The Accidental Book Club (12 page)

They both turned just in time to see something fly from the deep end right onto the lifeguard’s table with a splash.

“Hey!” he yelled again, his shoulders hunched up and his hands held out defensively. “Whoa! You can’t . . .” Something else flew at him, and then another thing and another, all landing with splashes on the table, on the deck next to the table, and on the lifeguard himself.

“What the . . . ?” Loretta said in a low voice. “Is that . . . ?”

But Jean could see what it was clearly, and her mouth went dry, the laughter evaporating from it instantly. “Bailey’s shorts,” she said.

The lifeguard jumped up, but didn’t seem to know what to do. He peeled a pair of underwear off his chest and dropped them to the ground. He looked up at Jean and Loretta, but Jean was too afraid to even look in the pool to see what she knew she’d see there.

Finally the lifeguard seemed to find his voice. “Dude, you have to have a swimsuit on . . . This is a family pool,” he said to Bailey. “She can’t do that here!” he yelled across to Jean.

“Oh, dear Lord, that child is naked as the day she was born,” Loretta said.

Finally Jean forced herself to look into the pool, and there was Bailey, swimming defiantly to the pool wall. She crossed her elbows on the pool deck and rested her chin on her arms. “You said I couldn’t swim in my clothes,” she said.

“That’s not what I meant. You have to wear
some
clothes,” the lifeguard responded. He directed his next words to Jean: “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” he said. “Sorry, but swimsuits are policy.”

Loretta burst out laughing, as if
Sorry, swimsuits are policy
was the funniest thing she’d heard all day.

So much for a regular thing,
Jean thought, and with a sigh got up and carried a towel over to the side of the pool where Bailey was treading water. Jean wordlessly bent by the ladder and opened the towel for Bailey to cover with on the way out.

But the girl paid no attention to her grandmother. She swam to the shallow end of the pool and took the steps, very deliberately, and, to Jean’s eyes, very slowly. She sauntered over to the lifeguard and picked up her clothes.

“Sorry. I guess I misunderstood,” she said, then yelled over her shoulder, “I’ll wait in the car!”

Jean stood by the pool, towel still outstretched, and watched as her granddaughter strode across the parking lot, covering herself with wads of sopping clothes, and got into Jean’s car. Jean and Loretta exchanged a look across the deck.

Loretta pointed at the car. “Wayne would not have known what to do about that!” she said.

Jean couldn’t argue. She could only fold the towel and, not daring to so much as look up, slink past the lifeguard to the car.

Dear J. K. Rowling:

I suppose you get fan e-mails all the time. You probably get so many of them, there is no possible way you can even look at them all. I know there is pretty much no chance you’ll see this, but I’m going to write it anyway.

I love your books. And, no, I don’t mean that I love the movies of your books like all the other kids. I mean I love your books. I’ve been reading them pretty much my whole life. Okay, maybe not my
whole
whole life, but since I was pretty little.

My mom and I read
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
out loud together. Every night she would sit on the edge of my bed, just like I was still a little kid, and she would read a chapter. And then I would beg her to read another chapter when she was done. And another when she finished that one too. And soon it was way past my bedtime, but we didn’t care because the book was so good.

That was the last book my mom and I ever read together—can you believe it? I guess things happened. Also, turning fifteen happened. It’s probably a little immature to have your mom read stories to you out loud at bedtime when you’re fifteen. Not that I would care, but maybe she did. I don’t know. Probably not.

I know Harry was the hero of your books, but honestly my hero was always Hermione. She was smart and brave and loyal. But she was also kind of serious too. I’m like that. Serious. I don’t know about the other stuff. I like to believe I’m smart and brave and loyal, but it’s been so long since I’ve just been allowed to be me, it’s hard to tell. But it was good to see a girl that could be those things without being all giggly and ditzy too.

I think it would be cool to just be able to make things happen with a flick of my wrist. It would be really cool to have a time-turner too.

So if you’re reading this, you don’t need to answer me or anything. I just wanted to tell you thank you. Keep writing!

Sincerely,
Bailey Butler

T
he lifeguard had a name. Noah. Ironic, Bailey thought. Like the guy in the Bible, rescuing the animals from the flood waters. Only this Noah had rescued her from the boredom of having to live in this place.

Not that her grandmother was all bad. She was old. She was boring. She was constantly trying to cram food down Bailey’s throat. But at least she knew Bailey was there. She was . . . predictable. Predictable could be good. She had forgotten what predictable felt like.

