In Deep

by Terra Elan McVoy

  Kate’s looking at me again. I press my finger to my lips and tiptoe back out of the room. She rolls her eyes, crosses her arms, and stares at the board again. Whatever. I don’t care what she thinks. I have to get these freaking things done. I speed walk down the hall, panicking at the thought that I may not even have brought the asshole books with me to school today.

  • • •

  I barely squeak into Woodham’s class before the late bell, clutching my lame attempts at the annotations, which are really just me rewording the flap jacket copy (the books were still in my bag, untouched from last week) and adding some limp sentences about how similar Booth’s plot seems to a lot of the current “acts of terror” we’ve had in the last few years. They should be typed, especially since even I can hardly read my hurried handwriting, but there was no way. I guess an F is better than a zero, though Kate’s scowl when I walk in makes me feel like I shouldn’t have bothered.

  “Thanks for covering for me in Enviro,” I murmur anyway, as Woodham takes roll. She doesn’t even turn around.

  What the hell ever, Kate. I don’t need your disapproval on top of everything else.

  During class, Woodham leads a discussion on the articles we were supposed to read this weekend, which of course I didn’t do. Regular homework on top of annotations feels particularly evil if you ask me, but I have to keep my head up and pay attention, because if Woodham calls on you during discussion and you don’t try to answer semi-intelligently, he docks participation points. The effort of concentrating on what everyone’s saying, plus keeping my face from revealing how lost I am, makes me feel bleary-eyed and cotton-brained by the end of it. It was dumb of me to take this course in the first place, but especially to have it at the end of the day, when I need my energy for practice. I can’t do this. I hate Woodham and his class, and the paper is going to be impossible. By the time he’s wrapping up, the edges of my vision are crackling, and my hands have gone clammy. I can’t have this. Something needs to be done.

  Kate nearly leaps out of her chair when the bell rings, which causes a wild solution to rise up in me. Kate is the answer. I haul myself out of my own desk and chase her down the hall. She started all this, after all. Like she said, she owes me.

  Standing up so fast gives me a head rush though, and the harsh light makes me blink way too many times. When I call out to her my voice feels rusty, which throws me off. Something’s not right. When she turns, it seems like even the animals on her binder are glowering at me, which strikes me as wildly funny. Which is definitely strange.

  “You didn’t do the annotations did you?” she says. “That’s why you skipped Enviro. Why I had to cover for you.”

  A giggle I can’t stop comes out of my mouth. “Sorry.” I try to take in a breath. “It was an intense weekend.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s homework tonight, but I didn’t write it down for you. You’ll have to check the class discussion board on your own.”

  I’m blinking furiously, trying to keep her still in my vision.

  “I’m not really worried about homework right now.” I widen my eyes, try to stretch the laugh out of my face. Now my creaky voice is hard, bright, fast. “I’ve been thinking about Woodham’s paper, and about my swim schedule the next couple of weeks. I know you have a lot on your plate, but this whole thing is overwhelming, and I was wondering if you would, you know, be willing to help me out. I mean, more than you’ve been doing.”

  She narrows her eyes but doesn’t say anything. Something about the way she’s acting, how cold she’s being, makes me even more hysterical.

  “I’d pay you, of course,” I gush. “I don’t know how much people usually charge for this kind of thing, but I’d be willing to—”

  She glances over my shoulder, so I turn: There are two teachers down the hall coming toward us, but they’re far enough away that I don’t think they heard. When I look back at Kate, her face is blotchy and her eyes look wetter than normal.

  “So, I mean, can you? Write it for me?”

  “You are such an asshole,” she says, low and quiet. Then she turns and starts walking away. The panic grabs me, sharpening everything again. Wilder.

  “Kate, listen,” I holler, scrambling for what to say. “You’re so good at this, and I’m just asking you—”

  She wheels around. “The answer is no. And don’t ask me anything, about anything, ever again, okay? Just leave me alone. Forever.”

  Her gross overreaction pisses me off even more. She doesn’t have to act like it’s such a big deal. People do it all the time. And I bet she could use the money.

