Twenty-One Mile Swim Read online

  Books by Matt Christopher

  Sports Stories

  THE LUCKY BASEBALL BAT

  BASEBALL PALS

  BASKETBALL SPARKPLUG

  TWO STRIKES ON JOHNNY

  LITTLE LEFTY

  TOUCHDOWN FOR TOMMY

  LONG STRETCH AT FIRST BASE

  BREAK FOR THE BASKET

  CRACKERJACK HALFBACK

  BASEBALL FLYHAWK

  SINK IT, RUSTY

  CATCHER WITH A GLASS ARM

  TOO HOT TO HANDLE

  THE COUNTERFEIT TACKLE

  LONG SHOT FOR PAUL

  THE TEAM THAT COULDN’T LOSE

  THE YEAR MOM WON THE PENNANT

  THE BASKET COUNTS

  CATCH THAT PASS!

  SHORTSTOP FROM TOKYO

  LUCKY SEVEN

  JOHNNY LONG LEGS

  LOOK WHO’S PLAYING FIRST BASE

  TOUGH TO TACKLE

  THE KID WHO ONLY HIT HOMERS

  FACE-OFF

  MYSTERY COACH

  ICE MAGIC

  NO ARM IN LEFT FIELD

  JINX GLOVE

  FRONT COURT HEX

  THE TEAM THAT STOPPED MOVING

  GLUE FINGERS

  THE PIGEON WITH THE TENNIS ELBOW

  THE SUBMARINE PITCH

  POWER PLAY

  FOOTBALL FUGITIVE

  THE DIAMOND CHAMPS

  JOHNNY NO HIT

  THE FOX STEALS HOME

  SOCCER HALFBACK

  JACKRABBIT GOALIE

  DIRT BIKE RACER

  THE DOG THAT STOLE FOOTBALL PLAYS

  THE TWENTY-ONE-MILE SWIM

  Animal Stories

  DESPERATE SEARCH

  STRANDED

  EARTHQUAKE

  DEVIL PONY

  Copyright

  COPYRIGHT © I979 BY MATTHEW F. CHRISTOPHER

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: December 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-316-09455-9

  Contents

  Books by Matt Christopher

  Copyright

  THE FIRST YEAR

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  THE SECOND YEAR

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  THE THIRD YEAR

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  To Cora and Gus

  THE FIRST YEAR

  1

  “HI, PEEWEE! Want a ride?”

  Joey Vass looked up. He was standing on the end of the twenty-foot long, three-foot wide dock that projected out into the lake, watching small fish swimming around in the shallow water beneath him. He was fourteen, five-foot three inches tall and weighed a hundred and twenty-one pounds. But he wasn’t amused by anybody’s calling him Peewee.

  “In that little boat?” he shouted back to the caller.

  Ross Cato laughed. “No! In that big boat!” he answered, letting go of the right-hand oar of the rowboat to point at the sailboat moored to a buoy some sixty feet off shore. Sitting at the stern was Paula Kantella, her long blond hair whipping about her pretty face.

  “How long you going to be gone?” Joey asked.

  “About an hour! Come on!”

  Joey thought about it.

  “It’s a lot of fun if you’ve never been on a sailboat before!” Ross said.

  Joey had never been on a sailboat in his life.

  A grin spread across his oval face. “I haven’t got trunks!” he said.

  “That’s okay! Come on, anyway!” replied Ross, and started to row the boat toward shore in Joey’s direction. With Paula’s weight holding down the stern, the bow of the ten-foot, wooden rowboat glided up on the graveled shore with a protesting crunch and ground to a stop.

  “Just give it a little shove and hop in,” advised Ross.

  Joey did so, getting his sneakers wet in the process. The boat slid out, and Ross began to row with short, jerky turns of the oars. After they reached deeper water, he turned the boat around with expertise and started to row to the sailboat.

