Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  He cups his hands over his mouth and shouts, “You’re coming to the party tomorrow, right?”

  The boys have abandoned the kickboards and are now beating each other with pull buoys, but they break to laugh at Harry.

  “Is she your girlfriend?” one of them teases him. Harry gives him a light shove.

  “Maybe!” I call back to Harry. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

  Harry presses his hand against his chest like he’s been shot in the heart. The boys fall on him like wolves on a wounded deer, using the foam pull buoys like mallets to hit him all over his back and shoulders. He grins at me, then does a graceful dive into the water to escape them. I duck into the locker room before he can surface.

  Under the hot needlepoint spray of the shower, I play what just happened with Harry over in my mind. Did I flirt with him? I never flirt. I didn’t even think I knew how to flirt. But with Harry it came so easily, like floating in water, like breathing. And it felt great.

  I am in so much freaking trouble.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  309 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  What do you mean you’re NOT GOING?

  IT’S SATURDAY, and Amber and Jessa have been texting me all afternoon, asking if I’m going to the party at Harry’s friend’s house and if they can come with me and if I’ve thought about what I’m going to wear and if I want help applying “some actual makeup for once in your life” (Jessa). I kept putting them off, because I honestly could not make up my mind, but around six p.m. I decided: I’m skipping it.

  That did not go over well.

  I’m finishing up the last of my homework when my phone rings. It’s Jessa. I put her on speaker.

  “Did you hit your head?” she asks.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe I did and it erased my memory, like in a telenovela. Why?”

  “Then what possible reason do you have for not going to this boy’s party?”

  “It’s too much pressure. He’s too cute, and too nice, and too...just too too, okay?”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of toos. You’re spiraling.”

  I sigh. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, so, counterpoint: you don’t have to marry the guy. It’s just a party. A little flirting, a little kissing, maybe, then you go home and enjoy the fact that a boy you like likes you back for a couple of days. Plus, I bet he’s not even that nice. They never are in the end.”

  “What happens after a couple of days?” I ask, ignoring that last part. Jessa has always had a take-no-prisoners approach to love. She treats it the way she treats everything else: like a battlefield.

  “You move on to another boy. At least, that’s what I do.”

  “I know. The pool deck is littered with the shards of your exes’ broken hearts.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic. They can’t be exes because they were never boyfriends. They were crushes. There’s no harm in a crush, but no boyfriends till next August.”

  For Jessa, boys are a healthy distraction from the rigors of training, but only in a noncommittal sort of way. She has this superstition that being in a relationship would compromise her chances at making it to the Olympics.

  As superstitions go, it’s not that unreasonable, but this is the first time I’ve given it much thought. I’m no casual dater—I’m no casual anything—and I’ve never liked a guy enough to consider something more serious.

  With my slowdown putting my career in jeopardy, right now doesn’t seem like the time to start.

  “Note that she didn’t say anything about girlfriends,” Amber chimes in. “I can have as many girlfriends as I want. Not that I have any, but in theory.”

  “No girlfriends, either,” Jessa says.

  “Damn,” Amber says with mock-disappointment. She’s always telling me not to take what Jessa says so seriously.

  “Hey, Amber. I didn’t realize you guys were together. What are you doing?”

  “Going on a mission,” Amber says in a low voice that I guess is supposed to be mysterious.

  “What kind of mission?” I ask. This is suspicious.

  “You’ll find out very, very soon,” Jessa replies. Then she hangs up.

  A second later, my bedroom door flies open and Jessa and Amber storm in. Frick and Frack, who were napping on my bed, startle and streak out of the room. Frida whistles from where she’s perched on top of her cage. She loves visitors. “Hola, Bela!” she chirps.

  Jessa, who hates birds, shoots Frida a dirty look, but Amber points to herself and says, “Frida, say Amber. Am-ber.”

  “Hola, Bela!” Frida says, then launches into a few bars of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

  “You’re hopeless,” Amber tells Frida with a disappointed eye roll.

  “You didn’t pick the lock on the front door, I hope,” I say.

