Swing Sideways Read online

  “Ponies can live thirty-five years, sometimes more. So yeah, they could still be alive. And I know they’d be here somewhere. I feel it, Annie. It’s like they’re waiting to be found.”

  “Here? On this farm? Wouldn’t they be in the paddock, or the stables? Wouldn’t your grandfather know?”

  “Not if he let them run free after she left. There’s six hundred acres on this farm. Do you know how big that is?” She flagged her hand in the direction of the lake. “That’s like a giant chunk of New York City.”

  I quickly did the math in my head. “It’s actually equivalent to almost one square mile, which is less than one percent of Manhattan.”

  As soon as I said it, I wanted to grab the words out of the air and swallow them. Not only had I shown what a super dork I was, it was argumentative, something smart kids should always avoid when in the process of making new friends.

  “Uh, the point is, Miss Smarty-Pants, it’s a lot of land for two ponies to hide. Besides, there’s a whole thousand acres of national forest attached to it, so what percentage is that? Huh?”

  It was seven and a half, but I wasn’t about to say it out loud. “I get it. It’s a lot.”

  “Right. Which is why I can’t do it alone.”

  “You really think she’d come home for the ponies and not because your grandfather could get sick again?”

  “I know it, Annie. If she could just remember what it was like before she left, I know she’d come home. I can feel it, can’t you?”

  The correct answer was yes, but I didn’t feel it. It wasn’t rational to think we’d find two ancient ponies on all that land by ourselves, just like it didn’t make sense Piper would come home because of them, no matter what California believed. But the promise of adventure, of running through the woods and searching McMurtry’s farm for two mystery ponies, was exactly what I wanted for the summer. I couldn’t have got a better offer if I’d invented it myself.

  “Okay. I’ll help you.”

  I slid into my seat just in time for dinner. Dad winked like we had a big secret and scooped a mountain of casserole onto his plate. “You must have done more than mere meandering today, huh?”

  My stomach growled at the aroma coming from the dish bubbling over with macaroni and cheese. Mom made it the way I liked it best: from scratch, with Gruyère, Cheddar, and Stilton, all “swimming in a roux” of sherry and buttermilk—she loved to say “swimming in a roux” like Julia Child—and topped off with a layer of grated Parmesan so it turned brown and crispy.

  A few years back she had tried to teach me to cook. Her macaroni and cheese was the main thing I’d wanted to learn to make, but after months of scorched scrambled eggs and overcooked roast beef, she finally gave up. “I’d advise you to start saving money now so you can hire a personal chef when you grow up. Otherwise you should buy stock in tomato soup.”

  I smiled at Dad and dumped a heaping portion onto my plate, banging the spoon on the china. Mom shifted in her seat.

  “I’m happy to see you eating, Annabel, but please remember your manners. And I believe Dad asked you a question.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” I said, trying to make my voice strong and firm. Instead, it came out loud and shaky. “I changed my name to Annie today.”

  Mom’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. “Excuse me?”

  Dad waved to shush her, and she shot him a piercing look. She hated to be shushed as much as she hated the Hairy Eyeball look.

  “That’s interesting, Annie,” Dad said. “Am I still allowed to call you Pumpkin?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s a nickname.”

  Mom smoothed the edge of her place mat with her fingertips. “Your name came from my favorite grandmother. Why would you want to change it?” Dad reached over and patted her arm.

  “Lots of kids change their names, babe. You can’t take it personally.”

  “I just want to be called Annie. That’s all.”

  Mom squeezed her eyes tight until her lashes disappeared, and chewed fiercely on her pasta. Her jaw clicked so loud she practically drowned out the hum of the ceiling fan. Finally, she took a sip of water and swallowed hard enough to down a croquet ball. Dad and I glanced at each other and turned back to our dinner.

  For the rest of the meal I pushed macaroni around my plate and pretended to ignore the glares firing across the table. My parents spoke louder without words than they ever did with them. Dr. Clementi had warned me the summer rules would be hardest for Mom. He’d also said it was not my responsibility to help anyone except myself.

