Counting to Perfect Page 6

You have to be supportive, Mom had said. You have to show her you are getting ready for this baby, too.

  Even though while everyone was getting ready for this baby I’d missed three swim meets, and the ones I’d made it to did not have a lot of spectators cheering for me.

  Supportive.

  Support the newborn’s head.

  I slid one hand under little Addie’s head and one under her back and I lifted her while Julia watched me closely.

  Why was she trusting me so much?

  I looked at Addie, who didn’t even wake up.

  “Here.” I handed her to Julia. She looked surprised that I didn’t want longer, but she took Addie into the crook of her arm all the same.

  “She likes you,” she said.

  “She doesn’t.”

  “She does, I can tell.”

  I looked at the IV needle and tape on Julia’s hand. What was that for? Her skin was bruised. She had purple circles under her eyes.

  Had it been awful? Did she scream and scream and tell Carter she hated him, like on TV? Had Carter even been in the room?

  My sister had had this huge thing happen in her life, and she had been strong and brave like a grown-up. I dropped onto her bed, feeling so small.

  Julia reached for me with her free hand and rested it on my leg.

  A nurse came in.

  She was nice, just like you might picture on a baby ward. Her scrubs had pictures from Curious George Goes to the Hospital on them, and she was plump and fluffy-haired and smiley.

  “Are you the proud auntie?” No hint of her thinking it odd that I was twelve and the proud mama only seventeen. That maybe we weren’t proud. That maybe we were a hundred other things, like ashamed and scared and trying to be supportive.

  “This is my sister, Cassie,” Julia said.

  The nurse took her temperature and blood pressure and said everything looked good and it was probably time to feed the baby again.

  Julia said, “Can’t I give her bottles?”

  “We encourage all our mothers to breast-feed. Let’s just try it again, okay?”

  Julia exposed a boob, like I figured she’d been shown to do earlier. I’d never actually seen my sister’s boobs. There hadn’t been a reason to see them. I was surprised she even had enough boob to feed a baby. The nurse seemed to think it was all okay though. She touched my sister and Addie gently here and there while Addie tried to eat, as if it were a totally normal thing to do. I sat stiff on the bed, waiting for it to be over. Was this going to go on all day at our house now?

  The nurse went to take care of something else for a few minutes. Julia reached for my hand and placed it on Addie’s little back. I rubbed it.

  “She does like you,” Julia said. “I can feel her relaxing.”

  Could Julia feel that I was doing the opposite of relaxing? That my hand tensed against hers and wanted to pull away?

  The nurse came back and helped Julia burp Addie. That was the best view I got of her smushy little face, when Julia held her up that way. The nurse showed her a couple ways to try until they got a good burp.

  “Come along, Aunt Cassie,” she said. “I’m teaching your sister to breast-feed, and we think that’s best, but I’m going to teach you to make a bottle, just in case. You never know when you might need to help.”

  As promised, after two more stops to breast-feed and one to refill the gas tank, Julia pulled off the road and found us a hotel with a Vacancy sign and a pool.

  My phone beeped again. “What should I say to Dad? Won’t they worry when we don’t come home tonight?”

  “Say…say whatever you want.”

  Julia asked about a room while I sat outside the front door with Addie in her car-seat carrier and our four bags of luggage. She returned after a minute with room key cards. She slung a bag onto her back and picked up Addie, and left me to drag the other three bags.

  Our room was a typical hotel room. We each got our own queen bed, and there was space for Addie’s Pack ’n Play.

  We jumped onto the beds right away, as if we were any two girls out on a family vacation.

  “You want to go in the pool?” Julia asked.

  “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

  Julia stared at me, her mouth open. “You’re a swimmer. When does a swimmer ever go anywhere without a bathing suit?”

  “I forgot.”

  “You forgot?”

  “Well, I was in a hurry and didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing or how long we would be gone!”

  Julia could tell I was getting mad, so she threw a balled pair of Addie’s tiny socks at me. Addie’s eyes followed them across the room and she laughed when they hit me.

  “Is that funny?” I asked her.

  “You can have one of my bathing suits.”

  “You brought bathing suits? So you were planning on swimming?”

  She opened her suitcase and tossed me a bikini.

  “I’m twelve. I can’t fit in this.”

  “Who cares? I bet you brought a T-shirt the size of a tent you can wear over it.”

  True, of course.

  Julia had a surprising amount of baby swimming stuff for Addie. Mom must have bought it. Special diapers and a cute white-and-red-striped bathing suit with frills and a white sun hat with a chin strap and baby sunblock that was like SPF 80. Julia insisted I put the sunblock on, too, and I did, but I didn’t like how it made me all creamy and I couldn’t seem to rub it in properly.

  “That is some bathing costume,” Julia said, glancing over at me.

  “Shut it.”

  When we were all changed, which took like half an hour, we headed out to the pool.

  There were other families there, though none of them looked as unusual as we did.

