Summer Swing

The characters and events portrayed in this work are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Chapter One

The waves tumbled softly against the warm, sandy beach, and the light breeze cooled the eighty-degree temperature just slightly. It was a comfortable heat to lounge in, because if I got too toasty, the ocean’s beckoning surf was always an option. The Bahamas were beautiful; imagine the pink stretches of sand and gentle waters. Or maybe another beautiful island of the Caribbean, like Barbados or Aruba. But I wouldn’t object to the romantic charm of Bora
Bora
, either. I’m not picky.
I could even be lured to somewhere in my own country, like Kauai or Maui, or four thousand seven hundred miles east to Palm Beach and Siesta Key. There were plenty of beautiful, warm coastlines in the world, and there were even a dozen more in California, which was just a state south of me. I would love to be at any one of those beaches, just to feel like—

“I am freezing my
butt
off!” D
awn exclaimed. “Please, Ellie, c
an we go now? This is ridiculous!”

“I’m not done yet,” I replied, still
sitting
with my eyes closed, imagining the possibilities of
being anywhere but the Oregon C
oast.

“You’re shivering, too! Dreaming about your warm sands and clear skies isn’t going to
crank up the temperature here. I taste like a salt brick.”

I opened my eyes and smiled at my sister. “Did you really
just
lick yourself?”

She kind of laughed. “No. Well, kind of.” She slid her tongue out to touch her cheek. “Yuck. I feel like I’ve been swimming in the ocean.”
The wind blew her light brown hair against her and she had to make an effort to
rescue her face from
it all.

My face felt sticky too, but since we were both bundled up pretty well, that was the only part of our bodies that was exposed to the misty air.

“I’m sorry, Ell
i
e, but I’m heading to the car.” She stood up and brushed
the cold sand from
her rear. “You can take as long as you want, though. I think I’ll just talk to Wyatt until you’re ready to go.”

I nodded, unsurprised that I’d lasted longer than my sister. It was my desire to make the trip to the beach, and Dawn had agreed to go with me, but my prayer for a sunny day at the
ocean
went unanswered. Apparently the coast didn’t get the sunny day memo like Portland had.

I attempted to settle back in to my beautiful beach
fantasy
, but Dawn was right—I
was freezing, too. Even with a sweatshirt and a coat, I still couldn’t get warm, and the sand my feet were buried in wasn’t much warmer than a wet rock.

I glanced acros
s the beach to the parking lot as
my sister was just getting into the car. I knew she was
dying to talk to Wyatt anyway, so
I figured I should give her some time on the phone with her boyfriend. The water was not enticing at all, and the brief moment that I’d already stuck my feet in was also the
start
of my
shivering
.

B
ut I made my way to the shore one last time, just to make the most of my visit. I rolled up my pant
leg
s again and stepped into the water. Of course I had to gasp
because it was freezing cold, a
nd after only a few seconds, my skin began to throb from the harsh temperature.

“This is ridiculous,” I murmured to myself, leaving the dark gray ocean behind without another look. “I guess I’ll have to do better at checking the forecast next time.
”

Note to self: The Oregon Coast has a climate of its own. Duh. It wasn’t even sunny th
e last
few
time
s
I was here, either.

I took my time walking to the parking lot, even to
slow
and watch a family play in the sand. All
six
of them were bundled up like I was, and the youngest one probably wasn’t any older than two. It reminded me of my own family—four kids consisting of
two boys
and two girls—and parents that spent quality time with them, no matter the weather.
The kids didn’t even look fazed by the overcast skies as they continued to play. I suppose I might have been a bit warmer had Dawn and I spent energy on building sand castles, too.

As I approached the car I shook off the sand from my clothes, and then sat against the
hood
to brush off my legs and feet. The horn blasted, scaring the
hell
out of me, and my sister was laughing hysterically inside the car.

She rolled the window down slightly and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist!”

