Swimming to Chicago Read online

  Synopsis

  Reeling from his mother's suicide, seventeen-year-old Alex Bainbridge retreats from the world around him, often finding solace on a secluded island behind his house. As an Armenian-American living in a small Southern town, Alex struggles to fit in. His close friendship with the outspoken Jillian Dambro is his only saving grace, until he meets and falls in love with Robby LaMont—an introverted new student at school. As the year unfolds and the lives of the adults around them unravel, the three teens form an unbreakable bond, vowing to do anything to stay together—even if it means leaving everything behind.

  Swimming to Chicago

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

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  By the Author

  Mesmerized

  Accidents Never Happen

  Swimming to Chicago

  Swimming to Chicago

  © 2011 By David-Matthew Barnes. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-608-3

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: October 2011

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Greg Herren and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  Acknowledgments

  Many people helped bring Swimming to Chicago to print. To them, I offer my deepest gratitude:

  To Len Barot, for her unconditional support, shared wisdom, and never-ending faith in my stories.

  To Greg Herren, for being a genius editor, a patient teacher, and a brilliant writer.

  To the wonderful Bold Strokes Books family, especially Cindy Cresap, Connie Ward, Kim Baldwin, Lori Anderson, Ruth Sternglantz, Sandy Lowe, Sheri, and Stacia Seaman.

  To Emily Haines and the members of Metric, for providing the perfect soundtrack to this novel, without even realizing it.

  To Shirley Manson for her beauty, strength, and truth.

  For their never-ending support and words of encouragement: Aaron Martinez, Albert Magana, Billie Parish, Carsen Taite, Collin Kelley, Danielle Downs, Debra Garnes, Elizabeth Warren, Frankie Hernandez, Jamie Hughes, Jill McMahon, Jodi Blue, Karen Head, Kate Williams, Kelly Wilson Lopez, Kimberly Faye Greenberg, Leila Wells Rogers, Linda Velasco Wread, Liz Hawkins Jester, Lynn Furtal, Marilyn Montague, Michelle Boman Harris, Nance Haxton, Nita Manley, Patricia Abbott-Dinsmore, Rebecca Johnson, Robyn Colburn, Sabra Rahel, Selena Ambush, Stefani Deoul, Susan Madden, Tara Henry, Therease Logan, and Todd Wylie.

  To my parents, Samuel Barnes, Jr. and Nancy Nickle, and my brothers, Jamin, Jason, Andy, and Jaren, for allowing me to be the writer in the family.

  To my students, who teach me more on a daily basis than I could ever dream of teaching them.

  To the loving memory of my grandmother, Dorothy Helen Nickle, for my childhood of soap operas and tea parties.

  To Nick A. Moreno, who believed in this story (and me) long before I did.

  To Mindy Morgan, for being my best friend for over twenty years.

  To Rena Mason, for always having my back.

  To Stacy Scranton, for always knowing the right thing to say. To Cyndi Lopez and Bethany Hidden-Cauley, for being sassy and sexy.

  To Edward C. Ortiz, for the wonderful life and love we share.

  To the beautiful city of Chicago. And the always inspiring people who live there.

  To God, for everything. Without You, I’m nothing.

  Dedication

  In loving memory of

  Norman Michael Parent

  June 28, 1988–September 18, 2009

  Because you lived and loved without fear.

  I am not young enough to know everything.

  —Oscar Wilde

  Part One

  June/Hunis

  Jillian

  Summer started like a seduction. They saw glimpses of it in late May, peeking through windows and dancing across every lawn in Harmonville. It snuck into their lives, flirting and tempting them with freedom from school, boredom, and homework. It was thick with promises of excitement, and hot possibilities of romance and sex.

  Like parolees, Jillian Dambro and Alex Bainbridge lapped up the start of summer vacation with a frenzied desire to explore all they’d missed while confined by nine months of high school. Every second of every day was filled with as much activity as possible. They were making up for lost time as though terrified of dying at the age of seventeen. But by the day the season officially began in the third week of June, their lust for life had faded. Apathy arrived like an uninvited houseguest. They slept late, watched too much television, and ate whatever they wanted—while doing their best to dodge questions about college applications.

