I blushed. What gave him the confidence to just go around telling people he liked them and asking them out on walks without even so much as a stammer? I wished some of his confidence would rub off on me.
“Thank you” was all I could say.
“Have a lot on your mind?” he asked after we’d been walking in silence for a minute, past houses and lawn statues and white picket fences.
I shrugged. “What am I supposed to talk about?”
He laughed. “Whatever you want to talk about.” He pulled at the cuff of his sweater, straightening it casually, and there was something about the way he did it, something so sophisticated. He was like an Asian James Bond.
“I guess I’m just a little overwhelmed.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Because of me?”
“No, not you.” I ran my hand through a bush as we passed by, the leaves cool on my fingertips. “It’s just everything, I guess.” I was definitely not a conversationalist, and Ben was going to figure that out any second now.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
We stopped in front of a house where a little fountain gurgled on the front lawn.
“Michael hasn’t told you all my secrets yet?”
He sent me a strange look, holding my eye for a long moment, until I felt like he was looking right through me. “No. No secrets. Michael’s not that kind of guy. I don’t know if you noticed, but he doesn’t even really talk about himself.”
I nodded. “I noticed.” We started walking again, and I could hear traffic passing on a nearby street, while ours was silent.
“Besides,” he went on. “I want to hear your secrets from you, not someone else.” There was something about the way he said it that made me sad. Maybe because it was obvious Ben was interested in me, and even though I really liked him, I didn’t think I like liked him, and that tiny little fact was like an ocean between us. Because apparently I could only want what I couldn’t have.
I scoffed. “Maybe I don’t even have secrets.” I tried to play it off as a joke, but when he glanced over at me, his eyes were serious.
“Everyone has secrets, Kate.”
My stomach churned, and I became desperate for a subject change. “What are you going to study at Stanford?”
He smiled down at his folded hands. “Has everyone been bragging about me?”
“Something like that.”
“Engineering. I want to be an astronaut.”
It had been shocking enough to me that he wanted to go to Stanford, but for him to have such a huge dream, one that I could tell he was confident about achieving, was astonishing. “Wow. An astronaut. That’s incredible.”
He shrugged. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever really wanted, ever since I was a kid. This just feels like the natural next step.”
“What’s it like, knowing exactly what you want to do with your life?”
He looked over at me, the side of his mouth quirking up just a little. “Cut yourself some slack. You’re what, sixteen?”
“Seventeen in December.”
“You have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do. You don’t want to swim? Okay, great. You’ll find something else that excites you. I’m certain of it. And that doesn’t have to be now or before you graduate or even while you’re in college. You’ll figure it out.”
I shivered, and even though I had on a coat, Ben stepped close to me as we walked and put his arm around me. I was really cold, so I let him. He smelled good, spicy and clean, like cologne and hair spray.
He held me close until we were standing in front of Marisol’s house again, right at the end of her driveway.
“Thank you for the walk,” I said, because what else was I supposed to say? I stepped away from him, but Ben stepped forward, and before I even realized what was happening, he was kissing me.
It wasn’t a long kiss—his lips pressed gently to mine for just a second, just long enough for me to register how soft, how gentle, his mouth was, and when he stepped away, I wasn’t sure what to say. I bit my lip. “Um…”
He sighed and moved away from me. “Yeah. I kind of got the feeling that this was one-sided.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I knew I didn’t have to apologize, and I knew that Ben wasn’t expecting me to, but I still felt like I should. I’d flirted back and let him think he could kiss me, but it just felt wrong.
“Is it Michael?”
I was so surprised by his words that I jumped. “What?”
He smiled, like I’d confirmed his suspicions. “It might not be obvious to everyone else, but it’s obvious to me. I thought I’d be able to win you over, but I guess not.”
My pulse thundered in my eardrums. Ben had noticed. He knew how I felt about Michael. Was he right about no one else noticing? Or had Patrice figured it out, too?
“I was kind of hoping I was wrong.” Ben nudged me with his elbow. “Look, your secret is safe with me, and I really don’t think anyone else has a clue. But if I’m going to be honest, I think you’re wasting your time on Michael.” He leaned against my car and crossed his arms. “Patrice has had a thing for him since they were kids, and I never thought he’d give in, but last year, he was so lonely, you know? He was spending all his time cooped up with his mom, and it was hard on him. So when Patrice finally made her move, he took her up on it. I honestly didn’t think it was going to last as long as it has, and I think he’s too nice to ever break up with her.”
I didn’t want Michael to break up with Patrice. It was obvious to me that she really cared about him. The last thing I wanted was to see her heartbroken. And yet, the idea that it might never be over made my heart ache a little.
“Even if he’s more interested in someone else.”
That ripped me out of my thoughts.
Ben’s face was coated in a kind of sincerity I hadn’t seen before. That charming lilt that he always had was gone, and he was looking at me like he knew me. Maybe he did. Everyone else seemed to know me better than I knew myself.
“He hasn’t said anything, trying to keep it to himself like he does with everything else that’s bugging him. But I know him pretty well.”
