The Time Keepers

Chapter 43

CHAPTER 43

T HE SUMMER HEAT INDEX WAS SOARING. K ATIE HAD BEEN working at the pool club for three weeks when her mother came up with the great idea to invite B?o along to swim with Molly there for the day. The temperatures in Bellegrove had risen to close to ninety, and Grace thought the boy would enjoy an afternoon cooling off with another child his own age and she could spend some time with Anh poolside.

“You don’t mind, honey, do you?” she questioned Molly over breakfast as she flipped two more pancakes onto the girl’s plate.

“No, Mommy. I’d love to go swimming with him.” She took the bottle of maple syrup and poured it over the pancakes.

“Thank you, honey. And maybe you can introduce him to some of your friends. The more conversational English he hears, the easier it will become for him. And he’ll probably be at school with you next year, too.”

Katie glowered and pushed what remained of her soggy pancakes to the side. “Does he have to come to the club, Mom? Why don’t they just hang out here together and you can put the sprinkler on in the back?” Her voice was bristly, like worn rope. “I’m sure he’d like that better than the crowded pool.”

“Do you always have to be so mean, Katherine Rose?” Grace shook her head, disgusted with her daughter’s selfishness. “How does this have anything to do with you? I’ve asked Molly to spend time with B?o, not you.”

Katie slumped in her chair, her face distorted in a scowl. Why did her mother always need to be so saintly? Couldn’t she just concentrate on her own family and leave the rest of the world’s freaks outside their front door?

“I’m going to pick Anh and B?o up at noon.”

Katie smiled. She’d be on her lunch break then, and she made a mental note to be as far away from the pool as possible when her mother arrived with her embarrassing entourage.

As a result of Katie having her first job, Molly’s summer had been uneventful and a bit lonely. Unlike her sister, who always seemed to have a gaggle of friends around her, Molly often found herself struggling to find someone to sit with at the school cafeteria or hang out with during recess.

While her sister had inherited Grace’s blond hair and athletic build that instantly marked her for the popular crowd, Molly had been forced to wear thick glasses for her myopia, and her brown hair fell limp around her ears. The recent addition of braces on her teeth only intensified her awkwardness, and on top of it all, she wasn’t good in gym class. Every afternoon, she was the last one picked when they made up teams. So when her mother suggested inviting B?o to the pool club, she welcomed the idea. Though Molly only had a vague memory of the little boy in the Hulk T-shirt who she had briefly seen standing in their kitchen that afternoon a few months earlier, after her mother discovered him on the street.

Grace let her sit up front on the way to pick up B?o at Lady Queen of Martyrs. “I appreciate you doing this, sweetie,” she said, tapping Molly’s leg with her soft hand. “You’re such a good girl.”

Molly smiled. Her lips were cut raw on the inside from those sharp little bits of metal. She pulled some wax out of her bag and put it on one of the brackets.

“Do you think he can go on the diving board?”

The car drove through the winding driveway and finally pulled to a stop. Grace suddenly had a pit in her stomach. Did he even know how to swim?

The kiddie pool was awash with toddlers with neon inflatable floating devices on their arms, mothers holding their babies in swollen diapers, and Molly and B?o standing in water up to their ankles. Molly had chosen to wear her Wonder Woman bathing suit that day, her favorite purchase of the season because she thought it made her look like she was wearing the superhero’s red-blue-and-gold uniform. She was happy to see B?o’s face light up when she took off her terry cloth coverup.

At first, Molly thought she had misheard B?o when he made a fist and exclaimed, “Wonder Twins powers acti … v …”

“Activate?” Molly laughed. “You got the wrong superhero, B?o. But that’s very cool.”

His feet shifted from side to side making small ripples in the pool.

“I’m Wonder Woman—well, not really, but I’m dressed like her.…” She knelt down in the water and gave one of the little kids a splash. The water was tepid, far warmer than the big pool. She wondered if they were actually standing in pee.

“You want to get something to eat? I’m hungry.”

B?o nodded.

When they went to the lounge chairs, she noticed that B?o didn’t wrap the towel around his waist. Instead, he wore it like it was a cape. He, too, fashioned himself like a superhero and walked next to her, smiling.

Anh sat quietly with the tall glass of lemonade under the umbrella. Grace had found a spot in the corner of the club for them, away from the crowded tables nearer to the two pools.

“I thought it would be nice for you and B?o to come here … to get a little change of scenery.”

Anh smiled. Every day the world seemed to grow larger for her. She thought about how previously she had foolishly thought that America was just another body of land, only a short distance from Vietnam, one they could float toward in a few short hours. She had no idea that it was on the other side of the world and the hardship they’d have to endure just to make it here. The first tragedy had been the loss of B?o’s parents, but the suffering would continue long after.

They would soon run out of fuel, the captain also guilty of failing to anticipate the correct length of the journey. Soon their supplies would be depleted. They would eventually find themselves adrift, floating for days without food and having to ration out a few spoonfuls of water between them. They shared a single lemon, biting the sour fruit and sucking the juice between them each day. She had tried to forgo her share of what remained and give it to B?o, who had fallen in and out of consciousness for most of the trip. When the French tanker finally found them, they had been on the brink of death, all of them dehydrated and starving. After nearly ten days, the ship sprang out of the waters like a mirage, and when they lifted B?o’s body onto the lifeboat that hoisted them aboard, his sunburned skin was covered in sores.

The little boy walking with the makeshift cape floats past Anh. He does not blend in with the sea of white bodies in their Technicolor bathing suits and their plastic flip-flops that snap against the wet concrete floor. But the girl with the Wonder Woman one-piece, the thick glasses, and the ropes of wet brown hair does not either. Together they walk toward the canteen. And Anh sees B?o smile—bright and uninhibited—not the kind he does to just signal to her he’s okay, but one that comes from true joy. She takes a long sip of lemonade from the straw, and when Grace asks her if she needs anything else, she thinks hard and long about what the right answer should be in English. Then she answers politely, “No, miss. But thank you.”