Dreadful Sorry (3 page)

Then she heard footsteps running up the stairs. There was a perfunctory tap on the door before Jen threw it open. She stood there, hands on her hips. "You
lied
to me, Molly!
Again!
"

"What do you mean?" But of course she knew.

"That was Coach Bascombe on the phone." Jen came into the room and sank onto Molly's bed. "She said you have refused all week to do anything more than get your feet wet."

"That isn't true—I've gone in up to my thighs." Molly's stomach contracted at the memory.

"Your thighs!" Jen's face was flushed. "And today you walked out twenty minutes early. She didn't have a dentist appointment at all."

Molly looked at her chemistry notebook. "That's true," she murmured.

"What's going on? I don't understand this preposterous behavior. It isn't like you, Molly."

Molly took a deep breath. She knew this would happen sooner or later. "I
did
get in at the shallow end, but that's all I've been able to manage." She shrugged, glancing up at Jen. "Look, I'm sorry."

"You should be ashamed of such silliness. It's infantile. You can't keep on this way."

Molly covered her face with her hands. "I
can't!
" She had to take a stand this time. "You and Coach Bascombe and Mrs. Higley don't understand. You can't make me! I can't even make myself!" Molly dropped her head so her mother wouldn't see she was trying not to cry.

Jen frowned. "Now look, pull yourself together. Stop acting like some hysterical child. I had no idea you had become this—weak."

"I haven't
become
anything, Mom. I've always been this weak. I've always been scared of water. It just hasn't been a big deal. I mean, how often have we gone near water? Not being able to swim never bothered me before, and it wouldn't bother me now if the school would just drop its stupid requirement and you would get off my case."

"But you
do
have to swim," Jen said succinctly. "Or you won't graduate next year. And I won't have that! West River Academy is the best school around.
Your father and I have spent a lot to send you there all these years. And you've done superbly. I'm very proud of you, honey. Don't wreck it all over a stupid swimming test."

Molly's cheeks were wet. There was a humming in her ears, "took," she said very quietly, "I just have this feeling that I'll die if I go into the water. I know I will."

Jen sighed. "
A feeling?
Oh, Molly, I don't understand this melodrama. It's just plain weird. And it's not productive. There's nothing that ever happened to make you afraid. You never fell into a pool or got water up your nose—nothing to account for this overreaction. Nothing at all."

"I know, I know." Molly couldn't explain the dread in her gut, the certainty that while other human beings floated in water, she alone would sink. "But it's no use."

"What's with this defeatist attitude? There's no such word as 'can't'!" This was the successful lawyer speaking now. "Of course you'll do it. I'll help you. Classes end next week, and if you haven't managed to swim across that pool by then, we'll sign you up for lessons at the recreation center. Okay? We'll make it our summer project."

"Mom, I've got a better plan. I can transfer to the public high school for my senior year. They don't have a requirement about swimming—"

"Molly Teague, you haven't gone to West River Academy all these years just to end up with a diploma from Battleboro Heights High!"

"Snob!"

"Molly!"

Molly was really crying now. They never fought like this, and it felt terrible. "I'm sorry, Mom, but it seems to me you care more about the prestigious name of the school I graduate from than what it'll cost me to get in that pool!"

"And it seems to me, young lady, that you are being self-indulgent and cowardly. Not to mention willing to throw away the education your father and I have worked hard to give you, just because you don't like to get your feet wet."

When Jen called her "young lady," things were bad indeed. "I wouldn't be throwing away the education," Molly whispered. "Just the ritzy name of the school on my diploma."

Jen brushed her hair out of her eyes and glanced at her wristwatch. "Look, enough of this. Your dinner will be ready in a minute, and I've got to get going." She stood up. "Come on down to eat."

Molly bit her lip. She took a deep breath and forced the usual calm to come back over her. The tuneless humming in her ears faded away. She was in control again. "Okay, Mom," she said stoically.

Jen stepped into the hall, then turned back. "But Molly?"

"What?"

"No more lies. I don't like you hiding things from me. I want you back to normal."

