for a moment—looking, I think, for the joint that my aunt is no longer smoking—then calls, “Callie, dishes, please!” and walks back inside without another word. For a moment, my heart races and my throat constricts, but I breathe, and it subsides, as I turn back toward the water. I breathe deep, and think,
In the scheme of things, one more secret won’t make a difference.
“Nessa?”
“Yes?”
“I want to learn how to swim.”
C H A P T E R 14
I AM GETTING GOOD AT KEEPING SECRETS.
I can line them up end to end, a succession of half-truths and lies of omission, each one putting that much more distance between my life and my father’s watchful eyes. The truth about that night, in the dark, by the dock; the scent of river water in my hair, washed clean and covered up by the time he gets home from work; the sneaking, almost-silent click as I carefully lock my door at night. It was three weeks ago that we installed it, down low at the base of the door, a position that various websites claimed would thwart even determined sleepwalkers. From dusk till dawn, my room turns from a sanctuary into a prison, my aunt from a giddy ally to a watchful warden. I spent the first week waiting—for him to notice, to visit, to see the lock and ask me why.
He didn’t.
I’ve stopped listening for his steps on the carpet. I don’t wait for the sound of his knuckles against the door. It has been weeks now since he came to say good night, since he stood in the doorway and noted the rise and fall of my chest, and said, “You’re really looking better. Much, much better.” Without the constant threat of illness to keep him close, we’ve drifted. Him, into endless sheafs of scrolling data, later and more nights away, the constant thrum of conversation behind his study door. And me, into solace, solitude. The privacy that experts say a girl my age needs now. I’m left alone.
Just like any other sixteen-year-old with no-more-than-ordinary problems. And working lungs. And a busy, important father with so much on his mind.
I wonder what they do, other girls, with their long hours alone behind a closed bedroom door. I imagine they look in the mirror, studying, scrutinizing, tracing thick lines of shadow on their eyelids or filling the fullness of their lips with color. Or indulge unspoken dreams of boys, bodies, the rough backseats of cars. Their fingertips tracing circles like they hope his will do, in the dark. Or do they do nothing—nothing at all, stretched on their backs in the ice-cold silence of All By Themselves, letting their minds drift away from people, places, future plans, to settle out there in the careless wherever for a much-needed rest.
I wonder if this is what I should do, too. Now that I’m one of them. Normal, or nearly there. The battle with my body used to dominate everything, a ceaseless struggle, begging without end for me to pay attention to its demands. Ever since the airless pain subsided, the inside of my head feels huge and empty. Illness was a constant companion. Without it, the evenings seem to stretch on forever. How do people fill so many hours? How do I? There’s a sixty-minute spot on the couch with Nessa, a rerun of a show I watched while sick last year. There’s a thirty-minute dinner—with its stilted conversation, my father only half there if he’s there at all, paging through e-mails and data at the table while we talk over his head. There are ninety minutes of work, two hours on a busy night, assigned reading or essays or redundant sheets of math problems—and that’s even though I do it in fits and starts, cramming it in between conversations with the friends I suddenly have. The girls, Jana, Shanika, and Mikah, have looped me in on their Thursday-night ritual of group-watching horror movies over video chat. Ben sends me messages most every night, rapid-fire windows that bloom on my laptop screen, riddled with transposed letters and missing periods. I love the way he thinks, so
In the scheme of things, one more secret won’t make a difference.
“Nessa?”
“Yes?”
“I want to learn how to swim.”
C H A P T E R 14
I AM GETTING GOOD AT KEEPING SECRETS.
I can line them up end to end, a succession of half-truths and lies of omission, each one putting that much more distance between my life and my father’s watchful eyes. The truth about that night, in the dark, by the dock; the scent of river water in my hair, washed clean and covered up by the time he gets home from work; the sneaking, almost-silent click as I carefully lock my door at night. It was three weeks ago that we installed it, down low at the base of the door, a position that various websites claimed would thwart even determined sleepwalkers. From dusk till dawn, my room turns from a sanctuary into a prison, my aunt from a giddy ally to a watchful warden. I spent the first week waiting—for him to notice, to visit, to see the lock and ask me why.
He didn’t.
I’ve stopped listening for his steps on the carpet. I don’t wait for the sound of his knuckles against the door. It has been weeks now since he came to say good night, since he stood in the doorway and noted the rise and fall of my chest, and said, “You’re really looking better. Much, much better.” Without the constant threat of illness to keep him close, we’ve drifted. Him, into endless sheafs of scrolling data, later and more nights away, the constant thrum of conversation behind his study door. And me, into solace, solitude. The privacy that experts say a girl my age needs now. I’m left alone.
Just like any other sixteen-year-old with no-more-than-ordinary problems. And working lungs. And a busy, important father with so much on his mind.
I wonder what they do, other girls, with their long hours alone behind a closed bedroom door. I imagine they look in the mirror, studying, scrutinizing, tracing thick lines of shadow on their eyelids or filling the fullness of their lips with color. Or indulge unspoken dreams of boys, bodies, the rough backseats of cars. Their fingertips tracing circles like they hope his will do, in the dark. Or do they do nothing—nothing at all, stretched on their backs in the ice-cold silence of All By Themselves, letting their minds drift away from people, places, future plans, to settle out there in the careless wherever for a much-needed rest.
I wonder if this is what I should do, too. Now that I’m one of them. Normal, or nearly there. The battle with my body used to dominate everything, a ceaseless struggle, begging without end for me to pay attention to its demands. Ever since the airless pain subsided, the inside of my head feels huge and empty. Illness was a constant companion. Without it, the evenings seem to stretch on forever. How do people fill so many hours? How do I? There’s a sixty-minute spot on the couch with Nessa, a rerun of a show I watched while sick last year. There’s a thirty-minute dinner—with its stilted conversation, my father only half there if he’s there at all, paging through e-mails and data at the table while we talk over his head. There are ninety minutes of work, two hours on a busy night, assigned reading or essays or redundant sheets of math problems—and that’s even though I do it in fits and starts, cramming it in between conversations with the friends I suddenly have. The girls, Jana, Shanika, and Mikah, have looped me in on their Thursday-night ritual of group-watching horror movies over video chat. Ben sends me messages most every night, rapid-fire windows that bloom on my laptop screen, riddled with transposed letters and missing periods. I love the way he thinks, so
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