How to Breathe Underwater

by Vicky Skinner

  “I’m ready.” Hair was done, dress was on, jewelry was firmly in place. I just needed to slip on my shoes.

  My mother stepped back, holding Lily at arm’s length. “You look absolutely stunning.”

  Lily smiled, but not in a way that said she believed it. Lily had always been the pretty one, but she’d also always been the first one to deny it. Her hair was pulled back into an elegant updo, her makeup perfectly understated, her dress flowing around her, dangling in waves around her legs. She fiddled with the capped sleeve of her dress and ran her hands down the length of her satin bodice, nitpicking at anything that might be misconstrued as an imperfection.

  My mother searched through her bag, and I watched Lily fidget with her hair, her leg bobbing up and down as she waited for my mom to return to her.

  In my bag on the floor, my phone beeped, and this time, I was ready for whatever Harris would throw at me. But there wasn’t a picture. It was just a text.

  Been talking to Coach and my adviser about scholarship options. Think I’m good enough? Got my time down on the fly, and I think I can get it down even further by District. I might need some coaching from the best, aka you.

  I tossed my phone back in my bag, the nerves dissolving into something like anger. Didn’t we have anything to talk about but swimming? Did he have to bring up my dad in every single conversation?

  There was a knock at the door, and before any of us had a chance to get to it, my father was stepping into the room, like Harris’s text had somehow summoned him. It had been a month since the incident at that preseason practice, a month since my parents decided their marriage was over, a month since my mother started looking for a place for us to live. But somehow, with all of us standing in the same room, it felt like it had happened centuries before and we were together after being apart forever.

  I noticed the careful way my parents tried not to look at each other. My father stepped up to the mirror, right beside Lily, and my mother stepped away, keeping her eyes trained on the floor.

  “Wow,” my dad said, and even though she was trying to hide it, I saw the way Lily glanced over at my mother, the way she tensed when my father reached out to hug her, the way she was the one to pull away first.

  “Well, Tom certainly is the luckiest man, isn’t he?” my father said, his hands still on my sister’s shoulders. “You feeling okay? Feeling ready?”

  Lily nodded, and she opened her mouth to say something, but my father spoke over her.

  “Where are the earrings I gave you?”

  Lily’s mouth popped open in surprise, and my mother finally looked at my dad. “She decided that she didn’t want to wear them.”

  I saw the moment the anger set in. My father’s jaw clenched and his hands dropped away from Lily. His eyes fixed on my mother. “She didn’t want to wear them, or you didn’t want her to wear them?”

  My mother made an exasperated sound in the back of her throat. “Oh please. You really think I would make a decision like that for my daughter on her wedding day?”

  My father’s eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t exactly be surprised, since you’ll do anything to turn her against me.”

  Beside my father, Lily’s eyes had gone wide, shooting from our mom to our dad and back again before finally securing themselves on her feet.

  My mother barked out a laugh. “Oh, believe me, you did that all by yourself.”

  My father threw his hands up. “Look, I didn’t come in here to endure the We Hate Dad show. I came to see my daughter. If that’s a problem for you—”

  “You’re the one who turned this into a problem,” my mother said through clenched teeth. “You always know how to be the most childish person in the room, don’t you?”

  My father looked like he was getting ready to snap, so before he could say anything, I reached out and yanked open the door.

  “Why don’t you guys talk outside?” I said as loudly as I could, covering up whatever he had been getting ready to spit at my mother.

  Everyone looked at me, and I saw the moment my mother’s anger dissolved into regret. Her eyes went to Lily, who looked ready to cry, her face flushing and her whole body shaking. My father stomped out of the room without another glance at anyone. I could tell my mother was thinking of staying behind, so I motioned for her to leave, and as soon as she was in the hallway, I closed the door behind her.

  I turned back to Lily, but I could hear my parents moving down the hallway, bickering as they went. Their voices finally faded.