Molly flopped onto her bed and lay back on the pillows, feeling battered. But as soon as she closed her eyes, Jared Bernstein's face swam before her, his puzzled brown eyes under dark brows watching her. She sat up abruptly, covering her ears to stop the sudden humming.

Back to normal? But how?

On Saturday morning when Molly woke up and went down to breakfast, the breeze through the open kitchen windows was already heavily scented with the rosemary from their little garden. The day would be hot.

Jen was standing by the stove flipping pancakes. "Muggy, isn't it?" she greeted Molly, setting a glass of orange juice next to Molly's plate. "How did you sleep, sweetheart?"

Molly groaned. Her night had been broken again by the dream. She had struggled awake at four-thirty, then forced herself to lie awake till dawn. She didn't trust sleep.

Jen frowned, spatula in hand. "Poor baby."

Poor impractical, fanciful baby. That's what she means.
Molly hastened to change the subject. "How was your date—I mean, your business meeting—last night?" She had gone to bed long before her mother returned.

Jen brightened. "Imagine two lawyers at a business dinner actually having fun! His name is Ben. It's going to be nice to have somebody working with me who isn't one of the old guard."

"Jen and Ben. Pretty cute," teased Molly. "Sounds like you were made for each other."

"Like father, like daughter," moaned Jen, sitting down across the table from Molly. "Just try to keep such goopy thoughts to yourself. I'm trying to eat."

Molly dribbled syrup over her pancakes, then picked up her fork.
Well,
she decided,
it's nice that one of us is happy.
Her head was aching from lack of sleep. The dream this last time had been even worse than the others. Same house, same long hall, same sense that something awful waited in the room at the end—but this time the awful humming became clearer. It was as if someone hidden out of sight were tuning up to sing that old folk song about the miner, forty-niner, and his daughter. No words, just humming, but Molly couldn't get the tune out of her mind all night. And even now, at the breakfast table, the words were running through her head: "
Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin', Clementine—
"

The telephone rang. Jen answered it, then handed the receiver across the table to Molly. It was Michael, calling to see if Molly would come to a party at his house that night.

"It's a pre-graduation blast," he said. "To celebrate my last week as a high school senior. It's going to be really excellent."

Molly had known Michael since she was in kindergarten. He and the other first graders had taken the new children under their wings and showed them around West River Academy. Michael had saved a place for her on the best apple tree at lunchtime, and they had been buddies ever since. In high school they saw each other often because they were both on the student council and on the school's award-winning debate team. Michael had been so crushed this past November after his longtime girlfriend, Libby, moved to Colorado, that Molly had tried to cheer him up by asking him out to see movies or to share a pizza. And he had asked her to the Winter Festival Dance at school. They'd even gone to the prom together. But Molly had to smile whenever she heard people call Michael her boyfriend. They both knew they were really just old pals. She had never been in love with any of the guys she went out with, but Michael was fine company. His party would be the perfect way to forget the past week's horrors, especially since Kathi would be busy at Lake Pymatuning with her family. Molly didn't think she could handle having to shine socially around Jared Bernstein. Who knew what idiotic things she might do?

"I'd love to come cheer you seniors out of town," Molly told Michael. "But wait a sec while I ask. I'm in disgrace around here—as you may have heard."

"As the whole school has heard," he said cheerfully. "It's the latest gossip. Even the lowliest freshman knows the story: Molly Teague hauled to the office! Molly Teague forced to stay after school all week to be tortured by Beast Bascombe! Molly Teague can't swim as far as you can throw her!"

"Need a job after graduation?" she asked drily.
"Try writing headlines for the
National Enquirer.
" She covered the receiver and raised her brows at Jen. "Mom? Michael's having a party at his house tonight and—"

"Go ahead," nodded Jen. "I'm going to be gone myself tonight, as it turns out."

"On business?" Molly asked. Jen took a careful sip of coffee. "Is it Business with Ben? Ben Business in Battleboro Heights?"

"You should write for the
National Enquirer
yourself," Jen said and took her plate to the sink.

