Surviving High School

by Doty, M.

“So why aren’t there any new ones?” asked Emily.

  “Let’s just say I’ve seen where that path leads, and I don’t want to go there.”

  Emily picked up another trophy and said, “I don’t understand.”

  Ben ran a hand through his hair and stared at the floor, lost for words for the first time since Emily had met him. Finally he said, “It’s like that one quote—I don’t know exactly how it goes—something like, ‘What’s the point of gaining the world if you lose your soul?’ Or, ‘What’s the point of success if it means you have to spend your whole life unhappy?’ ”

  Emily blew a sheen of dust off another trophy. It read: CALIFORNIA MATH OLYMPIAD, WINNER, PRE-CALC DIVISION, 9TH-GRADE DIVISION. The dust filled her nostrils, and she coughed a few times before backing away from the trophy shelf.

  “I get what you’re saying,” she answered, thinking over his words carefully. “But I’m not sure it makes sense. Like, success and fun don’t have to be opposites, right? And what’s the fun in doing nothing but having fun? Wait, that doesn’t quite sound right. I guess what I mean is, wouldn’t you get bored after a while?”

  “Constantly,” said Ben, taking a step toward her. “Except for right now. For the first time in a while, I’m not bored at all.”

  He took another step. He was only inches from her, close enough that if he leaned forward a few more inches they’d touch.

  “Emily, I—”

  “Be-en! Be-en!” a voice called from down the hall. Ben’s eyes went wide, and he tiptoed to the door, closing it as quietly as possible.

  “Be-en!”

  Emily recognized that voice. Dominique. Ben locked his door and put a finger to his lips. Footsteps approached, and a second later a loud knocking reverberated through the room.

  “Ben!” shouted Dominique, slurring slightly. “I know you’re in there! Let me in so we can pla-ay!”

  Ben cringed as a second round of knocking began.

  “She’s kind of relentless, isn’t she?” he whispered. “I’m not quite sure what Spencer sees in her. If he doesn’t hook up with that girl soon and get her out of my hair, I’m going to have to stop inviting her to parties.”

  “Most guys would be flattered to have Dominique chasing after them,” Emily whispered.

  “I’m not most guys.”

  A small burst of joy filled Emily’s chest. He really didn’t like Dominique! In fact, it seemed like Ben wanted nothing to do with her. It wasn’t as good as finding out definitively that he liked Emily, but it did give her a certain guilty happiness. What was that SAT word she’d learned for taking delight in an enemy’s unhappiness? Schadenfreude? She’d have to look that up when she got home.

  Ben walked over to a sliding glass door with a small balcony on the other side. He opened the door and stepped out. She walked up next to him and looked down, where, fifteen feet below, the swimming pool shimmered in the moonlight. At the far end, a crowd of the Never Have I Ever players, including Spencer and Samantha, had stripped down to their underwear and were splashing each other and laughing.

  “Be-en! Don’t you want to at least see my dress?” shouted Dominique from behind them.

  The night air blew cold against Emily’s legs.

  “Only one way out,” said Ben as he started taking off his socks. “Know any sweet dives?”

  Emily shook her head as Ben removed his shirt to reveal a thin yet muscular body.

  “I’m a swimmer,” Emily said. “Not a diver.”

  “Ben!” shouted Spencer from below. “Do a cannonball!” The rest of the crowd cheered and shouted Ben’s name.

  Emily tried to look away as he stripped down to his boxers. She ended up watching the far wall, where his projection pulled off its pajama bottoms and swung them playfully over its head several times while the crowd cheered.

  “Right. Maybe just a standard flip for me,” said Ben as he climbed over the edge of the balcony.

  The crowd began to chant.

  “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

  Emily started to say, “This doesn’t seem very sa—” But before she could finish her sentence, Ben was gone, flying through the air. He did a graceless flip and a half before landing in a near belly flop down below. The crowd exploded in applause.

  A few seconds later, Ben surfaced and looked up at Emily.

  “It’s really nice in here!” he shouted. “You should come down!” He looked back at his friends and started to chant, “Em-i-ly! Em-i-ly!”