  The air fell silent, and I felt like I was slipping underwater, the world going mute around me. Beside me, I could feel the tension coming off Lily, vibrating like a living thing. I could hear the unsteady tempo of her breathing. Her face had gone white. She backed up until she was against the dressing table, her hand on her stomach, breathing hard. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God.”

  “Lily.” I reached for her, but she moved away from me.

  “I can’t do this.” She plunged her hands into her hair, tugging with such force that strands of hair were coming undone to fall messily around her face. “I can’t do this. I can’t be like them, Kate. I can’t do it.”

  “Lily.” This time when I put my hands on her shoulders, she didn’t move away. “It’s not going to be like that for you.”

  She shook her head hard enough for pins to come lose. She’d spent almost two hours in a chair for that perfect hair, and it had only taken her thirty seconds to ruin it. “I can’t do it. I can’t. I thought I wanted this, but maybe…” She let out a heavy breath. “Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe this is wrong.”

  I had no clue what to do then. A good maid of honor was supposed to keep this very thing from happening, wasn’t she? Wasn’t I? Shouldn’t I be telling her that she and Tom were different? That people don’t always end up like Mom and Dad? God, but was that even true?

  I should have found something to say. But I saw in her face the panic I’d felt at that rec center, that I’d felt looking down into the water.

  I opened my mouth to tell her that she couldn’t just leave, but hadn’t that been what my father had done all this time, made my decisions for me until I didn’t know what I wanted for myself? How could I do the same to Lily? How could I tell her she was wrong to run when I’d done the same thing?

  “Get me out of here,” she said, her eyes on the door.

  My phone beeped in my bag again, and my attention was caught by it for just a second before my eyes found Lily again. Suddenly, I wanted to leave as much as she did. I surveyed the room and found what I was looking for: my mother’s orange purse, lying in the corner next to my tote bag. Rushing over to it, I zipped open the front compartment, and there were the keys to her car.

  Taking Lily’s hand, I didn’t look at her to try to comfort her. There was no time for a kind and sympathetic moment. If I wanted to get her out of there before people started to notice that she wasn’t walking down the aisle on cue, we had to get moving.

  I stepped out of the room first and looked both ways to make sure that no one was standing in the long hallway. One end led to the sanctuary, the foyer, and the other wing of the church, while the other end led to an exit. My parents were nowhere to be found, and when Julie, one of the bridesmaids, came around the corner at that moment, her heels clicking down the hallway, I shook my head at her, waved her away. Immediately, she stopped cold.

  I threw the door open and made a run for it, my sister’s hand grasped tightly in mine. I was glad I hadn’t gotten around to putting my shoes on since I had no experience running in heels. Lily seemed to manage pretty well behind me, her heels clicking on the laminate floors and her dress swishing loudly down the hallway.

  The bright sunlight was disorienting when I threw open the back door. It took me a few seconds to locate Mom’s car. By the time I spotted it, my heart was pounding so hard, I thought it would beat a hole through my satin dress.

  I opened the passenger-side door and helped Lily in, scooping up the overflowing t
ulle of her dress and shoving it in behind her. I had just closed the door and started for the driver’s side when I spotted Michael.

  He was standing by the side of the church, not far at all from the exit where we’d just made our escape, a cigarette in his mouth and a surprised expression on his face. I stared at him for a second, so out of place in the middle of all my chaos. For just a moment, he bulldozed through the mayhem, a completely normal boy, and I forgot what I was doing, my hand wrapped around the car handle.

  Then I yanked the door open, looking away from him. We had to get out of there before people realized Lily had just pulled a disappearing act.

  “Thank you,” Lily whispered as we peeled out of the parking lot. In the rearview mirror, I saw the church get smaller, like a bad dream fading away into reality.

  Six

  Hey, are you okay?

  I stared at the words on my phone, the little cursor blinking as I tried to decide how to answer. Michael had sent the text almost as soon as we’d gotten home, hours ago. Why did he have to be there at that exact moment?