  That night Mom clomped loudly up the stairs the way she did when she wanted the entire universe to know she was upset. The clomping stopped outside my door. My rocking chair sat next to it, with the quilt she’d sewn draped across the arm. Annabel was stitched in perfect, pink script along the border. A worn copy of Winnie the Pooh lay in the seat. When I was small enough to sit in Mom’s lap, she read to me every night. I loved the way her voice rose and fell in time to the rocking of the chair and the way her arms circled me, the book open in her hands, so the three of us—me, the book, and Mom—became one.

  I knew she was standing in the dark right now, thinking about me, probably wishing I was still small enough to wrap in her arms. Small enough not to want to change my name from the one she had picked. I pushed the fleeting moment of guilt away and whispered into the dark, “Annie Stockton, Annie Stockton, Annie Stockton.”

  EIGHT

  “Keep pushing!”

  I gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow and heaved again. California and I were deep in the woods, and a web of tangled vines had clawed its way around the wheel. I couldn’t push through, even with her pulling up front.

  “Oh, boogers.” She dropped the front end and pulled a pair of giant shears out of a tool belt buckled around her waist. “Let me cut more of this crapola out of the way. We need to get through this last part to get to the river—”

  Snap! A tight vine broke, and half the web fell away. She stomped heavy boots on the brambles and rolled a half-rotted log over them. A flurry of salamanders disappeared under last year’s fallen leaves.

  “Come on, I’m starving. I brought lunch. For both of us.”

  California had found the perfect hiding place for our supplies to search for the ponies. I was every bit as excited to get started on our sleuthing adventure as she was determined to bring Piper home. The river wasn’t huge, not like the East and the Hudson Rivers in the city. It was more a wide creek. On the bank, an oak tree as big around as California and me standing side by side rose from a sandy dip in the earth, its branches canopied over the water. I put my head inside a hole in the trunk.

  “Smells like smoke, like the one in the book about the kid who ran away and lived on the mountain.”

  “My Side of the Mountain,” she said. “The hole is perfect for storing our stuff. That’s egg-zactly why I picked this spot.”

  We unloaded an armful of old halters, ropes, a notebook, pencils, and a throwaway camera from the wheelbarrow and stashed them inside the tree. She pointed to bags of carrots and apples, and a rusted-yellow coffee can.

  “All those go into that plastic bucket. Snap the lid tight. That’ll keep the deer out.”

  I did as I was told. The day was so thick with humidity, I could barely see through the sweat dripping into my eyes. “It’s so hot.”

  California pulled off her boots and dumped the tool belt on the ground. “Come with me.”

  I followed her to the edge of the river where clusters of rich, green ferns hung from the sides, their roots woven tightly into the earth. The soft fronds draped over a short drop to the water, which rushed by, clean and inviting. California crouched and wove her hands through the foliage.

  “There’s an herb growing in here somewhere that might help you.” I knelt beside her. “I know it’s here, if I can—” She raised one foot and, with a loud grunt, shoved hard against my hip. I opened my mouth to yell, flailed my hands in the air trying to grab hold
of something to keep me from falling, but it was too late. My whole body toppled down the side of the bank, elbows and knees digging a rut in the earth, until I met the water face-first. My feet found the bottom, and I pushed off, shooting above the surface, coughing so hard that water spewed out of my nose. California stood on the bank grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “You said you were hot.”

  “What if I didn’t know how to swim?”

  “Guess I woulda had to save your life. Here I come!” she cried, right before cannonballing into the water.

  When she came up, we laughed like we’d known each other forever. Like she’d been my best friend since nursery school and not Jessica Braverman, who ditched me last fall when the panic attacks started. Jessica had traded our friendship for contact lenses, a nose job, and her first crush, while I hid in the school bathroom every day, gasping for air. The blooming connection between California and me made my heart lift. It was a powerful feeling.