  “Did you ever ride on a sailboat?” Ross asked, taking long, even strokes now that shot the boat across the water in swift, even strides. He was wearing red trunks and a red band around his forehead. His back and shoulder muscles bulged like rope on his six-foot, streamlined frame. He had the sleek physique of a swimmer, developed over the past few years doing laps in the pool at Merton High.

  “Never,” said Joey.

  “Always been a landlubber?”

  “Right.”

  “How come you moved near a lake?”

  “My father always wanted to live by water,” explained Joey. “He likes to fish, and he likes boats. So, here we are.”

  He caught Paula’s green eyes looking at him over Ross’s gleaming shoulder. She had on a white two-piece swimsuit and held a white rubber cap on her lap. “My dad loves fishing, too,” she said. “And he knows some good spots. Bass, trout — fish like that. They ought to get together sometime.”

  “Good idea,” said Joey.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t sure that they would. Both his mother and father were immigrants. They had come to the United States from Hungary when the communists took over the country. Even though that had happened more than twenty years ago, their English vocabulary was still limited, and their speech was noticeably accented. They were usually self-conscious and reluctant to make new acquaintances.

  They neared the sailboat, and Ross said, “Grab the line, Joey.”

  Joey grabbed the line; at the end of it was a snap-on latch hooked to a round metal loop secured to a buoy. Ross laid the oars inside the rowboat, hooked the rowboat’s line to the loop, and took the line from Joey.

  “Okay. Hop in,” he said as they pulled the rowboat alongside the sailboat.

  It was a twenty-one foot, fiberglass cabin model, a streamlined beauty whose smooth, white hull glistened in the bright June sunlight. A burst of admiration went through Joey as he began to realize that his dream of riding on the boat was coming true. He had first seen the sailboat when it was brought here about the middle of May. Twice it had gone out with two people aboard, one of whom, Joey now realized, was Ross. The other was an older man, probably Ross’s father. The tall, triangular sails billowing out before the wind and the boat sailing through the water, bent slightly by the wind, had been a picture he had hoped to be a part of someday. Now, today, the time had unexpectedly come.

  “Loosen up those halyards, Joey,” said Ross, pointing at the sail tied around the boom.

  Halyards? Is he pulling my leg by using sailing lingo on me? Joey wondered.

  “I’ll help you,” offered Paula.

  While they worked to free the sail, Ross got the tiller out of the hold and secured it in position.

  “Hey, man, if you got up off your knees you could work faster,” he said to Joey.

  Joey, unraveling the sail from the boom, shrugged, and smiled to show that the wisecrack didn’t bother him — even though it did. He wondered why Ross had asked him to join them. Was it just to look better than him and show off to Paula? “We can’t all be tall Adonises like you, Ross,” he said.

  “Right,” sai
d Paula. “Everybody can’t be a six-footer like you are.”

  “Six and one-half inch, to be exact,” said Ross, straightening up his solid, sun-browned frame.

  “Ugh,” snorted Paula. “Talk about modesty.”

  He laughed. “Okay, let’s quit the chatter and get these rags hoisted,” he said seriously. “Paula, grab the tiller, will you?”

  Joey met Paula’s eyes and saw them look skyward in an expression that clearly indicated she didn’t think much of Ross’s self-adoration.

  He didn’t know how the two knew each other since they went to different schools. Ross was sixteen, a junior at Merton High. Paula was fourteen, a student at Gatewood Central, and Joey’s height. But he didn’t need glasses to see why Ross could be attracted to Paula. She was the prettiest girl he had seen since his family had moved here.

  She sat on the stern seat and grabbed the tiller while Ross raised the jib and then the mainsail. The boat was already starting to move through the water, drawn by the wind as it filled the sails. Ross secured all the lines; then he went and took over control of the tiller from Paula.

  “You two put on life jackets,” he ordered. “They’re right behind you, Shorty.”

  Joey found the bright orange life jackets and tossed one to Paula. He watched her put it over her head so that it rested against her neck and shoulders and began to do likewise with his. He pulled the cloth belt tight around his chest and knotted it, just as a gust of wind hit the sails, tipping the boat enough to knock him off balance and almost into the water. He sat down hard, grabbing the side of the boat in a vise-like grip.