Bailey had even been considering giving the poor woman a break had her mom not shown up. Not that Bailey would’ve wanted to be there without her mom, but just that with her mom there and still not paying any attention to anyone but herself, it was kind of a slap in the face.

This was what her mom did all day every day:

1. Sleep.

2. Walk around looking like a zombie, which was scary as hell. If Bailey had told anyone who knew Laura Butler that the woman hadn’t showered in, like, two weeks, they probably would have joined a church right away and waited for the Apocalypse to get here. And, not for nothing, but the perfect-skinned, perfect-smiled, perfectly perfect Laura Butler looked pretty not perfect at the moment. She might have even made Bailey look good, and Bailey had to force herself to keep from sniping,
I don’t know where I got these genes! I swear to God I have more than once wondered if they switched me with some other baby!
But she’d have to be speaking with her mom to say that.

3. Yell at people.

Bill collectors: “I don’t care what your policy is! Where’s the heart? Where’s the caring for a sick single mother, huh? I’ve been in the hospital for a month, and you’re talking to me about your goddamn policy? How do you sleep at night? I know it’s not your personal policy, but I would never be able to work for a company that treated people the way your company treats people, and you know why? I have a conscience!”

Various managers and employees at Bradley Electronics: “I’m on a leave of absence, Syl; I’m not dead. I know you have to take care of things while I’m away, but don’t treat me like a corpse. Well, Henry can get another job if he doesn’t like it. I wonder how Carolyn and the kids will like it when they find out he pissed away his career because he was too impatient to wait for his boss to come back. How about you bring that up as new business at the next board meeting, Syl, and see how it goes? Well, then stop treating me like I’m some sort of plague on the company and start giving me the respect I’ve earned. I don’t care what I did a month ago—it’s not about what I did in one day, but what I’ve done over the course of sixteen years!”

And, especially, her soon-to-be-ex-husband, the Ghost Dad: “No, I will not calm down! I don’t have to calm down! You lost the right to tell me to calm down the minute you walked out of that house. No, I won’t lower my voice. I don’t care if someone else hears me. What do I have to be ashamed of, Curt? Not nearly as much as you do!”

And then repeat it all on a loop. Back to the bill collectors, back to the office, back to Ghost Dad. Over and over and over again until Bailey got tired of eavesdropping, until her brain hurt trying to keep up with the long list of People Who’ve Wronged Laura Butler. God, the woman was even perfect at being a victim. It was sickening.

And you know who she wasn’t yelling at?

Bailey. Of course. Because she’d have to actually know Bailey existed to yell at her. That would be way too much trouble.

But Noah the lifeguard noticed her. If she’d only known that standing naked in front of a guy would make him notice her, she might have done it years ago.

She still couldn’t believe she’d done it. It was one thing to drop a glass jar on a hospital floor; it was another to get naked in front of the whole world in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, and she was beginning to wonder if she really was just flat-out losing it. One minute she’d been paddling around and thinking about mermaids—mermaids! Like a little kid would do!—and the next she was throwing her clothes at a guy she’d never seen before in her life.

And walking toward the lifeguard, not even worrying whether she looked fat or frumpy or whether he could see the freckles on her thighs or whether he was grossed out by the pudge on her lower belly.

She’d sat in the car and laughed one of those laughs that was a half cry, because she’d realized at that moment that she’d somehow gone from pretending she didn’t care to actually not caring. And somehow that seemed scary and really hopeless to her.

She’d left her bra down there. She hadn’t meant to, but when she went back the next day to retrieve it, she found out that she had some things in common with Noah. For example, he didn’t like to think about heavy things, and she was trying to escape them. He liked to listen to stoner music around the pool, and she liked to read to a brainless beat. He liked to smoke a lot of dope, and she liked to pretend she did.

She started hanging out with him every day. He’d light up a joint, and she’d complain that she could only smoke it at night because it made her want to sleep. Then he’d give her a baggie for later, because he was generous that way, and she’d stuff it in her pocket. The dope would kick in and he’d start talking all this philosophical crap; she’d act like she cared, and then he’d turn on some music and she’d pull a paperback out of her backpack and prop it on her knees and get lost in a story the way she’d always done. Sometimes he would get the stoned giggles and they would laugh over the dumbest things. It felt good to laugh with someone, someone who didn’t have a clue what her life was really like.

