Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  “You’re going to do great,” he tells me. For a second, the look on his face makes me think he might say something else, but instead he pulls me in for a one-armed hug. I’m probably imagining it, but he sounds sort of choked up as he says again, “You’re going to do great.”

  I wonder what he would think if he knew Beth was here, but of course I do not tell him.

  I head to the ready room in the main pool, where I sit in my GAC parka with a pair of noise-canceling headphones on, blaring my pump-up music and staring at a nearby television without really watching the other heats. Darby Phillips is sitting ten feet away from me doing the same thing, but I avoid looking at her. I don’t want to think about my competition.

  I close my eyes and visualize the race to come—my pacing, my stroke, my breaths, my turns, over and over again until I feel breathless with imagined exertion.

  When they call my heat, I get up and follow the other nine swimmers to the door, where we arrange ourselves in a line based on seed order. My qualifying time puts me in lane two—not exactly the highly coveted center of the pool, but at least I won’t be riding the gutter.

  As we file out onto the deck, the spectators on either side of the entrance lean over the railings with their hands outstretched. I high-five as many as I can, especially the little girls, feeling the sudden thrill of celebrity like a jolt of electricity. I smile at the cameras and wave to the crowd, then head to my lane and shuck my parka and warm-up clothes. I adjust my goggles, my cap, my shoulders, swing my arms in wide circles and jump to get my blood pumping. All those old rituals, still constant after all this time.

  The whistle blows and I climb onto the block. At “Take your mark,” I bend to grab the front of the block with my fingers and fill my lungs with as much air as they can hold. For a half second, I close my eyes and envision myself touching the wall. The horn sounds and I dive, hitting the water with the force of a bullet and disappearing beneath the surface.

  It’s incredible, how fast I feel in this pool. Out of the corner of my eye I notice the underwater cameras darting along their tracks. Every time I lift my head out of the water, I hear the roar of the crowd, and the bright lights flash across my field of vision. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to being a rock star on stage at the Staples Center or a starting quarterback at Soldier Field, and the buzz it gives me is almost intoxicating.

  But Beth and I talked about this. I know it’s an illusion. I can’t trust what I’m seeing and hearing, or—even worse—let it influence what I’m feeling. The only thing I can rely on is the body knowledge I’ve built up over the course of the last year, my sixth sense, my north star, so I let it guide me through all four strokes until the last twenty-five meters, when I abandon all sense and break like mad for the finish. After punching the time pad, I glance frantically at the scoreboard.

  I clock in at almost a full second off my qualifying time and third in my heat, with one heat left to go. A good time, but not what I was looking for, and quite possibly too slow to earn me a place in the semis. I won’t know until after the last heat if I’ve made it, but Darby Phillips is in that heat, and so are three of the best swimmers in the country.

  Back in the ready room, I grab my phone and join the crowd of swimmers watching the next race. I have a text from Beth: 6th overall coming out of that heat. You’re in.

  My vision swims and I turn away from the television. I feel like I’m going to collapse. Even if all ten swimmers in the heat happening right now finish with times faster than me, I’m going to the semifinals, but I’ll be seeded dead last.

  For a fraction of a second, I’m disappointed. Accepting a dignified defeat seems easier right now than having to claw my way past a dozen superstars just to earn a place in the finals, only to have to do it all over again for an Olympic berth. What if I’m not up to it?

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I whisper to myself. I don’t want a consolation prize. I want to go to the Olympics. I turn back to the TV to catch the final seconds of heat twelve and gasp audibly in astonished relief when I see the times. I’m not going into the semis seeded sixteenth.

  I’m going in seeded ninth.

  * * *

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Beth?”

  Dave’s enraged outburst carries all the way down the hall. From where I’m standing, I can see him and Beth facing off outside the entrance to the warm-up pool locker room. I want to turn around and find another way onto the deck, but this isn’t something I can run from.

  “Can you guys not fight right now?” I ask. “This is kind of a big day for me.”

  They turn to look at me, all kitted up in my cap and goggles, GAC sweats and parka, swim bag slung over my shoulder. I wonder how I must look to them, what they see in me, and it occurs to me that every coach must pour their own dreams into their most promising swimmers, even if only a little.

  But I refuse to be a vessel for anyone’s dreams but my own. If they want to continue their petty squabbling, they can do it far, far away from me.

  Dave rounds on Beth. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, jaw clenched, arms folded across his broad chest. “I fired you.”

  “I’m not here for you, or for GAC,” Beth replies. “I’m here for Susannah.”

  “Yeah, well, Susannah doesn’t need you,” Dave says. “I’ve been her coach since she was a guppy. I made her a world champion. We were doing fine before you came along.”

  “No, we weren’t,” I interject. He glares at me. “Come on, Dave, we weren’t! Beth helped me get here. I’m not going to let you pretend that’s not true. If you want her to leave, then you can, too.”

  Dave stares at me, trying to figure out how serious I am, but he must realize how much I’ve changed, how little he really knows me now. I’m not the girl he put on that winner’s pedestal at Budapest. I’m something else. Something different. A sword melted down and newly forged.