  Maybe I had to stop thinking of us that way, as all wrong.

  Julia claimed a table with an umbrella and some chairs so she could sit with Addie in the shade. I rolled my eyes, thinking of all the bother we went to with that sunscreen.

  “You coming in?”

  “In a minute. You go ahead. Don’t you want to do your laps? Aren’t you missing practice?”

  After yesterday, I wasn’t.

  “It’s not that kind of pool. Plus, I’m in this ridiculous outfit that’s pure drag.”

  “I thought you guys liked that kind of thing. I thought that’s why you wear ten bathing suits at once.”

  I shook my head at her. Julia had just never understood about swimming.

  But that being the same about Julia, the same as it always had been, was enough to make me smile before I ran to do a cannonball.

  * * *

  —

  Later, Julia picked up Addie and waded out to me in the water.

  “Are you forgetting?” she asked. “It’s baby’s first swim. I think her Auntie Cass should do the honors. She is, after all, a professional swimmer.”

  “Really?” I tried to retie my ponytail without flicking water all over their faces.

  “Of course, really. I’m right here. There’s a lifeguard. Go for it.”

  Julia handed me Addie. I started by just dipping her toes in the water. She kicked twice, then stretched out tall and made a happy face. Slowly, I moved her back and forth, back and forth, lowering her a little bit more, and she kept smiling. Finally I had her in to her armpits, and then I started walking backward. Her feet floated up behind her.

  “Wow,” Julia said.

  “What?” I asked. “Kicky, kicky. Kick, Addie! Kicky, kicky.”

  She did. She laughed. I laughed.

  “You just like, know the water. How did you know what to do?” Julia asked.

  “I just did what felt like the right thing to do.”

  Julia watched me drag Addie around the pool.

  �
��You know what else I want to do?”

  “What?”

  “Dunk her.”

  “Dunk her? Like, underwater?”

  “Like underwater.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “The lifeguards do it to the babies in the swim classes at the pool. Like this, see?”

  I blew in Addie’s face. She scrunched up, and I dunked her just for a second. She looked surprised, but I was holding her so tight and so steady that she probably only thought the water splashed her in the face and not the other way around. She sputtered and opened her mouth wide. She wasn’t smiling anymore, but she wasn’t freaking out, either.

  Julia looked like she’d had a mini heart attack, and then she recovered enough to laugh. She looked at me, like she wanted me to explain.

  “Coach says we’re all born knowing how to swim. We forget. We forget and then someone has to teach us all over again like we never knew.”

  “But then—”

  “Yeah.” I handed Addie back to her mother. “But then the second time, your body never forgets.”

  Julia studied me for a minute, like she was considering something she’d never thought of before.

  “You know what else Coach says we’re all born knowing and that we forget?”

  “What?”

  “How to climb like monkeys! Ooo ooo ooo ooo!” I climbed monkey fingers up Addie’s arms to her chin and she squirmed to block my tickles. Then I threw myself backward in an arc and swam around them underwater to pop up on their other side. Addie shrieked.

  “Cass!” Julia said.

  “What?” I asked.

  Had I splashed her?

  Made her mad?

  “Cass,” she said again, waiting for the water to drip out of my ears, waiting for me to really listen.

  “What?”

  “This is the best day I’ve had in a long time.”

  I smiled. “Me too.”

  “Hey, what do you want for dinner? You pick. Anything you like.”

  Mom’s chicken parm. But I couldn’t say that. Not with Julia out of our parents’ house having her best day ever.

  “Burgers. And heaps of french fries.”

  “Done,” Julia said. “Perfect after a summer swim, don’t you think?”

  “I do. That’s why I suggested it.”

  She and Addie played in the water and watched me as I did rings of perfect, smooth, unbroken dolphin dives all around the pool.

  At bedtime, I took out my phone.

  Dad had texted us a bunch more.

  I texted back: We’re going to have a sleepover. Girls’ night out.

  Dad: Everything okay?

  Me: Yeah super

  Dad: You have somewhere to stay?

  Me: Yeah

  Dad: So…we’ll see you in the morning.

  Me: Tomorrow night

  Dad: ?? Okay…you guys are together and okay?

  Me: YES!

  “That Dad again?” Julia asked from the other bed.

  “Yeah. He’s worried.” Probably Mom was, too. So worried she didn’t even know what to text. Did we have diapers? Were we eating? She was probably asking Dad to talk to us and trying not to freak out.

  Julia came and took my phone from me. She turned it off and tossed it into my duffel bag.

  “That’s part of our vacation, okay? Just girl time.”

  “Yeah, okay….I told him we’d be home tomorrow. We will, right?”

  Julia sighed, got in her bed, and turned out the light.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, someone was wrapped around me.

  “Julia, what are you doing?”

  She stretched, letting me go.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you have a baby to cuddle?”

  “Yes, I do. But she’s sleeping. She was up in the night.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “I think it’s her teeth bothering her.”