  The others joined in. “Em-i-ly! Em-i-ly!”

  “I don’t have a suit!” she shouted at them, but the crowd only chanted louder.

  “It’s like that old song!” shouted Ben. “Come as you are!”

  Emily looked down at her dress. She imagined the pool water soaking through the fabric and how much it would weigh as she tried to surface, how stupid she’d look with it fluttering around her on the way down, like a girlie pink-and-white parachute.

  “Em-i-ly! Em-i-ly!”

  She imagined what Ben would think of her if she didn’t jump. Then she pictured opening the door to face a belligerent Dominique, and a shiver ran through her. She took off her shoes and swung her legs over the balcony. Ben looked up at her and smiled.

  “I don’t have any spare clothes!” she shouted at him.

  “You can borrow some of mine!”

  “We won’t be able to get back into your room!” she warned.

  “I’ll pick the lock! Come on!”

  She jumped.

  For a moment, time froze as she hung in the night air, the pink ruffles of her skirt floating up past her waist, up to her shoulders. The crowd cheered and called her name as every pair of eyes followed her trajectory. And then, suddenly, the water parted beneath her feet and enveloped her.

  She opened her eyes beneath the water’s surface to see the soft pink of her dress, now darker with the wet, floating around her like candy-colored seaweed, and she wondered if there’d ever been a time in history when girls had to swim in long, flowing ball gowns. That definitely couldn’t have been good for their race times.

  As she began to push to the surface, she saw Ben swimming toward her, a big smile on his face. As he got closer, he put a hand on her shoulder and pulled his body close to hers. He closed his eyes and moved his lips close to Emily’s.

  Wait a second, she thought. Is he trying to… to kiss me?

  A dozen pairs of legs kicked beneath the pool’s surface a few feet away, and the sound of music and laughter filtered softly through the water. She wondered if anyone at the edge of the pool was looking down and watching them. This definitely wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she’d imagined her first kiss.

  Suddenly, Emily’s head felt light, and she realized she hadn’t taken a breath since she was up on Ben’s balcony. She needed some air. Now. Two competing impulses took hold: Press her lips against Ben’s or swim to the surface and breathe. A first kiss or oxygen? She wasn’t sure which one she wanted more.

  A moment passed, and Ben stayed in place, looking into her eyes and smiling. But he didn’t move forward to kiss her, and after a few seconds, Emily’s need to breathe grew so overwhelming that she had to swim to the surface.

  A second later, Emily gulped air and treaded water as her dress floated up around her. She felt her now-exposed legs kicking through the water and tried to remember if she’d worn her stupid underwear with the pattern of kittens playing with balls of yarn.

  She hoped that down below Ben was keeping his eyes closed and that he’d surface soon. After a few moments, he swam up beside her and inhaled deeply.

  “Hey,” he said. “What, uh, happened just then?”

  “I needed a breath.” She started swimming backward to the edge of the pool. “You didn’t, uh, look while you were down there, did you?”

  “I wouldn’t dare, kitten,” he said. “You wait here. I’ll get you a towel and a change of clothes.”

  He pulled himself out of the pool and ran inside, his wet boxers clinging to his t
highs as the nearby crowd whooped at him.

  As Emily reached the pool’s edge and struggled to heft herself out, waterlogged dress and all, she looked up to see an angry stiletto-heeled figure staring down at her.

  “At least now you’ll have to change out of that stupid dress,” whispered Dominique, crouching down and leaning over the pool but not offering Emily any help. “Don’t think this means Ben is yours. Just because the two of you took a little swim—”

  As Emily climbed farther out of the pool, Dominique tried to stand up, but her foot landed on Emily’s soaked skirt and the wet taffeta slipped out from under her. She tried to steady herself, but it was no use. She stumbled forward over the ledge and into the pool.

  Emily turned around to see a furious Dominique treading water. Her face was so angry and contorted that Emily felt an urge to call an exorcist. At the far end of the pool, Hannah, Amanda, and some of the other popular girls, who had witnessed the whole exchange, were laughing so hard they were crying.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be,” said Dominique.

