by Seth Fishman
2
THE WATER IS COLD, BUT YOU DON’T FEEL IT FOR MORE than an instant. It’s supposed to be cold. Anything warmer than seventy-five degrees, and you’re in a sauna, muscles floppy and useless. I’m under for almost the entire first length of the pool, then it’s all breathing and eyes, rotating my breaths to see the competition in the adjacent lanes. Look left, look right. My body knows what to do, my breath comes in even bursts, my muscles begin to slowly burn, and I watch the girls fall behind, unable to leech off my wake. Even with my drag suit, designed to slow me down and work me harder, by the time I come out of my turn at the end of the pool, they’re a full body-length back. By the time I touch the finish, I’m all alone.
No one congratulates me, not even Coach Hart, who sees me as his gift horse and picks on me more than the others because, heck, they aren’t going to make it to nationals. He’s turned swimming into a solo sport, despite the fact that I also anchor the relay. During meets, he runs up and down the edge of the pool shouting “WOOP WOOP,” telling me where he is, giving me signals like kick harder, double tempo, you’re falling behind. To push me, he had me swimming with the boys, which immediately pissed off the girls. Thirty of us spending six hours a day together on different sides of the pool, and no girl who would talk to me. And while I didn’t realize that this would happen, I didn’t really care at first. The boys were fun, crazy and cute together. I guess I never thought about how they’d react to being beaten by a girl. For about a month, I went side by side with the best in the state, winning a couple races too, watching the boys watch me, feeling sexy for the first time in my Lycra Aquablade suit. I thought they were my friends, and maybe they were. Maybe the boys didn’t mean any harm, but I’m alone now, back to beating the crap out of the girls. All because of the time when I was tapering at practice the day before a big race, doing laps just to stay loose, and I saw one of the talented boys, Eric, swimming underneath me, crosswise, faceup, and I smiled at first because I wanted to, because I was into Eric. He’s taller than me, looks good with his swim cap on or off. His blue eyes are so bright you can see them through his goggles. But then I heard laughing above my head, and Eric rolled over and his Speedo was down and he was mooning me, which was funny enough, but then there was another boy, Steve, passing by Eric and his wiener was out, flopping like a third leg, and when I came up gasping for air, they were all exposed, swimming around me like dirty dolphins, laughing to tears.
I might have been able to get them all expelled, but probably not. Their parents own the world (Eric’s from Manhattan, his father a vice president at Goldman Sachs, his uncle a congressman), while my dad works in a cave. Coach Hart saw it all and did nothing. Well, not nothing. He put me back with the girls, who no longer wanted me. So I swim faster now, just to get away from them.
At one point in my life, I swam to win. But the summer before last, I watched the London Olympics, saw Phelps after twelve years and that many medals; I thought, what’s the point? I’ll swim my way into a good college and then give it up. Or at least give all this team sport mumbo jumbo up.
I rest my arms on the pool’s edge, my nose sucking in the chlorine, and watch Jo make her dive from the platform. She twists perfectly, her tall body a ball of muscle and slick edges, and then dissolves into the pool. I smile. At least I have one friend in the pool area. I’ve known Jo forever; she’s one of six townies at Westbrook Academy, though we weren’t always this close. Her father teaches AP Calculus, which is why most people think Westbrook let her in, but watching her dive, I know that’s not entirely true. She, like everyone at Westbrook, has a legit talent. The standard entry formula is obscene wealth and power coupled with talent, but if your father teaches at the school and you get invited to the junior nationals for platform diving, that usually works just fine too.
“Mia!” shouts Coach Hart. “Get your ass back in gear.”
I look around, startled, and I see all the other girls already on the starting blocks watching me, their eyes encased in plastic, their expressions dull and robotic. They hate me. I might hate them too.
I climb out of the water and shake my limbs, loosening my muscles, stretching my neck. Back to the block, where this time Hart tells us we’re going to hold our breaths and swim under for fifty meters, then freestyle back, then under for fifty, then back. Ten times. They’re called “over-unders”—surprise, surprise. And I’m the best at them too. No wonder my teammates don’t like me.