  “Nina let us in,” Jessa said, gesturing over her shoulder. Nina’s standing in the doorway, with Frick cradled in her arms like a baby, smirking at me.

  “Et tu, sister?”

  “Go to a party, Susannah,” she says. “It’ll be good for you.” Then she leaves.

  I almost call after her to stay—we hardly ever see each other, and I miss her sometimes. We used to have fun together. We were close once. We joined GAC together, a long time ago now. But she wouldn’t want to hang out with me and my friends, except maybe Amber, who she’s always liked.

  “Listen to your sister. She’s older than you, and therefore very wise,” Amber says. “You are going to this party, missy, and we are going to help you get ready.”

  She has a massive bag in her hands that clatters as she flings herself across my bed.

  “Jessa’s going to dress you, and I’m going to do your makeup,” she tells me. “Nothing outrageous, don’t give me that look. You have foundation, right? Mine won’t match you.”

  “What do you think?” I rarely wear makeup, and even when I do, it’s just mascara, maybe blush if I’m feeling sassy. I spend half of each day in the water, so what’s the point?

  She rolls off the bed. “I’ll ask Nina. She’ll have something we can borrow.”

  Jessa puts her hands on my shoulders and stares into my eyes.

  “Are you going to this party, Ramos?” she asks.

  “Are you guys going to make me miserable until I do?”

  “Susannah, we’re your friends.” For a second, Jessa sounds genuinely hurt, but then she grins. “Of course we will.”

  “Yeah,” I say with a sigh as she drags me over to my closet. “I’m going.”

  * * *

  Harry texted me the address of the party earlier in the week, but I don’t map it until the three of us are piling into Jessa’s car. I assume we’ll have to drive to Beaumont, since that’s where Harry lived before he transferred. But the party isn’t far from my house, which means Tucker goes to our school. I wonder if we’ve ever had a class together. Gilcrest has about four thousand students, so I doubt it.

  My parents think we’re getting dinner and going to a movie. I feel bad about lying, but they’d never agree to let me go to a party at the house of someone I don’t know. They’re barely comfortable with Jessa driving. Dad wanted to drop us off instead; it took twenty minutes to talk him out of it.

  “What’d you say this guy’s name was?” Jessa asks, backing into the street. “Trevor?”

  “Tucker,” I reply.

  “I don’t know any Tuckers, do you?”

  Amber and I shake our heads. The swim life is all-consuming. We pretty much don’t know anybody who’s not on the team.

  Tucker’s house is even smaller than mine, one of the squat three-bedroom ranch houses in the older part of town, but it’s hard to miss with all the cars crammed in the driveway and lining the street. Jessa double-parks in front of the house—the girl has, like, a hundred tickets; I don’t know how she still has her licen
se—and we make our way to the door.

  My palms are so sweaty I have to wipe them off on the hem of my dress. I think my makeup looks good, thanks to Amber, who stuck to her promise of not going overboard, but Jessa made me borrow the dress from Nina after she deemed my entire wardrobe “unacceptable for social occasions of any kind,” and it’s too short. I keep tugging the back to make sure it’s covering all my important parts.

  Getting dressed up for a guy feels weird. I’ve never done that before. I want Harry to think I’m pretty, but if he likes how I look tonight, in Nina’s clothes with Amber’s makeup on my face, will that mean he doesn’t like how I look without them? I’ll never be able to do this every day, and I don’t want to. But if he doesn’t like it, I’ll feel dumb and desperate.

  My mind spins out further with ever more apocalyptic scenarios: What if Harry isn’t here and then we’re stuck at some stranger’s party? Or worse, what if he is here and I make a fool of myself in front of him? The possibilities of self-humiliation are endless, really. I should go home.

  Amber grabs my arm. “I can see what’s going through your head all over your face. Cut it out. We’re going in.”

