Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (6 page)

“Oh, joy,” I mimicked. “I get to put up with the bitch patrol all semester.”

Sailor’s eyebrows creased into a scowl, but before she could say anything, the teacher, Ms. Sheffield—who was also my math teacher—came in and blew her whistle. “All right, girls,” she said. “Let’s line up for basketball drills.”

The class was combined ninth through twelfth, but still, that only made up a class of twelve girls. All of my classes today had been much smaller than I was used to. I’d had blending in and being invisible down to an art at my old school over the last few months. When you were watching your mom die slowly at home, listening to the latest gossip or rumors was a lot less important. But here, staying hidden would take a lot more work.

Ms. Sheffield split us up into four groups, one group to each of the four basketball goals hanging from the ceiling. I breathed a sigh of relief when Sailor and I ended up in different groups. Ms. Sheffield assigned her to the goal to the left of mine, so she hadn’t gone very far away, but at least she was far enough that I didn’t have to talk to her.

My group consisted of two girls I knew from my earlier classes, Elizabeth Connors and Jackie Armstrong, and a younger girl that I didn’t know.

As we all started off into our groups, Elizabeth planted herself in front of Ms. Sheffield and said, “I’d like to request a different group.”

Ms. Sheffield studied her, then Jackie, me, and the younger girl. “What’s wrong with the one you have?”

“I can’t work with certain members,” Elizabeth said. “Let me switch with her.” She pointed at Sailor.

“If she gets to switch, I demand a new group too,” Jackie said, stepping forward.

Ms. Sheffield rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “No one is changing groups. This is not a socializing hour. You’ll work with the group you have or you’ll take an F for the day.”

Elizabeth pouted, but Ms. Sheffield had already turned her back and started gathering the basketballs.

“Stop bitching,” Sailor snapped at her.

Elizabeth sneered toward Sailor. “Something smells like rotting fish. Deodorant wouldn’t cover up your stench this morning?”

Ms. Sheffield blew her whistle, sending everyone scuttling off to their own groups and ending any comments Sailor might have had. Elizabeth caught the ball Ms. Sheffield bounced our way and then lined up in front of the goal. She dribbled the ball a few times, then shot, sailing it perfectly into the net.

“Show off,” Jackie teased her, sticking out her tongue.

Elizabeth caught the ball and then passed it roughly toward Jackie. “Let’s see you do that.” She pranced out of the way, her ponytail swishing back and forth.

The other girl in our group was small and skinny, with pale, knobby knees sticking out from her gym shorts. She looked too young to even be in the ninth grade. It wasn’t hard to imagine girls like Elizabeth and Jackie making life miserable for her. She glanced at me and I tried to smile.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Mara.”

The girl’s eyes widened and her face blanched about fifteen shades of white. Her eyes darted toward Elizabeth and Jackie, back at me, and then at the floor. She ducked her head, letting her white-blonde hair fall into her face.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Claire,” Elizabeth snapped. An expression of disgust was etched across her face.

“Y-yes?” the girl, obviously Claire, asked in a squeaky voice. She clasped her hands together in front of her body, as if holding on in preparation for Elizabeth’s attack.

“Don’t tell me you’re honestly speaking to
her
,” Elizabeth snarled, casting a glare in my direction.

Claire shook her head so fast that her glasses slipped down her nose. “N-no. She spoke to me.”

My mind spun as I tried to process what was happening here. Elizabeth’s problem with our group wasn’t Claire, it was me.

It was hard not to notice that probably ninety-five percent of Swans Landing was white. It wasn’t something I thought about constantly, but my school back in Memphis had been much more diverse. Still, I had run into my share of the occasional prejudiced moron in the past.

Under other circumstances, I might have tossed Elizabeth into the moron category. But she and Jackie seemed to be best friends, judging from how close they stuck to each other, and Jackie’s brown skin was even darker than mine.

So ruling that theory out, what could I have possibly done to get on Elizabeth’s bad side after one day of school?

