“Hey,” Michael said behind me. “Hey, what did I say?”
I wiped at my face with chlorine hands, trying to regain some sanity, trying to quell the dizziness. “What’s happening to me?” The words came out raw and desperate.
I heard Michael treading water behind me. I felt the heat of his body along my back. “What are you talking about?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and gulped in a breath, focusing, focusing on not slipping away. “Swimming,” I finally said, because what else was there? My whole world began and ended with swimming. “Why do I feel like this?”
“You’re okay.” His hands found my arms, and then he wrapped his arms around me until he’d pulled me against him, front to back. The heat of his skin and the feel of his heart thumping against me made me stop trembling. “Swimming is not all you are,” he said. He pressed his mouth to my ear, like if he said the words directly against my brain, I might be more inclined to believe them.
I shook my head but couldn’t speak. Slowly, I felt everything inside me begin to calm. The world came back into focus, and I felt his fingertips digging into my sides. I shivered, the air cold on my flushed skin. “How can I love something and hate it at the same time?” I asked, my voice weak. My whole body felt sore and tired.
“Life is complicated,” he whispered.
And then I felt his lips on my neck, pressed and held there, and the feeling of his hot breath made something break into my mind: Patrice. Patrice’s sad face as she wondered what was going on with Michael.
I jerked away from him.
He looked as dazed as I felt, his eyebrows pulled down in confusion.
“I can’t do this.” The panic that he’d managed to coax away was back. Before he could stop me, before he could say something to convince me that his mouth on me had been something other than what it had seemed, I used the stairs to bolt from the pool, grabbing my clothes and towel as I went. He didn’t call out after me, and he didn’t follow.
* * *
I knew Michael could catch up with me if I took the stairs down to my apartment, so I took the elevator, closing my eyes and plugging my ears and focusing only on my breath as the elevator lurched, taking my stomach with it. When it came to a stop, I rushed out as fast as I could. There was no one in the hall, so I quickly put on my clothes over my wet suit in an attempt to feel more grounded before I opened the door.
When I let myself into the apartment, it didn’t smell like dinner, like I’d hoped. Lily was sitting on the couch, and when she caught my gaze as I came in, her eyes were wide.
“What?” I was certain something terrible had happened, but she didn’t have a chance to answer before my mother’s voice cut her off.
“Katherine, if you could please have a seat.” My mother was seated at the dining room table, her arms crossed tightly and her lips thin with disappointment. I knew that face. I knew it because it was one my father loved to use on me when he caught me doing something he didn’t approve of: talking to a boy, slacking on my homework, staying up past my appointed bedtime.
I went into the dining room, but I didn’t sit at the table. There could only be one reason my mother was looking at me like that. She knew.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking from her to Lily, hoping that maybe by some miracle I was wrong. Maybe I’d made some other huge mistake.
“Where have you been?”
This was potentially a trap. I could lie and say that I’d been at practice, but if she knew I wasn’t, then I was busted. And if I told the truth, that I was with Michael, I was also busted.
Lily watched us with horror across her face, like I was currently burning at the stake.
I chose to stay quiet.
“I got a call from Coach Wu almost two hours ago.”
I bit my lip. My mother’s eyes had fire in them.
“She was calling because she’s worried about the way you’re adjusting to your new life. She really thinks joining the swim team would be best for you.” Her words might have almost sounded sarcastic if they hadn’t been so bitter.
“Did she also tell you that she harassed me in the middle of the hallway today?” I knew that jumping in with this bit of news was probably not going to help my case, but I was fairly certain it couldn’t hurt.
My mother slammed her open palm on the table, and it felt like the entire building trembled. “You’ve been lying to me for weeks,” she hissed. “What have you been doing with your evenings? Something could have happened to you at any point, and I would have had no clue where to find you.”
“I’ve been giving Michael swim lessons after school.”
My mother stared at me, not saying anything for so long that I had time to count the beats of my heart in my ears. “I don’t understand. You’re not joining the swim team? You’re off with some boy you barely know without telling me—”
“You’re the one that invited him to Lily’s wedding!” I cut in.
“I’m not finished!” she shouted. “I thought I could trust you. I thought this move would be best for all of us, but clearly it was too much for you to handle.”
“And we had another option?” I threw my hands in the air. “Oh, right, we should have just stuck around with Dad while he was sleeping with someone else.”
“It wasn’t like it was the first time,” my mother said, flat and cold and so quiet I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly.
On the couch, Lily sat up straight. “Wait. What?”
My mother shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. It’s not important. What’s important is that you, Kate, are grounded.”
But my mother wasn’t getting off that easy. Within seconds, Lily was standing beside me, and we were both staring down at my mother, who pushed her chair back and began pacing along the table.
“Dad cheated on you more than once?” I demanded.
My mother sighed and came to a stop in front of us. “Yes, your father cheated on me more than once.” This version of my mother was so different from the one I’d seen just moments before, her eyes sad and her shoulders slumped, that I wasn’t sure whether to feel completely outraged that she’d kept this secret from us or just feel sorry for her.
