Learning to Swim Read Online Free PDF Page B

address. Real estate will be key in the coming years.”
    I knew this was somehow referencing the talks he and Mr. Carlton had just had about their respective corporations, but I pounced on it as if I knew what he was talking about.
    “Well, that’s great, Dad, because, you know, I’d like to live abroad. And travel. You know, take a year off.” My voice felt unnaturally high in the silence it occasioned.
    Every eye turned on me. Even the little girl was judging me.
    “One cardboard box, please!” I added with a nervous squeak.
    My dad laughed heartily in the silence that had descended on the table. I gambled a look at my mother, and the look in her eyes was positively murderous. Mrs. Carlton’s eyebrows were raised beyond what I thought was humanly possible. Abercrombie just looked bemused.
    “Cora, the world traveler. Won’t even eat green beans unless Joan douses them with sugar.” Dad laughed. “I can just see her in the mountains, hunched over, eating French fries with the natives.”
    “Well, my boy here is going to Southern,” Mr. Carlton said, clapping the kid on the back of his broad shoulders. “He’s going to play water polo. For my part, I’ll be happy as long as he studies law.”
    The parents around the table all twittered, the mothers with hands thrown daintily across their mouths, as though this was some politically incorrect joke. But it couldn’t have been plainer that the man was completely and utterly serious.
    And Abercrombie’s face belied no resistance to this fate.
    “Cora.” His blue eyes were addressing me. They would have been gorgeous had it not been for his gross, self-assured smirk. “I was hoping you’d come out with me and my friends some time. Everyone is really eager to get to know you.”
    This could hardly be true, judging by my previous interaction with what I assumed were his “friends.” But I felt my cheeks burn by the will of those cursed raging hormones and also with the knowledge that my mother was watching this scene with glee.
    Damn you, cheeks!
    “What a gentleman!” Mom cooed in my confused silence. “Cora, write your number down. We can’t wait to get to know all you kids. Call anytime, Owen, she’s simply glued to her phone.” My phone was currently lost somewhere in the abyss of my pink room.
    And then, scribbling my number on a napkin, Mom winked at the guy. She actually winked at him.
     

     
    I heard my phone jingle from the floor. Even hundreds of miles away she had some kind of pull over me. I stirred clothes around, looking for the elusive phone before fishing it out from under the bed to see Rosie’s exultant text.
    ROSIE: Call me a wildcat, baby! Cuz it’s official!!!!
    She’d been taken off the wait list. That was her first-choice school.
    I threw the phone at the floor where it bounced and hit the bed frame with an ominous crack, just as my unassuming mother walked in without knocking.
    “What’s this in your pocket, Cora?”
    Weren’t you supposed to be happy for your friends? So why was my blood boiling?
    “Cora?” Mom had my cream-colored dress slung over one arm.
    I looked at her confusedly. It couldn’t be—
    “You know how to do laundry?” I asked, incredulous. Joan must have given her lessons, unbeknownst to me, in preparation for this special summer away.
    She ignored me. “What is all this?” she asked again, dumping a handful of seashells and the small silver flute on my desk.
    I shrugged, not bothering to look up from my book. It would only please her, and I was in no mood to please my mother.
    She looked at me seriously for a moment. “Are you okay? We never talked about—I mean—the other night—”
    “I’m fine.”
    “I just mean, I didn’t know if it would bring back some bad memories of—or make you think—”
    “I wasn’t even alive, how could I have memories of it?”
    “Cora, I just—”
    “Spare me the psychoanalysis, I’m fine.”
    She looked crestfallen. But she was in a good enough