Elizabeth pointed to a spot on the floor next to her. “Stand over here, Claire.”

Claire nodded obediently and did what she was told.

“What is your problem?” I asked.

By now, Jackie had joined Elizabeth, standing on her other side with the ball tucked between her arm and hip. The three girls faced me, although Claire spent more time eying the floor than me. But Elizabeth and Jackie stared back, defiantly meeting my gaze with matching looks of contempt.

“You may be allowed to walk around here like you’re a normal person, but you’re not,” Elizabeth said.

“And you never will be,” Jackie added.

“Just what does that mean?” I growled. My teeth clenched so tight that my jaw ached. My hands twitched and I silently dared her to give me a reason to knock the teeth out of her mouth.

A ball came whizzing by my head, so close that the wind of its passing brushed across my ear. The ball hit Elizabeth squarely in the stomach with so much force that she stumbled backward into Jackie.

I spun around. Sailor stood nearby, hands on her hips, staring evenly across the floor toward the other three girls.

“Oops,” she said in a cold voice. “Sorry. I guess I mistook your head for the basketball goal. They’re both big and round with a giant hole in the center, so easy mistake.”

Jackie hurled her ball toward Sailor, who caught it effortlessly. The rest of Sailor’s teammates watched the exchange, but no one made a move to help or stop things.

Sailor held the basketball up in one hand and pointed at it. “Unless you two want this stuffed somewhere that won’t be very pleasant, you’ll keep your opinions to yourselves. Got it?”

Elizabeth glared at Sailor for a moment, then she whirled around and stomped off toward our teacher. “Ms. Sheffield!” she screeched. “Did you see what Sailor Mooring did?”

I opened my mouth, trying to figure out what to say. All day Sailor had been nothing but hostile toward me and now she defended me against Elizabeth and Jackie? But before I could come up with anything, Sailor turned away and followed Elizabeth. “You can’t prove it wasn’t an accident,” she called.

The rest of gym class passed quiet and uneventful, except that Ms. Sheffield made Sailor run laps for hitting Elizabeth. Our teacher didn’t believe Sailor’s claim that it was an accident, which led me to believe she’d been in trouble a few times before.

After class, I changed into my regular clothes slowly and the locker room emptied of all the other girls, hurrying off to whatever it was they did after school around here. Sailor stood in front of a mirror, brushing her hair and then pulling it into a ponytail again.

“So, I guess I should say thanks,” I said once the door closed behind the last girl, leaving us alone.

Sailor shrugged. “Say whatever you want.”

“I could handle those girls,” I told her as I stuffed my gym clothes into my locker. “I don’t need someone else fighting my battles.”

“I’m sure.” Sailor pulled out a tube of lip gloss and applied it to her lips, keeping her gaze on her own reflection in the mirror.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t believe you don’t care. If you really didn’t, you wouldn’t have thrown that ball at Elizabeth.”

Sailor dropped her lip gloss back into her bag and then turned to face me. “I didn’t do it for you. I couldn’t stand hearing her talk any longer. Her whiny voice gives me a migraine.”

“Okay, whatever,” I said. “But don’t think this means I’m going to put up with your attitude every day. I can handle you just as well as I can Elizabeth and Jackie.”

She laughed. “Obviously, I’m not the only one with an attitude around here.”

The slam of my locker door echoed throughout the dingy tiled room. “In case you hadn’t heard, my mom died. I’m
allowed
to have an attitude.”

“So?” Sailor asked, stepping toward me so that we stood only inches apart. Her body tensed, ready to pounce. “One dead mom and you can come in here and take whatever you want from everyone else? Newsflash, Mara: you’re not any more special than anyone else around here. So drop the attitude and get out of my face. And stay away from Dylan.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why should I?”

Sailor jabbed a pointed finger into my shoulder. “He belongs to me.”

I slapped her hand away, raising my eyebrows. “Does Dylan know that? Because I kind of got the feeling that he was flirting with me yesterday.”

