What I Thought Was True

Chapter Seventeen

I don’t have much hope that Nic or Cass will still be there when I get to the beach. Em wouldn’t walk, so I had to plunk him, Hideout, and Fabio into our old Radio Flyer wagon and drag it down the hillside. Not really drag, more like run ahead of it, because it picks up speed as we descend, and Fabio remembers being a puppy and hops out, nipping at my heels and yelping all the way down.

My cousin and Cass are apparently facing off at the end of the pier, ready to dive again. Viv is sitting on one of the wooden pilings, counting down on Nic’s watch as Em and Fabio and I walk out.

“To the breakwater again?” Cass asks, breathing hard, hands on his bent knees.

“The far one this time,” Nic answers. He swipes his arm across his forehead, then shakes his head, sending droplets of water flying. He squints and points at the second wall of rocks, blue-black, jagged edged, barely visible above the waves. Cass nods, shortly.

Viv shields her eyes, evidently on shark watch.

“Want me to count off?” I call. “On five, four—” And Nic dives before I say “three.” Cass shoots a what-the-hell look back at me, then he’s in. We watch Nic’s arms flashing. Viv’s shouting, “Go Nico, go Nico!” Fabio leaps around, yipping, happy to be part of the action. I feel this impulse to cheer for Cass. Against my own cousin? Blood may be thicker than chlorine, but hormones seem to scramble the equation.

“Go!” I shout loudly, not quite sure for who. “Go!” I shout it again, drowning out my thoughts. Drowning out another memory of the summer Cass spent at Seashell, the first year we were all old enough to swim out to the breakwater alone. Of him, little-boy skinny, standing on the rocks, pumping his fist in triumph, slapping Nic’s back, high-fiving me, and then doing his ear-blushing thing, missing his two front teeth.

Nic is ahead, thanks to his unfair advantage.

Then there’s another splash, a sharp bark from Fabio, and I whirl around. Em’s not there. Em is not there and I didn’t put his life jacket on. For the first time ever, I forgot. I wasn’t holding on to his hand or leg or a fold of his shirt, which I do even when I have put a life jacket on. I’m hurling myself off the pier in an instant, Viv’s screams echoing in my ears.

It’s high tide.

High tide. Emory’s in his Superman pajamas, which are darkish blue, the color of water. I’m swishing my arms around wildly, grabbing for his fingers, his hair, his big toe, anything. Coming up for a choking breath, then plunging down again, clawing through the cold depths. Then I touch warm skin, his leg, oh thank God, yank him toward me, his head bumping up against my shoulder, hauling us to the surface with an inhale that sounds like a sob. He’s coughing . . . he’s coughing, so he’s breathing, but he immediately starts to cry. I’m towing him toward the steps that lead from the deep water to the pier, gasping into his hair.

Then I feel someone beside me.

“You got him,” Cass says, warm hand around my waist. “He’s safe. You got him. Breathe. Both of you.” Emory howls louder and I can hear Viv gabbling, “Oh my God oh my God.” This is my fault. I looked away at the wrong time. I didn’t put a life jacket on him. Cass has his hand on my back now, steering us up the steps.

Viv is waiting with a towel and I wrap Em in it and gather him into my lap. “Em, talk!” I order. “Say something.”

“Hideout!” Emory bursts into even stormier tears. “My Hideout. He wanted to see the water. He drownded.”

Cass turns to me for clarification.

“Stuffed animal,” I say, combing my fingers over Em’s scalp, feeling for bumps. He keeps crying, shoving my hand away.

“What color?” Cass peers into the water. “Brown? Black? Blue?”

“Red.”

“Perfect.” He dives back in, so cleanly there isn’t even a ripple.

Nic has reached the steps now and hurries up, eyes worried. “Dude, you cool?”

“Hideout!” wails Emory. Vivien, Nic, and I debate taking him to the ER just to have him checked. Teary-eyed Vivien and I are in favor, Nic tells us we’re overreacting.

“Remember the time you fell off Uncle Mike’s boat when you were, like four? You were fine. Same thing.”

“But it’s Emory,” I say. Em was born so early, at twenty-eight weeks, a fragile two pounds. Then when he was four he had viral meningitis and a fever of 106. Whenever he gets a cold in winter it always, inevitably turns into bronchitis. Pretty much everything that could go wrong does go wrong. I’m clutching him so tightly that he stops sobbing to say, “Ow. Be nice.”

“Here you go, buddy.” Cass has climbed up the ladder from the water to the pier thrusting out a bedraggled, waterlogged stuffed hermit crab.

Em’s tears turn off, his lips part, then wing into a smile. “Saved him. Superman saved Hideout.” He snatches the crab from Cass, hugs it, squeezing out a bucketload of water, fingers its head for bumps, kisses it, then scootches over and puts his hand on Cass’s cheek, petting him the way Mom does to Em himself.

Cass clears his throat, shuffles one foot on the wet wooden slats of the pier. “No problem, man. He might need a little CPR—and a dryer—but he’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Somers. Quick thinking.” Nic nods at him, chin lifted, arms crossed.

“Not as quick as your footwork on the dive,” Cass says coolly. Nic’s jaw tightens.

“Badly played, man,” Cass continues. “Very un-CGA.”

Nic’s face shades stormy. He looks quickly at Viv, then me, then down at the pier.

