How to Breathe Underwater

by Vicky Skinner

  Lily and I exchanged glances. Lily hadn’t gone to class, a fact that she apparently hadn’t told my mother about, which I found comforting. It was nice to know I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

  Neither of us said anything. Lily munched away on her food, avoiding my mother’s eyes, and I tried not to panic when she turned to me. “Kate? Practice? What’s your new team like?”

  “Practice was great,” I said, trying not to be too annoyed that Lily had avoided her drama so easily. “The team is really great, and Coach Wu is nice.”

  When I chanced a look up at my mother, her face was bright, and if I wasn’t mistaken, her eyes were a little teary. “I was so worried that you weren’t going to be able to get your stride back, but that’s just great.” She sniffled. “Oh God, I’m a mess.” She laughed and wiped her face, and I felt like the scum on the bottom of someone’s shoe. Why couldn’t I just tell her that I wasn’t swimming?

  “Did you get a schedule? I need to know when your meets are so I can make sure I’m there.”

  “Oh. Um. I’ll have to get a schedule from Coach Wu next week. I forgot.”

  “Okay. Sounds great.” She munched away, and the happiness in her eyes made guilt gnaw at me until I had to look away.

  *   *   *

  “So I was thinking,” Michael said as soon as we got out into the hallway the next morning.

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe we could strike a bargain.”

  We made our way down the stairs. “Strike a bargain? What are you, a 1920s oil tycoon?”

  “I’m serious,” he said, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “Look, I’m going to tell you something that not many people know about me. A few things, actually.”

  My stomach tilted. He’d barely told me anything about his personal life since we met, and I was ready for the secret sharing to be a little less one-sided, even if I was a little nervous about what those secrets might be.

  “Number one, I can’t swim.” He paused on the stairs, and I knew that he was giving me room to react.

  “You can’t swim?” I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that.

  “No. I mean, I can dog-paddle, but sometimes I have dreams of driving into a river or going down in a plane crash, and I imagine myself trying to dog-paddle to safety. I always die.”

  I tried not to laugh. “Your dream self should really have more faith in your real self. Dog-paddling could save your life.” I scowled at him. “Why did you throw a pool party if you can’t swim?” I thought of him floating at the shallow end during Marco Polo. I suddenly realized I couldn’t remember him straying past halfway, even when he was it. When he’d gotten to me, we’d been standing in water up to our chests. Looking at him now, I pushed the memory of his hands pulling me up from the water out of my mind.

  “No one expects you to do the butterfly at a pool party, okay? You stand by the edge or you sit in the hot tub, and no one really knows the difference.” He kept walking. “So anyway, then I thought, well, I have the swimming state champion living in my building. Why not ask her to teach me?”

  “Michael…” All the joy that had slowly been soaking into my bloodstream at his excitement seemed to seep out again. He wanted me to teach him to swim? I wasn’t even sure I could get in the water. Would I be able to handle it if only Michael was there? Or would I have another panic attack?

  He stood on the landing below and craned his neck to meet my eye. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not asking you to do this for free. I have something to offer you in return.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Well, how would you like to learn to dance?”

  I started down the steps toward him slowly. “Wait. What?”

  The smile was starting to take over his face again, and he glanced sideways at me. “That’s the second thing about me. I might know how to salsa. Would you like to learn?”

  I sputtered.

  His smile lost some of its luster. “I just mean because you told me you and your sister liked ballroom dancing. I thought it would be fun.”

  “How in the world do you even know how to salsa?”

  “Okay, first of all, don’t sound so shocked. Second of all, my father was a Spaniard, and he taught my mother to dance, and she taught me.” He smiled and threw open the lobby door.

  I hesitated for a moment on the fact that he’d mentioned his father in the past tense, but he kept talking before I had a chance to ask him about it.

  “Don’t feel pressured,” he said, his hands up. “It was just an idea.”

  Swim lessons in exchange for salsa lessons? That could be … interesting. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” he sounded eager, like a little boy being told he was about to get his first bike. He rushed to follow me outside. “Really?”

  “Sure. How about tomorrow after school?”

  “Yeah. That’s good.”

  We stood by the traffic light, and he smiled a little as he rocked back on his heels, and I felt the same way, holding in my smile until he reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. My eyes fell to the pack and then I looked up at him, and my distaste for those cigarettes went beyond plain disgust. If he kept smoking, would he end up like his mother someday?

  His fingers froze on the pack, and he stared back at me for a long second. And then he reached into his pocket again, shoving the cigarettes back in and retrieving something else instead. It wasn’t until he’d unwrapped it that I realized it was a peppermint.

  He popped it into his mouth, and I smiled as I climbed onto the bus.

  *   *   *

  “So, Ben has been asking about you.” Marisol wiggled her eyebrows at me over the lunch table. “He wants to know when we’re all going to hang out again.”

  I froze with my soda halfway to my mouth. “What? Why?”

  Marisol chuckled. “What do you mean, why? You guys were totally flirting like crazy at Michael’s party. He said he really liked you.”

  I tried to think of what to say that would make me sound like I was more interested in Ben than I was in Patrice’s boyfriend. “Why don’t I ever see him around campus?”