I scowled at him. “But then why did you…?” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the question, one that slipped out of my mouth unbidden. If he thought Michael might like me, why had he flirted with me? And tried to kiss me?
But he knew what I was asking. “Michael’s my best friend. I don’t want to see him get hurt because he did something stupid. And I do really like you. So I thought if you dated me and got over Michael, this whole thing might just go away. Offer’s still on the table.” He smiled.
I smiled back even though I felt like someone had taken a melon baller to my insides. “I don’t think I should be dating anyone right now.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough.” He reached out and squeezed my arm, and then he turned and walked off into the night.
I got in my car and drove home, and when I got to the third floor, I stopped in the hallway and looked over at Michael’s door. I didn’t know if he was home or not. Maybe after the girls had finished the project, Patrice had called Michael. Maybe he’d gone over to her place. Or maybe they were behind that door right now, sliding into home base.
I went inside my apartment and shut the door firmly behind me.
Fourteen
The next day on my way to lunch, I found myself staring at the trophies in the swim case at school. They had an entire case in the hallway outside the cafeteria. So did the football team and the track team and the basketball team. The swim team had trophies and medals and pictures of athletes and coaches. Some of it was from the previous year; some of it was from ten years ago.
Right behind a state championship trophy from 1996, there was a picture of a guy coming up out of the water during the butterfly that caught my eye. Whoever had developed the photograph had made all the colors too bright. The blue of the water was too blue and his skin was too peachy, but I stared at it anyway. The guy w
as almost smiling. He was coming up out of the water during a stroke, taking a breath of fresh air as he did so, and from the look on his face, you would have thought that was it for him: that was bliss. Maybe it was.
“Do you miss it?”
I jumped. Coach Wu stood beside me, a clipboard in her hand, like if she didn’t constantly have a connection to her team, the whole world might fall apart.
It took me a second to process her question. “Do I miss what?”
She raised her eyebrows at the case. “Swimming. Competing.”
I wasn’t sure how to tell her that yes, I missed swimming, but no, I didn’t miss competing. That was the problem, really. “I guess.”
“Why did you feel like you needed to quit?” she asked, crossing her arms and watching me.
What, was she writing an article or something? People were starting to stare. If a student stood too long next to any teacher, people assumed they were getting in trouble. I was watching them instead of her, wishing I could jump into their midst and disappear. “Coach Wu, I know you think you’re trying to help me,” I said as kindly and respectfully as I could, “but swimming just isn’t going to happen for me.” That sounded so mature. I wanted to pat myself on the back.
“Is it because of your father?”
I clenched my jaw. My maturity threatened to jump out the window. I wanted to tell her that it was none of her business and that she had no right to even be asking me questions. She wasn’t my guidance counselor and she really wasn’t anything to me at all, not a coach, not a teacher, just another human being.
But I didn’t say anything. I figured that was the best way to hold the anger in.
Coach Wu sighed. “Well, I can assure you that if you joined the swim team, you wouldn’t have to deal with your father.”
As long as I was swimming, I would have to deal with my father. He would come to my meets, I would see him at District, and he would call to see how my training was going once he thought I had cooled down. What he didn’t know was that I wasn’t ever planning to cool down.
“No, thank you.” I started to turn away to join the throng entering the cafeteria, but she stepped halfway in front of me.
“Listen, I know that things are difficult between you and your dad right now. It’s hard having your parent be your coach. I’ve seen that situation happen on more than one occasion. It adds a lot of pressure, so I get that. But now that he’s not your coach anymore, you could start to separate your personal life from your life in the pool. You could move on if you wanted to.”
I felt my face flush. I felt my whole body flush. I felt every single capillary in my body come up against my skin and burst. “Excuse me?”
She blinked, clearly aware that she’d set off a reaction inside me. “Well, I just mean—”
“You don’t know a damn thing about my father or me.” I knew I was crossing so many different lines, but now that I had gotten started, I couldn’t stop. “You met him a few times? Well, good for you. You must know everything. It wasn’t swimming that added a lot of pressure, okay? It was the fact that he decided to forget that he had a team and a wife and a family and cheated on my mom, and I’m certainly not going to move on by joining your team so that I can win your sport some more financial support from the school board. So I would appreciate it if you would leave me alone before I report you for harassment.”
I turned and walked right into Marisol. She and Patrice had materialized out of nowhere, and Marisol put out a hand to steady me as we walked together toward the cafeteria.
“What was that?” Patrice hissed to me as we stood in line. My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t hold my tray. Marisol took it from my hands. “Did you just threaten to report Coach Wu?”
“I said I didn’t want to be on the team.” My voice trembled. “And I meant it.”
“I think she’s just a little pushy,” Marisol said from behind me. Patrice still had a hand on my elbow to move me along the line, even though none of us had grabbed any food. I reached out absently and put a piece of pizza on my tray.
“I think she has no idea what she’s talking about. She thinks I can just move on now that my dad is out of the picture? I quit swimming because my father slept with one of the swim moms, and now every time I look at a pool, I want to vomit.” Unless that pool had Michael in it, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to say that in front of his girlfriend.