• • •
Jo’s dressed first and leans against a locker next to mine, humming a country song I sorta recognize, looking effortlessly perfect as usual. It’s eight thirty at night, our second practice of the day and last before the meet. Normally, we’d be up at five thirty going at it again, but Coach gives us one off to rest the muscles. How thoughtful of him. I’m in my flip-flops, trying to avoid getting plantar warts, and am scrambling to change. Everyone else is gone, Coach made me do a few more laps, and Jo is kind enough to wait almost every day. For the morning sessions, that means we’re usually late to first period. Now, she’s off in her own world, her lips puckering a touch, as if she’s about to actually sing, when suddenly she bolts upright and grabs my arm.
“Shit, I meant to tell you.”
“What?” I ask, slipping my shirt over my head.
“Odessa’s throwing a party tonight.”
I groan. Of course she’d throw a party on a Thursday. Odessa’s one of the other townies, and she lives next door to Jo and me. We all live there, in what the students like to call “Scholarship Row,” though I have seen Odessa’s house, and I know for a fact she doesn’t need a scholarship to attend Westbrook. The thing about Odessa is that she’s done all she can to connect to the others, to prove that she isn’t some new-blood rich girl from a backward town that doesn’t understand the ins and outs of social convention. Usually that means she’s nowhere near our hallway. Unless she throws a party. And a party the night before we travel to a swim meet means no sleep will be had.
Jo’s not concerned. “Oh, come on, Mia. It’ll be fun.”
“What?” I ask, incredulous. “You’re actually trying to convince me to go?”
She shrugs, her eyes on her phone. “It’s not like you’d sleep through the noise anyway.”
“And it’s not like you have to be rested to jump off a board.” I sort of expect to get a rise out of her at that—despite her perfectly choreographed boredom routine, she’s fiercely competitive—but nothing. Her thumbs are moving fast, and she doesn’t look up. When I first became truly close with Jo, it was a late night just like this. I heard her splashing into the water over and over again as I swam laps. When I finally pulled my goggles from my eyes, I saw her climbing the concrete stairs. She was running, hurrying to do another dive, pumping her legs until she made it up the platform. I remember watching her compose herself and balance on her toes, bounce, fall, do it again. I’d seen her around and knew who she was, but never did I expect her to be so dedicated and hardworking. By the next year, we were roomies. She told me, later, that she thought I was cool because I could beat the boys. I thought she was cool ’cause she could get them. Which has me thinking.
“Todd’ll be there?” I ask, tying a shoe and looking up from my crouch.
She flashes a grin. Jo’s a real friend, so it’s rare that I can get genuinely annoyed with her, even if she’s trying to drag me to a party to be a wingman when she knows I need the sleep.
“Maybe we can get Rob to come,” I venture, my way of relenting.
“Already texted him,” she replies, and as if on cue, my phone buzzes. I take a look, and it’s Rob, responding to Jo and adding me in.
Long day?
Jo and I share a smile. Rob, another townie and friend who lives across the hall, has a way with understatement. He’s probably at his computer, his desk lamp the only light on, plugging away at some code or other—his hobby. Sometimes I wonder if he’s in Lulz Security
or Anonymous.
Absolut, Jo texts back, which, of course, pops up on my phone too.
I thought Mia’s idea of unwinding was Seinfeld reruns.
Apparently, I type, 2nite it means following Jo to Odessaville.
O fun, he replies. I’ll remember to shower. C U soon.
We pause near the big gym doors, each taking an involuntary breath against the cold. I’m not looking forward to tonight, but the alternative is lying on my bed with a pillow over my head getting more and more annoyed at Odessa’s high-pitched laugh. Maybe Rob’ll cheer me up. He always does.
