“I think she’s the one, man,” I say.
“Wow, man, that’s crazy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know man, I just never saw you getting married, that’s all.”
“Sooner or later that one girl comes along for everyone,” I say. “Don’t worry, Dave. I’m sure she’s out there somewhere, waiting for you.”
Dave just laughs. “I don’t think it’s my style, man.”
“You’ll find her,” I say. “Someday. It may take you a hell of a long time, because I think you’re even more of an asshole than I am.”
“Anchor! Get your ass over here.” It’s coach, yelling at me.
“He sounds pissed,” says Dave. “And we didn’t even do anything.”
I get up slowly and walk over to where coach is standing by the side of the pool.
He’s got everyone on the team doing a brutal set.
“What the hell is this?” says coach, still practically yelling, even though I’m standing right next to him.
“A newspaper?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, you fucking prick,” says coach.
Wow, I’m kind of surprised. Sure, coach can be a bit rough with his words, but he’s never called me something like that to my face before, right, except during the last meet.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, coach,” I say. “If you’re getting that mad about a newspaper, I don’t know how to help you.”
“Asshole,” says coach, pushing the paper into my face.
“I can’t read it when you’re pushing it in my face like that,” I say.
“Your girlfriend wrote an article about us. You mean you don’t know anything about this?”
“Oh, sure. Yeah, I haven’t read it yet, but Allison told me all about it. I bet it makes us look pretty good, right?”
“Good? Are you fucking kidding me, Anchor? And you know what, this is all your fault!”
“My fault, what the hell are you talking about?” I’m getting mad. Why is coach talking to me like this? After all, Allison told me all about the article, and it sounded fucking great. She was going to make me out like a real star. She even said she put the coach in a positive light, like he was some kind of tireless crusading hero or something.
I grab the paper from the coach, and, holding it at a more comfortable distance from my face, I begin reading.
Meanwhile, coach is still yelling at me. The volume of his voice is actually increasing. “This is your fault, Anchor! There’s no way she’d know all this stuff if you hadn’t told her. She makes the whole team look like a bunch of fucking criminals, and I guess that’s what you all are.”
Everyone has stopped swimming. Some of the guys are hanging out around by the side of the pool. Others have gotten out, and are standing around us, dripping wet, trying to read the article. But I pull away from them, and read as quickly as I possibly can.
This doesn’t look like it’s the article Allison described to me. Not at all. Not in the least bit!
There isn’t a single good thing about us in the article.
Instead, the article details every single thing I ever told Allison about the swim team—every bad thing, that is.
She paints a picture of us, using some, I have to admit, very impressive vocabulary and writing skills…what she about our ‘exploits’ would make even the most hardened criminal shudder.
She writes about all the shit Dave and I have gotten into on our own. The statue is just the beginning of it. She writes about how the guys used ecstasy at the party. She writes about the steroids Dave got the guys taking… Shit! The steroids. This is a big fucking deal. This kind of stuff can’t get out to the public, or we’re in serious fucking trouble. But here it is, in black and white on the campus paper.
What the fuck?
How could Allison do this? How could she do this to me?
Everything has been going so well between us. I can’t believe she would do this, but here’s the evidence right in front of me. So her career is really that important to her? She really wants to work for The Journal so much that she’ll throw me under the fucking bus just to write her killer article?
“You OK, man?” says Dave, from behind me. He’s been reading the article over my shoulder.
Someone grabs the paper from me. Whatever, I’ve already read it. I’ve seen what I need to see. Everyone else now is huddled around Thompson, who is reading the article out loud.
Coach is still screaming. I haven’t been catching his words, though.
Now I do. “Anchor, you’re off the team. Dave, you too!”
“What did I do?” screams Dave, indignantly.
“Doesn’t fucking matter, man. You’re not going to be racing again, anyway.”
“Guess you’re right,” says Dave, shrugging. He’s always been an easy going guy in some ways.
“I knew she’d get us into trouble,” says Spellman.
“Shut the fuck up, Spellman,” I say, spinning around to face him. “Or I’ll knock you out again.”
Spellman shuts his mouth. Fucking right!
“All right, everyone,” I say, my voice loud, echoing around the swimming pool.
Everyone’s standing around me. Coach has even shut up. That’s what my presence can do to a crowd. My real presence. They know I’m the boss here. They’re waiting to see how I’ll respond.
My mind is rushing with anger and thoughts of Allison. How could she do this to me? I thought we had something real. Fuck, I was just talking about marrying her.
“All right, team.”
“You’re not even on the team anymore, Anchor. Get out of the building, now.” Coach says this in a calmer voice. I guess now that he’s kicked me off the team for good he doesn’t feel the need to yell at me.
“I’ll leave. I’m headed to the swim house. And you’re all going to follow me.”
