In Deep

by Terra Elan McVoy

  “Tell me what Van meant.”

  There’s a quiet beat. “He meant he’s worried about you. We all are.”

  I lean up on my elbows to look at him. “No, I mean that thing he said this afternoon. About a break. About the club.”

  He makes an uncomfortable sound out his nose.

  “What did he mean about paying attention to Grier?”

  “Look, Brynn, this is about you right now.”

  “I know it’s about me. Van is my coach.”

  He moves from foot to foot and puts his hands in his pockets. “Nothing’s been decided yet, okay? It’s just a lot of angry e-mails from what I can tell right now.”

  “What are the parents saying, Louis? Quit beating around the bush.”

  He looks at me, hard. “Grier’s parents are concerned. She . . . posted some things online . . . and there are some accusations going around that she was maybe compromised by one of the older teammates.”

  “You mean Gavin. That’s why he and the other guys got switched to evening practice.”

  He clears his throat uncomfortably again. “No one’s saying names. But the Hawkinses are pretty upset. They think that Van was . . . irresponsible. That there wasn’t enough supervision.”

  “So they’re going to fire him.”

  “That’s not what anyone’s saying right now.”

  “But that’s what they think. Even if it isn’t his fault.”

  I lie back down and shut my eyes under the weight of my arm. I know Grier’s parents. I know they don’t care, until suddenly they really, really do.

  “You don’t need to worry about all that right now,” he says quietly. “Right now you need some rest.”

  “Yeah,” I say with a laugh, though it comes out sad. “You know me. Worrying way too much about everyone else.”

  “Your mom’s writing your teachers,” he says. “You won’t have to go to school until you’re ready.”

  Sure, school.

  Like that’s the top thing I’m worried about fucking up.

  • • •

  When Louis leaves, I sit there in my bed, robotically forking lasagna into my mouth and staring into space. Today’s pretty much been one of the worst in my life since Dad’s accident, and talking to Louis just made me tired all over again. I don’t want to think, but I know there won’t be any swimming this off for a while. Mainly I want to lie down and fall asleep and never wake up. It’s not that I want to die—I just don’t want any of this.

  Something keeps nagging at me though, while I scrape my plate clean and lick off the remnants of sauce and ricotta. About Van, and Gavin, and why he didn’t come over on Thursday night.

  So, since today’s already been Mega Revelation Suck Day, I go ahead and text him: hey i have a question. just one. okay?

  I sit there, cross-legged, jiggling my knee, waiting. He still may not text me back. I could call, I guess, but I don’t want to hear his voice, his breathing. It’d be too close. I could pull a Grier and text him relentlessly until he answers, but I think I’ve had enough crazy for today. I look at the clock—6:21. He could be anywhere. Having dinner, partying, hooking up with one of those sluts from the lake house. I might never hear from him again. Which, mostly, would be fine. The thought of him now—all the game-playing and secret grabs, him sneaking over here at night—feels stupid from this side of it. Even when I picture his hands on me, kissing him, I can’t conjure up the same heat. All I feel, when I see him in my mind, is one big, deflated Why?

  So it doesn’t hurt—it isn’t even annoying—when he finally texts back an hour and a half later: i don’t really want to talk.

  “Yeah, I don’t either,” I say to the air. “So let’s get this over with.”

  jst want to knw if ur out of the club or not?

  A minute, two, then: not for now. evening practice w/ littler kids, though they still may not think that’s safe. if van’s not coaching, i’ll look at other options, anyway. not worth it.

  I shut my eyes. If Van’s not coaching . . . If. It’s not a thing that’s happening right now, but apparently it really is more than angry e-mails. I picture Van having to work with Troy, Linus, and Gavin all in one lane while encouraging the middle level at the same time. And Grier’s mom, still squawking about how Gavin’s some kind of predator.

  Christ.

  i’m sorry, I type. I don’t know for which part right now, but I am. Sorry.

  it’s not your fault, he finally sends. but you can understand if—you know. it was fun though. i’ll look for you in 2016.