And she would come home, sun-drenched and chlorine-soaked, and her grandmother would practically fall all over herself with happiness that Bailey was “getting out and making friends.” Bailey wasn’t sure if Noah really fell into the category of “friend,” mostly because it had been so long since she’d had a real one of those. Could someone who didn’t know you at all be your friend? Could someone who was stoned one hundred percent of the time you hung out together really offer any friendship potential? She didn’t know, but he didn’t judge her and she didn’t question him; as far as she could see, these days that was close enough to friendship.

And sometimes she would lie back on the chaise lounge and close her eyes against the sun, old Led Zepplin songs pulsing over the overhead pool speakers. She would imagine herself in a lavender and silver prom gown, a stoned Noah standing next to her in a tux, awkwardly clutching a wrist corsage in a plastic box, and the image seemed okay, like it could even possibly have happened in an alternate life.

And after his shift, he would invite her to get pizza or go hang at his house, but she’d beg off—scared to be alone and away from her grandmother, even if she didn’t quite understand why—and make him drop her off at home, where she’d dump the pot he’d given her in an ugly ceramic vase that sat on a shelf above the coatrack in the kitchen.

“What’s that?” Noah asked one day. She was tucked into a deck chair, a book propped up on her knees as usual.

“Huh?” She didn’t look up.

“What’s that?” he repeated, smacking the book with the back of his hand. It wobbled.

“Stop—it’s a book, dumbass. This is your brain on drugs.” She gestured to his head but still didn’t look up.

He was silent for a moment, bending and flexing his knees restlessly. It was overcast, and the one person who’d come to the pool had packed up and left an hour ago.

“Let’s smoke some,” Noah said.

Bailey didn’t answer, just turned the page.

He smacked the book cover with the back of his hand again. “Come on, you never join me. I’m tired of getting high alone.”

“Stop. In a minute,” she mumbled.

He was silent for another minute, then, with surprising quickness and agility, reached over and snatched the book out of Bailey’s hand. “I think you’re afraid,” he teased.

“Stop it!” she cried, smacking at him, at first playfully, but when he didn’t give the book back, she started to get angry. “Give me the book. I’m serious.”

He grinned. “I love it when you get mad. It’s cute.” He stood up and held the book high, out of Bailey’s reach.

She jumped off the lounge, her teeth bared, and slapped at his arms, his stomach, his hands. “I’m not kidding. That’s not even my book. I borrowed it from my grandmother. Give it back.”

But he held it even higher and started across the deck with it. And she could feel it coming, rolling in on her like a wave—the anger, the ridiculous, blinding ugliness that seemed to push itself in on her so often these days. It was the same rage that made her smash her mother’s TV screen in or bust the slats in the backyard fence or tamp out a cigarette on her father’s pillow. She couldn’t stop it, even though she wanted to, even though she knew that it never turned out well for her. She was powerless against it.

In one motion, she grabbed Noah’s cell phone off the patio table and chucked it into the deep end. It went under with a
ploomp
.

Noah’s eyes went huge, the book going slack at his side. “What the fuck? Are you kidding me?”

“I told you to give it back,” Bailey said, marching over and pulling the book out of his hand.

She walked home, her nose buried in the book the whole way. But she wasn’t reading the words. She couldn’t through the remorseful tears that streamed down her face. So much for friendship. So much for lavender gowns.

The real kicker was that she hated the stupid book. It was called
Blame
, and it was written by some nitwit with about ten names. She’d found it on the end table in the living room and had picked it up out of curiosity. She knew it was the book her grandmother’s book club had been talking about at the last meeting.

About three paragraphs in, she was already pissed.
Blanche sat on the toilet, smoking a cigarette, gazing through the doorway at the doughy arm of her last trick, which had slipped through the sheets and pointed toward the overturned gin bottle on the floor. When she was done with her cigarette, she knew she’d crawl to that bottle and drink the dregs, no matter that her most recent “partner” made her stomach churn with revulsion, no matter that his lips had last suckled it. She knew she would do it, and as pathetically as her mother had done. She knew this precisely because it was what her mother had done. She would be powerless to do anything else.

This Thackeray idiot had no idea what he was even talking about.

Yet she couldn’t stop reading.

She came home, stripped out of her clothes, put on her pajamas, and propped her back against two pillows and read.

By night’s end, she’d finished the book.

And had begun to formulate a plan.