Counting to Perfect Read online

  “I don’t even know. I don’t know what I count them by, or even what I wish I counted them by.”

  “Did you used to know?”

  “I guess I could have told you what I did in school. Or if I saw friends after school. I guess I could have told you how my week went, things like that. But counting nights I get up with Addie, or mornings I feel sleepy…those are all the same.”

  “Count how you woke up this week.”

  “Why?”

  “I just want to hear what you say. Count.”

  “That first morning we left, I got up in the dark in my room, and got Addie ready as quietly as I could. The next morning, I woke up in your bed at the hotel. And the next morning, too, on the mountain? Then, what, the other hotel along the road, and then this morning at the bed-and-breakfast with you.”

  “That’s something to count, if how you wake up affects your day.”

  “At home, it was the same every day, waking up with Addie, going back to sleep, waking up with Addie again. I guess a month ago there were days Mom or Dad woke me up to go to school. I maybe could have counted those, but I was so tired.”

  “Julia?”

  She looked up.

  “I can tell you my mornings, before we left. They were all the same, but…you put Addie on me. Every day. You never forgot, not since she was born. Maybe you didn’t come to cuddle with me. But you brought her to. It must have mattered to you that she know me, even if, even if…”

  Even if things had gone all funny between us.

  She was still willing to cross the doorway into my room.

  It was the closest we’d ever come to talking about it.

  But we didn’t. We stopped right there.

  Though it hovered, out in the open.

  We both knew it.

  Something was nudging me, telling me to say I was sorry.

  But I couldn’t get out the words.

  And Julia, the way she always did, was scooting us on past the moment to talk about things.

  She had pulled out a wipe and was cleaning the sticky face and hands of her werebaby.

  “How are you always so messy?” Julia asked.

  “Goo,” Addie said.

  “She really is very cute,” I said.

  Julia looked up, and caught my eye.

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it,” I said.

  “So do I.” She held my eyes with hers. “Thanks.”

  Mom and Dad had sat me down at the kitchen table.

  “So are you finally going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

  “What’s going on?” Mom asked.

  “What do you think is going on?” Dad asked.

  I sipped my ginger ale carefully. The taste reminded me of things you drink when your mouth already tastes like throw-up. The bubbles stung my tongue and nose.

  “You’re getting a divorce, aren’t you?”

  My parents both looked shocked.

  “Why would you say that?” Mom asked.

  “Because. Everyone’s been all…upset. Fighting. There’s nothing else it could be.” I couldn’t tell them how it felt when I saw them, all crying in a heap together as if I wasn’t even a part of the family. I couldn’t. Anyway, it had been over a month ago.

  “No,” Mom said. “Your father and I are not getting a divorce. But there is going to be a big change in our family.”

  “Someone’s going away?” They were sending one of us away, I knew it. Me or Julia. Maybe she had been crying because it was her. Or because it was me. That would have been nice of her. To cry so much over me and then ignore me.

  “Your imagination…” Dad shook his head. “Cassie, just listen for a minute. Your sister is going to have a baby.”

  “A what?”

  “A baby.”

  “When?”

  “In about five months.”

  “A baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Carter?”

  “Yes.”

  I bit my lip. I tried to take another sip of ginger ale, but it went down the wrong way and I started choking. Mom and Dad watched me sputter.

  “So…Julia is going to leave.”

  “No, Julia is not going to leave. We already said that, no one is leaving. Your sister is young, and we want to keep her home with us. Her and her new baby.”

  “So you’re going to be…grandparents? Aren’t grandparents, like, old? Are you going to suddenly have gray hair and canes?”

  “Cassie, this conversation is giving me more gray hairs right now.” Mom ran her fingers along her scalp in exasperation.

  “I didn’t ask to have this conversation!”

  They both stared at me.

  Dad cleared his throat.

  “We want you to be very understanding toward your sister. We want you to be supportive and helpful, okay?”

  Wasn’t this her fault? How hard was it not to do something?

  Stupid Carter, why did she have to like him so much?

  I wanted to throw my ginger ale in Dad’s face, to show him just how much understanding I had.

  But instead I pushed my chair back from the table. I thundered upstairs.

  Julia was waiting for me in the doorway to her room.

  “Cass?”

  I looked her full in the face. I glared at her. And then, between us, I slammed the door to my room as hard as I could.

  * * *

  —

  The slam cracked something. Something that sounded and looked and felt like a mirror. Or a stained glass window, maybe. Something that had been beautiful when it was whole.

  The fragile thing broke.

  Into a million, gazillion teeny, tiny pieces, and even if I tried every day, even if I crawled around on my hands and knees with a magnifying glass, I could never, ever find every single one and put it back together.

  Julia woke up in a tangle with me, and when she saw me notice, she tapped my nose and climbed out of bed. She returned with a cooing Addie, complete with squishy morning diaper, and plopped her on my chest, just like every day.