  She stuck her toes above the water and spread her arms wide. I tossed my soaked sneakers onto dry ground, knowing I’d have to find a way to clean them before I got home. Rolling on my back, I floated beside her, forgetting about dirty shoes, and fake friends, and choking, and watched the sunlight push through the leaves overhead and sprinkle dapples across my belly.

  “Piper used to sing this song about Peaches and Cream and fields of green and memories from long ago—have you heard that song? Because I never knew for sure if it was a real song or one she made up, and now I think, since I discovered the ponies named Peaches and Cream—well, since I found the photograph of the ponies named Peaches and Cream—now I think she made it up. It’s a sad song; it goes like this . . .”

  She warbled a few bars of something so off-key I dipped my ears below the surface to drown out the sound.

  “She must miss them,” she said when I resurfaced. “I’m not sure how she got all the way to Oregon by herself, but somehow she ended up on that tree farm building a yurt when she was seventeen.”

  “What’s a yurt?”

  “You know, a yurt.” She pushed her legs like a frog, and her wiry hair spread into a yellow triangle on top of the water. “A thing you live in.”

  “I’ve never heard of a yurt.”

  “Didn’t you study Mongolia in your fancy city school? Never mind. It’s a dwelling. It’s round with a pointed roof. Anyway, Piper helped build that first yurt. Then Harvard and Euberthia helped build one for her. We live in a permaculture community. It’s better for the environment.”

  “Who are Harvard and Euberthia?”

  “They’re like my aunt and uncle, only not related. Harvard’s mother named him that because they were so poor she knew he’d never go to college, so she gave him a name that sounded like he did. Isn’t that a hoot?”

  “Hoot? You sound like my dad.”

  I’d never heard of permaculture, had no idea what a yurt looked like, and wasn’t even positive California was telling me the truth about either one.

  She turned on her belly and swam to the side. “Come on, let’s eat.”

  I scrambled up the bank behind her and squeezed water from my shirt and hair, pushing away thoughts of Mom’s expression when she saw me. If we were going to spend a lot of time in these woods, I’d have to figure out a way to conceal the evidence. Mom had never once hidden how she felt about Mr. McMurtry—my friendship with California had to stay secret.

  We ate sandwiches of homemade wheat bread and hummus. They weren’t too bad, and there was no hint of throat closing, even with California staring at me.

  “That’s a start,” she said, handing me a brownie. “Nothing like a day in the woods to build an appetite.”

  She had found a barrel of oats in the carriage house—further proof, she claimed, that the ponies were still around. After we ate, she swished the oats around inside the coffee can.

  “Annie, think. Why would Grandfather have oats? Do we have chickens? Donkeys? Goats? What else might eat oats beside the deer he spends all year trying to keep away from his corn?”

  “Ponies?”

  “Yup.” She smelled inside the can. “And these aren’t twenty-year-old oats, either. I bet he feeds them in the winter when there’s no grass. I bet they come right up to the barn.”

  We sprinkled the oats in between clumps of ferns and along the path we’d made to the water, and threw the apples and carrots farther into the woods. “If they find these, they’ll come back for more.”

  Sealing the food inside the bucket, she set it beside the tree and smiled at me. “I really wish you could see yourself.”

  “Why? What?”

  “Let’s just say no one will have to guess where you’ve been today.”

  I followed her out of the woods, plucking burrs and dried leaves out of my hair and off my clothes. When we got to the bottom of the orchard, she said, “Picked clean as a cotton field in November,” before turning away and zigzagging the wheelbarrow up the hill to the house.

  I wiped sweat from my face and trudged past the apple trees to the road. The whole walk home I kept along the edge of the woods so I could hide if Mom and Dad drove by. About halfway I checked my cell. Six messages flashed on the screen. All from Mom. Where are you? It’s past noon!

  I’d missed my noon check-in.

  I quickly texted back, Sorry! Phone died. On my way.

  I should have signed it Liar.

