Above The Surface

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Yet, here I was, doing something selfless for some poor kid. Coach could be as confused as he wanted. He could think what he wanted too. I was doing this for Thea, because I hadn’t been lying on her birthday when I told her she deserved the fucking world and that I was going to give it to her.

  I pretty much bounced on my way out, feeling like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh—sexy, I know—as I headed into the locker room and toward the bathrooms for some privacy. On my way, unfortunately, Cain stopped me by grabbing my arm. I hadn’t expected his approach, so I nearly flew into him.

  “Watch it, Cain,” I snapped, shoving him back hard enough for him to almost collide with the bench behind him.

  “What’s got you so excited?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s it got to do with you?”

  “You asking Coach for weight loss tips?” he asked loudly, louder than goddamn necessary. I heard a few snorts around the changing room and saw that his dweeb friends were standing around in varying states of undress.

  “No,” I said shortly.

  “Then what were you talking to him about?” He cut a look over his shoulder where there was a window that looked into Ryder’s office. Coach was watching us with a flinty gaze, until Cain raised his hands and I backed off.

  We knew about the ‘no fighting’ rule, but we had broken it a time or two. Naturally, I was the troublemaker.

  “And I repeat, what’s it got to do with you?”

  He squinted at me, then shrugged. Only when he’d turned his back on me did I rush out of the locker room. Now that he was in there, I was getting the hell out.

  Only when I was outside in the parking lot did I hit ‘connect’ on the call to Thea.

  “Hey!”

  She sounded chirpy, and I loved that tone on her. The last couple of weeks had been tough for her. Louisa had died, and Thea’s foster folks were, quite understandably, taking it hard. After the healing that she considered botched, even though, as far as I could tell, Louisa’s life had been extended further than the doctors had imagined, Thea had taken it to heart. I’d only managed to cheer her up this week with her birthday gift which she loved, and which I loved seeing her ride. She looked cute as fuck on it.

  “Hey,” I rasped, closing my eyes at just how good it was to speak with her. I’d only seen her this morning, but even that was too damn long ago.

  She was like my personal drug, and I had no desire to go cold turkey.

  “You okay? Or just want to listen to me breathe?”

  Mouth quirking into a smile, I inquired, “Wouldn’t that make me a heavy breather?”

  “No. I’d be the one heavy breathing. You’d be the one liking the sound of it.”

  I snorted then, sobering up a little, questioned, “How would you feel about joining a swim team that has prospects?”

  She went quiet. “Why would you ask that? You know I can’t join anything like that. There’s nothing in the area—”

  “There is. I’m a member of one.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen the jacket you wear. It has patches from your team, but they’re attached to Rosemore, aren’t they?”

  “No. We can’t be. Long story short, but to compete in the NCSA, you can’t be attached to an ‘institution.’ But, I admit, the team is made up of Rosemore students.”

  She blew out a breath. “Then why ask me when I can’t be a member?”

  “Because I might have got you a tryout.”

  “Why would you do that without talking to me first?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was pissed or just curious. Her voice was bland, and considering her voice was always loaded down with emotion when she was talking to me, I didn’t think that was the best sign.

  “I know what Coach Ryder is like. He’s difficult.” And that was being kind. “Plus, he doesn’t like me. If I hadn’t told him your times, then he wouldn’t be interested. If anything, he’d be the opposite of that because I’d been the one introducing you.”

  She grunted. “Let me guess. He’s on Team Cain too?”

  “Isn’t everyone?” I laughed. Before Thea, it would have been a bitter laugh. Now? It was just amused, mostly because I didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion except for hers.

  “God, don’t turn this around so I’m not mad at you!”

  I laughed again, feeling pretty fucking giddy at how things were turning out. This plan had been percolating in my head for too long, but now that she was sixteen? I felt like it was time to take things to the next level. Some of the greatest female swimmers had already attended an Olympics by now, and I wanted Thea to be where she belonged—on an Olympic podium with a gold medal around her neck. “I’ll take it how I can. We can grab an Uber to the pool because it’s too far to bike it. We’ll need to be here by seven AM.”