However, Lily didn’t seem so torn. Her mouth fell open. “Then why the hell did you wait until now to dump his sorry ass?” My mother and I both stared at her. Her outburst gave me chills.
My mother’s eyes flicked to me, for just a fraction of a second, and I knew what she was going to say before she said it. I knew that there was only one reason she would stay with my dad, even if it was killing her. I squeezed my eyes shut, all the fight draining out of me.
“What?” Lily said, but Mom didn’t say a word.
I turned to my sister. “She stayed with him because of me. She stayed with him because of the swimming.”
Lily’s eyes slid to our mother. “Is that true?”
She still didn’t say anything.
“So why now?” Lily asked. “Why leave him now?”
My mother stared down at the table. “Because it hurt too much. I couldn’t do it anymore. I prayed that you would forgive me, and I did what I had to do to survive.”
Lily and I were quiet. Hadn’t we done the same thing, trying to survive, when Lily left Tom and I quit swimming? We were just trying to keep breathing.
I leaned my palms on the table and took a deep breath. “Lily’s right. You should have left him the first time.”
We were all silent for a long moment, the sounds of our breathing mingling in the small room loudly enough to hear.
“This doesn’t change anything,” my mother finally said. “You’re still grounded.”
I groaned. “We were just swimming. And we were upstairs!”
She shook her head. “You lied to me. You’re grounded until the end of the year. No going out. Home and school, that’s it.”
Lily’s eyes went wide. “That’s a long time.”
“Mom, come on,” I said, trying to imagine m
yself cooped up in my room for the next two and a half months. “I wasn’t out drinking. I wasn’t doing drugs. I was literally in this building the whole time.”
My mother drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Fine. One month. But only because it’s been a hard few weeks for all of us.”
I thought maybe there was a chance I could get her to lower my sentence even more, but I really did feel bad for lying to her, so I took my punishment.
In my room, I stared at my phone. I wanted to tell Michael what had happened, that we’d been caught. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t go near him again, not until I’d figured out what was going on between us.
So I dialed Harris’s number. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms, either, but he’d always been there for me, whether we were fighting or not. He always answered.
But he didn’t answer now. His phone rang and rang and rang and finally went to voice mail, and I wanted to cry, listening to his voice in my ear. When the beep came, I hung up.
Fifteen
I woke up to the sound of someone throwing open my bedroom door. When Lily rushed into my room, it was still dark outside my bedroom window.
“Kate, get up. Something’s wrong.” She latched onto my arm and pulled me up out of my bed. The front door hung open, and my mother watched from the entryway as people in uniforms went in and out of Michael’s apartment. Everyone was talking, and there were so many lights, I was almost blinded.
“What’s going on?” I asked Mom. She was holding her robe closed as she watched, and I finally realized that the people outside were paramedics, and they were rolling a stretcher into Michael’s apartment.
I started to go for the door, but my mom grabbed my arm. “You should stay out of their way. It’s Harriet. She’s having some trouble.”
We stood in the open doorway and watched as the paramedics returned, this time with Michael’s mom on the stretcher, an oxygen mask over her face. I could see the panic in her eyes, and it broke my heart.
And then Michael rushed out of the apartment.
“Michael!”
That time, when I lunged for the door, my mother didn’t stop me. Michael was following close behind the paramedics, but he whipped around when I called his name.
“Kate,” he sighed, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Mom’s having trouble breathing. I think it’s pneumonia again, but she said she had this headache, and I don’t know what…,” he trailed off, his eyes wandering over my face before he hugged me. He was still in his clothes, even though it was the middle of the night.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said when his arms went around me. “Are you riding in the ambulance?”
He seemed to remember that he was in a hurry and gently pried me off him. The elevator doors were closing. “Yeah, I have to go with her.” He turned back to me, and his face was so serious, so scared, that he didn’t even look like the Michael I knew. “Will you meet me there?” he asked. “Please.”
“Of course.”
He held my eyes for a long moment, extended his hand out to me just barely, like he might just drag me along with him, but then turned and made a run for the stairs.
My mother’s eyes were on Michael’s back as the stairwell door closed behind him. She looked back at me, and I could tell that she wanted to argue, but how could she?
She reached back into the apartment to the hook by the door and grabbed her keys. She handed them to me, and then she and Lily went back inside.
* * *
Michael was sitting in the waiting room with his head in his hands. He didn’t look like Michael. He looked like a shadow of the boy I knew, the one that was always smiling. This boy looked like he’d never smiled in his life.
“How is she?” I asked, taking a seat beside him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re trying to drain the fluid from her lungs.”
“I’m sorry, Michael.”
He was quiet for a long moment, and the sounds of the hospital infiltrated the conversation—beeping from far-off rooms, nurses talking at the front desk, footsteps rushing in and out of the hallway.
“I don’t know what to do for her.” His words were barely more than a whisper. “She just keeps getting worse, and I’m completely helpless.”
I scooted closer to him, needing to feel his warmth to know that everything was real, hoping that maybe just my being closer to him would be enough for now.
