How to Breathe Underwater

by Vicky Skinner

  He scraped his chair over to me until his hands were on my arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think this would happen.”

  I put my hand on his cheek. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

  He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again, he was back. “She’ll get over it eventually. This isn’t my first argument with her. We’ve had too many to count.”

  I shook my head. “It’s different. This time, you broke up with her and then immediately started seeing someone else. And while you might have had fights with her before, I haven’t. She has no reason to forgive me. I’m no one to her.”

  “She likes you. She has since your first day. She told me. She’ll get over it, I promise.”

  In the meantime, I would have to handle being a social pariah to the only people who’d actually liked me.

  *   *   *

  “Are you okay? Are you feeling sick?”

  I didn’t look up at my mother. Yes, I was feeling sick, but not the way she meant. I pushed my food around on my dinner plate. “I’m fine.”

  Under the table, Lily nudged me with her foot. “Is it Michael?”

  I pushed my plate away hard and looked up at them. “Could we just stop talking about Michael for one second?”

  Beside me, Lily’s eyes went wide. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  I buried my face in my hands. It wasn’t Lily’s fault, and it wasn’t Michael’s fault. It was my own damn fault.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked me, her voice gentle from the other side of the table.

  I sighed and let my hands drop. “It’s nothing—just drama at school.”

  My mother’s brow wrinkled. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head immediately. “It’s nothing to talk about. Michael thinks it’ll pass, so…”

  My mother tried to smile at me, but it seemed to crumble a little when I looked at her. “Why don’t you call Harris? You haven’t been back to Salem in a while. Why don’t you go down and visit?”

  Because Harris had stopped answering my phone calls and started spending all his free time with the person responsible for this mess. “We’re not really talking right now.”

  My mother’s mouth popped open in a little O. “Well, what about those girls you’ve been spending time with? What were their names, the ones from your chemistry class?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Actually, I think I’m just going to get some of my reading for Lit out of the way, maybe go to bed early.” I pushed back from the table, leaving my mostly full plate of food as I turned and went to my room.

  But I was only there a second before my mother knocked on my door and let herself in. “Kate,” she started, but I stopped her, putting my book down on my bed.

  “Mom, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Actually,” she said, coming to sit at the end of my bed, “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

  I pushed myself up, my back against my headboard. “Okay.”

  Her index finger traced the design on the cover of my book. “I thought I was doing the right thing by coming here. I know I could have waited. You’ll be a senior next year, and I could have held off longer, but I knew how it would be. I knew your father would insist on deciding what college you go to. He would try to get you to stay as close to home as possible so he could still be involved in your coaching. He never would have let you go.”

  She stopped and took a deep breath, and I thought maybe she was trying not to cry. “But then that practice happened, and I was so angry that he had let it happen and that he’d had such terrible self-control, that I knew I couldn’t stay anymore, and I guess it didn’t occur to me that it would be this hard on you.”

  She looked up, and I was struck by how comforting her familiar features were.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  She gripped the spine of The Crucible and pressed it into my mattress. “Maybe not, but I still wish things were different. I wish you were happier here.” She finally let go of my book and folded her hands in her lap. “I never meant for our moving here to make you feel like you couldn’t swim anymore. I know it shook you up. It shook me up, too. But you don’t have to give up swimming, if that’s what’s making you so sad. I just want you to have the right to choose for yourself.”

  I was shaking my head before she was even finished speaking. “It’s not that. I mean, it’s a little bit that. I do miss swimming. But quitting swim didn’t make me sad.” Empty, maybe, but I didn’t think sad was the right word.

  She pursed her lips. “Things are going to get better,” she said quietly. “I know they are. But I don’t want you to forget that you still have me, and you still have your sister. I’m sorry to hear that you and Harris aren’t speaking, but he wasn’t your only friend.”

  I knew that much. I still had Michael, even if he couldn’t quite understand how I felt about hurting Patrice. “Thanks.”

  She smiled, a genuine smile this time.

  *   *   *

  Even though it had come at a cost, it felt great to be able to hold Michael’s hand on the way to class the next morning. He curled his fingers around mine and talked to me about his mom all the way to school. We split up at the staircase, the way we did every B-day, and I rushed up to the third floor, where I had Health Science first period, but I hadn’t even made it all the way up to the third floor when I heard crying.

  I stopped, even though I was fairly certain whoever it was had to have heard me coming. It wasn’t like I had anticipated someone needing privacy in the middle of the stairwell. Most of the students used one of the elevators or the main staircase in the commons, but I preferred this emergency staircase in the back of the building because it was usually secluded.

  “It’s okay,” a voice came down to me.

  “You can come up. Just ignore me.” I recognized the voice. It was Marisol. I rounded the flight and stopped on the landing between the second and third stories to see her sitting on a step halfway up, a crumpled tissue in her hand and her hair falling out of its ponytail.

  Oddly, there wasn’t disdain in her eyes when she looked at me. “You know how it is. They get what they want, and they move on,” she said. She scrubbed at her face with the tissue, but it wasn’t doing much good. I thought the poor thing had pretty much reached its saturation point. She threw it over the railing, and I said nothing. “Why am I even talking to you?” she said, her voice raw. “You screwed over my best friend.”

