Authors: Marthe Jocelyn
Would You (14 page)
The owner is away, so the pool is unlit. I take off my shorts and top and slide into the dark, secret water.
I'm only by myself for a minute, time to look up at the watery moon from the underside of the surface.
And then they all come jumping in: Audrey first, of course, and then the others, turning the pool into a party for Claire's birthday.
Party
Is the Wrong Word
I ride home alone. The night's still warm, and always quiet in a small town. There is no reason to believe that I'll hurt less someday. Someday it'll be me Mom is sending cookies to, me Mom and Dad are missing, me starting a
new life full of people who never met Claire. Will that be better or worse?
I've decided that hope is an ever-changing element, like water.
It calls to you; it beckons; you want to plunge right in. But it's treacherous too; it tricks you and swallows you up.
If you told me this whole story and it didn't happen to me? I'd say
screw
hope—if you stick a hopeful ending on there, it'll be a total lie.
But what I know about water is that after all the splashing and the churning, it lies still. It quenches your thirst and it buoys you up.
So I guess I'll be one of those wobbly-pegged, flappy-skinned old ladies at the Y, because I'm going to be swimming until I really can't anymore.
I'll be the Driftwood of the future, paddling along on my own.
Nowhere near happy.
And, except for Claire, not really an ending at all.
Huge thanks to friends who provided important details for this story:
Dr. Ruben Olmedo, Ingrid Stenskar, Carly Huitema, Marianne Huitema, Hannah Jocelyn, and Nell Jocelyn
Marthe Jocelyn has written and illustrated four picture books and is the author of several award-winning novels. She divides her time between New York City and Stratford, Ontario.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Marthe Jocelyn
Published in Canada by Tundra Books,
75 Sherbourne Street, 5th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9
Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books,
an imprint of Random House Children's Books,
a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency - is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jocelyn, Marthe
Would you / Marthe Jocelyn.
eISBN: 978-1-77049-022-2
I. Title.
PS8569.O254W69 2008 jC813′.54 C2007-906512-0
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program
(BPIDP)
and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
Typeset in 12-point Garamond
v3.0