  He throws his hands up in defeat. “Okay. If that’s what you want, Susannah. I’m not going to waste time fighting about this when you’ve only got a couple of hours before the semis. But this doesn’t change anything. You’re still fired, Beth.”

  “And I still quit, Dave,” Beth says, looking relaxed and pleased.

  He points at me. “I’ll see you on deck in ten minutes.”

  “So will I!” Beth calls after him.

  “This is promising,” I mutter, hitching my bag up on my shoulder. Maybe this was a stupid idea. Having them bicker on deck won’t be much of an improvement over having them bicker in the hallway.

  Beth shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it, Susannah. He won’t get into it with me in front of all those other swimmers and coaches. And besides, Dave’s no fool—he knows you’re here because of what we were able to do together. He’s not going to let his pride get in the way of that.”

  “Yeah, right,” I reply, unconvinced.

  “Dave’s number one goal is sending a GAC swimmer to the Olympics,” Beth says. “Nothing matters to him more, and you’re not his only iron in the fire. He’ll leave us alone.”

  I should’ve learned a long time ago not to doubt Beth. She’s right about Dave; he stands back and lets Beth take me through my warm-up. It feels so good to swim for her again, like slipping in the final piece of a puzzle. When it’s time for me to go to the ready room, they walk me there together, and it makes me feel calmer, watching them pretend to tolerate each other for my sake, like it’s a sign that the old me and the new me can coexist.

  Or maybe I’m looking for omens in everything to escape the bruising randomness of fate. Whatever it is, it seems to be its own brand of magic. I crush it in the semifinals, squeaking through to the finals seeded eighth with a time that’s faster than my prelim time and my qualifying time, a long-course personal best for me.

  Dave agrees to let Beth stick around through the finals. I’m going to need all the
help I can get, swimming in one of the farthest lanes, against seven women who could easily make it to the Olympics, some of whom have already qualified for Team USA.

  I wonder how much experience they have with outside smoke.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  US Olympic Team Trials—Day 4

  SWIMMING IS A fairly anonymous sport as far as the public is concerned, but there’s a pageantry to Trials that makes me feel like everyone in the country is paying attention. I make the mistake of watching recap coverage of yesterday’s races. The media is trumpeting me as the dark horse of this year’s Trials. Hastily assembled profiles of me revolve around my quick rise and quicker fall, then my determined climb back to elite status. It’s embarrassing, frankly, and it makes me wish finals were in the morning, so we could get it over with. But no. A race like this needs to be shown in prime time.

  At a loss for how to spend the time leading up to the race, I let Jessa talk me into getting a massage in the morning, provided gratis by USA Swimming, and take a walk with my parents along the riverfront. Mom and Dad are so excited for tonight’s race they’re practically vibrating, but Nina, who can always be trusted to provide a hard dose of reality, is more circumspect about the whole thing.

  “Seeded eighth against the country’s best swimmers in this event?” she says, snatching the water bottle from my hand and taking a big sip. “Damn, sis. That sounds tough. What’s your fallback plan?”

  Later, at the warm-up pool, I’m floating at the end of the lane when Dave bends down to talk to me privately. He’s been here the whole time, but he let Beth run me through a light workout without interfering. Beth stepped out to go to the bathroom, so I guess he noticed his chance and went for it.

  “How’s all the attention feel?” he asks. “I assume you watched the coverage last night.”

  “Yeah,” I say, playing with the straps of my goggles. “It’s a lot of pressure I wasn’t expecting.”

  “You know,” he says, “Beth and I don’t agree on much.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m trying to have a heart-to-heart with you, and you’re ruining it,” he scolds me.

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Beth and I don’t agree on much, but something she said about you once stayed with me. She said that some swimmers are like goldfish: the bigger their bowl is, the larger they grow. She thought you had enough talent to be huge, we just needed to give you room to prove it. Well, this is one big bowl, Susannah.” He smiles. “Time to see if she was right.”

  * * *

  Tonight, in the ready room, it’s like déjà vu. Same suit, same music blaring through my headphones, several of the same people milling around, waiting to be called for their race. But the air in here is thick with a new tension, and a sort of nervous energy that’s hard to define. I feel as if I can see everyone’s thoughts spiraling through the air like threads cast from a spool, their mantras and doubts, fears and hopes. I wonder if they can see mine.

  None of us knows what’s going to happen out there. So many races have been won and lost in this pool already. Shoe-ins have triumphed and slunk home in defeat, up-and-comers have toppled icons and faded into obscurity. But there haven’t been any real surprises yet. We’re all aiming for one of those two Olympic spots, but I don’t just want to win. I want to take their breath away.

  When I step up to the block, a calmness like none I’ve ever known before settles over me like a light blanket. There’s a peculiar feeling in my shoulders—not pain, but rather a slight, comforting weight, as though fate has settled its hands on me. It feels like a benediction, a sign of what I’ve suspected since the prelims: that my destiny has finally caught up with me. Now that we’re together again, my dream is ripe for the plucking.

  I am going to the Olympics.