  Yeah, I can more than understand. The pit of my stomach feels hollow and raw even though I just ate. Gavin says it’s not my fault, but there’s no one else I have to blame right now for ruining my life and everyone else’s.

  46

  MOM COMES IN TO CHECK on me before she leaves for work the next day. I’ve been awake for at least a half hour already, thinking. Thinking too many things I don’t want to think.

  She comes over, presses the back of her plump hand to my forehead. “How are you feeling?”

  “I don’t have a fever, Mom.”

  “I know you don’t.” She slides her hand down to my cheek. “Old habit.”

  Maybe before yesterday I would’ve told her I haven’t been sick in years, say she hasn’t done that in forever, and I haven’t needed her to. But I don’t really feel like saying anything to her right now. I turn my head away.

  “You going to be okay here on your own?”

  “I’m upset, Mom. Not suicidal.”

  I can feel her looking at me. “I know you’re not. I’m just wondering if you need some company, maybe talk some more about yesterday.”

  Talk about yesterday? I have no idea how to start.

  “You said what you had to say. I don’t know what there is to talk about. Dad screwed everything up, and now it looks like I’m exactly like him. What is there to talk about?”

  “Sounds like there’s a lot to talk about, actually.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not in the mood.”

  “Brynn—”

  “Mom.” My voice gets harsher. Her being in here, asking me, just makes it all worse, and I’m not going to cry again. Not today. “I said I don’t want to talk right now, okay? You’re going to be late.”

  She sighs and stands up. “I know it’ll take some time, honey. And I want you to know I’m here when you’re ready. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. All I can do is be here now.”

  She waits, but I still don’t feel like talking.

  Eventually she goes, shutting the door behind her.

  • • •

  I stay in bed for hours, mostly doing nothing but watching a few videos, thinking, and drifting in and out of sleep. There haven’t been any revelations, and I don’t feel better about anything, but by one thirty I finally get up. I realize I haven’t eaten much except the lasagna Louis brought in last night. Might as well eat some more, put some clothes on. Take another shower first. Act like a human.

  Since there’s nowhere I have to be, I spend a long time in the bathroom, letting the warm shower spray sluice down over me, feeling the hard muscles under my skin. Muscles that I’ve worked for, that can do anything. Anything except deal with all the shit in my head and figure out what my life will be like if I really have to take a break from swimming.

  After I towel off, I put on a robe and go downstairs to make a sandwich. I bring it and a half a bag of popcorn up with me, climb back in bed with my computer. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself, thinking about everything I’ve jeopardized, but the first thing I do is go to Charlie’s pages.

  There isn’t a lot up. Like me, he’s too busy to go online much. Maria’s posted a few pictures from the Friday night dinners, but I’m not in any of them. Instead it’s Charlie, Ethan, Nora, and Maria, plus some other people I don’t really know, all smiling and making goofy faces, posing with chopsticks and holding up hands of cards. I look out the window towar
d Charlie’s house. Maybe I should try to tell him I’m sorry, that he really was a good boyfriend and I didn’t deserve him. Maybe he’d be willing to let me come over to try and explain. Maybe he would listen, help me sort out what’s what, instead of all this mixed-up I feel. But I also know that part of what I’d need to talk about would involve what ended up happening with Van and Gavin, and he sure as shit won’t want to hear about that. Besides, sorry doesn’t fix anything. Mom’s said sorry a dozen times since yesterday, and it doesn’t change how she was when Dad died or the fact that apparently he loved his gambling more than he loved me. Tears well up, thinking that plus seeing Charlie’s smiling face on my screen. Charlie who didn’t want me to prove anything. Charlie who kissed me in the only way that helped me sleep. Charlie, who made me laugh. Who thought I was a winner just by being around.

  I close my eyes. I totally lost him, and I can’t get him back. No matter how hard I work from now on, I’ll never get anything back from the way it was before.