• • •
Westbrook Academy is, as elite private boarding schools go, a relatively new creature. Created in the ’60s by a new breed of wealth, the creators mimicked Groton or Milton or Dalton and bettered. Westbrook’s buildings are state of the art, but look like Gothic castles, like a mini Oxford or Cambridge without the cold drafts. Each student has the option of a single, and rooms are equipped with bathroom, living room and kitchen. The professors were poached from the best universities in the country, the coaches from the big state schools, the students from the czars worldwide.
Entitlement is a way of life at Westbrook. But, I have to say, there’s nothing easy about the curriculum. Sure, kids smoke pot every night, their doors open, waving the student RA in to take a hit. But my classmates have goals or come from families that demand goals of them. No one would be caught dead with less than a 2250 on the SATs. Without a 4.0. Without an acceptance letter to higher learning, traditionally known as the four-year vacation from Westbrook. Good grades are greatly rewarded, pep rallies are for academics as well as sports, and you actually win a snowmobile if you’re the valedictorian.
Sometime in the early 1990s, kids around the country began to hear of Westbrook. And, to Westbrook’s credit, most didn’t get in. The sprawling dorms, built for the future growth, stood half full or even empty for years. My father was one of the first townies admitted to the school. His picture hangs, as that weird reporter noticed, in the school’s administrative building. And I was one of the first to be given alumni treatment. Now the cup is brimming, a cascade of royalty. If you thought you were special as a kid, rich or brilliant or perfect in all ways, here you’re nothing special at all. It’s like that drag suit I wear when swimming. Westbrook feels tough, makes it hard on you while you’re at it and then, when you’re out, everything comes more easily than you could ever hope. Dad decided to stay in town, to work at a place with a scary nickname, but I want to use Westbrook for more. I want to stop being a Fenton claim to fame and start being something else: unrecognizable and not at all a baby anymore.
• • •
The room Jo and I share is crammed right next to Odessa’s. The thin walls do nothing to muffle the sound of laughter and hip-hop. We’ve both just showered at the gym, so we go straight into prep, which for me means jeans and a T-shirt and sitting on my bed watching Jo try on a few sets, and then bend forever over her vanity.
“You want me to pluck your eyebrows for you?”
She kicks her leg vaguely in my direction, as if to shoo me away, her face remarkably still in the process of applying eyeliner. Jo likes to do color, and she moves quickly on to an eye shadow called Midnight Plum. I think I’d look like a clown with that stuff on, but I can’t help admiring the way it shimmers against her pale face.
“I still don’t get how your hair looks that good after all the chlorine,” I say, recognizing that I sound a smidge worshippy and glad she doesn’t take advantage of it.
“You’re way too down on yourself,” she replies, glancing at me in the mirror. She’s probably eyeing my wide shoulders. “You just don’t take any pride in your swimmer’s bod.”
I stare at my arms and see a ribbon of muscle. “I doubt being beaten by a girl is a big turn-on for a guy.”
“I don’t want to hear that talk tonight, okay? We’re going to Stanford, the best school in the country for swimming, where we’ll meet the best boys in the country for swimming, and you’ll find a tall and limber boy you actually respect because he can beat you in the freestyle, and you’ll get married and have dolphins for kids. Until then, relax and have some fun.”
Aside from the dolphins, I’d say Jo knows exactly how to talk to me.
There’s a knock, I shout for him to come in, and Rob enters with a bottle of Absolut Citron and two shot glasses. His hair’s wet, combed into an ironic part, so slick it looks like it’s glued to his head. The style matches perfectly with his mail-order Warby Parker glasses. His T-shirt is tight and red, with black Korean characters arranged in thin columns. I’d think that lame, except Rob’s mother is Korean and he speaks it fluently. He can be cool in two languages.
“Where’s yours?” I ask. He plops Indian-style on the floor, back to Jo’s bed, and pulls out a flask from the inside pocket of his AllSaints coat, a black semiwrinkled thing that drapes well over his bright shirt.
“All scotch all the time,” he replies, and taps his calculator watch to emphasize the point. He pulls out a bottle of Zyrtec and pops a couple pills, which he claims stops him from going red in the cheeks when he’s drunk. His words, not mine.