The fury that raged in Sailor’s eyes made me feel the tiniest bit smug. “Next time you can deal with Elizabeth on your own,” she snapped. She snatched up her jacket and then stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

Chapter Seven

When I returned home from school that afternoon, I found Lake sitting cross-legged on the front steps with a bunch of rusty wire boxes scattered around him and his dirty flip flops kicked off to one side. He bent over a box in his lap, making adjustments to it with a pair of pliers.

“Hey,” he said, looking up at me through his straggly hair. “Have a good day at school?” He asked this casually, as if he was used to dad things like this. As if it didn’t seem weird to him at all that this was the first time he’d ever asked about my day.

“It was fine.” I watched him fiddling with the boxes for a moment. The tip of his tongue stuck out of the side of his mouth as he worked, making him look like a little boy. “What are you doing?”

“Repairing some of my crab pots,” Lake said. “Want to help?”

I made a face. “No, thanks. I’m not really into smelling like fish.”

He blinked at me. “Crabs aren’t fish.”

“They live in the ocean. They’re fish.”

“Crustaceans. Crabs are crustaceans. Fish are fish. And dolphins and whales are mammals.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend your sea life expertise.”

“I don’t smell anything fishy.” Lake picked up the trap and held it close to his nose, sniffing.

“That’s because you reek of fish,” I told him. “I think it’s permanently attached to your entire body. You’re probably immune to the smell.”

“Maybe,” he said.

I nudged one of the wire pots with my toe. “So that’s what you do then? Catch crabs and play with seashells?”

“Along with a little of this and a little of that.” Lake shrugged. “I do whatever can make me a little bit of money to survive. A few crab pots, oyster harvesting, boat tours, roof repairs, and of course, the shells.” He tapped the shell necklace he wore around his neck today, which had become twisted with the chain of the long silver necklace.

He smiled up at me with a goofy expression.

“What?” I snapped.

“I think this is the longest conversation we’ve had so far,” Lake said.

My entire body stiffened and I clenched my fist around the strap of my bag. I swallowed back the lump in my throat that started to choke me. It was the longest conversation we’d
ever
had. “Call me when dinner is ready. No, on second thought, spare me your dinners. I’ll find something to eat when I’m hungry.”

“Supper is already taken care of,” Lake called after me as I headed into the house. “Miss Gale brought us some food.”

I grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter as I passed through the kitchen, then climbed up the ladder to my loft. Dropping my bag on the floor, I sat down on the mattress with my legs stretched out in front of me.

A day in high school had exhausted me. Today was the first time I’d been back to school since my mom died. Even though Swans Landing School was small, it still felt crowded and stifling. The incident in gym class replayed over and over in my head, but I couldn’t figure out what I had done to Elizabeth to make her act that way toward me.

All day I had wanted to be alone in my room and sit in silence, but now it felt too quiet. I needed to hear another voice, preferably not Lake’s.

Lake and his pots had disappeared from the front porch when I went back downstairs. I retrieved the bike I’d used yesterday and zipped up my coat against the cold wind.

There were a few people out as I rode through the neighborhood, working in their yards or going places. A group of kids chased each other through several yards, leaping over small, leafless bushes and squealing with laughter. Every now and then snatches of a soft, sighing song drifted toward me. The air shimmered slightly when I heard it, but whenever I turned my head to figure out where it came from, the melody had disappeared.

The bright red painted facade of Moody’s Variety Store drew me in and my bike skidded to a stop in front of it. It was one of the few shops open, according to the old fashioned painted sign hanging in the front window. It sat between two shops that looked long abandoned, and the sign out front boasted that the Variety Store was also the library and video rental place in addition to selling groceries. I hooked my bike into the rack out front and then climbed the steps up to the building. The ice machine out front rattled and puffed in the cold air. A bell jingled I pushed the door open and an old man with a bushy head of gray and white hair looked up at me.