  • • •

  After a while of feeling sorry for myself, I go back to my screen so I can disconnect from Charlie. It’s probably better that way. For him and for me. As I do, I realize I have fifteen different notifications, most of them tags from a page I follow, “What Should Swimmers Call Me,” and one or two old things from Van or people on the team. The last one, from a week and a half ago, makes me pause though: Kate Braught Wants to Connect.

  “No, she doesn’t,” I say out loud, laughing a little as I accept for the hell of it.

  At first I’m not surprised by what’s there, mainly posts about animals: lots of photos and quotes, plus links to Web cam videos surveying different animal babies—herons, hummingbirds, some rescued tigers in India. There are also several petitions, calls to support various animal rescue groups. I click through a bunch of photos of some weird collective called the Inman Park Squirrel Census, amazed. It looks like Kate is online almost all the time with this stuff, and she’s connected to a ton of people. I’m stunned, seeing this supersocial online version of her. When she changed her status to “dating,” for example, nearly eighty people sent up exclamation points and smiley faces, even the ones who seem to live in different countries. I liked Kate before, but now I am fascinated by the fact that her life is so much more complex and interesting than mine.

  Turns out, she’s not just social online, either, and not all her photos are of animals. There are five whole albums, all labeled Camp Callanwolde, from different years. In these are pictures of Kate in a canoe; Kate holding up charred marshmallows with two guys who have their arms around her shoulders; Kate participating in some kind of water balloon game; Kate smiling down from the back of a horse (and then several more of this horse, and Kate doing various things like combing it or cleaning its hooves); Kate doing cartwheels in a field with other girls; Kate hugging at least twenty different people.

  I realize, looking at them, that I want to be in photos like this with Kate.

  And then my chat screen flashes open: are you dying or something?

  I laugh out loud, not believing. no I type back to her. just recuping.

  i saw you were online. mr. woodham said you were in the hospital.

  Then a second one: are you okay?

  I’m amazed she’s asking me, considering how mad she’s been. Considering I was just looking at her stuff, missing her, and now she’s here, just like that.

  i guess i’m ok. And then, before I think too much about it: thx for checking. and i’m sorry.

  She doesn’t say anything back for a long time, and then: our drafts were due today. he’s giving them back weds and then the finals are due mon.

  i know, I type, though it’s the first time I’ve thought of that paper in days. I’ve barely done the reading. I don’t even have an outline.

  you should check your messages. he’s being pretty strict it sounds like.

  I groan. Of course Woodham’s being strict about it.

  okay thx for the heads-up, I finish.

  I wait for a while, but she doesn’t say anything back.

  Since everything else is pretty much shit today, I open a new tab and decide to face my in-box.

  • • •

  As soon as Mom and Louis are both home, I charge down the stairs, asking if they’ve checked their messages from my teachers. This is completely unfair, and I want them to see, too.

  “Actually, it’s pretty nice of him,” Louis says, looking down through the bottom half of his reading glasses at his screen, taking in what Woodham’s said about my paper, that at this point all he can do is give me an incomplete, and then expect the draft on Friday and my final within two weeks of the end of school. Chu wrote back to Mom too, about Enviro, saying I need to make up the end of the lab that I missed today, because part of the exam comes from it. Not to mention that I still have exams next week and need to finish those stupid Spanish flash cards.

  Louis and Mom are hardly sympathetic when I complain I don’t have enough time for all this, even if I do go back to school tomorrow.

  “Seems like you had a fair amount of time, reading this,” Louis says.

  “I agree, honey,” Mom adds. “It looks like you don’t have a choice. It’s either finish up this semester the way your teachers suggest, or it’s summer school. I can’t see that there’s really another way.”

  Summer school. Which would mean absolutely no practice, because they make you sit there from seven a.m. to five p.m. for a solid four weeks, plus homework. And from the looks of it, I’d have to take more than one class, which might mean two sessions. But there’s still State to prepare for. I have to nail National Cut there, if any of the rest of my college plans are going to happen. It doesn’t matter what else is going on. There is no other option.