“Ugh, you sound like them,” I say.
“No,” he spits emphatically. “They sound like me.”
There’s a loud crash next door and then a muffled cheer. Someone screams and runs past our door, his voice a lesson in the Doppler effect.
“Sounds like we need to get moving,” I venture, partly so we can get back already. It’s not that I don’t like parties; it’s just that I have this amazing ability to get beer spilled on me. Jo seems to agree, because she pops her lips, adjusts her breasts and then cranes her neck just so in a seductive pose, her lips pursed, the lip stain glaring against her pale skin.
“All right, all right,” Rob says from the floor, where he’s been watching the whole thing. “I’ll make out with you, Jo—get over here.”
He smiles big and wide and raises his flask. We take a few shots, which I hate but readily admit get the job done more efficiently than beer in a plastic cup. There’s a moment, as we all sit together, where Rob slows his sarcasm and Jo actually snorts when she giggles, and I feel myself start to enjoy myself and look forward to the night. It happens out of nowhere, magic. Most of the time, I’m trying to find my way out of a situation, but tonight I’m going in, arms open. I wish I could figure out how to harness that magic and use it whenever. But I’ll take it for tonight if the universe is offering.
• • •
I consider it a good sign for Jo when Todd Silver opens the door; he’s clearly pleased to see her. His eyes catch ahold of me, and his brows go up, but he’s not going to complain. I’m an enigma, made fun of, but not a pariah. Baby Mia jokes aside, there’s only so much flak you can give the hot girl’s friend before the hot girl stops liking you. Jo buffers me with her sheer looks.
Todd’s wearing plaid shorts and a sports coat. He’s got an abnormally deep voice, which goes beyond sexy to just odd. But he is, undeniably, a hottie. Jo’s always had more friends than Rob and me, and at things like this, I often find myself hovering on the edge of a conversation. Do parties work for Jo just because she’s so ridiculously perfect? I always joke that I don’t know how she gets such amazing diving scores with those breasts. Sometimes I feel like I’m holding her back from some other side of herself. Another life she could be leading. But she never seems to mind or care. I think that’s what makes her such a good friend. I wonder what makes me one for her.
Todd ushers us in, keeping a keen eye on Jo. “I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight, before the meet and all,” he says, but she’s being uncharacteristically awkward around him and is smiling too much. She must be pretty drunk already. I’ve never felt the need to try to save Jo from a boy situation, but there’s a first time for everything.
“Todd,” I say, and he looks at me with reluct
ance. The music thrums across the room, and with one glance, I take in much of the crew team. “I hear Odessa’s trying to do body shots with every boy at Westbrook. True?”
He laughs and winks. “Just had one myself. You’re next,” he says to Jo, pinching her arm. She giggles like an idiot.
“I’ll try a shot,” Rob offers helpfully. Todd’s a tall one, six foot four, and he peers down from his chiseled face at little Rob, wondering who interrupted him. Rob just takes it, radiating indifference, his lips turned the barest centimeter upward. I grab Rob’s arm and pull him away.
“Impressive,” Rob says when we get past a few floating groups of our classmates into a spot where we can actually stand and talk. “We made it through the door before she abandoned us.”
“She’s not abandoning us, Rob. She likes him.”
“Jo likes everyone,” Rob replies. He’s not so wrong; taking in the large living room, I can already find three former boyfriends. To think of the things I know about them just from the noises that came from the other side of our room as I went to sleep. There’s Vance, with three balls. Trevor, who screams like a girl. Phillip, who gets kinky in Spanish.
“My fellow townies!” The line is filled with such self-effacing irony that I can only imagine it coming from Odessa. Rob doesn’t even bother sticking around. He mutters something about getting us beers, and I’m left to face the scourge of our hallway. She’s sitting on a couch with Rory—smarmy punk Brit—smoking a cigarette. She takes our arrival in quick stride.