I gave her a playful glare, but didn’t say anything as I knocked my shoes together to remove the sand from them. When I finally sat in the passenger’s seat, Dawn was finishing up her conversation with Wyatt, and since the car was toasty warm with the heat on, I took my coat off and tossed it in the back seat.

I was glad
my sister had her coat off too
because I stuck my
ice-cold
hand down the back of her shirt.

“Ahhh!” she screeched.

With a wry smile I said, “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

She took a second to recover from the cold shock as she narrowed her eyes at me, and then in
to
the phone said, “Oh, just my little sister being rotten…”

I had to laugh. “Oh, I think I’ve learned from the best,” I told her.

“David?” she smirked.

I chuckled again. “Yeah, right.
He’s
nicer to me than
you
are.”

“That’s because he holds that position as the oldest sibling to look out for you.
I’m your
sister
. I’ve earned the right to be
mean
to you.”

It was true, and I thought about that as she finished up her conversation with
her boyfriend
. David was the oldest,
but
Dawn was
only
a
year
younger than him. Growing up
they’d been the best of friends, but also the worst of friends because
the two of them had always
been
in competition with one another for as long as I could remember. Whether it had to do with
allowance and chores and things at home, or school, social status and sports, David and Dawn were always neck and neck. They were the ultimate example of sibling rivalry, and it was no wonder I turned out to be so overlooked.

I don’t say that in a bad way, because I
was
certainly kind of my own sort, but once Adam was born, I took a back seat to the rest of my siblings. He came into our family when I was ten years old, and even though my parents would never say he was an “accident,” my mom did admit that he was “a pleasant surprise.”

My little brother had Downs Syndrome, and until four years ago, Adam was kind of the focus of our family. He was only six years old when he died, and even though we all loved Adam for everything he was, we felt at peace with his passing. He’d suffered so many medical problems his entire life, and we almost lost him two other times, but God decided to finally take him home, and the rest of us
did our best
to put our own home back together
without him
.

By then I was a sophomore in high school, Dawn was a senior, and David began his baseball scholarship at Oregon State
University
. We all kept pretty busy, but once the dust had settled a
bit
after Adam’s death, my parents seemed to take more notice of
me—
the one child that had become pretty independent over the years. Whereas David and Dawn had always been involved in your typical slew of sports—baseball, basketball,
volleyball
and football—I’d taken up a different sport that hadn’t exactly been passed down through the family
, and wasn’t as easily a spectator sport
.

Snowboarding.

I loved being queen of the mountain, and
I was
fifteen
when I first decided to try
it
. My parents didn’t exactly approve since it wasn’t something they’d ever been too familiar with, but they did allow me the opportunity to learn from the Newman family. Harvey Newman worked with my father
at the hospital,
a
nd his son Grant
was
(kind of)
my boyfriend at the time.
Because the Newman’s had two other sons and a daughter that also boarded, my parents agreed to let me go with them whenever they
invited me to the mountain
. Grant wasn’t exactly the best instructor, but his
older
brother was. Asher pretty much took me under his wing out on the slopes, and it was because of him that I became confident enough to own the snow.

These days I still lived
with my parents in Lake Oswego while
I
attended
Portland Community College, but in the fall I had plans to transfer to Portland State University.
I was currently working as an intern at a
popular
Portland radio station, and since I was finishing up a degree in broadc
asting, I was hoping to someday land the job that I’d had my sights set on for the past four years.

Out of my entire family, I was the only one that wasn’t employed in some sort of medical
career
. My parents were both nurses at Legacy Meridian, my siste
r was a nurse at Legacy Emanuel, and
David just recently landed a position
as one of the athletic trainers at Clackamas Community College. There was definitely not a lack of knowledge in our family when it came to healthcare or sports injuries.

“So are you excited for Summer League to start?” my sister inquired
with a smile
.
So far most of our car ride
chit
chat
had been about Wyatt, but
I
knew it wouldn’t take long for Dawn
to bring up what else had been on her mind
.

“You mean to meet Wyatt’s
cousin
?”

She smiled. “Uh, yeah.
Why else would
you
want to watch baseball?”