  “No, wait,” said Emily. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Save it,” said Dominique. “There’s no stopping me now. I’m coming at you with everything I’ve got. Watch your back from here on out, Kessler. There’s a target on it.”

  An hour later, Emily sat in the passenger seat of Samantha’s truck—definitely not her first choice for a ride home, but Kimi and Phil had disappeared without warning, leaving Emily stranded, and Samantha had begrudgingly offered her a lift.

  Normally, Emily’s eyes would have bulged at the sight of the speedometer’s needle pointing well past eighty, and her pulse would have quickened as the scenery rushed by, but tonight her only thoughts were of Ben Kale. She looked down to see the T-shirt and sweatpants he’d lent her, and a warm feeling radiated from her chest as she remembered jumping after him into the pool.

  “What are you smiling about?” asked Samantha. “Your little boyfriend back at the party?”

  “Ben’s not my boyfriend,” said Emily.

  “Too bad,” said Samantha. “You’re kind of cute together.”

  “Really? You think so?”

  Samantha rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded like freshmen.

  “Whatever,” said Emily. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like he’ll actually ever be my boyfriend. It was fun hanging out, but I’m way too busy for, you know, date nights and going out to dinner and a movie, and dances and stuff.”

  “Too busy?” asked Samantha.

  “My life—” started Emily. “It’s scheduled down to the minute. I wake up, eat, head to school, swim for three hours, dinner, homework, stretching, maybe an hour to talk to people online, and then I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep the minute my head touches the pillow.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got a pretty packed schedule,” said Samantha.

  “Definitely.”

  “But on the other hand…” Samantha trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Well, you did make it out to the party tonight.”

  “This was a onetime thing.”

  “Right,” said Samantha. “Of course.”

  Emily crossed her arms and glanced over at Samantha, trying to get a read on her. With her freshly shaved head and her motorcycle jacket, Samantha looked more like a heroine out of a postapocalyptic zombie movie than a high school girl. It was hard to believe they were talking about something as mundane as boys.

  “Busy, busy girl,” Samantha added.

  “You’re making fun of me,” said Emily.

  “You’re pretty observant.”

  As they neared Emily’s street, she told Samantha to stop and let her out a block from home.

  “Daddy doesn’t know you left?” asked Samantha.

  “Does yours?”

  Samantha shrugged and smiled. She pulled over to the street corner and killed the engine.

  “Probably not,” she admitted.

  Emily opened the door and stepped out of the truck.

  “Anyway,” she said, “thanks for the ride.”

  She closed the door and had taken a few steps toward home when she heard Samantha’s voice calling after her.

  “Hey, Kessler! If your sister had time for a boyfriend, so do you.”

  Emily turned to respond, but by the time the words had sunk in, Samantha’s engine had already roared to life. In all her years around a pool, Emily had only belly flopped off a diving board once or twice. Now, she had that same feeling, as if all the air had been pushed out of her.

  “Your sister had time for a boyfriend.”

  Emily watched in silence as the older girl’s taillights disappeared into the distance.

  “Your sister had… a boyfriend.”

  It was impossible, right, to live in the same house as someone for more than a dozen years without really knowing her? And yet—Emily’s parents knew nothing about Ben. Emily had never mentioned him, and she’d sneaked out to his party without them knowing. Was it possible that Emily herself had been just as clueless about Sara’s love life?

  Emily turned and started walking home, the words echoing in her mind. What if what Samantha had said was true? What did it mean if Sara—the Machine—turned out to have been human?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Halfway through her 10K run the next morning, Emily was starting to regret going to Ben’s party. What was the point in trying to get together with a cute guy if she collapsed and died of a heart attack by the side of the road before she even got a kiss?

  “You’re almost a minute over your usual time at the 5K mark!” her father shouted from the driver’s seat of his car. On Saturdays, he liked to drive at her side as she ran her circuit through sleepy suburban neighborhoods. “I sure hope you’re planning to pick it up in the back half of the run.”