  “Sorry about that, Joey,” said Ross. “These gusts come up without warning sometimes. Hey, you’re not scared, are you? Your face is white as that sail. You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  He was now, but a moment ago he wasn’t. The fear of being thrown into the water had struck him like an ice-cold shower, for he hardly knew how to swim. Not until now, when he had his wits gathered together again, did he realize that his life jacket would have kept him afloat.

  “You can swim, can’t you?” said Paula, her wide green eyes centered on him.

  He forced a grin. “Not — not very well,” he confessed.

  “Joey! You’re kidding!”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve never swum very much in my life.”

  “And you live by a lake?” exclaimed Ross. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I told you why we moved here,” Joey replied, trying to ignore Ross’s tone of voice. “It was my father’s idea. Anyway, swimming is going to be the first thing I’m going to learn to do well.”

  Suddenly he wished he had refused Ross’s invitation to go sailing. Joey hadn’t expected anything more than a nice ride. Instead, his close call had turned up the embarrassing fact that he was a very poor swimmer.

  “Too bad you’re not going to Merton,” said Ross. “Coach Harvey would have you swimming fine in nothing flat.”

  “I bet,” said Joey.

  “He would,” insisted Ross, the wind whipping at his brown, curly hair. “He’s the best around. The only thing is, though, you’d never make it as a sprinter.”

  Joey looked at him. “Why not?”

  “You’re too short. Our shortest sprinter is six inches taller than you.”

  “What has size got to do with it?” Paula cut in, her tone edgy.

  “A lot,” said Ross. “How many little guys do you know in our school who have won meets? Including kids in the middle grades?”

  Joey’s neck reddened. He could tolerate the “little guys” bit, but he hated to be told that he couldn’t do something just because he was short.

  “I couldn’t go to Merton if I wanted to,” he said, trying hard to keep his emotions under control. “It’s not in our district.”

  “Well, if you did you might do all right against those seventh and eighth graders,” said Ross. “Most of them are about your size.”

  “Ross! What nerve!” exclaimed Paula hotly. “How can you sit there and talk to Joey like that? Just because he’s shorter than a lot of boys his age doesn’t mean that he can’t be a strong competitor! I think you owe him an apology!”

  “Oh, cool it, Paula,” said Ross tersely. “I didn’t say anything to him that I have to apologize for. Did I, Joey? Look, if you think I did —”

  “Forget it,” said Joey. “We came out for a ride, not a debate.”

  “Right.” Ross smiled and shot a glance at Paula as if to see if Joey’s comment satisfied her.

  He could see it didn’t.

  “Okay,” said Ross. “If it makes you feel better, I apologize. Women! Always raising a stink about the puniest thing.”

  He turned the tiller slightly, maneuvering the boat so that it leaned harder into the wind. The move was almost as if he had done it purposely, a blunt act of irritation.

  “What did you say?” Paula said, frowning at him. Then she turned her face into the wind so that it caught her blond hair and flung it furiously around her head. “Oh, never mind,” she said, her words swallowed up by the wind.

  They sailed to the opposite side of the lake, then came about and sailed northward. Joey, temporarily forgetting Ross’s references to his small stature, was impressed by Ross’s seamanship. Maybe the guy was stuck on himself for being a good swimmer, but he certainly knew how to handle a sailboat.

  2

  AFTER almost forty-five minutes of tacking back and forth, running first a northerly course and then a southerly, Ross headed the sailboat home. He maneuvered it into a position so that the sails lost the wind and went limp as it approached the buoy, drawing up close enough to it so that Joey was able to hook the line to it.

  “Attaboy, Joey,” Ross said amiably. “You’ve got the makings of a sailor — at least.”

  He glanced at Paula as he spoke, a mischievous glint in his eyes, and Joey knew that Ross had added the last two words to tease her.

