Swing Sideways Read online

  Dad put his hand on my back. “You look great, Pumpkin.”

  He led us to an empty table where the beach jutted out like a finger and set a cooler of clams down on the glass tabletop. I sank into the closest chair and picked the hairs at the nape of my neck. Each little prick gave one millisecond of relief from the looming panic. The familiar scent of lime and charcoal settled around me. This was a happy smell. This was normal.

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  The vise gripping my shoulders started to loosen.

  “Vicky? Pumpkin? What would my two favorite girls like from the bar?” Dad winked at me. You okay?

  I nodded and said, “Diet Coke and an aspirin, please.”

  He chuckled and turned to Mom.

  “Plain tonic water with lime for me.”

  She emptied the contents of the picnic basket onto the table, lining up everything in some kind of specific order apparent only to her. Dad patted my shoulder and wandered off, greeting friends with smiles and handshakes. It was so easy for him—the whole social thing. So natural. I turned back to watch Mom arrange our food with the sinking realization she and I shared the same awkwardness.

  She paused in her relentless organizing and frowned at me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Shoulders. You’re slouching.”

  Far in the distance, across the lake, up the side of the hill and through the trees, lights twinkled, white against dark green. Mr. McMurtry’s house. Wherever she’d been, California must be home now. I unslouched my shoulders.

  “Mom?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Did Mr. McMurtry ever come to the clambake?”

  She paused, and I immediately wanted to take the question back. “I assume he did, why?”

  “Just curious.”

  Tommy’s mom, Mrs. Radcliffe, called from across the beach. “Vicky? We’re over here.” She waved a jiggly arm sheathed in hot-pink chiffon. Mrs. Radcliffe’s claim to fame was her extensive wardrobe of wild-colored muumuus and her knowledge of how to mix every drink in The Bartender’s Guide. Mom’s mouth curved up at the invitation. She turned to me.

  “Want to go sit with the Radcliffes?”

  “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  She looked back over to Mrs. Radcliffe and shook her head.

  “You don’t have to stay here and babysit me.”

  “I don’t want to leave you alone,” she mumbled.

  “Mom, really, go. I’m totally fine alone. I don’t want them to come over here.”

  She wasn’t convinced.

  “The Freedom Plan, remember? My decision doesn’t mean you have to stay with me.”

  Mom watched Mrs. Radcliffe mixing something in a silver shaker. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. One hundred percent.”

  She still had her worried-about-Annabel vibe. “Tell Dad, okay?” She lifted the cooler of clams and headed off.

  I turned my chair to face the water and slid down. All around me glasses clinked, butter sizzled on hot coals, and strings of plastic American flags flapped in the breeze—all sounds that used to make me happy. Now they meant crowds. Panic attacks. I laced my fingers together in my lap, not sure what else to do with my hands. California’s binky comment still stung, so I’d left my notebook at home and had nothing to doodle in. With any luck I’d get through the evening without being noticed.

  “Annabel!”

  Nope.

  I still hadn’t seen Tommy, but there he was, striding toward me, his face lit up like a Christmas tree, waving his whole arm in the air so everyone turned to stare.

  “Hey, where’ve you been?”

  The plastic chair disengaged from the backs of my sweaty thighs with a loud sucking noise when I stood up. Tommy gave me a one-armed hug. A strange girl had her hand clasped around his elbow. “This is a friend of mine, Sam. She’s visiting from Savannah.”

  “Hi, Annabel,” Sam-from-Savannah drawled. “That’s such a lovely name.”

  I’d never heard anyone say my name with so many vowels in it. “Thanks, but I go by Annie now.”

  Sam-from-Savannah looped her arm through Tommy’s and smiled. She was wearing baby-pink lip gloss. “Annie is just as sweet.” Pure honey couldn’t have flowed any thicker.

  She tilted her head so wisps of pale hair fell over her eyes, then blew them away with a delicate puff, like she was kissing the air. Sam looked like a slightly older, Southern version of the city girls I’d had as friends, before the panic attacks. Before I got to spend my days on a farm like I’d always wanted. Before I understood what Dr. Clementi meant when he said you can’t fit a square peg—me—into a round hole—the wrong life.