  “She doesn’t have a lot of teeth to bother her.”

  “Sure she does, they’re underneath her gums, sawing their way through.”

  “Ouch, Julia!” She’d run her fingernail across my arm.

  “Shhhh, don’t be so loud—do you want to wake her?”

  “Too late.”

  Addie didn’t sound upset though. She was cooing happily.

  “I like that sound,” Julia said, burrowing back into my pillow.

  “Me too,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  An hour later, with Addie changed and fed and dressed in fresh clothes, Julia said, “Pack.”

  “Don’t we like it here?”

  “We do. But not enough.”

  “So we’re going home?”

  “Nope.”

  “But…”

  She glared at me.

  “But I told Dad we were coming home.” My voice was tiny.

  “ ‘But I told Dad we were coming home,’ ” she mocked, sounding even whinier.

  I probably deserved that.

  “Well,” I said, trying to sound more confident, “I did say by tonight. So we have until then.”

  I scooped all my things into my bag. I left the still-damp bikini in a wad in the outside pocket. I could spread it out in the car.

  “Leave your phone in there. I don’t want to see you turn it on today.”

  “I probably can’t. You have the only charger and I haven’t plugged it in….Julia?”

  She was organizing her many bags—the diaper bag, her bag, Addie’s bag.

  “I didn’t bring a toothbrush.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, remember, I was in a hurry to catch up.”

  “Why didn’t you say that last night?”

  “I didn’t think of it last night.”

  “You didn’t think of brushing your teeth before we went to bed last night?”

  “No!”

  “Ew.” But she grinned as she tossed me a tube of toothpaste. “Go rub some of this around in there, will you?”

  I used my finger and swished as much as I could at the bathroom sink. I actually felt a lot fresher when I was done. I gave Julia a big, gleaming smile as I handed the toothpaste back.

  “Up for a lumberjack?” Julia asked.

  We drove to the nearest diner and ordered the lumberjack breakfast again, already falling into a natural habit of splitting up the drinks.

  But the lumberjack looked different. It came with a heap of beans.

  “Lovely,” Julia said. “A steaming pile of—”

  “Who wants to eat beans for breakfast?” I asked.

  “A lumberjack.” She looked sideways at Addie, who was happily teething on a rainbow set of plastic baby keys. “Addie, would you like to try some beans?”

  “Can she eat beans?”

  Julia picked up a bean and mashed it with her fingers. “The middle’s soft enough. I’ll just squish it out of the skin part.”

  She placed the middle of a bean in Addie’s mouth. Addie gummed it, and her face fell, like she’d never eaten anything so disgusting. She stuck her tongue out and Julia scooped off the yucky bean.

  “That’s probably for the best. I don’t really want you to have to change a bunch of beany diapers in the backseat today.”

  I laughed and we divvied up the good parts of the breakfast.

  Would Mom and Dad feel sad that they missed Addie trying her first bean? Or going for her first swim yesterday?

  Julia would probably say Who cares?

  Would she really mean it?

  “So, where are we going today?”

  “Up,” Julia said.

  “Up?”

  She threw a broch
ure on the table. It was for a mountain.

  “I’ve never heard of this mountain.”

  “We’re like eight hours from home.”

  “We are?”

  “Yes, where were you yesterday?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Well, stay awake more today. Get in with Addie. Read to her or something.”

  I wished that Mom and Dad had gotten me my summer reading books before I’d left, because I could have been reading them. Or a blank notebook I could have started my journal in. Maybe I could have journaled this trip. But instead, they’d gotten me a heap of science books I hadn’t even wanted.

  There had been yelling.

  We weren’t really the yelling sort of family, but if there was yelling, I didn’t like it. So I hid in my room like I always did when that happened. I turned on some music.

  There was a lot of yelling.

  Then, when it stopped, I waited.

  While I don’t like yelling, I do get curious about things.

  So I decided I needed a glass of water, and I tiptoed to the kitchen.

  Mom and Dad and Julia were all sitting around the table, but Julia was in Mom’s lap, like she was a little, little girl, curled up and cuddling. It was the first, and last, time she ever looked small to me.

  Everyone was crying.

  I snuck past, afraid to cancel my pretend mission halfway through. I got a glass and turned on the faucet at the sink and filled the glass up, nice and slow.

  When I turned, Dad had come around the table and had his arms around Mom and Julia. They were all still crying.

  I stood there, frozen and stupid, with my glass of water I didn’t even need.

  They looked like this family. This family that was all complete, just the three of them.

  I debated. I debated going over there and hugging Dad from outside all of it. Or sneaking under his arm to be on the inside.

  But they looked like they’d forgotten all about me.

  Like I didn’t exist.

  As part of the family, or otherwise.

  I headed upstairs, my feet a bit too loud, and I spilled my water.

  Nobody helped me clean it up.

  I was on my own.

  “Carter asked me to marry him.”