  She offered no comment but took off her life jacket, which reminded Joey that he had his to remove, too.

  After the sails were lowered and fastened to the boom, the three got into the rowboat, and Ross rowed Joey to shore.

  “Thanks for the ride,” said Joey, hopping out. “See you again, maybe.”

  “Maybe by the next time you’ll have learned to swim better and won’t worry about falling out of a boat,” remarked Ross.

  “Maybe,” said Joey.

  He gave the boat a shove away from shore, and Ross took it from there, applying his oars in short, rapid motions that propelled the little vessel along the shoreline northward toward Paula’s cottage. Actually, the cottage was both a winter and summer home for her and her parents ever since they had moved here some eight years ago.

  Coming down the wooden steps to the red deck was a contingent to greet him: his two sisters, Yolanda and Mary, and the youngest member of the Vass clan, his brother Gabor. Yolanda was sixteen, the eldest of the lot; Mary was eleven and Gabor eight. At five feet three and a quarter inch, Yolanda was exactly half an inch taller than Joey. He often thought that at the slow rate he was growing, that half-inch might as well be a foot.

  “Well!” exclaimed Yolanda, wisps of her dark hair blowing across her face, “The sailor’s back. How’d you rate a ride on Mr. Cato’s sailboat, any way?”

  “I have a hunch that Paula had something to do with it,” admitted Joey.

  “Oh,” chimed in Mary, “you admit that.” Her black hair was cut shorter than her sister’s mainly because it could pack up easier under her Softball cap when she played.

  Joey, grinning, made a motion as if to cuff her across the ear. She ducked away from him, laughing.

  “I’d like a ride on that sailboat sometime,” said Gabor, staring off dreamily at the boat lying anchored in the distance. “Suppose Ross would take me, Joey?”

  “Isn’t Ross a bit older than Paula?” Yolanda asked Joey, totally ignoring her younger brother.

  “Why?” spoke up Mary. “Any particular rea
son why you’d like to know?”

  “I’m talking!” piped up Gabor irritably, his small voice suddenly loud enough to suppress the other voices around him.

  Joey looked at him, smiling. “I heard you, Gabe,” he said. “And the answer is, I don’t know. Maybe he will, and maybe he won’t.”

  Gabor stared at him with his soft blue eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Joey shrugged. “Just that. Maybe he will, and maybe he won’t. I don’t know him well enough yet to ask him if he will.”

  “Maybe Daddy will buy a sailboat,” he said, his eyes suddenly shining as he looked at the sailboat.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Joey. “Dad’s interested in fishing, and fishermen don’t go for sailboats.”

  “Is Ross still in school?” asked Yolanda. “He looks about nineteen or twenty to me.”

  “He’s in the eleventh grade, I think,” said Joey. “Which makes him about sixteen or seventeen.”

  “He’s real tall, isn’t he?”

  Joey tried to ignore that comment from Mary, even though he didn’t think she had said it to tease him.

  “I smell smoke, Mary,” said Yolanda cautiously. “I don’t think your brother is interested in any further discussion about Ross Cato.”

  Mary giggled.

  Joey, halfway up the steps, stopped abruptly and gave his sisters a cold stare. He started to say something, but changed his mind and ran up the remaining few steps. He’d be darned if he was going to let Ross Cato’s name bother him.

  He headed across the immaculate green lawn toward the white, wood-shingled house. The house was fronted by a windowed porch covered with Venetian blinds to use when the sun became unbearably hot.

  Instead of entering by the front door, however, he went around to the back door and entered into the narrow foyer and then into the small kitchen. Everything looked spic and span. He loved his mother’s tidiness. Maybe she wasn’t well educated and spoke English with an accent, he thought, but she was tops in house cleaning and a darned good cook, too.

  He saw from a quick glance at the electric clock above the sink that it was almost two-thirty. He started into the living room, smelling the familiar odor of fresh tobacco smoke, when he heard footsteps and met his father coming toward him.