  Sam had perfectly smooth, blond hair, feathered at the bottom, and matching lashes over turquoise eyes. Her crisp, white sundress and sandals were almost identical to the ones stuffed in the back of my closet, minus the bumblebees. Mom would love Sam-from-Savannah all the way to the end of her perfectly tanned feet and pampered, pink toenails.

  “Thank you,” I croaked.

  Tommy touched my arm. “What have you been up to all summer?”

  Sam watched me like a fat cat watches goldfish trapped in a cement pond.

  “I’ve been busy. Really busy.”

  “You wanna sail together on Sunday?” he asked.

  Sam shifted her shoulder so it edged between Tommy and me. “Yes, come sail with us, Annie. We can make room for you.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got somewhere to go.”

  “You always used to sail. Where are you going?” Tommy asked.

  “Just somewhere.” I shifted from one foot to the other. Sam raised her eyebrows and smirked, forcing me to blurt out something really stupid. “I’m helping a friend with her ponies.”

  “Whose ponies?”

  Tommy knew I’d never ridden a pony. He knew almost everything about me, except how much I’d always wanted to ride a pony. He didn’t even know my secret dream of living on a farm, or that I was writing a story, or that stuffy lake people made me feel inferior. He didn’t know I felt like a klutz when I took tennis and ballet lessons, and that I preferred a symphony of crickets over anything I could hear in the city. He had no idea I’d had panic attacks all year; that the panic attacks had scared away all my school friends, and I’d replaced them with someone who was nothing—nothing—like anyone he knew, and I’d rather go on ten hot pony searches with California than be stuck on that beach with him and Sam-from-Savannah for five minutes.

  So, really, Tommy Radcliffe knew nothing about me. Nothing that mattered, anyway.

  “No one you know. It’s a friend who lives on a farm.”

  “A farm around here? You mean that crazy guy with the corn?”

  I’d given away too much. Tommy could say something to his parents about me hanging around on McMurtry’s farm. They would definitely say something to Mom.

  “No, no, not anyone you know. I’m helping, um, no one around here. That’s all.” My whole entire body was on fire.

  Sam did the tilted-head-because-I’m-so-cute thing and asked, “Are you okay, Annie—”

  Tommy interrupted her. “Aren’t you going to sail at all this summer?”

  “Of course I’m going to sail, and play tennis, yeah, all summer. I’ve been so busy, you know, summer reading, all that summer homework—”

  A flush from being caught in this weird trap crept up my neck. Sam smiled, but not a nice kind of smile. The kind that made me feel stupid.

  “Tommy, I’m going over there.” She motioned toward the Radcliffes’ table with a jerk of her head. “Clearly your friend isn’t interested in anything we have to offer. So nice to meet you, Annabel-slash-Annie.” She flipped her hair and pranced away across the sand.

  Tommy’s face fell. He looked from me to Sam’s retreating back like he couldn’t pick which side of the war to fight on.

  “Tommy, I’m—”

  “I have to—” He sidestepped in Sam’s direction.

  Past To
mmy, across the lake, the lights from California’s house still twinkled, warm and welcoming. I thought about the fight she and I had the day before, and how it got fixed so easily because we had that kind of friendship. A real one.

  I didn’t belong on this beach with these people anymore.

  “I’m sorry, Tommy.”

  He turned away to follow Sam, and one more string fell away from its grip around my neck.

  TWELVE

  At 7:55 the next morning, California used the code to summon me. I dressed in thirty seconds and raced downstairs. Mom and Dad were having coffee on the deck. I slid the door open and stuck my head outside.

  “Hey, I’m leaving,” I said, trying to shut it before they asked any questions.

  “Where are you off to already?” Mom asked.

  “Pumpkin?”

  My mind went blank until I saw the firefly jar sitting on the edge of the deck, the one I’d hidden the cloth in the day I’d met California.