  “Be a bitch about it, why don’t you?” I yell down the hall. That she doesn’t even turn around fills me with inexplicable fury. “No wonder you love those sheep!” Anger is swimming up my throat, choking me. “Since you have so much in goddamn common.”

  34

  THE WHOLE MESS WITH KATE, and how unstable I feel, has made me forget about anything but drills at practice, until I come in from the locker room and my eyes connect with Gavin’s. For a second I feel his mouth all over my neck, his hands all over everywhere else, and I almost turn back around. But my body knows what to do; I blink once, twice, and pull back my shoulders. Looking at him again, I realize he’s not angry but tense, not to mention alone, on the bleachers, earbuds in, jaw tight, glaring at Grier, who’s surrounded by most of the team. So it’s not him I have to worry about. As soon as I walk by, everyone else drops silent. Their you-are-such-a-bitch glares feel like little needles tingling over my neck and into my teeth. Three steps, four, past them all, and I realize I’m breathing shallow and my hands are shaking. I don’t know what she’s told them, but even Megan, who hates Grier, makes a disgusted sound like I just smoked five cigarettes and then licked the ashtray in front of her. I squat down by the water, blinking, and lift a handful to my face. I breathe slow, trying to calm myself. I don’t care about them. Them or Grier, or Charlie, or Kate, or anything else. I care about swimming, and that is all I care about. I tell myself this, standing up. I tense all the muscles in my body, squeezing hard for a count of forty. When I let go, though, I still don’t relax.

  I wheel my arms around in my sockets, try to force myself to loosen. When Van comes out of his office, everyone straightens up, darting eyes at Grier and taking cues from her. She holds her chin up high, aiming it at me like some kind of amazon spear. I don’t meet her eyes or Gavin’s, either. Van claps and tells us to get into the water. I take the lane on the farthest right side and watch as everyone else triples and quadruples up in the other lanes, just to not have to swim with me. I grit my teeth and press my goggles into place.

  • • •

  So that we’re rested and running on full power for Saturday, this is a taper week, which is a good thing, because I’m swimming like shit. I’m weird and sluggish already, but on top of that, every time I break surface it’s like I can hear Grier slapping the water way down at the end of the pool, can feel Gavin trying to send me mental I’m not sorrys and We should talk about thises in submarine sonar, and can feel and smell and hear the anger of the rest of the team uncurling out at me through the water.

  When I struggle back from my last 50 free, Van’s there at the end of my lane.

  “Don’t push it,” he says when I look up at him. “Take it slow. Breathe.”

  I nod, because I’m already breathing too hard to say anything else.

  He hands me a kickboard. “Two hundred, steady kick. Slow as you can go.”

  I take the board from him and nod, feeling relieved, embarrassed, and pissed off at the same time.

  • • •

  When practice is over, Grier sidles immediately up with Kelly, Megan, Siena, and Phoebe—like they’re all best girlfriends and always have been. Like she hasn’t said scathing things about them to me for over a year. The guys have kept their distance from both me and Gavin, so when it’s time for the locker rooms, I move behind them slow, not wanting to be near them but needing to get out of my suit and
into dry clothes so I can go home and go to bed. I’m fumbling, being obvious, worried I might trip and fall into them, when Van takes my shoulder and turns me around.

  “Anything I need to know about?” he asks, his voice quiet but serious.

  I blink, my vision still fuzzy. “No.”

  His eyebrow arches up, high.

  His doubt, his accusation, and his palpable disappointment, plus everything else today, brings up tears again. That I’m being so pussy makes it even worse.

  “Just a dumb argument,” I say, fighting the ball in my throat.

  Van’s eyes go to the door of the guys’ locker room. “I see.”

  I swipe at my eyes. “She’s overreacting. It’ll be fine tomorrow.”

  “If it’s something I should be involved in, here’s a chance to let me know, right now. Otherwise, I may have to ask her.”

  I glance at the pool, and a hallucinatory layer appears over the water through my angry, wet vision: the whole team crowded in their lanes, and me, alone, in my own.