  “You don’t have to watch me,” Lily whispered, her head on a pillow as she reclined on the couch. I sat on the floor at her feet, the TV on in front of us with the volume turned low.

  “I’m not watching you,” I lied, closing out the text just to be confronted with the fact that I never answered the texts Harris had sent me that morning. I hadn’t even read the one that came in before we bolted. I could hear my mother at the dining room table, making phone calls to relatives to apologize for the events of the day, like she’d been doing for the last two hours.

  The clock on my phone said it was after seven. The party on the roof was probably in full swing, but there was no way I could go. I couldn’t leave Lily after the day she’d had. I opened the text from Michael again to try to tell him why, but his words glared at me. No, I wasn’t okay.

  “You can go. It’s okay.”

  I met Lily’s eyes. She looked like she was about to fall asleep, her eyelids pink and drooping, and for the hundredth time today, I wondered if I’d done the right thing, helping her run from the wedding. I had to let her make her choices, and I knew that, but had it been the right one?

  I’d told Lily about the pool party in passing after Michael had agreed to go to the wedding, and now I couldn’t decide if I should regret it. I wanted to take care of my big sister, to be here in case she needed anything, but I also needed to get away. The events of the day seemed to hang over us, like humid air you can’t blow away, and when I thought about going upstairs, meeting Michael’s friends, it seemed like the perfect escape.

  “Are you sure?” I asked her. “I don’t want to leave if you need me.”

  Her eyes fell closed, and she yawned. “I think you’ve done enough for today.” She was quiet after that, and I couldn’t tell if she’d fallen asleep or not, but I decided not to question it anymore. I got up quietly and went to the dining room.

  I waited for my mother to get off the phone. She sighed and pressed her face into her hands.

  “Are you okay?”

  She dropped her hands to the table and looked up at me, her eyes flitting quickly over my shoulder to the living room. She nodded. “I’ll be fine. Just doing a little cleanup.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  She made a dismissive gesture. “Of course not. You don’t need to worry about all this. You’ve got enough to worry about.”

  I was thinking the same thing about her, but I didn’t say so. Someone had to worry about Lily.

  “I was thinking about going up to the pool,” I said. “Unless you need me to stay.”

  She looked up from her cell phone, where she’d been texting away while I spoke. “Getting some practice in?” she asked, but then her eyes focused on me. “You’re not even in your suit.”

  “Michael is having some friends over. I told him I would go up and meet them. Is that okay?” I’d never really asked my mother for permission to do anything. My social life before had consisted mostly of hanging out with Harris and going to the occasional after-meet party during the season. I almost never had anyone else to hang out with. The people on the swim team were my only friends.

  “Sure. Don’t take your keys. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”

  *   *   *

  Light music reached me as the roof’s door fell closed. There were about fifteen people milling around the pool, most of them girls, their voices escaping out into the open air. I didn’t linger long on their faces. Most of them huddled together in a corner of the pool, almost all of them wearing bikinis, even though it was September and a little too cold for so little clothing. It was a good thing the pool was heated. I was distracted by all their tan skin and their obvious confidence, and I suddenly felt stupid for not wearing a suit. I didn’t want to swim, but standing there in a sweater and jeans, I felt like an idiot.

  Then I recognized Michael, his back to me, hanging out at the edge of the pool with his feet dangling in the water. He was talking to an Asian boy I didn’t recognize whose wet Mohawk was spiked up playfully. The boy, facing the doors and bobbing in the water, met my eye and said something to Michael, who twisted around to look. I saw the moment he processed my face, his mouth pulling into a smile. He pushed himself up to come over to the door, leaving wet footprints behind him.

  He didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t appropriately dressed for a pool party. I had tried to block out the fact that he was shirtless before, but now that he was standing in front of me, it was completely unavoidable. I held his eyes so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at his chest.