  Patrice shrugged. “He’s a senior. A lot of his classes are off campus. He does, like, community service projects and internships. He’s getting ready to apply for early admission at Stanford.”

  “Wow.” Stanford was a pretty big deal. “I don’t even know if I’m into him. I mean, I barely know him.”

  “Well, sure.” Marisol’s face lit up. “You don’t know him now. But you’ll get to know him, and you’ll love him, just like we do. When I first met Jesse, he was so annoying, and now he’s my favorite person on the planet.” She grinned at me and then Patrice, and I saw the way Patrice focused on her food like she was trying not to say something.

  “Hey, do you guys want to get together tomorrow night to work on our project?” Patrice asked, reaching across her tray to peel open her chocolate milk.

  Marisol frowned. “I thought you were hanging out with Michael tomorrow.”

  Patrice shrugged. “I was, but he canceled on me second period. He said he and Ben had something they wanted to do.”

  I felt my skin go hot. Michael had told Patrice that he was going to be hanging out with Ben when he was actually going to be hanging out with me? He’d lied to her?

  “It’s not like we’ve been spending much time together lately anyway.”

  Marisol made a pouty face at her. “What about last night?”

  Patrice shrugged. “Okay, fine. We don’t hang out unless his mother is really sick. But isn’t that just as bad as not hanging out at all? Like, it feels like he really only calls me when he’s lonely.”

  I focused on chewing my broccoli. I didn’t want to be the cause of any problems between Michael and Patrice. If I had known they had plans, I never would have suggested we meet in the first place.

  “Um, I actually have plans tomorrow,” I said. If I was bei
ng honest, I didn’t want to cancel my plans with Michael, even if he did lie to Patrice, but I still felt guilty, like I was the one who’d lied, even though I wasn’t.

  Patrice slumped a little but Marisol nodded. “That’s okay. We have no clue what to do for the project anyway. Maybe we should ask Roger, the world’s worst lab partner.”

  She and Patrice laughed, but I stayed frozen, completely unable to find humor in the situation.

  *   *   *

  When I took my seat in American Lit, I was feeling jittery. I tapped my fingers on my desk and waited for Michael to show up.

  “Am I not supposed to tell Patrice about the salsa and the swim lessons?” I asked as soon as he sat down. “Because she said you told her you were hanging out with Ben tomorrow night.” I didn’t want to come right out and accuse him of lying to his girlfriend, but, well, it was pretty clear that was exactly what he’d done.

  The casual happiness on Michael’s face melted away. “Oh. Well, I thought I might surprise her. You know, it could be fun, learning how to swim without telling her. Thought maybe I could drive her out to the beach when I can do more than dog-paddle. She’ll be impressed.”

  His smile returned, but I could tell it was forced, and something in my chest was beginning to ache.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Hure said, her face glowing. “Did everyone finish the book?”

  The response this time was a little more encouraging, but there was still a fair amount of lazy grumbling. “You were supposed to be done by today so that we could discuss,” she said, though her voice wasn’t particularly stern. “Your quiz is next class, and I expect perfect As from everyone.”

  More grumbling.

  “What did we think about the end result for Daisy and Gatsby?”

  My mind still buzzing from the Michael situation, I spoke without thinking. “I thought it was kind of stupid.”

  Mrs. Hure turned to me, and she was already making her way down our aisle, beautiful and intimidating. She looked surprised to hear me talking. Maybe I was a little surprised, too. “Why’s that?”

  I shrugged. I’d finished the book three days before, after yet another night of insomnia. “Gatsby did everything for this completely self-obsessed woman. It’s all fake. He completely changes his life and who he is just to get her, and in the end…”

  I was babbling again, but this time, everyone was looking at me.

  “… in the end, he loses everything.”

  Mrs. Hure nodded at me. “I think that’s a fine observation, but I think there’s a lesson to be learned there. Gatsby built Daisy up in his head. He created an entire life, perhaps one that wasn’t true to himself, just to make Daisy happy, but the dream wasn’t real. Nothing could have made her happy enough.” She took a deep breath, her curly golden-highlighted hair rising and falling with her shoulders. “Michael? Care to weigh in?”

  Michael looked straight ahead at the dry-erase board for a long moment and then shook his head.

  Mrs. Hure made a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat. “Well, thank you for your input, Kate.” She spun around quickly, her long skirt swaying around her ankles. “That was actually an excellent segue into our first topic, the ever-elusive green light.”

  I looked over at Michael. He was rigid in his seat, his hands folded together and his gaze straight forward, like he had no intention of meeting my eye.

  Ten

  I’d spent a large portion of my life hanging around guys who were wearing nothing but jammers without so much as blushing, but when Michael walked onto the roof for our first swim lesson wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, I thought I felt my heart stop. Even though I’d seen him shirtless at the party, I still felt a little flustered at the sight of his bare chest.

