more than anyone else to hold his secret. Luke may be lonely and sad, but he's awaiting trial for a violent crime that he is capable of doing. I need to remember that.

I ball up my parents' card and Luke's letter and throw them into the fire.

I'm staring at the bottom of the toilet. No, I do not have the flu. My stomach has wrapped around itself, looped and bound into a large knot. Tomorrow is the pretrial hearing, where they will determine witnesses. Tomorrow I find out if I will have to testify against my brother. My stomach contracts. I expect it to empty out. It loops around itself one more time, leaving me staring at the toilet bowl with the sensation of a dry heave. Ten minutes later I give up, crawl to bed. Facing the ceiling, I try to think of warm, sunny days at the beach, or laughing with Drea. But Skeleton's cigar smoke circles the room, filling my nostrils, reminding me that he is here.

•  •  •

I have to go to school in the morning. Even though my stomach is still in knots and my head pounds from the mere two hours of sleep I was able to get last night. Usually I pick up Drea, but she's sick, so I slowly navigate the icy roads alone. Maybe it will be nice, being in school today. Distracted from what is going on in the courthouse less than an hour's drive away. I have a
history essay test that I spent the greater part of last week reviewing for. The prospect of doing well on that looks good.

A bright orange flyer for the winter art show is posted next to my locker. All this week the walls of the cafeteria will be graced with student work, featuring award-winning photography by Mandy Jordan. Really? Award-winning? According to whom? I remember her zoom lens on me and Luke at the lake this summer. My stomach turns again. I check my watch. With fifteen minutes before first period, I can head to the cafeteria to see this award-winning art.

I pass Omar on my way and stop to stab my pencil into the middle of the flyer on the bulletin board, right above Mandy's name.

He looks up and comments, “Award-winning, huh? This I gotta see.”

“I'm going there right now. Want to join me?”

“Meet you in five?”

I walk into the empty cafeteria. Mandy's pictures are immediately to the right of the door. A panoramic-style black-and-white photo with all of the Cranberry Hill girls looking very serious and sullen in front of the entrance to the school is the first photo. They are all dressed the same—tight white T-shirts and jeans, their hair slicked back, eyes, cheeks, and lips overly made up. Each holding a roughly drawn letter dropped down lazily between their chest and their thigh to spell out: “Soul Escape.” Oh, please. Mandy is attempting to be deep? Can't wait to see what the rest of the photos are
going to look like. I'm about to roll my eyes, when I stop myself—the topic might be a stretch, might even be classified as cheesy, but the picture itself isn't bad. She's caught the entrance to the school at just the right angle to make it look like it could be the concrete wall of a prison. And the makeup, though overdone, makes the girls have that creepy kind of soulless pretty that horror films can so perfectly capture.

If this picture is as calculated as it seems, Mandy is not nearly as stupid as I thought. Or as untalented. While her friends played fashion model for her title picture, she set them up as a subject. Their escape, their comfort, is being clones. Alright, then, award-winning Mandy. I hate to admit it, but you've got my attention.

The next picture is of Ryan, tucked inside the barrel of a huge wave. She has saturated the water to look bright turquoise; the white foam almost bleached. It's too much. Too cheery. Too overwhelming. Dreamlike and dangerous. I want to pluck him out of the wave and put him onshore.

Although the words are blurred, a SKYY Vodka bottle is the unmistakable subject of the next photo. The sunlight filtering through the glass creates an eerie blue shadow on the beige-tiled table below. An older lady's hand featuring a huge emerald ring—Lucille's—holds a martini glass, the stem pinched just so between her fingers.

I walk in front of the last two photos. The largest of them all, a 20" x 24", features the lake during a summer morning. I breathe in sharply as I scan the
picture, the sun just over the top of the mountain in the background; the tall, knotted trees along the edge; the soft green grass and wispy reeds; and an arm—my arm!—sweeping up through the air, water suspended between my skin and the lake below; the red of my bathing suit barely visible under the surface, a white wake all around me. I'd be a little dot of white and red in the middle of the blue water if the print were only a 3" x 5". Instead, somehow, the lake, the trees, the sun all become just part of the background. Me swimming is the focus.

It's beautiful. Incredible. Award-winning.

Maybe I should be angry that I'm the subject. That swimming, my personal soul escape, has become part of her art project. But looking at the ball of sun in the background, the way my arm is cutting through the surface of the water, I can't feel anger. Instead I can almost feel how good it was to swim in the mornings, how strangely exhilarating and comforting the freezing water can be. The picture leaves me with the deep longing for the one thing that could make me feel better right now, the one thing that I can't have until summer.

One last picture. Considerably smaller at 8" x 10". It's Luke's arm, nuzzled into the deep green grass. The Virgin Mary solemnly stepping on the head of a viper as the warm light from the sun perfectly highlights the muscles in his arms. This one leaves me with a different longing, the longing for things I can never have again: the innocence of believing Luke is really a good person at heart and the hope that he can be different.

Sinking to the floor, I'm thankful that the cafeteria is empty, because suddenly I can't stop crying.

It's Omar's arms that find me and pull me off the floor, his voice trying to make an uncomfortable joke. “Mandy's pictures are so bad they made you cry, huh?” His hands guide me to the restroom, where Skye and Lala are waiting. Skye helps wash and dry my face, applies a layer of her cover-up to conceal my red, blotchy skin.

They don't ask any questions. I don't offer up any information. Besides, if I start talking about Luke or me, or any type of emotion, I'm going to cry again.