“Three-second advantage,” he scoffs at last, like Whatever.

“Yeah. Exactly.” Cass shakes his hair out of his eyes, which seem a slightly more wintery sea blue than usual.

“Jeez, enough with the pissing contest,” I say. “Let’s get Em home.” Nic takes him out of my arms and looks at me, face impassive. I give his back a little nudge toward shore, almost a shove. He nods, a motion so small it’s almost undetectable, walks off. Vivien trails, wringing out Hideout, occasionally glancing back over her shoulder at us, standing so close we’re each dripping water on each other. She cocks her head at me, then hurries after Nic and Em.

I touch Cass’s arm quickly. “Thank you.”

“No big deal.” Then he turns to me with a straight face. “But, hey, was that a stuffed hermit crab?”

I laugh, and it feels so good, unknotting the tension that’s been snarled in my stomach for days. “I know—it’s like a bunch of toymakers were in a boardroom somewhere, snapping their fingers, and said, ‘I know! A crustacean line! Just what every kid wants.’ But Em loves him. So really . . . thanks.”

“You did the more important save, Gwen. Keep this up and I might have to forfeit my superhero cape. Or talk to Coach about that Lifeguard of the Year award you earned back in March.”

The Polar Bear Plunge.

For a beat, it just lies there, like a glove thrown down. Smack. Then I meet his eyes. I don’t know what mine are saying, but after a moment, he looks away, up to the sky, then down at me, lips parted. I follow his gaze to my chest, where of course my too-tight tank top is completely plastered. White. Practically transparent.

That’s what this is about?

I snap my fingers. “My face is up here.”

Cass reaches for his towel, now an interesting shade of mottled pink, wraps it tightly around his waist. “Um, sorry. Are you cold, by any chance, Gwen?”An infinitesimal smile, just enough to bring out one dimple, pulls at the corner of his mouth.

I groan. “You have no idea what a pain these are. Since I was twelve I’ve gotten this! Like I’m boobs attached to a faceless girl. Sometimes I just want to take ’em off and hand them to whoever can’t be bothered to see the rest of me and say, ‘Here. I think this is what you’re really after.’”

Cass flips his hair back. “And we were doing so well there for a second. I didn’t mean to objectify you or disrespect your personhood. You look”—he throws his hand toward me—“like you look. Sue me for noticing.” He meets my eyes. “By the way—just let me give your little brother a few lessons. Otherwise, you’re going to have a heart attack worrying, or an ulcer blaming yourself for not being on guard twenty-four/seven. And let’s make tutoring happen. At this point you’re just making bullshit excuses. I need this, okay? I need to stay on the team.”

“Why is that so important to you?” I ask. “It’s not like you’re applying to the Coast Guard. You’ll get into whatever college you want.”

He shakes his head. Looks at me. “You have no idea what I want. None.” His voice has abruptly gotten hard.

I take a deep breath, shut my eyes, exhale. “You’re right. I don’t. I don’t know what you want. You did a good thing and I’m being a jerk.”

I’m relieved to see both dimples groove deep. “Whoa. Is that an actual apology? I forgive you. If you forgive me for standing in front of a girl like you and letting my eyes wander. My mom would be pissed with me.”

I have only the haziest of memories of Cass’s mom from that one summer. Adults you don’t know well all seem blend together when you’re little—someone big who talks about things you don’t understand that don’t sound interesting. No memory at all whether she was tall or short, blond or dark. Or even kind or not. I try to picture her at meets and I can’t. I can just see Cass’s dad cheering.

“She’s a therapist,” he adds. “Specializes in empowering girls and women. She’s written books about it. How the Patriarchy Silences the Female Voice. That was her best seller. Oh, and Men, Why Do We Bother?”

“Ouch,” I say. “Really?”

“Yep. Mom doesn’t like to leave any feeling undelved . . .” He wrinkles his nose, squinting. “Is that a word?”

“Close enough,” I say. Try harder to remember Cass’s mom. Picture her in hemp clothing with wild hair, fingers tented. Then with hair drawn back into a stern bun, power suit on. Neither seems right.

“Sometimes family dinners are like therapy sessions. I feel like we should all be lying around on couches while my mom over-explores our psyches. ‘How does having pizza again make you fee-el, Cass? I think we need to examine your broccoli issues, Bill.’”

I’m still stuck on Men, Why Do We Bother? I don’t want Cass to have some uptight, disapproving family. It doesn’t fit with my image of his dad from that summer, from my memories of feeling comfortable running into their house, never bothering to kick off my shoes outside the door. “And she wound up with three sons,” I say.

“Yup, I was the one last try for a girl. I would have been Cassandra . . . you know, after the girl no one listened to in the Iliad. Who died.”

“Instead you got named after the cool guy in an iconic classic movie.”

“Yeah, well, he got offed in the end too.”

“Well, my mom named me after the world’s most famously unfaithful woman.”

Cass flinches, then looks out to sea. “I’d better get home. I’ve got this—family thing tonight—and you’d better go dry off. I’ll put together a program for Emory.”

He strides down the pier without looking back. I scan the parking lot, half expecting to see Spence’s car idling there like the other day. It’s not. But it might as well be, because Spence was right there between us.

Again.

And we were doing so well there for a second.