  Jillian noticed Alex was avoiding everyone’s questions—even hers.

  She knew something was wrong. After eleven years of friendship, she could just tell. She secretly cussed herself out for not having the courage to casually bring up her concerns in their daily conversations. I’m a shitty friend, she told herself. I need to stop being so selfish.

  A hollow coldness had crept into Alex’s eyes, and it scared Jillian. There was a sense of anger shadowing him, like an imaginary friend playing a cruel and constant game of piggy-back. He carried bitterness around with him. His hands gripped everything they touched with frustration. The edges of his words ended with a bristling sharpness, carrying an unspoken caution that he shouldn’t be challenged. It was in every step he took—his stride was mean and severe as he pounded the earth in his favorite pair of black and white Converse shoes. The rage seemed permanent, as if he were possessed by something trying to escape from his body. It seeped out of his soul through an insensitive stare.

  Jillian became crippled with fear her friendship with Alex was falling apart, and she couldn’t figure out why.

  She was overwhelmed by this abrupt sense of loss one Friday afternoon. She sat on the sofa wearing a pink and white gingham tank top and white Capris, remote control in hand. The opening theme music to The Young and the Restless blared from the outdated television set. Her bare feet were resting on the lip of the marred coffee table. She wiggled her freshly painted toes, noticing the new sandals she’d bought last week were giving the tops of her feet a strange V-shaped tan line. She tightened her ponytail by grabbing two thick strands of her honey-colored hair and pulling firmly. She’d been toying with the idea of changing her image. She wanted to dye her hair jet black. And get colored contacts—green, probably—because she was tired of her brown eyes. All new makeup, and all new clothes.

  She wanted to become a new person.

  Jillian reached for an ice-cold bottle of Wild Cherry Pepsi on the lamp table to her right. She unscrewed the cap, took a sip, and welcomed the sweet burn of the soda in her throat. She was craving a cigarette but had to wait until her mother left for work so she could smoke in peace, without the risk of getting grounded again. “Hurry up,” she said quietly, hoping the hushed words would somehow urge her mother to get out of the house.

  “Baby!” Delilah Dambro called from the other room. Jillian cringed at the sound of the hus
ky, throaty voice. Her mother had a knack for destroying the English language with her tacky euphemisms and out-of-control Southern accent. “You seen my purse, buttercup?”

  “You left it in the car.”

  “What’d you say, sugar?”

  “You left it in the car!” Jillian practically screamed.

  She could hear her klutzy mother stumble down the hallway before stepping down into the sunken living room. “Darlin’, I really wish you wouldn’t yell like that.”

  Jillian didn’t take her eyes from the television screen. “I didn’t realize you were teaching etiquette lessons now.”

  Delilah sighed a little. “You, little girl, have the manners of a dairy cow. Get your filthy feet off of my coffee table.”

  The realization hit Jillian then. It swept over her like an allergic reaction. Her eyes narrowed, suddenly sensitive to the sunshine tumbling in from the front window and spilling all over the worn carpet of the living room. Her chest burned and her breath caught in her throat. Her pulse throbbed and pounded in her wrists and temples. She felt sweat forming on the back of her knees and a slow, growing wave of nausea in the pit of her stomach. Alex is hiding something from me. Something serious.

  Jillian sensed her mother’s look of concern. “You all right?” she asked.

  “Yes…”

  “You don’t look well.” Delilah folded her arms across her chest. She quickly unfolded them, saying “Dang gone it” when she smashed her waitress name tag against her left boob. She shot Jillian a wide-eyed look. “Good Lord, you’re not pregnant, are you?”

  Jillian rolled her eyes, and said through a smirk, “Must’ve been all the whiskey I drank last night.”

