Up For Air

Thirteen-year-old Annabelle is a talented competitive swimmer who struggles academically at Gray Island Academy, a boarding school on a small New England island where she attends as a day student on financial aid. As seventh grade ends, she cannot finish the essay portion of her history exam despite receiving extra time as part of her learning accommodations, which address her low processing speed and working memory. Her mother picks her up and tries to celebrate, but Annabelle asks to be dropped at the pool, the one place where she feels in control. She lives with her mom and stepfather, Mitch, a financial planner who moved the family to Gray Island before sixth grade.

At the pool, Connor Madison, a popular almost-sophomore, remarks to a friend that "Hummingbird," Annabelle's old nickname from her days as a small, lightning-fast young swimmer, is "all grown up" (11). His attention makes her feel "powerful" and "extraordinary" (12). When her report card arrives with Cs in English, Spanish, and history, her mother gasps, and Annabelle interprets the reaction as shame. At Bluff Point, a favorite beach spot, her best friend Mia announces she earned nothing below an A-minus, while her other best friend, Jeremy Green, a brilliant student with the same scholarship, gives Annabelle a sympathetic look she reads as pity. Jeremy reveals he is leaving for a summer program in Boston, breaking up their trio for weeks.

A bright spot arrives when Coach Colette, the high school team's coach and a former Division I all-American, asks Annabelle to swim up with the fourteen-and-up team. The squad needs her butterfly strength for their medley relay if they hope to qualify for the Labor Day Invitational, the end-of-season championship. Mom agrees on the condition that Annabelle keep up her summer reading and tutoring sessions with Janine, a recent Academy graduate.

Around the same time, a letter arrives from Annabelle's estranged father, who now lives in Boston. He apologizes for being absent and says he is doing much better. Annabelle recalls the incident that ended their regular visits: in fourth grade, he showed up drunk to pick her up from swim practice, and her coach refused to let him drive her. She hides the letter from her mother, wanting to sort out her feelings independently.

At her first meet with the high school team, Annabelle dives in a fraction too early on her relay leg, and the team is disqualified. They lose to the strong South Shore squad by five points, and Annabelle blames herself. Meanwhile, Connor's attention intensifies. He offers rides, takes her phone number, and begins texting her nightly. When his ride to practice conflicts with her tutoring, she cancels on Janine. Mom finds out and warns that one more violation means removal from the high school team. The rift between Annabelle and Mia deepens as Annabelle spends more time with the older crowd and begins corresponding with her father, carefully crafting a letter about her life on Gray Island.

One evening, Connor invites Annabelle to a group outing, and the night takes a dangerous turn when his friend Jordan Bernstein proposes breaking into a movie director's pool. Connor devises a plan to lift Annabelle over a tall iron fence because she is light. She agrees, feeling needed and important. When they hoist her to the top, a security alarm blares. Connor lets go and flees, leaving Annabelle stranded on the fence. She falls, fracturing her right thumb and badly spraining her wrist. Jeremy is the only one who returns, carrying her piggyback and calling his mother for help. They argue bitterly; Jeremy is furious Connor abandoned her, while Annabelle defends Connor.

The next morning, Mom and Mitch confront Annabelle. Mitch yells for the first time, declaring that no high school boy should be paying that kind of attention to someone her age. Mom invokes her one-strike warning: Annabelle is off the high school team permanently and cannot swim for weeks. During recovery, she continues texting Connor, interpreting his questions as genuine interest. Dad's email reply arrives, full of warmth and enthusiastic questions, none about school. Annabelle savors them, finding it a new experience to look forward to answering rather than dreading them.

Her relay teammates Elisa Price and Kayla Green, Jeremy's older sister, invite Annabelle for pizza and gently warn her that Connor is a compulsive flirt who makes every girl feel special without meaning anything. Annabelle feels cornered and humiliated. She leaves early and heads to a bonfire where she knows Connor will be. There, she sits beside him in the sand. He starts to tell her something, but before he can finish, a girl named Caroline arrives, rests her head on Connor's shoulder, and reveals herself as his girlfriend. Annabelle realizes Connor was about to let her down gently, meaning he knew all along she liked him. She flees.

The humiliation compounds when Annabelle encounters Mia, who seems more satisfied than sympathetic. Feeling entirely exposed, Annabelle impulsively takes a ferry and bus to Boston to find her father. She locates his workplace, Beans and Books Café, and finds him relaxed and clearly in a relationship with a woman behind the counter. The woman's young son does not know who Annabelle is, revealing her father never mentioned his daughter. Her father is flustered, saying he did not expect her "without any notice" (243), contradicting his letter's promise that she was welcome anytime. Annabelle lies about being in town for a concert and leaves, accidentally forgetting her wallet.

Stranded at the Boston bus station, Annabelle calls Connor in desperation. His voice is thin and indifferent, with Caroline beside him. When she asks why he kept texting her, he admits he was "just making sure we were good" (250), confirming that he simply wanted her continued admiration. A new emotion cuts through Annabelle's shame: anger, both at Connor and at herself. She calls her mother, who is already in Boston, having tracked Annabelle's phone and received a call from her father after Annabelle left the café.

On the drive home, Mom tells Annabelle she makes her happy and proud, not just worried. She admits she knew Dad had moved to Boston but withheld the information to protect Annabelle, and she acknowledges pushing too hard for the Academy. Mom also reveals that Mitch's move to Gray Island was partly driven by bad investments, puncturing Annabelle's belief that he never fails. At home, Mitch admits he has done his share of disappointing as a father to his older daughters.

Over the following days, Annabelle rebuilds. She apologizes to Elisa and Kayla, who share their own painful experiences: Elisa's hurt from Connor the previous summer, Kayla's ongoing eating disorder recovery. Running into Mia, Annabelle finds her lonely and they share a moment of honesty, both admitting the summer has gone wrong. Annabelle decides not to force the friendship but trusts they have time. When Jeremy returns, she waits on his steps with a peace offering of ice cream and apologizes. Jeremy tells her, "You're smart like you" (272), prompting Annabelle to recognize that her perceptiveness about people is its own kind of intelligence.

With her injuries nearly healed, Annabelle replaces the perfect, store-bought shells in her old lamp with two imperfect keepsakes: a chipped shell and a granite stone from the night of the bonfire. She and her parents agree to rebuild a relationship with her father slowly, through emails and eventually phone calls. She considers returning for the final meet against South Shore, knowing she will have to face Connor but recognizing that Kayla and Elisa both came back from their own painful experiences. She dives into the ocean near her house, feels the cold salt water and the current's gentle resistance, and swims toward the open horizon.