  “Hey, Addie-girl,” I said.

  Her eyes, big and blue, gazed into mine.

  * * *

  —

  It was mostly the same crew at breakfast.

  “Can I hold her?” asked the woman next to Julia.

  “Sure.” Julia handed Addie over.

  The woman bounced Addie gently in her lap. Addie seemed to be okay with it. She didn’t really get the Stranger Danger thing yet.

  Did she think about Mom and Dad, or miss them? Did she think about Carter? Did she think about much of anything? She gave no sign that she missed anything.

  One of the men poked his wife’s arm, and then leaned in to whisper to her. She looked at us carefully, while he very carefully did not look at us. Then they looked back at each other, as if having a silent conversation.

  Like Mom and Dad’s eye-conversations.

  A conversation about us.

  My fruit salad suddenly tasted too sweet.

  * * *

  —

  Upstairs in our room, Julia asked, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I…I just think I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

  Julia looked at me, waiting. Finally she said, “We should move on anyway.”

  “No lumberjack,” I said. “Where will we swim today?”

  Julia looked thoughtful again and started packing.

  I started collecting my things, too. “I’m running out of clean clothes.”

  “We are, too. Maybe we can stop at a Laundromat.”

  I’d never been to a Laundromat.

  In the car, she handed me a pamphlet that she’d snagged on our way out.

  “You’re good at t
hat.” I turned it over. There were pictures of kids playing in shallow pools and sprinklers. “You can really spot them, even if we don’t slow down on our way past.”

  “It won’t be a swim, exactly. It’s a water park. For little kids. I think you only pay for kids in the age range it’s for, but older kids—like us—and babies are free. So maybe we’ll have to buy like, one kid ticket, but it shouldn’t cost a lot. Sound okay?”

  “Yeah.” It’s amazing how even the idea of water calmed me down. Julia always found a way to include it in our day. She really did know me that well. “It will be fun to carry Addie through the sprinklers.”

  She was right about the tickets. At the counter, she said, “One kid.”

  The ticket lady looked at all of us and wasn’t sure who the kid was meant to be. “Seven dollars,” she said.

  We had to change in the gross cement-floor open locker room, but it wasn’t too bad.

  There were lots of little kids running around, mostly two- and three- and four-year-olds.

  “We should bring her back here, when she’s older,” I said.

  “That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  But what was going to happen to us? Would the three of us still be together in two or three or four years?

  It was hot out in the park, because it was all pavement, so you really wanted to be under those sprinklers. They had interesting shapes like sculptures or fantasy stuff like a mermaid lagoon and a pirate ship. Addie didn’t care about any of that, but I thought it was neat. She didn’t mind the sprinklers though. Eventually Julia took her off to the shade to eat, and I walked through the park, feeling like too big a kid to run around with the little ones.

  * * *

  —

  The Laundromat had twenty washers and fifteen dryers, but we were the only people there.

  We dragged in our bags. Julia set Addie’s car seat on the floor and handed me a bunch of singles. “Turn these into quarters. It’ll be fun. There’s a machine over there.”

  I went to the change machine. It was fun. I put the dollars in one at a time and the quarters clattered out below. I stacked them in fours on a counter to make sure I’d gotten the right number of coins.

  Julia had put all her and Addie’s clothes into a big washer. I handed her the quarters.

  “Put your things in. I’m going to get soap.”

  I unloaded my clothes right into the washer and shut it.

  Julia came back, put in the quarters and the soap. Set some buttons and hit Start.

  Then she put our towels and Addie’s blankets into another washer and started that one, too.

  “When did you learn how to do laundry?” I asked.

  She looked at me for a minute, thinking. Like she was surprised I didn’t know how to do laundry. “Actually, I guess after Addie. When she was really little, we must have made a whole hamper of dirty clothes every day. She was always spitting up or her diaper would leak.” She looked down at Addie. “Why were you so messy?”

  “Goo!”

  We watched the clothes spin for a few minutes. You could see everything. The water got deeper and the soap made suds and the barrel turned and the clothes fell and swished around in a big heap, our things all mixed up. The dirt of our lives was being washed out together.

  “I’m hungry,” I said.

  Julia handed me quarters and pointed. “Vending machine.”

  I picked peanut butter crackers and a bottle of water, and sat in the row of connected plastic chairs.

  I turned my phone on. Finally decided to look at all those texts.

  Bunches from Liana.

  Where have you been?

  Are you still swimming?

  Did something happen?

  Are you mad at us?

  I thought. Texted back: I went on vacation with Julia and Addie.

  Ate a couple more crackers.

  Liana: You did!? You didn’t say you were going! Where are you?

  Me: Just driving around.

  Liana: When will you be back?

  Me: I don’t know yet. How’s practice?

  Liana: Hard.

  Several minutes went by.

  I didn’t know what else to say.

