Water Balloon Read Free Page A

hand, the cooler pulling down the other. I run ahead with Rig while Dad pays a guy in a little shack. We all slog through the mud to the water's edge, and I watch as Dad loads everything onto a rowboat. Rig looks around, as though he's trying to figure out what's expected of him here. Dad snaps his fingers and points at the boat and Rig splashes into the water and clambers aboard. The boat tips back wildly and Rig gets this crazy look in his eyes, this
How could you ever put me in this situation?
look, this
I'M IN DANGER, PEOPLE
look, and hoo boy, do I ever get how he feels. I grab the splintery oar, then the side of the boat itself, to still the rocking. I climb in and put a steadying hand on his neck. He thumps his tail once and sits at my feet, his chin on my left knee.
    Dad fiddles with the oars and starts rowing out. There's the
shplush
sound of the oars hitting the water, then a
thluup
as they come out. Dad's looking back toward the dock we just left. I'm looking at Dad's old Yankees baseball cap, scratching Rig's ears until his left rear paw is thump, thump, thumping. Every time I rub his ears just right, his left rear paw just does that—it's some kind of reflex that signals dog bliss.
Shplush ... thluup. Shplush ... thluup. Thump thump thump.
    I'm waiting for the right moment. I figure maybe out here, in Dadland, I can get him to see how unfair he's being about this stupid babysitting thing. Even
he
has to be able to see that normal people do not surprise their children with unwanted jobs.
    When he gets us to some place that must seem right to him (it looks like the rest of the lake to me), he stops rowing. Rig lies down in the bottom of the boat, his head readjusted to rest on my right foot. Dad digs a worm out of the container. Ew.
    So this is what I've been missing when I hang out with Mom on fishing days. I watch my dad impale one creature to catch another.
    He throws the line back over his shoulder and swings it into the lake.
Splish!
Then he hands me the rod to hold.
    "Did you bring a radio to listen to the game?" Sports radio chatter and baseball games have been the background music of all my summers. Dad shakes his head. I don't exactly like listening to all that baseball talk, but it gives me a lot to discuss with my dad: this one's hitting streak, that one's trouble with the inside fastball.
    "How's the gardening stuff going?" I ask. "Is it fun or anything?" From Dad's summer job it's just one more conversational step to the babysitting thing. I can do this. I'm almost there.
    "We can't talk, Marley." He points down. Huh? Is there some new way Dad and I are supposed to communicate now that he doesn't live with Mom and me? He sucks in his lips and crosses his eyes. Is he dying? Has he lost his mind? He points out at our lines, just sitting in the water. I still don't get it. Finally, exasperated, he says, "The fish."
    Oh. Duh. The fish. But ... but, but, but!
Dad! Are you at all sorry about making me do a job I don't want? Have you missed me? Do you wonder if maybe someday things might get back to our Perfectly Good Life? Do you ever think about Mom?
    I look out at my line, unmoving in the still waters. So this is it? Fishing is about silently holding something? Wow.
    I wonder when the Curtain Call orientation will end, how much longer until I'm finally hanging with my friends again. I wonder if Leah will like it. Jane's been going since she was six, but Leah always used to spend a ton of time visiting her grandmother on Cape Cod, so she never signed up for Curtain Call before.
    I bet she'll love it.
    Leah and Jane spent almost all of seventh grade in drama club together. They were so into it at the end of the year, with all the extra rehearsals and performances and cast parties, that I hardly ever saw them. Acting might not be my thing, but it's clearly theirs.
    Much to my guidance counselor's obvious disappointment, the things I like to do, other than just hang with my friends, are kind of solitary