  Delilah didn’t blink, trying to appear in control of the situation. “Good for you, sister. Drink yourself to death like your granny did. She was a party girl, too.” Delilah returned to the task of finding her missing purse. She sauntered off. Seconds later, Jillian could hear her mother’s black high heels scuffing across the kitchen floor. The door leading from the house to the garage creaked open. “That cheap stuff always kicks you in the ass, honey bee! Jesus Christ, this garage is a filthy mess. Look at all this crap. Useless junk left behind by a useless man.”

  Jillian sat up, placed both feet on the floor, and tossed the remote control aside. “My God…I’m losing my best friend.” She stood up, scanning the room for the black cordless phone.

  Delilah came back into the room, her right hand wrapped through the shoulder strap of her faux leather purse. She smoothed out a few wrinkles in her uniform. “What’s the matter? You lose somethin’?”

  Jillian stopped for a moment and took a deep look at her mother. Jillian thought her mother was way too thin. As usual, Delilah also had on too much blush, and her cheap perfume swam around the room. “I think so,” Jillian breathed. “But you wouldn’t understand.”

  Delilah ran a few fingers through her burgundy-tinted hair. Her long nails, painted a vibrant shade of peach, snagged on a couple of fresh curls. Jillian thought her mother looked like a sad clown, an escapee from some cruel circus. “I look all right?”

  Jillian purposely avoided her mother’s eyes. “Have you seen the cordless? My cell phone died and I forgot to charge it.”

  “It’s in the bathroom. I was talking to Conner while I was curling my hair.”

  Jillian couldn’t help herself. “You’ve got too much blush on.”

  “I do?” Delilah opened her purse, searching for her compact. “I might be home late tonight, buttercup. Conner wants to take me out…for drinks. Ain’t that sweet?” She studied her reflection in the round mirror. She rubbed a little at her cheeks. “There…that’s better.”

  “Sure it is,” Jillian said with a forced grin. She moved past her mother, went inside the bathroom at the end of the hall, and shut the door.

  *

  Jillian sat on the edge of the bathtub, her feet and toes sinking into a bubble-gum pink shaggy floor mat. She looked over to the cluttered sink and noticed her mother had forgotten to turn off her curling iron. She picked up the black cordless phone, dialed a memorized number, and waited for an answer.

  “Hello?” he said, gruff.

  “You were sleeping.”

  “I know. My mom’s on my ass about it, too. She says we gotta find something productive for me to do this summer.” Jillian could hear the frosty edge to his words and the frustration in his breath. She was determined to have a normal conversation with him. She needed to, so her fear they were drifting apart could be dismissed.

  “Tell your mother she needs to mind her own business.”

  “You know she’s been depressed, Jilli. I’ll just try to avoid her until August. I want to avoid everyone.”

  Jillian wondered if he meant her as well. She swallowed and said, “The summer is going by too fast. Only nine and a half more weeks.”

  He sighed, bored. “I just wanna get the next year over with.”

  Jillian stood up, went to the mirror above the sink. She opened her mouth, running an index finger across her teeth. She felt nervous, fidgety. “My car’s still in the shop. They’re holding it hostage until I pay them a ridiculous amount of money. I’m tired of walking everywhere and bumming rides from people. I need to find a job.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish I could quit mine.” Just a week ago, Alex had gushed over his new job, thrilled about an unexpected raise. Jillian was more certain than ever that something was wrong. She knew they needed to spend more time together, to prevent the distance from growing.

  “Hey,” she said with feigned enthusiasm, “ask Mr. Freeman if he’ll hire me. Tell him I’ll even consider going out with his bonehead son if he does. It can’t be that difficult to make a pizza.”

  Alex coughed, cleared his throat. “Sue Ellen already beat you to it. She’s waiting tables.”

  “Ah, nepotism has found its way into the lovely state of Georgia.” Jillian opened the medicine cabinet, reading the labels on her mother’s bottles of prescribed drugs. Too many tranquilizers. “I hate Sue Ellen Freeman. That bitch told me I looked like a boy.”

  “That was almost three years ago.”

  “So?”