  “I can handle it,” I tell him, trying to breathe. “I mean—I promise I will.”

  35

  WHEN I FINALLY MAKE IT home, I go straight to my room and shut the door. Since she’s not only involving Charlie but now the whole team, too, I may as well see every horrid thing Grier’s slung at me over the weekend so I know what I’m up against. So I know how to fight. I press the on button, and once everything’s done blinking and singing, I’ve got eighteen messages.

  The most recent ones aren’t from Grier, though; they’re from Kate. For some reason, just the sight of her name makes the confusing, frustrating tears I just fought down at the pool spring up again, and it gets worse as I go through what she sent.

  Friday night: nothing happened like what you drew in class, but i have finally seen the view from second base!!

  Saturday afternoon: how is the reading coming?

  And then: if you don’t have practice tomorrow, do you want to get together?

  Sunday: hey, good luck with the last annos. hope you did okay on the first. connor has been texting me all weekend! i think he may even come over after school monday. (!!!!!!)

  And, today, after I asked her to write my paper for me: i thought we were friends, but i guess not. i won’t tell w what you asked me to do, but you can stop lying to my face every day now. in fact, i don’t want you to say anything to me again, not even that you’re sorry. thanks.

  “God damn it.”

  I wipe my eyes hard with the back of my hand, swallowing, swallowing, but still unable to keep a sob from coming out. I’m not sad, really—it’s just that I can’t stop myself from all this crying. It’s like the tears and me are unconnected, even though I am upset. Kate thought I had ignored her, and that’s why she was so bent out of shape today. But I hadn’t, and she didn’t even let me explain, and now she won’t help me and this isn’t at all my fault. I almost text back that I just now got her messages, but then I realize I wouldn’t have ignored Kate at all before. If it hadn’t been for fucking Grier.

  So I go to Grier’s messages next, which is what I meant to do in the first place. The trash-talk that pours out of them immediately dries my eyes and clears my vision: such a cunt. come get your stupid shit outta my hous. how cd you do this 2 me????????? u have to have everything don’t you fucking bitch and on and on. I scroll and scroll, the tears replaced by dry anger. I keep scrolling past her hateful messages from the weekend to the exclamation points and excited questions she’d sent me before the party on Saturday night. Down, farther, through her you are the best and thx so much messages, plus the needy, whiny ones about how Gavin’s been ignoring her. Far under those—and I really, truly hate her now—I find the asshole picture of her and Gavin, bragging to me from the beginning about how he chose her, not me.

  I stare at the tiny photo on my phone, realizing, for the first time, this is just one of five. The first one—the only one you can see unless you click on it to show the rest—is Gavin’s face in her chest, taken from above so mostly you see her melony cleavage and the top of his head. The next one is closeup: their arcing jaws, smiling lips, and two tongues flicking together. The other three are of Gavin’s sculpted chest, her hand squeezing various places.

  Without giving it another thought, I send the pictures to myself and open up my laptop. I pull up my e-mail, download the photos, and at the same time pop open new windows and browse for her pages. Grier’s been on my computer plenty, and I know she’s done that dumb and lazy thing where she just automatically saves the passwords. Within seconds I’m logged in as her, and I’ve got the meanest grin on my face. So the whole team thinks I’m a scag? Watch this.

  I upload the photos, adding SHE’LL NEVER TAKE HIM AWAY FROM ME captions, and IN YOUR FACE, BITCH. They’re stupid, but whatever—Grier is stupid. And in my head it makes sense. Though you can’t see her face in any of them, the giant ruby cocktail ring she got when her aunt died (and which she wears on her middle finger so that she can “Flick people off with royalty”) is right there in the shot of Gavin’s chest. I love how the flash catches it as she’s pinching his nipple, her pinky finger held out like she’s sipping tea. For a second, just to make sure everyone knows they’re really of her, I consider tagging Gavin, and myself, even, but then I think crazily that if I do, then maybe Charlie will somehow see them, even though he’s barely online, and why would he care about photos of Grier, anyway?