Both of them were quiet until we took a seat. I hadn’t missed the looks they were giving each other, that weird telepathic facial conversation they had. I looked down at the food on my tray, but there was no way I could eat any of it.
“Well, the good news,” Marisol said, “is that while you were with Ben, we finished cutting out all the letters for the blanket. All we have to do is hot-glue them on fabric and let Michael’s mom sew it up.” She leaned across the table and wiggled her eyebrows mischievously at me. “How was your walk?”
I took a bite of my pizza so I wouldn’t have to answer.
Patrice and Marisol looked at each other.
“It wasn’t good?” Marisol asked.
I shrugged. “I like Ben, but I don’t think we’re very compatible.”
Marisol narrowed her eyes at me. “Wait. Do you like someone else? Because I really thought you’d be into Ben. Everyone’s into Ben.”
I felt my face go red, and I pretended to wipe my mouth on a napkin to hide my blush. “No, it’s nothing like that. Ben is really nice, but I just don’t think it’s good timing.”
“Sometimes it just doesn’t work out,” Patrice said. “We get it.”
I couldn’t meet their eyes.
* * *
“So, I heard a rumor that you physically assaulted Coach Wu in the middle of the hallway today. You’re quite the celebrity.”
The door to the roof hadn’t even fallen closed behind me before the words were out of Michael’s mouth. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course it was all over school, and since Michael had had some sort of meeting with the school counselor that afternoon and hadn’t ridden the bus, he hadn’t had the chance to bring it up yet.
“Thanks for the reminder.” I tossed my towel and change of clothes on one of the lounge chairs against the wall.
Michael went from sassy to concerned in one second flat. “Oh, hey. I was just joking. Are you okay?”
I scrubbed my hands down my face. “She’s still trying to get me to join the team, and she came up to me in the hall and started asking all these questions, and then she starts telling me how I shouldn’t let my personal life interfere with swimming and I should move on or something.”
I was babbling, and now that I was replaying our conversation out loud, it sounded so juvenile.
Michael reached out to me, his fingers brushing my elbow, and I jerked away from him. I couldn’t let him affect me like this. He wasn’t being fair. He had a girlfriend. He wasn’t allowed to touch me comfortingly.
“It doesn’t matter.” I jumped into the pool.
I pushed myself against the bottom. Through the rippling water, I could see the sky, the blurriness of the buildings rising on either side of ours, the bubbles floating from my mouth to the surface. I pressed my hands to the floor beneath me, feeling a lump form in my throat. I wanted to stay under until my lungs gave out and I dissolved into the water, but I could feel the panic rising inside me as I tried to push thoughts of Coach Wu away. I wanted it to be over. Couldn’t it just be over already so I could love the water again? So I could be normal again? So I could be free?
My skin started to tingle with the anxiety and my chest was aching for breath, so I pushed away from the floor and came up to join Michael, keeping himself afloat in the center of the pool. His legs and arms moved in wide circles, sometimes not fast enough and he would slip downward, his chin slapping the water before bobbing back up.
“You okay?” he asked, but I couldn’t talk about it. I couldn’t even explain this confusing storm inside me.
I
pressed myself against the wall and motioned for him to do a lap. He hesitated, but he eventually conceded, having trouble staying under the surface with his body while trying to keep his form perfect. But he made it from one side of the pool to the other without dying, which was technically a success.
“Make sure you’re slicing in with your hands, not splashing down. And you’re not kicking fast enough. That’s why you’re sinking.”
He smiled like I’d just told him he was the greatest swimmer on the West Coast. “You gonna join me?” he asked after another lap, gasping between words. I knew he wasn’t going to be able to do much more before the cigarette lungs took over. I crossed my arms and considered. I didn’t want Michael to get discouraged, which is easy to do when you think you’re doing amazing only to be upstaged by someone who just happened to do it better for one reason or another. I’d been practicing for almost ten years and didn’t have a set of trashed-out lungs.
“Sure,” I finally said. Michael seemed cheery enough to take the competition, but I still swam slow, keeping pace with him beside me as we went to one side of the pool and then to the other. Michael executed a surface-and-turn-around kind of maneuver when he reached the wall while I did a flip turn and pushed off the wall, giving myself significantly more distance than he had.
I waited for him at the other side of the pool, and when he got there, gulping in breaths and smiling like a little kid, I shoved him playfully on the shoulder. He floated away from me.
“You’re amazing, you know that?” He pressed his head to the concrete lip of the pool and kept smiling at me.
Something about the way he smiled at me, like he didn’t have a care in the world, made everything well up in my chest then.
I turned away from him, but I was too late. I was heaving in breaths that didn’t feel like they were making it to my lungs. I covered my face with my hands, trying to stifle the sound of hyperventilating. I tried to find something solid to hold on to, but I felt like I was getting farther from the edge of the pool, unable to get a grasp on it. Any second now, I would drown.
How to Breathe Underwater Page 16