  “When’s the last time you even ran a mile?” Emily said under her breath.

  “What’s that?” her dad barked. “I couldn’t quite hear you. Sounds like you’re a little winded!” He reached over to his CD player and switched it on. “Maybe this will fire you up.”

  “Dad, no,” Emily said, her lungs burning as she tried to speed up her pace. “Please don’t. It’s way too early in the morning for this.”

  “Too late!” her dad said, smiling gleefully.

  A few seconds later, the national anthem started playing.

  “Please stop,” Emily said, barely able to talk and breathe at the same time.

  “You’ve got to visualize!” her dad shouted. “You’re on top of the Olympic podium, the flag unfurled behind you… and then ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ starts blasting from the stadium’s speakers!”

  “This isn’t… helping,” said Emily. Her legs felt like jelly as each step of the run sent a shock wave through her aching muscles.

  “Out in the crowd are the girls you beat. The Brazilians, the Australians. The Canadians! Yeah, that’s right. We’re not listening to ‘O Canada,’ Em. Those are the Stars and Stripes hanging at your back. That’s our anthem playing!”

  She tried to ignore the blaring music and the pain and sleepiness. That’s what Sara would do: Fight through it all and find a way to speed up and beat her usual time. Sara would find a way to win.

  And then Emily remembered: “Your sister had… a boyfriend.”

  The sentence sat in Emily’s gut like a stone she’d swallowed and couldn’t digest. She needed to find out more about this supposed boyfriend, preferably soon. Suddenly, every conversation she’d had with the upperclassmen had taken on a new shade of meaning. Phil had mentioned knowing Sara, and Samantha claimed to know about some kind of secret boyfriend—but it was Cameron Clark who kept talking about Sara. When Emily had told him that Sara had never mentioned his name, he’d seemed so—disappointed.

  “Dad,” she said, “did you ever see any guys hanging out with Sara?”

  “What?” he asked. “I can’t hear you!”

  “Maybe turn the music dow
n a little?”

  He shook his head. “In the middle of the national anthem?” He turned the volume up. Maybe it had been pointless to ask, anyway. Emily had a feeling he’d chosen not to hear on purpose.

  “… And the rockets’ red glare,” her father sang along with the car stereo, “the bombs bursting in air!”

  She couldn’t stand it anymore. Emily quickened her pace, almost sprinting as she tried to get as far away from him as possible.

  “Yeah!” her dad exclaimed as he accelerated to catch up. “That’s the spirit!”

  That night, Kimi came by for their monthly sleepover. She unpacked her never-to-be-mentioned-to-anyone-on-pain-of-death Hello Kitty sleeping bag as Emily sorted through her friend requests on Facebook, trying to figure out which people she actually knew. Kimi kicked off her shoes and flopped facedown on Emily’s bed.

  “Uh, so, sorry about last night,” said Kimi, avoiding eye contact.

  “No problem. I got a ride home from Samantha,” said Emily as her cursor hovered over Zach Reynolds’s friend request. They had played Never Have I Ever together. Technically, that qualified as a kind of friendship, right? She hit Accept.

  “Kimi, I know this might sound weird, but have you ever heard any rumors? Like, about my sister?”

  Kimi sat up and looked over at her.

  “About Sara? No. I mean, I doubt anyone would say anything to me. They know you and I are friends. Honestly, though, I don’t think there’s much to say.”

  “Yeah,” said Emily. “You’re probably right. Sorry I brought it up.”

  It doesn’t matter, she thought. I’m pretty sure I know who I need to talk to anyway.

  She imagined what it would feel like to confront Cameron Clark, to ask him if he and Sara had secretly dated. A shiver went through her as she turned back to the computer.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she added after a few seconds. “Something fun.”

  Kimi flipped onto her back and let her head roll over the edge of the bed. Her hair hung down like thin black icicles as she arched her back like a contented cat and looked expectantly at Emily.

  “Okay,” she said. “Ask me about my night.”

  “Huh? What about it?”