  “Going to see if I can find more raspberries.” I looked right at Mom and lied. “Maybe we can make jam.” That one slipped out way too easily.

  “Jam?” Her joy at the idea of us making jam together was almost worse than if she’d been mad.

  “This early?” Dad asked.

  “It’s supposed to be in the nineties later.”

  “Do you have a basket to carry them in?” Mom started to get up, which meant a lengthy search for the perfect basket, and an inquisition. “You need the right kind—”

  “I’m good, already have it. Bye, see you later!”

  I quickly closed the door and left her standing at the edge of the deck, coffee cup in hand, mouth open in silent protest. Dad’s hand gripped the edge of her bathrobe, holding her back.

  California was waiting for me in the orchard, pacing the fence line. “Sorry to use the code for something else, but I needed you to come fast.”

  “What do you mean? Is your grandfather still home?”

  “He left for Saratoga-something-or-other. We’ll investigate inside later. This is too important to wait. Follow me.”

  She took off running, with me right behind her. At the bottom of the hill, we ducked into the woods near a lone dogwood and raced down the path our own feet had made. The oak came into view, and I jerked to a stop. A thick bunch of pine boughs were propped against one side of the trunk like half a tepee.

  “What’s that?”

  “Come see.”

  California crawled underneath. Inside, a large, gray dog’s body stretched over a ratty blanket stained with dried blood and pus. One leg, right above a back paw, was mangled.

  “What happened?”

  California kissed the top of the dog’s head and stroked the ruff of black and white hairs around his neck. “He hobbled up the hill yesterday dragging an animal trap behind him. Luckily, I saw him before Grandfather did—he would have shot him.”

  The dog was so still, if he hadn’t blinked I would have taken him for dead.

  “How’d you get him down here?”

  “Wheelbarrow. Took me almost two hours. I had to wrench the trap off him too. Bet he weighs more than you, even thin as he is. Feel his ribs.”

  I opened my fingers and buried them in his hair, one in between each rib. It was a dog—a beautiful, mostly alive dog. My hand moved to his hip, to his thigh, and down toward his paw. The closer I got to the wound, the hotter his skin. “He has an infection.”

  “I know. He’s probably going to die, but at least he’ll know someone loved him.”

  She rubbed her cheek along the top of his head. It wasn’t like California to give up so easily.

  “Maybe he doesn’t have to die. Maybe we can help him.”

  She rolled her fingertip in a circle around his ear. “I’ve thought about it all night. We don’t have medicine. And even if we found a vet to fix him, who would pay for it? There’s only so much paying-for-things Grandfather’s going to do. Saving an old dog isn’t on the list.”

  My whole life I’d wanted a dog, one that would lie on my bed at night and stay by my side through thick and thin. I’d begged and pleaded. I’d even gotten Dad on my side this year and used my panic attacks to try to persuade Mom we could get a service dog, like our neighbor Mrs. James, who got a golden retriever because of her seizures. Mom’s answer never wavered. There would be no dog hair on the furniture, no trekking down the sidewalk, plastic bag in hand, picking up “waste.” In other words, there would be no dog in my life as long as I lived with her.

  Until now. And right that second, there wasn’t anything I wanted more in the world than to nurse that dog back to health.

  “I can search the internet and bring supplies from home. We’ve got more medical stuff than a drugstore. We can help him. I know we can!”

  California got a curious expression, then whispered in the dog’s ear. After a few seconds, he shifted his shoulder and licked her fingers.

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s worth a try.”

  An hour later my fingers clicked the keyboard: dog infected wound. My foot tapped under Dad’s desk. “Come on, Google.”

  A dog—barely alive, so beautiful, and I might be able to save him.

  The computer screen changed, and a photo of a brown, curly-haired dog appeared. Its leg was bandaged, and a white-coated vet stood by with a smile on her face that promised, This dog will live. I wanted to do what that vet had done. I wanted to save the dog. I zoomed in on the image and studied the way the bandage was wrapped, then hit Print. The article said: Clean with warm, soapy water, rinse, pat dry, and get antibiotics from your vet. God save that poor creature down by the river, because all he was getting was me.

