Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  But in not that much time, Harry has staked out some prime real estate in my heart, too. I didn’t think I had space in me to love more than a handful of family and friends on top of the dream that has defined me since I was a kid. It’s taken me longer than it should have to realize the obvious: I have to make space. If we’re going to be together, swimming can’t be the only thing I care about. It can’t be all about me anymore.

  Harry’s been trying so hard not to take up more room than necessary. Make it easy, demand no sacrifices, create no conflict. Looking back at the time since we met, I can see him struggling, desperate to keep himself small enough to clear the imaginary height bar hanging over the entrance to my life, and it makes me feel heavy with sadness, like my body is filled with sand. It’s not just his imagination that put that barrier there—it’s mine, too. I can’t expect him to wedge himself around what I need and what matters to me. What he needs is just as important.

  “I’m not breaking up with you,” I say. He looks like he doesn’t believe me.

  “You should think about things before you say that.”

  “I’ve thought about it, and it turns out you’re my favorite person in the whole world.”

  Harry’s signature sunny grin appears for the first time in this conversation, and I’m so happy to see it I’m not even bothered by the certain knowledge he’s about to make fun of me.

  “I’m your favorite person? Why?” he asks, incredulous.

  “Shut up, you know why. You’re sweet and you’re smart and you’re hot and you’re a really good swimmer, and—”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” His smile turns sly. “You think I’m hot?”

  I bury my face in my hands. Harry has a vain streak. There’ll be no living with him after this.

  “I take it back!” I mutter. “You’re hideous. An ogre. I can’t bear to be seen with you in public.”

  “Nope, no take-backs.” He chuckles. “You said it, Susie. I always suspected, but now you’ve confirmed it. I’m hot. So this is what it feels like.”

  I laugh. There’s no way he doesn’t know how attractive he is, and if he didn’t before, surely the fact that I can’t keep my hands off him must’ve offered up some hint. But Harry’s nothing if not hyperaware of what other people think of him. He’s only teasing me.

  Silence creeps over us as the moment fades, the joke dissipating like the fog of warm breath in the cold morning air. I can see his mood rapidly disintegrating. He needs more reassurance than I’ve given him. But I’m afraid to say something that makes his discomfort, his fear, any worse.

  “You’re my favorite person in the whole world, too,” he says. “But I’m a mess.”

  His eyes are wet. If he were jealous, or angry, or anxious, I think I’d know how to calm him. But this despair is beyond me.

  “You’re not a mess,” I say. “It kills me to think you believe that.”

  “I swear I wasn’t going to keep this from you forever,” he says. “But I was hoping to, I don’t know, ease you into it? It’s kind of a long story.”

  “I like long stories,” I tell him. “I read the entire Harry Potter series every year.”

  Harry laughs. “Yes, my life is exactly like Harry Potter, except with less magic and more meds. Although I guess that’s its own kind of magic.”

  “What kind of meds? Is that too personal a question?”

  “It’s fine.” He ticks them off his fingers. “I’m on a mood stabilizer, and Prozac, which you’ve probably heard of—it’s an antidepressant. I also take Xanax for anxiety, and Ambien to help me sleep when I need it. Oh, and fish oil and vitamin B complex—my mom makes me take those. I don’t drink at all, but you know that. Alcohol negates the effects of the medication. Everything except the vitamins comes with some nasty side effects, but it’s worth it to me.”

  “What kind of side effects?” I ask.

  “Migraines,” he says. “Awful, brain-splitting headaches—that’s the Prozac, so I’ve been talking to my doctor about a possible alternative. Hair loss, insomnia, dizziness, nausea, chronic thirst...the whole fun pack. I didn’t skip the Santa Clara meet because I had the flu. I stayed home because my doctor adjusted my doses and my body didn’t react well. I was vomiting, like, a lot. Felt like the flu.”

  “Who else knows?” I ask.

  “My parents and Tucker,” he says. “The school, because some of my medication needs to be administered during the day. Oh, and Dave. When I joined GAC, I had to fill out all these health forms, and tell them what medication I’m taking. I started swimming because my therapist said the exercise could help calm and focus me. And it has helped. When I’m swimming, all the thoughts that spin through my mind quiet down for a while. But I try not to get too intense about it because I tend to fixate on stuff. I need to be able to tell the difference between a hypomanic episode and an amazing week in the pool.”

  “Is that why you don’t push yourself in races?” I ask.

  He nods. “My doctor thinks that’s unnecessary. But I don’t know. Hypomania is sort of a trickster. It can feel great. You have lots of energy and feel really productive and excited, but you also feel sort of invincible, which can lead to poor choices. I want to stay on the safe side. But Dr. Porter doesn’t think I should hold myself back from excelling at something I’m good at.”

  “I’m not a doctor,” I say, “but it’s obvious you could be swimming so much faster than you do.”

  “I know. Dave hates it. He’s constantly lecturing me about it, as you know.”

  “You said it wasn’t a cure, the medication. How do you feel on it?”

  “Better than I felt without it. I don’t know what it’s like to not need medication, so I can’t say how it compares, but nothing has ever been a perfect fit. I still experience periods of depression, but they’re shorter and less severe when I’m on the medication.

