Free Jake by Audrey Couloumbis Page B

it—I’d been riding Joey’s for a year—and that I’d never ride in the street, she’d probably feel like it wasn’t that scary after all.
    She might even feel bad she’d never gotten one for me before. I had this little picture in my mind, me shrugging and saying,
That’s okay. Mom
.
    While I helped Mrs. Buttermark rinse off the pancake boxes for recycling, Granddad asked me what school I go to and looked up the phone number. While I finished getting dressed, he talked to the principal. Just like that.
    I didn’t know someone could call and get him on the phone. I thought the office ladies kept people from talking to him. Sort of the way the Secret Service protects the president from just any old person who wants to strike up a conversation with him. I’m not sure Mom ever talked to the principal.
    Granddad made a couple more calls. Nothing to do with a bike, that I could tell. Mrs. Buttermark went over to her apartment, saying she’d make some fresh sandwiches for us to take over to the hospital.
    Visiting hours at the hospital wouldn’t even startuntil two o’clock. We didn’t have the excuse of Mom being in surgery so we could show up earlier. I didn’t know what Granddad and I would do with each other all morning.
    Still, it was sort of cool to miss school on a Monday, even if it was the day of the Christmas party. I fed the fish. They were always hungry.
    “Well, that’s taken care of,” Granddad said, hanging up the phone. “It’s early yet. I saw a YMCA in town. What say we go for a swim?”
    “I can use the trampoline or something,” I said, putting down the fish food. “Run a few laps, maybe.”
    “A swim,” Granddad said as if I hadn’t heard him. “Heated pool. Warm, rough towels.”
    I had skipped the shower. Now that I thought about it, I guess I’d skipped the shower since Friday.
    I said, “I don’t go in the pool, usually.” Ever. I was sort of floundering here. I wanted him to know I wanted to do things together, just not the pool. “I’ll shower if you’re worried about it.”
    “Why won’t you go into the pool?”
    “I’ll go in,” I said. “Nobody drowns in the shallow end.”
    “You don’t swim?”
    “I
can’t
swim,” I said, getting annoyed with the way he made me sound uncooperative or something. Suzie offered to teach me to swim, and when I said no, that was the end of it.
    Well, she asks again every so often, but she doesn’t make a big deal out of it.
    Granddad said, “Even nonswimmers can get some benefit from a pool. Exercise. I’ve got an extra cap.”
    I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. Who would do jumping jacks or push-ups in a pool, especially if they didn’t swim? And those caps, pressing on my head until it felt like an overfilled balloon.
    “I get embarrassed,” I said. Granddad didn’t seem to get it. He looked like he had half an idea I could swim but didn’t want to.
    The thing is, for the first time in my life, I really
wished
I could swim. It was plain to me that Granddad thought very highly of swimming. He might not care about tennis, and he didn’t care one way or the other about karate. Swimming mattered.
    “Try this on,” he said. “It might be a little big for you.”
    When he offered me the cap, I took it. It lookedpretty cool, black with a blue zigzag like lightning. I pulled it on. It was a little big, which meant I didn’t feel like my head would explode.
    “Fine,” I said. “If it’ll make you happy, I’ll come flap around in the shallow end.”
    “You can’t learn to swim in the shallow end.”
    “I didn’t know that,” I said. I didn’t believe it either. Where else would somebody learn? Or what was the shallow end for?
    But he wasn’t saying this like it was true. He was saying it like he’d be embarrassed if I stayed at the shallow end.
    “You don’t swim,” he said, almost to himself. Then he looked straight at me. “That’s why you don’t go into the pool?”
    “That’s why