 

Molly hesitated a moment to push down her unease before stepping into the pounding shower and pulling the curtain shut. She had always avoided baths, but lately showers brought on the same sense of danger. Being forced to take swimming lessons was making her water phobia worse. Now even the thought of raindrops on her head made her nervous. She lathered her hair and scrubbed the fragrant suds into thick white foam, then rinsed quickly and turned off the shower in great relief. She hesitated before inspecting her face in the mirror over the sink. Was her hair getting darker? And her eyes? She blinked, and the reflection seemed to correct itself.

She was pleased now, with a closer look, to see her pale face just as sensible and normal as Jen could want. Molly vowed she would become strong. She would be in control again. Enough of these vague feelings of unease, this stupid water phobia, and the childish bad dream. She rubbed some moisturizer into her skin, then toweled her hair dry and combed it out. She carefully pulled it back into a sensible braid down her back.

But as she turned away, it happened again: the mirror flickered—glimmered—like the surface of water. For a second the other face looked back, and Molly ran, gasping, down the hall to her room.

She threw open the closet, pulling her favorite blue-and-lavender flowered sundress off the hanger.
Calm down. Don't be silly. It was nothing.
She reminded herself of her vow to be strong. Minutes after dressing, though, she felt wilted and turned up the air conditioner. The June days were already so humid that even by nightfall the mugginess remained. July would be worse, August the worst of all. Her father had told her that the nights were cool and breezy on the Maine coast. Maine was sounding better all the time.

She drove Jen's little red sports car to Michael's house and parked in the street.

Michael met her at the door and led her into the living room to say hello to his parents, then out to the back garden, where the party was in full swing. The patio was illuminated by flickering lanterns strung above the grass on a clothesline. Music thumped loudly from Michael's sound system. Some people were dancing on the brick patio, some were clustered by the picnic table, and others were lingering in pockets of darkness by the bushes. Michael's two little sisters hung over the bowls of chips, stuffing themselves. The oval swimming pool, lit softly from beneath the water, glowed in the dusk like a topaz.

Molly stood for a moment, surveying the scene,
then took a deep breath and felt her lungs expand with the evening air that was scented by flowers growing along the fence. She spied some kids from the drama club and crossed through the chattering flock of her classmates on the patio to reach them, with Michael following. "Hi, you guys!"

"Molly, are you and Michael coming to the graduation play?" Tina was playing Nancy in West River's production of
Oliver!
next weekend.

"I wouldn't miss it for anything," Molly answered. "It's my vicarious thrill, you know, listening to you sing. I wish I could."

Laura, who was the stage manager, shook back her dozens of black braids tied with little silver beads. "Must be the only thing you
can't
do, then, in that case. You're brilliant. I get
my
thrills watching you take on Mr. Marec in psychology!"

Derek chuckled. He had a naturally unpleasant laugh, which Molly felt made him perfectly suited for the part of Bill Sykes in the musical. "Singing's not the
only
thing Moll can't do, or so I hear." He leaned toward her and put a hand on her bare arm. "How're the swim lessons going with old Bascombe, Moll?"

"Oh shut up, Derek," said Michael easily. "I've seen you in swim class struggling to keep your own head above water."

"Yeah, but at least I haven't resorted to forgery to cover it up," he retorted.

There was a moment of silence, broken by laughter from the other side of the patio.

"Want some munchies?" asked Laura, gesturing toward the table. "I'll load you up a plate."

"Thanks. I'll get something myself," Molly told her and filled a plate with potato chips and dip. She pushed past Derek to mingle with her schoolmates on the patio, congratulating the seniors on having only another week to go, commiserating with the members of her own class about the year they still had left. People started dancing fast. She danced with Michael, with Laura's boyfriend, Peter, with Tina's date, Sean—even with Derek.

"Hey, Moll, I didn't mean anything, really," Derek said during a slow song. "It's just the novelty of seeing a top student in trouble that fascinates me. Makes you more human."

"They don't come any more human than me," Molly bantered, but she moved slightly away from his close embrace and scanned the crowd for Michael.