  I had a million swimsuits: bodysuits, one-piece suits, some more utilitarian than others, and I also had a vast array of bikinis. Harris and I had spent a lot of recreational time throwing each other in the pool back at my house in Salem, and wearing a suit that went to your knees wasn’t ideal for pool parties. The bikini I’d chosen for today was red with orange polka dots, and I wasn’t so blind that I didn’t notice that Michael was also trying not to let his gaze stray any farther south than my chin.

  He grinned. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to swim, but my parents weren’t interested in teaching me. I mean, what kid knows how to rumba but doesn’t know how to swim?”

  I let out a huff of a breath. “You know how to rumba?”

  He shrugged. “Not great, but passably.”

  His eyes roved over the roof then, because we weren’t the only ones there. On the other side of the pool, a woman watched her young daughter, probably four or five, float in the shallow end of the pool. She waved at us, and I waved back.

  “Uh-oh,” Michael whispered, leaning into me slightly.

  “What?” I whispered back.

  “I didn’t think about the possibility of people. They’re going to see you teaching me and they’re going to know that I can’t swim.” There was humor in his voice, and a hint of a smile on his mouth.

  I rolled my eyes and patted him on the shoulder. It was warm and soft, and I tried to be subtle as I ripped my hand back. “Your pride is just going to have to take a hit tonight, sir. I think you’ll survive.”

  He smiled, and then we stood there awkwardly.

  “So do we just…?” Michael motioned toward the pool.

  “Go for it,” I said.

  He went to the far side of the pool, close to where the little girl was standing in the shallow end, and descended the stairs slowly, his hand gripping the metal of the rail tightly. It shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was, but I’d seen him floating around the shallow end at the pool party and I thought he would, at the least, gently hop over the edge where the water was only four feet deep.

  When he was finally all the way in, he looked up at me, grasping the edge of the pool. “What?” he said.

  I bit back my laughter. He was doing his best. “Nothing.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me playfully, but my amusement died when I looked down at the pool. I wasn’t sure what to expect anymore. Would Michael’s presence be enough to keep me from tipping over the edge, or would my father’s voice in my head keep ticking away until I couldn’t even look at the water without feeling like it was drowning me?

  Only one way to know. I took a deep breath and hopped over the edge. I let myself drift under the surface for just a second to get my skin wet, waiting for the moment when it would be too much while I let the water move through my fingers. I could see Michael’s legs, his feet pointed in my direction.

  The moment never came, and when I finally went back up for air, I felt steady. In the daylight, with Michael watching me, and that little girl and her mother close by, it didn’t feel as scary. I could forget everything but right now.

  “Okay, are you ready?” I asked.

  “I am.” But he didn’t seem very confident.

  “Really quick,” I said when Michael had waded over to me. “Do you need nose plugs?”

  “Nose plugs?”

  “Yeah. Do you need to plug your nose to go under?”

  He shook his head, and I tossed the nose plugs that I’d been holding over the edge of the pool. Michael watched them go. “Wow. That would have been embarrassing.”

  “It’s not embarrassing. A lot of people have to plug their nose, even professionals. Okay, so the first thing I’m going to teach you is the streamline position. It’s the most important thing you’re going to learn because all forms of swimming come back to it. It’s where you start and it’s where you end.”

  Michael cocked an eyebrow at me. “You just went into a whole different mode, didn’t you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, on your stomach. You can grab onto the wall.” He held the lip of the pool with both hands and kicked back so that he was sticking out straight into the pool.

  The little girl, bouncing around i
n the shallow end with orange floaties wrapped around each bicep, watched us.

  Michael started to sink.

  “Kick your legs,” I told him, and he did, his body floating back up to the surface. “Okay. Back straight, arms and legs stretched straight out in front and behind you, tuck your arms close to your head, keep it tight. Okay, overlap your hands on the wall. Hold your breath and go under to straighten your spine.”

  He was so focused on holding his breath and getting his body right that he stopped kicking and his legs began to sink.

  “Don’t stop kicking.” Without thinking, I moved forward and put a hand on his stomach to keep him from sinking. He stopped moving altogether, and I pulled my hand away quickly. “Keep kicking.”

  He kicked so hard that he splashed the little girl, and she laughed. When he was able to keep himself up in the water, I told him to let go of the wall.

  “What?” he demanded, his voice a little shaky. “If I do that, I’ll drown.”

  I crossed my arms and watched him kick his legs while holding on to the edge of the pool for dear life. “You’re not going to drown. Come on. I’ll take care of you.”

  He stopped kicking for a moment, and then, his face down in the water, he let go of the wall. Michael didn’t really need to know the streamline position. He wasn’t trying to learn how to swim competitively. He didn’t need to know proper form. He just needed to know how to not drown. But when he tucked his chin and arms, doing it exactly as I’d told him to, it made my skin tingle with the thrill of teaching him.

  Even though the previous experience had been a little daunting, I put my hands beneath his chest and stomach to stabilize him while he floated, belly down. “Okay, kick your feet and keep your arms at your sides.”

  We glided like that, me holding him up and him propelling us from one side of the pool to the other. It was almost an hour before I thought we could call it quits. But when I let him go, the feel of his skin on my hands was branded on me. We leaned against the side of the pool, the water sloshing up under our armpits as we draped our arms over the edge.