  There were four prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet. I ran back to the computer and typed fast. The first three were useless. The fourth was an antibiotic for humans with Dad’s name on the label. My fingers tapped the keys again: Amoxicillin for dogs?

  Yes!

  Ripping the picture from the printer, I put the other bottles back and raced through the house like my feet were on fire, gathering supplies before Mom and Dad came back. Within minutes, my backpack was stuffed with towels, scissors, the ice pack from the freezer, hydrogen peroxide, first-aid ointment, tweezers, cotton balls, a plastic bowl, a chunk of leftover steak, the seven antibiotics left in the bottle, and two granola bars.

  That backpack might as well have been loaded with hot bricks instead of towels and medicine. When I reached the lone dogwood at the edge of the woods, I turned gratefully into the shade of our homemade trailhead. That’s what California told me it was called. A trailhead. One word, no capital letters.

  She was still sitting under the pine boughs when I got back. The dog was so quiet I stopped short, afraid he’d died while I’d been searching for ways to save him. His sides rose and fell. He was alive. California had been crying, the flesh underneath her eyes puffed and pinky gray. I cringed at the sight of her mourning over that dog like he was her very own Romeo, dying in her arms.

  I piled the stolen supplies in the dirt. “I got stuff—antibiotics, hydrogen peroxide, all kinds of stuff.”

  She barely acknowledged me. “Annie, he can’t die.”

  “I know. We’ll fix him. Let’s start with getting him hydrated.”

  The poor dog could barely lift his head to drink the water I got from the river, so I cupped my hands and let him lap it with his tongue.

  “That’s a good boy,” I said. “Did you name him?”

  “Not until you told me you could save him. It would’ve been bad luck. You can save him, right?”

  Oh, God, I hope so.

  “I named him Field. That’s where I found him, and that’s the next part of Piper’s song. ‘Peaches and Cream and fields of green,’ remember? I found him in her fields of green.”

  I smiled at her logic. “Maybe naming him Field will bring us good luck.”

  “He’s going to need more than luck. That’s a mangled mess.”

  “First up is to wash those c
uts. Hold him steady, ’kay?”

  I picked up the scissors and began snipping away the hair around the ugly, red wounds. Every time I dribbled peroxide on raw flesh, Field curled his three good legs and whimpered. No sign of biting. Everything was going great until California decided to sing that awful song to him. She belted it so loud the birds flew away. I stuffed cotton in my ears when she wasn’t looking.

  “‘PeachesandCreamandfieldsofgreenmemoriesfromlong-ago’”—inhale—“‘Iweepforyouwithbrokenheart’”—sniffle—“‘underthewillowunderthewillow.’”

  I tried to drown out the sour notes by thinking of the beautiful music Mom and I played together, but all I heard was the harshness of California’s voice. Field shivered—and not because of what I was doing to his leg. I peered closer, cutting pus-crusted hair from around the wound. In some places the flesh was so ragged I had to use tweezers to pick out the pieces of dried leaves and dirt. He must have dragged that trap for miles.

  California nudged me. I pulled a cotton ball out of one ear. “What?”

  “Why do you have cotton in your ears?”

  I tugged at a bloody pine needle, dropped it onto a piece of gauze, and held it out. “Because I need to concentrate on this, not your singing.”

  She scowled but kept her mouth shut. I dug back to work. Kneeling under those pine boughs, working my way through every detail of cleaning Field’s wound, a new and exciting idea came to life. Maybe I could be like that vet in the picture. Maybe I didn’t have to be a professor, like I’d always assumed. Maybe I could choose my own career. I could be a writer if I wanted. Or a journalist who wrote for veterinary magazines. There were so many possibilities.

  When I was done, I sat back and admired my work. The edges of the wounds looked like they’d been professionally trimmed. The two deepest gashes were closed with tape, and the rest was clean and smeared with bacteria-killing ointment.