  “Mom, are you forgetting that State’s in two weeks? And after taking this week off like Van’s making me do, I absolutely cannot afford to miss another one.”

  Louis looks at me, then at Mom.

  I know what they’re thinking.

  “I’m taking this break, okay? I’ll cram this week when I’m not at practice. But I’m not going to miss State. I can’t. It’s too big, and there’s too much riding on it for me. If I can just get this one win, then next year I swear—”

  But I stop. Because I hear myself. I don’t even need to see Mom’s face.

  I collapse onto the couch, everything crashing in. “It’s not like that,” I say, my voice starting to tremble. “It isn’t.” But even I know better.

  “I know it’s not, honey,” Mom says, soothing. “Because the thing about your dad was that he didn’t know when to fold.”

  “So, what then?” I hit the couch in exasperation, my throat seizing up even more. “After all my hard work, it’s no big deal? What am I supposed to think about that, huh, Mom? If none of it’s going to matter, what the hell have I been doing all this time?”

  She looks at me, her eyes and mouth soft with sympathy. “I think your future is going to turn out just fine, Brynn, because of your hard work. But that question also sounds like a good one to ask.”

  47

  THE NEXT MORNING I STILL wake up according to routine. I still do everything in order, still do my thing. Louis is still in the kitchen with his coffee. The only part that’s different about any of it is me, and I’m not sure who that is right now.

  There’s no point in sitting at home for another few days, but being back at school right before the semester’s over, when my whole life’s been turned around, only hammers home the fact that I also have absolutely no friends. Yearbooks have apparently come out, and everyone is huddling over them in the halls or sharing phone pictures from all the extracurricular banquets that went on this weekend. Before, I wouldn’t have cared, because I’d have been too focused on practice. Or Grier and I would have spent the weekend at her place, defacing everyone in her own yearbook and cracking each other up. Now, I have none of it.

  The loneliness and understanding of what I’ve lost almost br
ings me to tears again. During lunch, I dodge the hall monitor and duck into the bathroom. I splash water on my face and then stand there, back against one of the stall dividers, staring hard into the mirror. I take in my sharp jawline, my hard body, everything about me nothing but fucking hard. And still—what? Still I’m here, like a weenie, crying in the bathroom.

  I growl at myself in the mirror, make a fist, and punch my rock-hard pecs as fiercely as I can.

  “You see that?” I shout, my voice echoing off the walls. “You see it? You made that. You made this whole thing, all by yourself. So what are you going to do with it now, huh? You going to turn pussy? Sit here and cry? Maybe your dad was a loser. Maybe he was. But he wouldn’t be proud of this, and neither are you. So what the hell’re you gonna do with yourself, huh? What’re you gonna do?”

  It shocks me, the answer that rings in my head: that I could just focus the same kind of energy on something else.

  • • •

  I get to Enviro early so that I can go over my schedule with Chu and find out when I can do the lab. She’s irritated, but she’s working with me. I even negotiate an extra day to finish the exam after school, since we can’t do the lab until Thursday.

  While I’m at Chu’s desk, Kate comes in. Her brows go up a little bit in surprise when our eyes meet, but she quickly sits down. When I’m finished with Chu, the seat behind Kate is still open. She’s not looking at me, and she probably doesn’t care, but I move in behind her.

  There isn’t time to write notes or say anything, because now that my exams really matter, I have to pay attention. There’s so much I’ve missed by not caring, by sleeping through class—for a minute it just seems pointless. The amount of studying I’ll have to do is overwhelming. But as soon as the panic starts to seize me, without thinking I suck in my breath sharp, count to ten, and let it out slow. My blood stops whirling behind my eyes. My abs stay strong and tight, and the hardness of them, the way they hold steady, calms me down, same as it always does. So maybe I really can figure out how to be disciplined about the next steps too.

  I look at the back of Kate’s head, bent over her notes. I remember her smiling face in all those pictures, how she’s subtly changed since she started dating Connor, and how fun it’s been to watch. How much I admired her wide life yesterday, and how I want to be a part of it.