  The air is alive with thousands of voices murmuring speculatively in the vast cathedral of the natatorium, but in my head, everything is quiet. I look around, mapping these last seconds of possibility with clear eyes: the lights and the cameras, the coaches and the crowd. Judges take their places at either end of each lane, on a sharp lookout for infractions. The water ripples in slow motion beneath me, calling to me in a language only we share. Come and find yourself here, I imagine it saying.

  “Take your mark,” the announcer commands over the loudspeaker.

  A sudden hush cascades through the arena. I bend and take the block in hand, running the pads of my thumbs over the rough nonslip coating as I remember the way Harry used to scratch his palms up before a big race. It always struck me as a strange ritual, the swimming version of an old wives’ tale, for someone who wasn’t superstitious and didn’t usually swim to win. Maybe he wanted it more than even he thought.

  I’m here for both of us. I hope he’s watching.

  * * *

  Even as my heart tells me that I’m going to climb out of this pool an Olympian, my head can’t help but tally up the strikes against me. I’m coming into this event with the slowest time of the pack by half a second, which in a race this short is a lot. My position out in the hinterlands of lane eight is one of the two worst in the pool. I have a strong IM overall, but I don’t have a stroke specialty to give me an edge, not like Caitlin Pierce’s sleek breaststroke or Darby Phillips’s powerhouse back.

  And then, of course, there’s my shoulder.

  I’m the youngest swimmer in the pool, which seems like an advantage until you factor in the combined experience of my rivals—how many international meets they’ve competed in, how every one of them has a box full of records and championships under her bed. I’m not swimming against my peers; I’m like a mortal who somehow wandered up a cliff side to Mount Olympus and is looking for a place to sit among the gods.

  It was like that at Worlds in Budapest, too, but back then I was too young to grasp it fully. Now that I can see what I’m up against, I’m glad I’ve always had my head underwater, too self-absorbed and stubborn to take in what was going on around me. If I had known, really known, what it would mean to be here—not just what it would require or cost, but how disorienting and scary it would be to reach the summit only to have nothing steady to hold on to at the top—I’m not sure I would’ve had the guts to try.

  But all of these thoughts dissolve the instant the water touches my skin. So many times, in the past two years, no matter the result at the end, my body has felt heavy and cumbersome in the water, but today I’m a feather coasting on a current of air, a particle of light shooting through the vacuum of space. My arms sail forward like wings, then pull back again, pushing me forward in the strong and steady rhythm of the butterfly. The ease of it is exquisite, the lack of strain or struggle, but I hardly have time to marvel at how good it feels before the first fifty meters are over and I’m into the backstroke.

  Everything is going so fast I can’t manage complete thoughts, only fragments that zip through my mind before disappearing. I remember Harry standing over me in the JCC pool, telling me to brush my ear with my bicep to keep my bad shoulder from pushing my stroke wide. Sharp shocks of pain telegraph down my arm, but I’m not giving in to them, not here, not now. I’ll cut the whole damn thing off after this if it can hold out for two more laps.

  The water churns around me with the fury of a sea in a storm, obscuring my vision so thoroughly I miss the flags at the fifteen. Instinct takes over and I flip just in time to get a strong push off the wall.

  I immediately feel a shift as I switch into the breaststroke. Never my favorite, the breaststroke is a place where I shine only if you’re going by technicalities. My form is good, my execution nearly perfect, but there’s something bloodless about the way I swim the breaststroke that I’ve never been able to change. Even now, in the most important moment of my life, the spark that animated me through the backstroke and the butterfly gutters and dies. The lightness I felt in the first two laps is gone; my limbs feel thick and rubbery. I try not to panic,
but I can feel myself thrashing, and in the breaststroke that will sink you—it’s suddenly as if I’m not moving at all.

  Water doesn’t fight, water flows, I tell myself, clinging desperately to the thought like a fallen climber scrambling for purchase on a rocky cliff. I try to relax my limbs. Be like the water. Arms like water, hips like water, legs like water, breath like water.

  A wail rises up inside of me, pressing against my ribs until I have to let it out. I scream into the water, lunging for every last foot as all the shitty things I’ve ever thought about myself cycle through my brain. You can’t do this. You never could. You should give up.

  I shove those thoughts away, rejecting their premise: I can do this and I am not going to give up. I’m too close. It’s too possible. I’m going to gut this out to the finish.

  A split second later, I hit the wall and escape into the refuge of freestyle.

  Pace yourself on this one, I imagine Beth saying as I come out of my streamline. Don’t blow all your reserves.

  I resist the urge to give everything I have right away, pushing back against the illusion that a burst of speed will last me the whole fifty meters. I haven’t checked my peripherals once to gauge the position of my competition; I can’t spare the energy or the brain space. I can only trust what I feel: that I’m poised for a win, and all that’s left for me to do is reach out and grab it.

  With twenty meters left, I make my final charge. It took me four long years to get here, thousands of laps up and down the pool, hundreds of early mornings and late nights and long flights. It was hard and it was hopeless for so long, full of agony and despair. There were times when it felt literally impossible to go on, and equally impossible to quit. I pour everything I have into this last twenty meters—not for Dave, or Beth, or my parents, or even for Harry. I do it for me.