  “My parents and I worked for months with my doctors to figure out what worked for me. I tried so many drugs and doses. Some stuff wasn’t great. In the beginning, I was on an antidepressant that made me feel tired and separated from the world, like I was underwater. I don’t take it anymore, obviously. We found something else that was better.

  “I’d never be able to function in the world the way I want to without those drugs,” he says. “They save my life, every day. I don’t know why Jeremy doesn’t take them.” At my confused look, he adds, “My bio dad.”

  “Is he bipolar, too?”

  Harry scrubs his fingers through his hair. “Yeah. My mom met him when she was super young and she’s always saying things like, ‘If I knew then what we know now, maybe I could’ve helped him.’ But she didn’t know, and he didn’t, either. By the time they figured it out, they’d split up.

  “Jeremy’s the reason she realized what was going on with me, though,” he continues. “Otherwise, I probably would’ve been diagnosed with ADHD or something. The longer bipolar disorder goes untreated, the worse it gets. Mom and Bruce fought to get me the help I needed.”

  “Do you still see Jeremy?” I ask.

  “No,” Harry says. “He lives with his parents, so I used to see him when I visited them, but he’s inconsistent with his medication and doesn’t take care of his mental health. It got to the point where my mom didn’t feel comfortable sending me over there when he was around. Now if I want to see my grandparents I meet them somewhere, or they come over to our house.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “It used to. When I was young, before my mom met Bruce, I missed Jeremy. I didn’t understand what was going on. My dad was around all the time and then he wasn’t. I just wanted him to come home. Most of my memories of him from that time are great actually. He was such a fun dad. But then I got older and my mom could explain things to me, or I saw them for myself, and I stopped wishing for that. Bruce isn’t a replacement for Jeremy, but he’s been a real father to
me. It’s why I took his last name.”

  He takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly.

  “I think about Jeremy all the time. I know what he’s going through, what it’s like to be born bipolar and not know why you’re feeling a certain way. It’s luck that I was diagnosed young and he wasn’t. It makes a big difference. But he has options and he doesn’t use them. It’s hard for me to relate to that. And he was shitty to my mom, and he’s shitty to my grandparents, and he’s been shitty to me, and there’s no way for me to know if that’s the bipolar, which is not his fault, or if he’s a shitty guy who happens to be bipolar.”

  Harry smiles at me, but it’s a sad smile, nothing like one of his lightning-bolt grins.

  “I’m not ashamed of having bipolar,” he says. “But every time I consider telling someone, I remember that, once someone knows, I’ll have to keep convincing them that I’m okay. Any time I’m upset or unhappy or angry, I’m afraid people will assume it’s a symptom instead of what I happen to be feeling. You’re always going to worry about me now. I liked it so much better when you didn’t.”

  “I can’t promise I won’t worry,” I tell him. “It feels like I worry about everything, all the time.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Harry says with a sigh.

  “But nothing will change how I feel about you,” I say.

  “Don’t treat me any differently, okay? I’m the same person I was the day you met me. You just know me a little bit better now.”

  He glances at the clock. “Oh, shit! We’re late. Why are you not worried about this?”

  “Because you’re more important,” I tell him. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay,” he says with conviction. He takes my hand. “Are we okay, though?”

  “More than okay,” I tell him. “I’m really glad you told me, Harry.”

  Harry seems relieved. “I feel better now that you know.” Then he hesitates, like he wants to say something else, but he seems to decide against it.

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me,” I say, giving his hand an encouraging squeeze.

  “It’s nothing,” he says, opening the door. “We have to go—Dave’s going to kill us.”

  “Come on. You have literally never cared about being late before. You can say it.”

  He laughs. “No!”

  “Say it,” I command in a low, stern voice.

  “You do not give up, do you?” He shakes his head. “This is going to sound so cheesy. What you said before, about how I saw all the stuff you were trying to hide? I don’t think I saw it so much as I recognized it. Which I guess is kind of the same thing, but it feels different to me.”

  “You’ve said that before. But I don’t really know what you mean.”

  “I work so hard in therapy and with my medication and swimming and sobriety and, you know, life, to keep my brain in check,” Harry continues. “It’s sort of like what you do with your training. You bust your ass to succeed even with the odds stacked against you and I admire that. I feel that. Because that’s what I’m trying to do, too. Every day. I think that’s why I liked you so much, right from the beginning. I mean, it’s one of the reasons. I also thought you were hot.”

  A smile tugs at my lips. It’s nice to hear that Harry admires me—I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone’s approval so badly. And the thought of someone seeing my drive, my ambition, and not dismissing it or being repulsed by it is intoxicating.

  But more than that, it’s good to hear him say out loud what I know in my bones is true: we’re fighting very different battles, but at the core we’re the same. Boats against the current, beating on in spite of it all.

  “What?” Harry asks. “Did I say something funny?”

  I press closer to him. I’m pretty much in his lap at this point, which is not a bad place to be. I kiss him behind his earlobe, which sends a shiver down his spine.