He sighed and pressed his face into his hands again. “I just feel so alone.” His voice broke.
“No. Michael, no.” I reached out and took one of his hands, hot and limp in mine. “You’re not alone. You’ve got me.”
He looked down at our hands together and wrapped his fingers around mine. “Kate—”
“Michael!”
I ripped my hand out of his. Patrice rushed into the emergency room, her shoes clapping loudly against the linoleum floor. We got up to meet her, and she stood on her toes to throw her arms around Michael.
“Are you okay? What’s going on?”
I stepped away from them, feeling like I was intruding on an intimate moment, even though I’d been there first. They finally separated, but Patrice held on to him, pressing her forehead to his. “I’m all right,” he told her, and she seemed to accept it because she let him go and turned to me.
“Kate, I’m so glad you could be here with him. Thank you.” She stepped forward and hugged me, and I hugged her back, keeping my eyes on Michael over her shoulder. I was afraid he would fall over. Patrice pulled away. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you go home? I’ll take it from here.”
Michael’s glazed eyes were on the floor. I wanted to stay with him, but Patrice was right. He wasn’t mine to look after.
“Okay. Keep me posted.”
She nodded, and I left the emergency room in a bit of a haze.
* * *
I woke up with the sun shining directly into my eyes and popped up in bed. The sun should not have been shining in my eyes. That meant it was late. The clock said it was after eleven, and I felt my heart squeeze. Mom was going to be so pissed.
I was struggling into a pair of pants that I’d found draped over my computer chair when I realized that one of two things had to be true: One, my mother knew I’d slept in and had chosen to go to work without waking me, letting me miss school. Or two, she had no idea how late I had slept and would therefore have no clue if I didn’t go.
I finished getting dressed and sat at the end of my bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Harriet, the fear in her eyes when she’d been rolled out on that stretcher. I checked my phone, but I didn’t have any messages, from Patrice or Michael or my mom. I walked out of my room and straight to Michael’s apartment.
He didn’t even look surprised when he opened the door. He just looked tired, his whole body ragged and thin. He stepped away from the door, silently inviting me in, and I went straight to the kitchen.
“Have you eaten?” I asked him.
He watched me, one hand slung across the bar. “Yeah, I had some coffee at the hospital.”
“Coffee isn’t food.” I was already going through his fridge, pulling out edible ingredients to throw together. The one thing I could tell by looking at Michael was that he might have been taking good care of his mother, but he obviously wasn’t taking good care of himself.
I shut the fridge, my arms full of sandwich supplies. “How long have you been home?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and ran a hand over his face. “Since seven.” Almost five hours. I wanted to be sad that he hadn’t let me know, but I could see from his groggy expression that he’d been asleep.
I turned my back to him and put the supplies on the counter. “How’s your mom?” I focused on putting mayo on white bread, then adding lettuce, turkey, sliced tomatoes. If I stopped to think, I would start crying.
“She’s fine. She’s at the hospital with my uncle. She’s sleeping. She’ll be fine.” He sounded like he was trying to convin
ce himself, and I did my best to ignore how his voice made me feel. I didn’t know this Michael, this guy who fell apart and forgot to eat and moved like a zombie. I piled turkey on the sandwich. He looked like he probably needed the protein.
Something brushed against my elbow, and I spun around with a gasp to find that Michael had come up behind me. He was standing too close, his arms held up awkwardly, like he wanted to put them around me but couldn’t make himself move, even though he’d just slunk across the kitchen like a cat.
I was still holding the mayonnaise-covered knife, preparing to cut the sandwich. I opened my mouth to say something, not really sure what, when he spoke over me.
“Thank you for being there, at the hospital. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
I twisted to snatch the plate off the counter. I put it between us. “Eat,” I told him.
He took the plate and took a step back, looking vulnerable. It was like Michael was standing before me without a layer of the armor that I’d never even noticed was there.
I stood there, watching him, but he didn’t eat the sandwich. He set it on the counter beside him.
“You don’t have to look at me like that.” He sighed and wrapped his arms around himself.
“Like what?” But I knew what he was talking about. I was trying not to look like I pitied him. I didn’t pity him. I was worried about him. I was scared for him.
“Like I’m some little boy. Like you have to take care of me because I can’t take care of myself.”
I took a step toward him but stopped myself. “That’s not it. I just…” My heart felt like it was going to burst. I felt like I needed to scream at him. Couldn’t he see how much he’d done for me? That I just wanted him to be happy?
That I was falling for him?
“Michael, I care about you. I just—”
“I broke up with Patrice.”
My brain seemed to short out, sputtering and stopping like a car out of gas. I grabbed the counter behind me for leverage. “What?”
He was frozen still, his eyes stuck on me. He licked his lips. “She was being so nice and so supportive, and she stayed at the hospital all night. She stayed with me until Mom was feeling better. But the whole time, all I could think about was how I wished it was you. It killed me when you left. I wanted to beg you to stay. I wanted to beg you to come back. I wanted to beg you to feel the same way about me that I feel about you.”
How to Breathe Underwater Page 17