  The fact that Patrice and Marisol thought I was the spawn of Satan had had enough time to really sink in that it didn’t hurt like a knife wound when she mentioned it. “I didn’t mean to screw anyone over,” I told her, even though I was certain I was talking to a brick wall. “Michael and I weren’t together before he broke up with Patrice.”

  I waited for her to argue. I waited for her to tell me that I was scum. But she didn’t.

  “You swear?”

  “I swear. I mean, I’ve liked Michael since we met, but I did my best to back off as soon as I knew Patrice was in the picture. She’s been so nice to me. You both have. I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  I felt like I was on trial. Didn’t she need a spotlight or a gavel or something? She wiped her eyes. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Patrice is my best friend, and Michael broke her heart, and you’re dating Michael, so you’re my enemy by association.” She groped in her clothes, probably searching for another tissue, but she didn’t find one. I pulled out the travel pack I carried and handed it to her.

  “Jesse told me he loved me. It’s such a freaking cliché.” She pulled one of the tissues out and wiped her nose with it. “I shouldn’t even be surprised. Isn’t this exact scenario in some kind of manual that every girl has to read before giving up her virginity?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  She rolled her eyes. “God, what help are you?” As if to punctuate her point, she pulled the last tissue out of th
e pack and stared at the empty plastic as if waiting for more to appear. “I just—” she stopped and wrapped her arms around her knees. “What if no one else wants me?” She broke into sobs then, covering her face and gulping in air.

  I sat down on the step beside her and put my arm around her because I wasn’t sure what else to do. “Marisol, you’re a freakin’ catch. Jesse isn’t the only one who’s ever going to want you.” I squeezed her arm, and she took a deep breath to try to regain her composure.

  “You know, I really liked you. You fit right in with us.”

  Her words felt like a ray of sunlight. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She pushed herself up off the step, knocking my arm away from her. “Too bad you blew it.”

  *   *   *

  I braved lunch in the cafeteria that afternoon, but it was worse than I’d thought it would be. Before, everyone had just seemed to ignore me. Now, it felt like everyone was watching as I took a seat in a far corner, away from my usual table, where Marisol and Patrice were acting like I didn’t exist.

  I tried to focus on Fahrenheit 451 while I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I was distracted every time Marisol or Patrice shifted, every time they moved, thinking that maybe they were going to look over at me, maybe they would come and talk to me. But I knew that would never happen. I was alone, and I needed to get used to it.

  And for the most part, I thought I had, until someone crashed into my table, knocking it just hard enough to jostle my tray, sending peas rolling across its surface. I assumed that it was an accident until I looked up into the face of the girl who’d done it. She wasn’t alone, and I immediately recognized the girls surrounding me as the swim team. Their faces, the ones that had been watching me that day at the rec center, were burned into my brain, and now here they were, looming over me.

  “Oops,” the girl who’d rammed into my table said. “Didn’t mean to disturb the greatest swimmer in all of Oregon. I know we’re not good enough to even be breathing the same air as you.”

  My stomach started to roil, my lunch becoming unsettled. “It has nothing to—”

  She bumped my table again, and it scraped across the floor toward me. “I don’t care,” she said. “If you think my team isn’t good enough for you to swim for, that’s just fine. Obviously, champions go around stealing other girls’ boyfriends and then flaunting it in front of everyone. So, good for you. You’re a gold-medal-winning slut.”

  Once, during freshman year, a girl on the swim team, Lizzie Bloom (short-distance breaststroke, red braces), was tortured relentlessly by a group of girls because she’d been caught by her parents having sex in her hot tub with a junior, some guy on the soccer team. The information went viral before first period the next day. I remembered all the names they’d called her: slut, whore, tramp, dirty. Each one had felt too harsh, like a paper cut, for someone so kind and undeserving. Now, this one word felt like a knife burrowing under my fingernails.

  I felt my skin flush, and then, stupidly, I felt a tear run down my cheek. How to make a situation worse: Cry in front of everyone. More and more people were starting to stare.

  The girls all backed away and then left, taking a seat on the other side of the room, all of them turning to look at me once they were settled. Every muscle in my body trembled, and I told myself to move, again and again. Run. Run. Run.

  Patrice’s eyes were on me, but they weren’t mean or even curious, really. They were full of pity. I looked away from her, ashamed and mortified and just really, really sorry. Sorry for wanting someone who wasn’t mine and sorry that I’d rejected the swim team and sorry that I’d ever moved to Portland.

  *   *   *

  My phone buzzed on my nightstand and I rolled over to see the screen lit up. The time said it was a little after midnight, and I was still up finishing my assigned reading for American Lit.

  There was a text from Michael.

  Is now a good time for a swim lesson?

  I glanced at my open bedroom door. My mother had never known about my late-night meetings with Michael, but now that she knew we were a couple, she’d been keeping a particularly close eye on me.