  Tucker’s house is even more cramped on the inside than it looks on the outside—the rooms are tiny, the hallway is narrow and the dark, oversize furniture is worn. An enormous TV takes up most of one entire wall in the living room, and the floor in front of it is littered with gaming consoles and controllers. Hip-hop blares from a giant subwoofer near the window. Harry mentioned Tucker’s mom, but there’s no sign that anyone but a teenage boy lives here. Even with a party going on, the place seems kind of lonely.

  There’s hardly any room to stand; people are stuffed in every corner of the place. Most of them have red Solo cups in their hands, which I’m sure do not contain soda. I don’t recognize anybody.

  “Kitchen,” Jessa says, pulling me by the hand through the front room.

  The closet-size kitchen is at capacity, but Jessa manages to thread us through the crowd. She bounces off to fetch us all something to drink, and Amber starts introducing herself to people she doesn’t know, as is her way. My shoes stick to the old-fashioned linoleum; someone must’ve spilled something. There’s a black trash bag slumped at my feet, overflowing with cups and cans.

  I scan the room for Harry, but he doesn’t seem to be here. I consider texting him, but will that make me seem overeager and clingy?

  “Susie! Susie, hey!”

  I turn to see Harry slipping through a knot of people near the doorway. When our eyes meet, I light up like a Fourth of July sparkler—I can’t help it. He’s beaming that megawatt smile at me, and I feel the electricity all the way down to my toes. I’ve never been like this around a guy before. It’s exciting. And terrifying.

  He looks great in a pair of dark jeans and a Pearl Jam T-shirt that seems soft and shows off his swimmer’s physique to maximum effect. If she were here, my mom would one hundred percent say he was “hunky,” after which I would die of embarrassment, but it’s true. His red-gold hair is shorter than it was yesterday, like maybe he got it cut this afternoon, and the lighter strands glow like the filaments in an antique light bulb.

  As he approaches, I admire the color of his eyes, which are the loveliest part of him; the blue of his shirt makes them look like pools of indigo ink.

  “You came!” he shouts over the music.

  He moves closer to me, like he’s going for a bear hug, but it turns into one of those awkward one-armed sideways hugs. Does he think a real hug would give me the wrong impression, or is there just not enough room to use both arms? Maybe Jessa and Amber are wrong about him liking me as more than a friend. It would make way more sense if he didn’t. Why won’t my hands stop sweating?

  “It’s great to see you,” he says.

  “You saw me yesterday!”

  Harry looks down at his shoes, a pair of battered old Chucks, but his smile doesn’t waver.

  “Yeah, well, it’s still nice. I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

  “Amber and Jessa brought me here,” I confess. I nearly said dragged, but I didn’t want him to take it the wrong way.

  He grins. “What do I owe them?”

  “A hundred and seventy-five dollars, before tax, and don’t forget to tip your kidnapper,” Jessa says, appearing at my elbow with three drinks balanced precariously in her hands—a beer, a bottle of water and a soda.

  “Worth every penny,” Harry says, taking the two cups. He hands me the beer.

  I shake my head. “I don’t drink.”

  “Me neither,” he says, switching my beer out for the soda.

  “Suit yourselves. I’m DD, so none for me, either.” Jessa cracks open her water.

  “I’ll just hold this for Amber,” Harry says. I smile at him.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” Amber says, emerging as if by magic out of a clump of strangers. She takes the beer from Harry. “Thank you, sir. That was very gallant of you.”

  “That’s me,” Harry says, bowing at the waist and flourishing his hand theatrically. “Gallant.”

  Amber taps her forehead. “It’s never too early to start studying for those SATs.”

  “Gallant is not an SAT word,” Jessa says with a sniff. She’s very intense about standardized testing. Her parents started enrolling her in prep classes back in eighth grade.

  “You look really nice,” Harry tells me. My chest cramps, and I realize I’m holding my breath. “But then, you always do.”

  “Right answer,” Amber says, punching his arm in a friendly way. She winces and shakes out her fist. “What are you made of, dude? Rocks?”

  “Petrified Red Vines, mostly,” I say. Harry laughs and pats his back pocket; there’s a half-empty pack of licorice sticking out of it.