  “So, you’ve got tits now.”

  Jillian glanced down at her chest. “Yeah,” she said, with a small laugh. “Barely.”

  Alex cut right to the point. “Why are you calling me?”

  She winced a little, shut the medicine cabinet, and turned off her mother’s curling iron. “Can’t I call my best friend on a Friday afternoon?”

  “If you want me to come over, just say so.”

  She held her breath for a moment before asking, “Will you?”

  Alex was silent for a second on the other end. The pause scared Jillian. They’d always talked about everything. There had never been secrets between them. Ever. “I got some stuff I have to do around the house first. I think my mom’s lonely. I need to help her with a few things. Keep her company for a while.”

  “My mom went to work,” she offered.

  “The Queen of Applebee’s?”

  “She loves that place. She gets to make waitresses younger than her feel like shit five days a week.”

  “Maybe you should get a job there.” His words cut deep. Alex knew how much Jillian disliked her mother’s working-class ways, and the fact she’d settled for a boring, routine life in a boring, routine town.

  She tried to control the venom in her voice. “I’m not exactly waitress material. I’m saving myself for life in a big city.”

  Alex moved in for the kill. “You can always work at Value Mart.”

  Jillian wasn’t sure what she’d done to deserve that. “I’d rather die than work there.”

  Alex

  After hanging up the phone, Alex stayed in bed and stared up at his bedroom ceiling. He welcomed the cool comfort of the blue cotton sheets against his legs and arms. The electric hum of the air conditioner spouting a cold breeze through a duct above his bedroom door offered him a strange sense of
security.

  His mother’s contagious laughter floated upstairs from the kitchen below. She was on the phone, talking to one of their relatives in Chicago. Alex strained to hear the Armenian words his mother spoke. He wasn’t fluent, but knew enough to know she was defending the reputation of a promiscuous girl and giving her the benefit of the doubt. He loved to hear her speak in Armenian. Her voice always lifted, thick with happiness and truth. Lately, she seemed unusually sad and distant. The soft waves of her rock-smoothing laughter were a relief.

  Alex replayed his phone conversation with Jillian in his mind. He knew she was concerned about him. He could hear it in her voice as she had tried her best to make him laugh, to find the source of his anxiety. Her gentle reminders she was still his best friend made him love her even more.

  Alex’s guilt roamed through his veins like ghosts looting an old house. It wasn’t Jillian’s fault. She had no idea what was going on. He knew he’d been unusually mean to her, so he vowed to make it up to her by being a better friend. Although she pretended to be tough, Alex knew firsthand how sensitive Jillian was, how much she relied on him. There was a connection between the two of them carrying a deeper meaning than Alex could understand or define.

  He wondered what her reaction would be when he told her the truth—nothing in his life had been the same since last Saturday when Tommy Freeman spent the night.

  For the last week, Alex had tried to hide out from everyone. He was constantly being reminded he was a different person now. He was frightened others might be able to see it—they could tell what he’d done just by looking at him. Everywhere he went, he felt haunted by shame. He walked with his shoulders slumped forward, his eyes to the ground, his hands in his pockets. He avoided stares, turning away from people as quickly as possible. He retreated to his bedroom, searching for solace by listening to his favorite band Metric on his headphones, playing games on his cell phone or rereading his favorite comic book for the four hundredth time. He caught distorted glimpses of himself in the mocking faces of clocks and watches, in the finger-smudged glass of bathroom mirrors, in reflections of the greasy forks and spoons in the kitchen at work. Alex felt the constant need to escape from the relentless images. He didn’t recognize himself. He had no idea who he was anymore. In his mind, he’d simultaneously become a bounty hunter and a fugitive, victim, and villain. There was a new disdain burning inside him, a powerful dislike he carried like a pistol aimed at his tortured heart. The self-hatred caught in his throat when he spoke, leaving a residue of chalk and vinegar on the back of his tongue. It found a spot to hide between his teeth and gums like chewing tobacco, stuck snugly between his shoulder blades while he slept.