  I stepped out into the hallway quietly, ready to tiptoe to the front door, but my mother’s bedroom door was closed and Lily wasn’t asleep on the couch, as I’d thought she would be. So I quietly and slowly opened the front door, grabbed my keys, and locked the door behind me.

  It was so strange how quiet the world got at night. Even in a city as populated as Portland, there were fewer cars on the roads, fewer people walking on the streets, less music coming from some undetermined location. I felt like I could hear the stars twinkling.

  “I thought we were having a swim lesson,” Michael said from the pool, where he was standing in the shallow end, running his arms back and forth in the water to create waves. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I was momentarily thrown by the situation. Things were different now. I could touch him, could look at him, could do whatever I wanted with him without feeling guilty because he was someone else’s. He was mine now. I wanted to throw myself into the pool.

  “We are.”

  He made a curled-up little shape with his lips. “Hmm. You’re not really dressed for a swim lesson.”

  I looked down at my clothes, a sweater and a pair of jeans. “I was trying not to wake my mom. There was no time for a wardrobe change.”

  He nodded and walked toward the steps. “That’s okay. We can talk instead. Talking is good.”

  I pulled my sweater off over my head. Michael’s eyes went wide, and I tried to ignore him as I wriggled out of my jeans.

  Except for the material and the underwire, underwear was no different from a bikini. Michael had seen me in a bikini, but standing in front of him now, you would have thought I’d stripped down completely. Maybe it was the unveiling of something that was supposed to be hidden.

  His mouth parted slightly as I stepped into the pool.

  I was barely all the way in before he pulled me against him and kissed me. I let my legs float up and around his waist, and he spun us around so that I was pressed between him and the pool wall. The pool was already warm, but every inch of my body went hot as Michael’s mouth moved over me, from my lips to my neck to my collarbone.

  “We’re supposed to be swimming,” I said, a little breathless as his fingertips found my rib cage.

  “Aren’t we?” he asked against my skin.

  I laughed. “Not exactly.”

  He pulled away from me, and we drifted slowly to the deeper end of the pool. But once the water began to rise up to his shoulders, I saw some of the sense of ease filter out of Michael’s eyes.

  I pressed my hand to his cheek. “Just keep kicking your legs. I’m not going to let you drown.” I wrapped my arms around him until we were pressed together from chest to waist, our legs tangling together under the water.

  “I’m crazy about you,” he whispered against my ear.

  I pressed my face into his neck, smelling the pool water in his pores. “So when do we get to start our salsa lessons again?”

  Michael shrugged. “Whenever you want. We could start right now.”

  I laughed as he pulled me into position and started counting off, our limbs dragging slowly through the water. He spun me around, and the water splashed out behind me as I spun back into his arms.

  He kissed me again, but before I could get distracted, I pulled away. “I can’t stay long. If my mom finds me up here, she’ll murder me.”

  Instead of letting me go, he pulled me into him, holding me close in a kind of desperate embrace that made me nervous. “I feel okay when I’m with you,” he said. “It’s like nothing bad exists.”

  I pressed my forehead to his. “I know how you feel.”

  He held my face in his hands. “Are you okay? I heard about what happened at lunch.”

  I pulled away from him just a little. “How?”

  He shrugged, splashing a little. “Marisol told Ben. Ben t
old me. I’m sorry it happened.”

  The kicking of his legs had slowed slightly, but I kicked harder to keep us afloat. “I’m okay. It was a little surprising, but nothing I can’t handle.” The only really surprising part had been the fact that the attack had come from the swim team and not from Patrice, even if a part of me knew that Patrice would never do any worse than she already had.

  “Okay,” he said, his lips pressed to my cheek.

  Getting out of the pool proved more than Michael could handle, as I was now not only in my underwear but in my wet underwear, and we spent another few minutes making out in a lounge chair before I got too cold to stay.

  We shivered all the way down to our floor, and just as he was leaning in for a good-night kiss, the elevator opened and Lily appeared before us.

  Her eyes went wide when she saw us, standing there in the hallway, dripping. “Kate? What are you guys doing out here?” She glanced at the door, like our mother might be there to catch us.

  “We went for a swim.” I tried to cover my almost naked body with the dry clothes that I hadn’t bothered to put back on. Michael didn’t have so much as a towel, and I could see the goose bumps on his arms.

  Lily’s eyes narrowed. “A swim, huh?”

  I narrowed my eyes right back. “Well, where were you so late?”

  Lily scoffed. “I don’t have to tell you. I’m an adult. You’re the one who’s going to be in huge trouble if Mom finds out you were swimming with your boyfriend in the middle of the night.”

  I didn’t let up. “Were you with your new boyfriend?”

  Lily’s joy seemed to dwindle slightly. “Um … no … I wasn’t. I just … um … lost track of time.” She was looking everywhere but at me, and my eyes met Michael’s quickly before he excused himself to go inside.

  Lily unlocked the door, and I left a trail of water behind me as we went in. “Lily, is everything okay?”

  She hung up her coat and dropped her purse by the couch. “You should probably take a shower. You smell like chlorine.”