  “You really think I’m hot?” I joke.

  Harry laughs—an explosive, full-bodied, genuinely happy laugh—and for the moment I feel like we actually are going to be okay.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  114 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  “YOU GUYS ARE such chickens,” Jessa says. “How many times have you done this? A thousand? Someone get in the damn tub.”

  “But it’s so cold!” Amber complains. She’s already shivering, even though she’s wearing a sweatshirt and the thermostat in our room is dialed up to about eighty.

  “Go on, Soos, get in,” Jessa says, pushing me toward the bathtub.

  I hang back. “How come I have to go first? If you’re so brave, you go.”

  “I get to go last because I got the ice,” Jessa says.

  We could argue about this forever, but Jessa’s not budging, and Amber refuses to take off her hoodie. I’m not even sure she’s wearing a suit under there.

  I sigh. “All right. You win, Jess.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Jessa says with a grin, swatting me on the butt as I wriggle out of my leggings and drop my T-shirt on the floor. I look at the tub full of ice water and shudder. The swimsuit I’m wearing will do precisely nothing to keep me warm.

  But there’s not much you can do to make an ice bath not suck. The only way out is through—eight minutes if you can stand it.

  I lower myself into the water quickly. The cold hits hard, like a punch to the stomach, knocking the air right out of my lungs. The whole point of an ice bath is to speed recovery after hard training sessions, but when you’re in one, it’s pure torture.

  My teeth are chattering so hard it feels like they might break, and after a few minutes I can’t feel my toes. Amber and Jessa try to distract me with cat videos and gossip, but every second in the tub feels like an eternity. I look at the timer on my phone. It’s only been three minutes. I make a low, keening noise—half sob, half groan—but it doesn’t help.

  “Susie? Are you okay? The door was propped, and I heard you—”

  Harry pokes his head through the bathroom door. When he sees what’s happening, he laughs.

  “I wondered what that noise was,” he says. “I thought you were crying. Or maybe giving birth.”

  He leans against the doorjamb and snaps a photo of me on his phone.

  “Put that on the internet and I will end you,” I say.

  “But you’re making such a great face!”

  He turns his phone to show me the picture. I look constipated.

  “Delete it,” I growl. “Or I will never speak to you again.”

  Harry pouts. “Fine. But it’d make a great new profile pic if you ask me.”

  “You want to get in here?” I ask. My legs feel like they’re on fire.

  “Is that an invitation?” he asks with a wink.

  “Gross,” Jessa says, pretending to gag. “Keep it in your pants, dude.”

  “You want to go down to the beach when you’re done tormenting yourself?” Harry asks me.

  He’s practically bouncing he’s so happy—it’s the end of February, but we’re in Corpus Christi for GAC training camp, and sun-loving Harry is effervescent with joy at escaping the cruel Midwestern winter at home for the warmth of a Texas spring. There’s a beach two blocks from our hotel, and he’s been dying to go since we got here yesterday, but there hasn’t been time until now.

  I’m not a beach person. I like my water contained, where I can keep an eye on it at all times, not infinite and wild and full of hidden riptides that can carry you away from the shore in a blink.

  I’ll do anything to get out of this ice bath, though.

  “Yes! Give me three minutes to change,” I say, lifting myself out of the water at the exact moment my timer goes off. My legs are so numb that I stumble as I get out of the tub. Jessa catches me.

  “You’re shaking,” Amber says. “You stayed in there too long.”
<
br />   I rub my thighs to wake them up. “I’m c-c-cold!”

  “Maybe you should sit down,” she suggests.

  Harry takes off his fleece and spreads it open.

  “Come here, Susie,” he says.

  I step in close and he wraps me up in his jacket. It’s warm from his body and smells like him. I let myself be held until the shivers subside.

  “There you go,” he says in my ear. I smile against his shoulder. “All good?”

  I nod. “Three minutes,” I say, running out into the room to grab a set of dry clothes.

  “I’m starting the timer!” he calls after me.

  When I’m dressed, we head over to Beth’s hotel room to check out. This trip is unlike any I’ve ever been on. When I was at my best, there was always someone watching me, guiding me, protecting me—parents, coaches, older teammates. Now that I’m sixteen and prepping for Trials, I have more freedom. It’s dizzying sometimes, how fast things are changing, how much more real it all feels this time around. The pressure increases every single day.

  But there are perks, like getting to go to the beach with your boyfriend without a chaperone. Harry takes my hand as I knock on Beth’s door. I smile at him and think, I’m so freaking lucky.

  “Curfew is nine-thirty,” Beth reminds us, handing me the sign-out clipboard. “Lights out at ten.”

  “We know,” I say. “We’ll be on time.”

  “Don’t go too far. Be safe. Keep your phone on,” Beth says. “And have fun.”

  “That’s the plan,” Harry tells her, grinning. “We’re going to the beach.”

  Beth looks doubtful. “I know it’s warmer than home, but the water will be too cold to swim in.”

  Harry glances at me. “I think we’ve probably had enough swimming for one day?”

  “Actually, I was thinking we could get in a few more hours,” I say. “Open water will be a nice change of pace.”