  NINE

  Over the next couple of weeks California came and went, traveling into the city for her grandfather’s treatments, and to meet up with Piper. Even though she was gone a lot, I still hadn’t sailed with Dad or lost my yearly tennis game with local prodigy Deirdre Maxwell—and I was actively avoiding Tommy. My trips to the beach were quick, long enough to be able to say I’d been there, which kept Mom and Dad from asking too many questions.

  On the Fourth of July, we drove into town to watch fireworks and ride the Ferris wheel at the carnival. The whole night I was jumpy, scared we’d bump into California and her grandfather in line for the next ride, or at the cotton candy booth. Mr. McMurtry didn’t sound like the fireworks-and-carnival type, but they’d been gone a few days, and I wasn’t sure if they were back yet or not. It would be awful if we ran into them. I’d never told California I was keeping our friendship a secret. That would require explaining why.

  Most other evenings Mom and Dad were either busy working on the redecorating project or off at some friend’s house to play bridge. I stayed home and kept my head in the Story Notebook, adding colorful, new details to the saga of Scout and the wild horse she’d named Liberty. Our summer was so out of whack, Dad and I hadn’t even spent an evening catching fireflies.

  What I had done was hide extra clothes, a hairbrush, and a tub of Handi Wipes inside the oak tree. Every time we were in the woods, I changed first thing. When we were done, I changed back, brushed anything woodsy out of my hair, rebraided it, and cleaned up with the wipes. And I never forgot the noon check-in again.

  One night during the second week of July, we were eating lemon meringue pie for dessert when Mom said Deirdre Maxwell had been sent away to a tennis camp for kids “with potential.” It was no secret my lack of athletic skills disappointed her, like I was doing it on purpose. Dad winked, scooped the meringue off his dessert, and dumped it on the side of his plate.

  “Guess you won’t have to play her this year, Pumpkin. Maybe you won’t have to play her ever again. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Mom frowned, then took the silver server and dished up her own piece.

  “Yup. One less thing to worry about.” I tucked into my pie, trying to figure out how to sneak a hunk of it from the house for California. “Thanks for making this dessert, Mom.”

  She was trying to do nice things for me. Twice she’d gone into the city and come back with bags of new summer clothes, the kind I actually liked. She’d been cooking all my favorite foods and had even left fabric samples on my bed so I
could pick new curtains myself. I hadn’t told her yet I didn’t like any of the choices.

  “Hey, the fireflies are out tonight,” Dad said. “How ’bout we all sit outside and catch a few?” He looked from Mom to me, a lump of lemon curd on the fork hovering near his mouth.

  “Sounds great, Dad. Can I have more pie first?”

  Mom turned her dessert plate so the flowers on the border lined up evenly with the ferns on the place mats. “I’m glad you’re eating, but be careful. You don’t want to overdo it and get fat.”

  My head flew up as fast as Dad’s fist pounded the table. “Vicky!”

  Mom’s mouth dropped open. The whole room vibrated with the electricity of a brewing storm. Impulsively, I grabbed the whole pie off the table and fled. Their argument was in full swing before my bedroom door slammed.

  Later, Dad and I sat on the edge of the deck with the firefly jar between us, watching tiny lights dance around in the dark. I twirled the lid, and Dad wrung the cloth left over from the Raspberry Stain Incident in his hands. Mom sat alone in the living room playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D on her violin. The notes drifted out the window, sad and sweet, with each pull of her bow. Dad turned his head to listen.

  “You and Mom always played that together,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “One of my favorites. You haven’t had your flute out all summer.”

  I shook my head and picked at the little holes we’d poked in the jar lid. “Pachelbel always makes me feel a little lost.”

  “Mom says when the two of you play together, it makes her heart swing sideways.”

  “She told me.”

  “You and Mom make my heart swing sideways. That’s how much I love both of you.”

  I ran my finger around the edge of the jar lid. The music stopped inside. Dad waited, listening for it to start again, but it didn’t. He bumped his shoulder against mine.

  “Well, enough of the mushy stuff. Did I ever tell you that fireflies are nocturnal beetles?”

  “Yup.”