“You’re all staying here,” interjects coach. “You have to finish practice.”
“Listen,” I say. Everyone is staring at me with rapt attention, eyes wide, from the freshman to the seniors. Even Spellman is looking at me like I’m the savior. I guess I have more of a reputation than I’d even realized. But, after all, my exploits have been barely short of legendary. “We’re going to get in a shit load of trouble for this shit we’ve pulled. It’s all here, and everyone’s going to read it.”
“It’s just the campus paper,” says someone.
“Knowing this bitch, the article will be picked up by every paper in the country. They won’t miss a scandal like this. I mean steroids and ecstasy, wild parties! It’s a huge fucking deal.”
“Dude,” says Dave. “Don’t call her a bitch.”
“What the fuck do you know?” I say, turning to Dave. I approach him, getting right into his face. “You got a fucking problem with how I’m talking?”
“It’s just that she’s your girlfriend,” he says.
“Not anymore,” I say. “Now you still got a problem? Just because you’re my best friend doesn’t mean I won’t knock you down like I knocked down Spellman.”
“No problem, man,” says Dave, quietly.
“Good,” I say. “Now we can bend over and let them paddle our asses. They’ll slap us with all kinds of punishments. You know the fucking deal. We can either take it the way they want us to. Or we can take it like the fucking men that we are! We can either go quietly, or we can go out raging. Who’s fucking with me? We’re going to throw the biggest and most degenerated fucking party the campus has ever seen in its entire fucking existence!”
24
Allison
“Allison, I saw your article. What the hell were you thinking?” It’s Beaumont. He’s just run up to me on campus. His corduroy sport coat looks disheveled, as does his hair.
“My article? You mean the one I wrote last week about the use of hand sanitizer?”
“No. God no! The article on the swim team. What the hell were you
thinking, Allison? Do you think this is your ticket to The Journal? Because this is underhanded. I know we talked about making it devastating, but this is beyond devastating. Don’t you have a relationship with this Anchor character? What does he think about all this?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Professor Beaumont? I’m still writing my article.”
“Well, it’s already published. How do you explain that?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I grab the campus newspaper from his hands. I’m expecting just to see my article on hand sanitizers and its possible uses and dangers, but instead the front page is covered with… my writing, my article...
But it’s not the article I’m still in the process of writing, the article that shows Anchor, the coach, Dave, Spellman, just about everybody, as complete heroes.
The article has my name on it. It’s titled “Criminal Enterprise Masquerading as Swim Team on Campus.”
I definitely didn’t write the title. But I start reading the article, and they are definitely my words.
To my absolute horror, the article is the draft I wrote a month ago when I was angry at Anchor, and decided to take it out by writing the worst stuff I could about him and the team.
“The members of the swim team,” the article reads, “pretend to be upstanding citizens, and they have the full support of the University administration, but in reality they are nothing more than common criminals, willing to do whatever necessary, by whatever means, to win, and to have the best possible time while doing so…”
“Oh shit,” I say.
“How do you explain this?” says Beaumont, giving me a stern look. “Did you write this?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I wrote it.” My voice becomes quieter. “But, Professor Beaumont, I wrote it, but I never published it. I never even sent it in. The only copy that I have is on my computer.”
“Then how the hell did it get into the newspaper like this?”
“I have no idea, honestly, Professor Beaumont. The last thing I want to do now is hurt Anchor. It’s true, we’re going out, and it’s really been getting serious. Shit, what if he sees this? What’s he going to think? I’ve got to call him right now and find him. I’ve got to explain that this was just a horrible accident.”
I’m getting frantic, and Beaumont can tell. I’m practically pulling my hair out while simultaneously searching through my backpack for my cellphone. Where the hell is that damn thing? Why can’t I just keep it in my pocket like everyone else?
“Slow down, Allison. First things first, we’ve got to figure out what happened. I believe you. You’ve never lied to me before, and I don’t know why you’d start now. Also, you don’t have the motivation.”
“You would have made a good reporter,” I say, trying to make a joke, but it falls completely flat.
“Where do you save the drafts of your articles?” says Beaumont.
“What do you mean?”
“Where do you write them?”
“I just write them in my email window. It’s easier for me to concentrate like that. I can pretend I’m writing to a friend. When I open up the regular writing program, I just go into a cold sweat. It looks so… blank.”
“Well,” says Beaumont. “There’s a valuable lesson in this. And it is: never do that. Do you realize what happened?”
“I…” I really don’t know. I’m too frantic right now to think straight. I’m still searching for my cell phone, pulling various items out of my backpack and throwing them onto the ground.
“Did you put an email address in the recipient field?”
I pause for a moment.
“Did you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I put the newspaper address.”
“Well, shit, Allison. You should never do that. But it’s too late now. Obviously, you accidentally sent the article, and they published it.”