  So I don’t. Instead I post without hesitation across the board. And then I sit there and smile as the comments start coming in.

  36

  AS MUCH AS I’M DESPERATE for sleep, there are bad dreams that night. The worst one’s about being held inside some giant warehouse where there are a lot of Chinese kids making video-game parts. I’m walking around observing them under a wolf mask. Maria’s dad is up on the catwalk, looking down at all of us. And I know he’s going to jump. It jerks me so hard out of sleep that it takes what feels like a whole minute for my heart to calm down. I spend an hour on the couch by the TV, but it doesn’t work, and I finally go back to my bed, where I guess I do sleep for a couple of hours. When the alarm goes off though, I want to kill it.

  But I’m also getting sick of all this. I march down to the bathroom, turn on the cold water, and splash several handfuls over my face. I don’t grab a towel. I just lean forward over the sink, glaring at myself in the mirror and watching the droplets slide down, following the snaky lines of my wet hair around the edge of my forehead. I seize my rib cage in the claws of my two hands and squeeze, hard, feeling the edges of my bones roll under my thumbs. When I can’t take a normal inhale, I let go.

  “It’s handled for now,” I say into the mirror. “So get over yourself. Get over yourself right this minute.”

  • • •

  For the first time ever, I down a Dr Pepper right before school. I slug another one at lunch, and then after Enviro, where I sat on the total opposite side of the room from Kate. As soon as that class ends, so that there isn’t any confusion about my obeying her wishes to never speak to her again, I beeline past her and across the building down to the vending machines, where I stand there, one hand still on the button, slamming down a Coke Zero. I know it’s only false strength, and probably I’ll still be late to Conflicts, but yesterday was bullshit and if this works, so be it.

  When I pause in my glugging for a much-needed burp, though, I see Nora and Maria walk past. At first I think they’re just going to pretend I don’t exist, but then Maria tugs on Nora’s elbow and turns around.

  I finish my soda and make off for the recycling bin, but she’s quickly beside me.

  “You really broke his heart,” Maria says, her pretty brown eyes glaring.

  I blink, wide, chemicals pulsing in me. All the tiredness and confusion are gone; I feel like I could break her over my knee.

  “And you think I need this news flash why?”

  It makes her back down half a notch. She sees me seeing it, and I smile.

&nbs
p; “It’s just that . . .” she tries again, switching from bad cop to good cop right in front of me. “He’s not the kind of guy who dates around. You’re the first since Sarah.”

  “I know it.”

  It’s like she wants tears from me or something. But the ones from yesterday were already too much. I stare at her, bored, saving my energy for more important things.

  “It must be nice for you up there on your high horse,” she finally says, exasperated. “I just hope it doesn’t trample you when one day you fall off.”

  I laugh as she heads, flustered, back to Nora. It’s not that I’m really laughing at her. It’s just that she has no idea how wrong she is: I’m not on this horse; I’ve fucking fused myself to it. I couldn’t fall off if I wanted to.

  • • •

  The outrage at Nora and Maria helps fuel me through Conflicts. I make it through Kate ducking her head down the moment I come in, make it through her stinky-ass feet and the cold silence rolling off her back. At the end of the day, I wait for her to leave, faking a question for Woodham, and then I trudge, alone, out to Louis and the car. We drive to practice. He doesn’t ask me anything.

  It’s fine.

  Still, when we get there, everything looks edgy and bright under the fluorescent lights at the pool, like on a high-def TV, and my insides feel lined with aluminum tendrils, but at least I don’t feel like my body’s just walking around with a soggy, weepy brain inside anymore. I’m still getting the silent treatment from everyone in the club, but since Grier, interesting enough, isn’t at practice, the hate beams are a little more diffused. At least Dylan gets in the same lane as me today. Gavin’s trying to catch my eye too, wants to say something, I guess, since I’ve ignored all his texts since Saturday, but I keep my eyes on the water. On the clock. On Van’s face. I can’t mess with him or anyone else.

  There are only three more easy practices after this one until qualifiers.