  I was glad I was missing practice if it was hard.

  But if I was missing hard practices, would I be any good?

  I wished for that feeling of blood coursing through me, of trying to catch my breath, that followed a tough practice.

  I checked the other texts. None from Piper. No surprises there.

  But there were a few from Maya.

  You guys good? Tell Julia I miss her.

  Call me if you need anything.

  Kiss those pudding cheeks for me.

  LOL Addie’s, I mean.

  I smiled.

  Julia had taken Addie out of her seat and was holding her in her lap a few chairs down. She was alternating reading her Hippos Go Berserk! and Each Peach Pear Plum over and over.

  Our washers beeped and she handed me Addie. She put all our things in a metal cart and wheeled them to the dryers. I took over reading.

  Then Julia was standing in front of me again. Beaming and holding a pamphlet.

  I must have asked the question with my eyes, because she laughed and pointed to a display of them by the door.

  I set down Addie’s book and took the pamphlet.

  “Campgrounds that also have cabins. Only four hundred for the whole week,” Julia said. “What do you think?”

  I looked up to see Julia’s smile fading.

  I was taking so long to answer.

  Too long.

  I looked back down.

  “Oh,” Julia said. She sat down next to me. Took Addie. “Hey…hey. Tell me.”

  “My first meet’s in like ten days. Or it was supposed to be.”

  “That’s important, Cass.”

  I shrugged. “It is. But it’s not, like, the most important.”

  “What do you think is the most important?”

  But I had answered her when I got in the car in the first place.

  More important than fixing things with Mom and Dad.

  More important than fixing things with Liana and Piper.

  More important than my swim season.

  “Let’s go check it out,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I want to.”

  * * *

  —

  The campgrounds were nice.

  And there was a lake, which was great, of course.

  Because most families wanted to camp in tents, or park their RVs, there were some cabins available. The cabins were set scattered among the trees not too far into the campgrounds, but a bit of a walk from the parking lot with all our stuff. They were sort of like hotel rooms all separate. Except that inside there was a little kitchenette. And sort of a damp smell.

  Julia seemed happy though. She set down her things and started setting up the Pack ’n Play. I just dropped my duffel bag and sat on one of the beds.

  “I know we went to the water park and our suits are all wet,” Julia said, “but do you want to go to the lake? We can bring our towels to sit on.”

  “Sure.”

  She helped me get Addie strapped to my chest, and then dug out our towels.

  There were other families at the sandy beach area of the lake and there were lifeguards, but, because it was kind of cloudy now, there weren’t a lot of people swimming.

  We spread our towels on the damp sand and settled to sit with our legs sticking straight out in front of us, our feet in the water.

  Addie was snoozing on me, a puddle of drool starting to soak through my shirt. I didn’t really mind. I made sure her little nose and mouth could get enough air. I brushed her soft hair back from her face.<
br />
  Julia was looking at me with a very gentle expression.

  Why?

  The question hung there. Just above our toes peeking up on the surface of the lake. Just above the smooth water. In the little puffs of Addie’s breath as she was sleeping. In the tips of our fingers, resting in the cold sand, not quite reaching for each other.

  Finally Julia said, “I left because I wanted…just to…be myself a little, I guess.” She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, like she was trying to be as small as possible. Or like she felt small. “Just to…not have someone telling me what to do all day. To live my own life. I wasn’t supposed to be home much longer. I was supposed to be going to college. Like all my friends are getting ready to do. And they’re all working jobs this summer. And I’m doing nothing.”

  I looked out over Addie’s head. “Taking care of Addie isn’t nothing.”

  “But it’s going nowhere.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s going into a little girl….And you finished high school.”

  “Barely.”

  “But you did. That was a really big thing.”

  “But it wasn’t supposed to be a big thing. It was supposed to just be a regular thing.”

  Julia looked so defeated. My big, strong, beautiful sister, always ahead of me in everything. So far ahead and getting farther all the time. I couldn’t catch up with her. I would never catch up with her. Eventually I would be so far behind her that it would be like we’d never been friends at all.

  But she had picked me to run away with her.

  Out of everyone.

  And she picked me for Addie’s middle name.

  Out of all the names.

  What did that mean?

  The why was hanging in the air again. My turn.

  To say why I was out here.

  What I needed to fix.

  “I miss you,” I said.

  “I’m right here. I’ve been right here, Cass.”

  “Then maybe it’s my fault I missed you. I think I was jealous.”

  “Of what?”

  “Everything was about you and Addie. What to do about you and Addie; how to get you through school, how to get you through a bad night. I was never a part of anything. There was Addie or there was Carter and I missed you so much I wanted you back just the way we were. I love Addie, I’m not saying I don’t….” I felt Addie’s sweet, sleepy body against me, trusting me, and I knew how true it was that I loved her. I looked over at Julia, who was waiting. “But I still want you to be my sister and not just Addie’s mom.”