I'm still looking a mess, but the first bell rings. Mom will flip if I go home. She'll claim I'm ditching on purpose. And I have that history test today. I have to go to class. As I leave the bathroom, Omar steps forward and puts his huge sunglasses on my face. “Keep them for today. Or for always. Whatever you need.”

By lunch I'm feeling okay. The need to cry is gone, and English quotes and history dates are bouncing around in my mind. The freezing air drives us from the quad into the cafeteria. A small crowd is walking past Mandy's pictures, taking a few minutes to stop and look at them.

I see the back of Ryan's head in front of the exhibition. I wonder how he feels to be on display as one of Mandy's subjects. At least no one except my friends will know for sure it's me in the picture of the lake. And who knows Luke's tattoos well enough to know that it's his arm? Ryan, on the other hand, is perfectly recognizable. Did Mandy ask his permission? Show him the
picture first? Did he see the whole series before she displayed them on the wall?

He turns and looks directly at me, then heads toward my table. Quickly excusing myself, I grab my backpack, toss my uneaten lunch into the trash, slip on Omar's sunglasses, and practically run to the library.

I don't want to talk to anyone. Not about Luke. Not about my soul escape and the reality I am swimming from. I don't want to talk to Omar, Lala, Skye, Chase, my parents, Peter, or Drea. And I certainly don't want to talk to Ryan.

•  •  •

“Hi, Clare. Set your bag down and have a seat,” Dad says as I walk in the door after school. I lower myself to the couch, apprehensively dropping my backpack onto the floor, trying to read my father's face. “Your statements taken during your interrogation will be sufficient,” he tells me. “You will not have to appear in court as a witness.”

I'm not going to have to appear in court as a witness against Luke? I'm not going to have to appear in court as a witness against Luke! I won't have to sit on the stand, worried that something I say or do might make him have more or less of a sentence. I won't have to see his face while testifying against him.

I allow myself to feel a hint of relief.

“Just so you know, Clare Bear, Luke told his lawyer that if they did want you on the stand as a witness, then he wanted to plead guilty so you wouldn't have to go through that.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Mom told me at Christmas that you didn't want to write Luke. Maybe now you want to write him a little thank-you or something.”

A thank-you? My teeth grind. With enough pressure they will split into a million shards, flying through my cheeks with all the force. I did not get him into trouble. What am I supposed to thank him for? How can my parents not get it?

“So, um, that's it. Unless you had a question or something?” he asks.

I have plenty of questions.

“What about the other charges, the stolen car and sexual assault? Are they all tried at once? Or is that separate? Did he have the preliminary hearing on that already? Is there enough evidence for that trial?”

“Oh. Don't you worry yourself about that, Clare Bear.” Dad gives me a weak smile. “How about a hot cocoa to celebrate your not having to appear in court?”

Skeleton does a little dance around the room, taking this opportunity to rattle his bones louder than usual. Don't you know, Dad, that you aren't protecting me by avoiding my questions? Don't you know that Skeletons don't like to be kept in closets?

Mandy's photos haunt me. I return to them again and again.

Some days I zero in on the photo of the martini glass in Lucille's hand, wondering what life is like in the Jordan household. I force myself to not feel sorry for Mandy. Even if we both have a taste of what it's like to live with an addict. But Chris. I miss Chris. I miss watching him improve and grow. I just want to tell him that I understand. Even if I can't promise him it'll turn out okay.

Some days I look at Luke's tattoo. Some days I pretend it isn't there. But I always take in every detail of my lake, swimming in the photo, letting myself feel the water surrounding me.

Then Friday comes; the photos disappear. All I'm left with is winter.

•  •  •

“Clare, are you okay?” Drea's mom plunks down next to me on a bench by the edge of the lake, frozen milky thick.

I shrug. “I haven't been sleeping well.” I think about
the night I got so drunk that I couldn't remember what I said to Ms. P. And I think about Luke and wonder what he remembers. If he knows what he has done. If he cares.

“On your walk?” I ask, moving the subject from me. It's cold. The mountains above the lake are bogged in with thick clouds, promising snow.

“Every day. You know, the trail around the lake is a full two miles. Good exercise. And this time of year I don't have to worry about rattlesnakes, either.” Drea's mom puts her arm around my shoulder while she pauses. Then, “It's been bad for you lately, huh?”

I chew my tongue, trying not to cry. Nod, feel the warmth of her hug through my jacket. It was too thin a choice for such a cold day. I didn't notice until now.

“The lake's frozen hard this year,” she says after a moment of silence. “I always wonder, what happens to the frogs? During winter, when the ground and the water are both frozen.” Ms. P looks far to the other side, where reeds stick stubbornly through the cloudy ice. “We always have frogs in the spring. It's a sign of a healthy environment. They're the first to leave and the first to die if the water is toxic.”

Frogs wouldn't last long in my house.

“So, enough small talk. I think what you need is a little time out of your house. I was thinking of taking Drea to visit her aunt Tiara who lives in Dana Point. You have a three-day weekend for Presidents' Day coming up. Come with us. I promise a lot of fun and relaxation.” She leans in tight, squeezes my arm for extra
emphasis. “The ocean, a Jacuzzi, a library where you can sit and read all day if you like. And the food. To die for. My sister makes the best chocolate cream pie. What do you say?” Her face is full of excitement and promise. She really believes that a trip will make me all better. She really believes that she can fix it. Enough that I want to believe it can bring me sanity, help me understand myself, my parents, my brothers.