  “Hey. I didn’t think you’d come.” He had a strange look in his eyes, and I tried not to picture him standing next to the church, watching me pack my sister into the getaway car. “Just because…” He trailed off, and we both looked around, as if anyone would be interested in our conversation, as if they would know what we were discussing to begin with.

  “Oh, um. No, it’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but it’s just—” I bit my lip, and he waited. “I’m here,” I said, and then immediately wanted to smack myself.

  “Oh. Okay. Great,” he said, but his eyebrows were still pulled together.

  I took a deep breath. “I just mean, we’re okay. We’re going to be okay. So I’m happy to be here.”

  He smiled. “Okay.”

  Someone came up beside us, and when I recognized Marisol, I couldn’t believe my own stupidity. We’d been talking about the same party at lunch yesterday. At a school with so many more students than my school in Salem, it had never occurred to me that Michael would know Marisol and Patrice, or that we might be going to the same party on a Saturday night.

  Her eyes brightened as she took both of us in. “Hey, Kate!” She smiled so big I could see all her teeth. They were a little crooked, but she still had the prettiest smile I’d ever seen. “Oh my gosh! Was our party and your thing the same thing? What are the chances? We had no clue that you knew Michael. How awesome!” She was beaming like this was greatest thing to happen to her all year, but when I glanced over at Michael, he had a strange look on his face, and it made me uneasy.

  “Uh, yeah. I know Michael.”

  Like she’d been shocked, Marisol jolted. “Oh, I forgot why I came over here.” She smacked Michael on the arm playfully. “Your girlfriend needs you.”

  Once, when we were younger, a boy from Lily’s class told her that if she unscrewed a hot light bulb and then spit on it, it would change colors. But the light bulb didn’t change colors. It exploded.

  This is what I imagined my heart did when Marisol said the word girlfriend.

  “Oh. Okay.” Michael turned to me, and I saw it in his eyes that he was being cautious. “I’ll be back.” I watched him go, and suddenly I felt so out of place. Of course Michael had a girlfriend. Had I really expected to just walk into this life, instant friends, instant boyfriend? Had I really expected it to be that easy?

  “You’re wearing your ha
ir down,” Marisol said. “You look great.”

  “Thanks.” I instinctively reached up to touch my hair.

  She smiled. “I still can’t believe that you know Michael. And that we didn’t even know we were going to the same party. And here I thought you were going on a date.” She laughed, but my heart stopped.

  I bit my lip. “Uh, yeah. I didn’t know you knew Michael, or I would have—”

  She reached out and touched my arm. “Hey, no problem. I don’t expect you to invite me everywhere.” If she suspected that I liked Michael as anything more than a friend, she didn’t let on.

  My eyes traveled over to where Michael had floated off to, one of the round poolside tables. And there they were, he and his girlfriend. It was Patrice, shapely and tan in her one-piece bathing suit. Patrice had the kind of figure that made guys drool, all curves and softness. Exactly the kind of girl a guy like Michael would be into.

  When my sister spit on the light bulb, she was pierced by three large shards, one on both arms and one on her leg.

  This is what it felt like to discover that I already knew Michael’s girlfriend. That the boyfriend she’d been talking about at lunch all week was the same boy I’d been developing a crush on. That the overly sweet person I’d been hoping to become good friends with had what I wanted.

  “Marisol, my love, can you please bring me a soda?” The question came from the guy in the pool that Michael had been chatting with.

  Marisol rolled her eyes. “Get it yourself.”

  “But, Marisol, beautiful creature, why should I get out of the pool when you’re already out?”

  Marisol, in a tiny navy-blue bikini, didn’t have a drop of water on her, so I assumed she hadn’t been in to begin with. Her long, black hair was piled in a knot on top of her head. The heat of the setting sun still hung in the air, but I saw goose bumps on her arms. She sighed. “Want anything?” she asked me.

  I shook my head, and she walked away to go to a large cooler standing open by the door, leaving me standing alone by the pool. I felt droplets splatter on my bare feet.