Learning to Swim Read Online Free PDF Page A

it they want you to do?”
    “Go to college.”
    She was quiet for a moment, still swaying in the rocking chair. “And this is such a terrible fate?”
    I would look back on this moment and wonder what had brought me to indulge this old woman’s questions. But at the time, it felt natural to tell her these things.
    “I just didn’t get into the school I wanted,” I said. Or any of them . I paused. “And I’d rather take a year off.” She was quiet again, and I read her disapproval in the silence. “To travel,” I added, trying to justify it. “See the world before I condemn myself to a degree and a career.”
    “And your parents will not allow this.”
    “We always argue about it.”
    “Your mother does not want that path for you. As mine did not want for me.”
    I was surprised. “You skipped a year before college?”
    The woman laughed a dry, brittle, almost sad laugh. “I wanted to see the world and my mother did not want it for me. It is dangerous.”
    “She thinks I won’t go to college if I skip a year,” I said. “But it would only be a year, I want to go to college.” But on my terms . I didn’t want to be the dumb girl the college let in because her dad knew the dean. “I’m not ready. Just not right now.”
    “Time has a way of binding us. Months turn into years against our will.”
    I was silent.
    “I never returned to my mother,” the old woman said, and I saw her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly as they swept the horizon.
    “I’m sorry,” I said lamely.
    We were both quiet for a few minutes, and the noise of the ocean seemed to heighten to a roar in the silence. I began to feel awkward and tried to make my escape. “I really should get going,” I said, standing up. “It was really nice meeting you.”
    “Cora, that is not to say I would not do it again, had I the chance.” I froze, standing awkwardly near the stairs. “Yes, I would always go again,” she said.
    “I’m glad,” I murmured. And I was. To know the adventure might be worth it, whatever the adventure might be.
    The old woman was nodding, her hands back in her lap. “At the end, the pros will always outweigh the cons, and so you must do what you feel you need. In your heart.”
    Now I was the one nodding in her strange, slow fashion.
    “And Cora?” She was smiling faintly. “It is dangerous.”
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Mar Deire
    Keeping up Appearances
     
     
     
    The sun was just settling over the backs of the sprawling yards of the old houses as I jogged home. I’d forgotten my phone at the Pink Palace (on purpose), and it was after dinnertime. A tongue-lashing was in my immediate future.
    I ran up the back stairs prepared for the combined anger of my parents, but somewhat emboldened by the old woman’s words. The adventure was always worth it.
    It occurred to me that I hadn’t even asked her name. She had gone on about mine and even Princess’s, and I hadn’t even considered hers. But her message had reached me loud and clear. I had every intention of going into that house and revealing that Western had, indeed, rejected me and so I was not going to college in the fall.
    But when I burst through the back door, I stopped dead in my tracks. Princess ran in ahead of me and scurried around the dining room table excitedly. It was set for dinner as I had expected, but it was also surrounded by people.
    “Cora, we’ve been worried sick about you,” Mom said with a beaming smile that belied her true feelings.
    The meal was in full swing, but everyone had politely stopped eating to watch me stumble awkwardly into the room. Wonderful. An audience for my declaration of independence.
    “We thought you’d fallen in,” a strange woman said genially.
    I cringed and hazarded a look at my mother, who had a stiff smile plastered to her face.
    Dad cleared his throat, bringing my mother back to the present. “Saved you some lobster, Cora,” he said. He was the first to return to said lobster. The man sitting next