  My friends look at each other like they’re about to abandon me.

  “We should—” Amber begins, but she’s cut off midsentence by the arrival of a white boy I don’t recognize. He flings his arm around Harry’s shoulders and sort of joggles him.

  “Hey, man, I lost you,” the boy says.

  “Well, now you’ve found me,” Harry replies with a good-natured roll of his eyes. The boy seems a bit buzzed. Harry shoots him a wary look, like he’s afraid his friend might say something to embarrass him. “Guys, this is Tucker. He goes to Gilcrest, too. His house, his party. Say hi, Tuck.”

  “Hi,” Tucker says. Harry introduces us, but Tucker barely feigns interest. He came over here for a reason, and he’s laser focused on that.

  “Harry, the people are demanding a show,” Tucker tells him, punching his arm repeatedly. Okay, maybe he’s more than buzzed. Tucker’s a skinny guy with a medium build, so I doubt it hurts, but Harry pulls away and holds up a hand to fend him off.

  “Not tonight, man,” he says. He gives me an apologetic smile.

  Tucker grabs Harry by both shoulders. “But the people, Matthews. Think of the people.”

  Harry laughs. I can tell he’s uncomfortable, maybe a little nervous. I want to pull him into a quiet corner, away from everyone, which is probably what a more confident girl would do, but I just stand there feeling self-conscious. What are they even talking about?

  “The people are going to have to learn to deal with disappointment,” he says.

  “Really? I thought you’d do it just to impress this one.” Tucker angles his head at me.

  I narrow my eyes at him as my face grows hot. Between the temperature and the embarrassment, I bet I’m red as a stop sign right now.

  Harry glares at Tucker. Something about the way they’re interacting reminds me of me and Nina. Tucker’s getting under Harry’s skin in the way only siblings or longtime friends can. “More like horrify her. I’m not doing it.”

  “Doing what?” I ask.

  “You’ll see,” Tucker says with a wink.

  “No, she w
on’t,” Harry shoots back, giving Tucker a light shove. To me, he says, “It’s stupid.”

  “I want to see it now, whatever it is,” Jessa says, crossing her fingers. “Please be a strip show.”

  “Me too, me too!” Amber agrees. “Although I’m cool if you keep your clothes on.”

  Tucker turns to me. “What about you, Susanne? Don’t you want to see the Flow?”

  “It’s Susannah,” I say. How hard is it to remember a name you heard three seconds ago? “And I don’t know what the Flow is.”

  “Believe me, it’s great,” Tucker says, ignoring Harry’s angry stare.

  “Okay, sure. Let’s see it.” I give Harry an encouraging smile. Tucker’s not giving up. Maybe if Harry does what he wants, he’ll leave us alone.

  “Fine,” he says with a world-weary sigh. “Let’s go prep the stage.”

  “The stage? What is happening right now?” I mutter as they walk away. Tucker throws his arm around Harry’s shoulders again, but Harry shakes him off gently.

  Amber shrugs, but Jessa’s so preoccupied with a text she just got that I don’t think she heard me.

  “You. Guys.” She looks up from her phone, wide-eyed. “Remember Kara Walker?”

  “Sure,” Amber says.

  “What about her?” I ask.

  Kara is a few years older than us, one of the best swimmers Dave’s ever coached at GAC. She swims for Stanford, and last year at the NCAA Championships she placed first in all of her events except one. I’ve always looked up to her.

  “She’s pregnant. Apparently, it’s a boy. Mazel tov, I guess,” Jessa murmurs. She returns the text so fast I’m surprised she doesn’t singe her fingertips. “Lucy says Kara met a guy at Stanford and they started going out and now, buh-buh-boom—bun in the oven.”

  “How?” I sputter.

  “Don’t make me explain where babies come from. My version does not involve storks.”

  “I mean, she’s supposed to go to the Olympics. Everyone had her pegged for a multigold contender! She can’t train if she’s pregnant, and she can’t go to the Olympics if she doesn’t train.”