“But I’m the head of the newspaper. How could I not know about this?”’
“How much time have you been spending at the newspaper lately?”
“Well…” In truth, I’ve barely shown my face there since Anchor and I started spending so much time together. He’s been sleeping at my dorm practically every night, and with school work and everything, along with trying to write the article for the paper, I really have been slacking on my editorial duties. I guess being in a relationship sucks up more time than I’d thought.
“You haven’t been spending any time there at all. I warned you about getting involved with the subjects of your articles, Allison.”
“I know, I know. But, the same thing would have happened if I had been in a relationship with anyone else. It doesn’t matter that he’s on the swim team…that has nothing to do with my slacking so much on my duties at the paper. Shit, Sally must have gotten the email and published it. I’m sure she wouldn’t have if had I stepped into the office once in the last couple weeks. I guess it seemed like a good article, so she published it. I can’t blame her. It’s all my fault, Professor Beaumont. What am I going to do?”
“Well, for one, you should be proud.”
“Proud? For what?”
“If what you said is true, and I believe it is, then this is your first draft. Yet it reads like some seriously professional copy from one of the best papers.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes,” says Beaumont, giving me a serious look. “You’re very talented, Allison.”
“Shit, does this mean the article will get picked up by a regular paper?”
Beaumont gives me a little laugh. “I don’t think we have to worry about that, Allison.”
“Why not?” I say, getting a little mad. My pride is boiling up inside of me, despite the situation. After all, I really don’t want the article picked up by anyone else. It could seriously ruin Anchor’s chances for the Olympics.
“It’s a great article in that it’s very well written. But it reads like a grudge letter. Someone with a personal grudge. I don’t think the other papers are going to be interested in something like that.”
“Well…good,” I manage to say. But now I think of Anchor again. Shit, what am I going to do?
“First thing’s first, Allison, you need to go find your boyfriend and explain this to him. If you’re serious about him, and want to keep him, you need to explain yourself fully. It’s going to take some serious convincing, but use your obviously strong verbal skills… And as for the article, you need to write another one. Take that draft you’ve been working on and beef it up. Make it the best article you’ve ever written. Make it so good that it’ll go national, and the Olympics coaches will have no choice but to bring him onto the team.”
“Thanks, Professor Beaumont,” I say. “Thanks, I couldn’t have gone through this with out you.” I really mean it.
“Get going,” he says, shooing me away with his arm, giving me a little half smile.
I turn around and start running, completely having forgotten about finding my cell phone. My only thought is to find Anchor in person, and as fast as possible.
Oh yeah, my cell phone is broken, anyway. It’s sitting in a landfill somewhere, still soaked through with water from the river I almost drowned in.
Is he going to be at the pool?
Somehow, my intuition tells me, “no.”
I head to the swim house, running full speed across campus.
When I get to the house, I’m completely out of breath.
I stand outside a moment, almost doubled over from running, with a stich in my side. It’s been years since I’ve run at all. Shit, I’ve got to get back into shape. But that’s not what’s on my mind right now. It’s only Anchor. Anchor, Anchor, Anchor! Poor Anchor. He must think I’m the worst person in the world. I can only imagine what must be going on in his head? He probably thinks I’m just with him to get an article that will make me a professional. After all, everything I put in the article is stuff he told me in confidence.<
br />
I look up, and suddenly realize something is going on in the swim house. Something that’s not normal for a school day morning.
It appears to be a party. The biggest party I’ve ever seen, judging just from the outside of the house.
The entire house is shaking on its foundations with the rumblings of what must be about three different songs playing simultaneously.
The last time I was here for a party, there was a guy hanging out the window, if I remember right. This time, there are no less than three guys hanging out of various windows. God only knows what they’re doing!
There are people rushing all around me, rushing into the house.
“Party!” yells someone. He looks like a sophomore who I TA’d once in a writing class.
I grab his sleeve as he runs by me.
“What the hell’s happening in there?” I say.
“Oh, hey, Allison. You here for the party?”
“What party?”
“The best party the campus has ever seen!”
“In the morning? What the hell’s going on?”
“Anchor got kicked off the team. You know Anchor? He’s the captain, the best swimmer they ever had. He got the whole team to cut practice, and they’ve invited practically the entire campus.”
Oh shit, I think. This has got to have something to do with me. There’s just no way it can’t have something to do with me.
25
Anchor
It’s the best party the campus has every seen. There are more people packed into the swim house than ever in its entire history.
I can barely tell what’s going on. There are so many people around, most of them already wasted, and it’s still well before noon. The music’s so loud no one can hear anything except super strong bass lines. I convinced one of the rich kids to rig up some kind of super stereo, and the windows are rattling, threatening to shatter.
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