  A shaky breath escaped her. “Are you kidding?”

  “No. I’m not.” I licked my lips. “Thea?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Coach doesn’t allow us to have relationships with people on the team.”

  She fell silent. “Then why did you go ahead with this?”

  “Because your future is important. Your talent can’t go to waste. He’ll be watching us.”

  Her quietness seemed to surround me, shrouding me in guilt when I was doing this for her.

  “There’s plenty of time for us. I’m not going anywhere. Are you?”

  “No,” she whispered eventually.

  “But I need you to try your best. Please, do it for me?”

  She gulped. “Okay.”

  “Get some rest today. Eat well. Sleep a lot.” At her snort, I grinned down at the gravel crunching underfoot. “I-I love you, Thea.”

  Weakly, she muttered, “I love you too.” And I knew, from how shaky she sounded, that I’d pretty much blown her mind with this shit.

  My grin felt like it was plastered onto my face. “Well,” I said brightly, “we can do anything then, can’t we?”

  And we did.

  THEA

  My time astonished Coach Ryder. Within the week, I was on the team, and kitted out like I was a rich kid just like Adam and Cain, with an Almanac Water Sports Team sweat suit displayed proudly in my closet, and three specialized swimsuits—the racer variety—in my drawers. Maria Lopez wasn’t happy, considering my being on the team kicked her off it, but even though she bitched about it and had thrown the towel bin in the locker room against the wall, there was no real arguing. Coach had settled things easily.

  A race.

  I’d beaten her by four seconds.

  That spring and summer changed everything. But it all started with Adam. He’d been the trigger, the catalyst. He’d taken me under his wing and helped me fly, because Coach didn’t just stop with a race against Cain’s girlfriend.

  He put me into a U.S.A. swimming competition, an open water junior meet, and I’d won first in all six of my races. Then came divisional meets, tristate competitions, and nationals.

  Gold, gold, gold.

  Suddenly, I had more gold medals than I had places to store them, and pinning them up on my walls just felt all kinds of wrong. Kenny would come into my room and gape at them, then shake his head at me and ask if he could have some of what I was taking. I knew why.

  It was unreal.

  Things like this didn’t happen to people like us.

  And crazier still? If it wasn’t too late for me to compete in the Olympic trials? Just by a couple of months? I had a feeling I’d be flying to Rio for the games.

  My talent opened doors for me in a way that it wouldn’t have without Adam shining a light on me. Suddenly, Coach stopped looking at me like a charity case. Instead, he had gold medals in his eyes, and me? I didn’t care.

  I wasn’t doing this for gold.

  I was doing this for Adam and for me.

  Even though we weren’t allowed to be a couple, nothing had progressed between us that led to that anyway. We’d only been allowed to see each other in the morning, and on rare occasions in the
evening, so it wasn’t like we could start a mad, passionate affair at Hawkvale, was it? This way, being a part of his club, I could see him for hours at a time. In my favorite place. Even if I couldn’t touch him.

  Which, admittedly, sucked.

  Still, this was for our future. Something we were both working toward, and for me? I was doing so in my favorite place imaginable.

  The water had always been my home, and a coping mechanism, so it seemed insane to me that it was the means in which I’d found my jílo, and how I might secure a future for myself that didn’t belong in a poverty-stricken area of Boston.

  I’d had no means of gaining a scholarship, not considering the high school I attended was a crappy one. We didn’t even have a guidance counselor—they kept leaving, traumatized by all the drugs and teen pregnancies.

  But suddenly, I saw a glimmer of hope.

  A chance to get out of there.

  And I took it. I owned it. I made it mine.

  I didn’t know what had happened. Didn’t know how or why. But in August, when I should have been rolling up to Madison Winthrop High School? I rolled up to Rosemore Academy with Adam at my side.

  I’d been sponsored, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out by who.

  Things like this didn’t happen to people like me, but Rosemore Academy had seen my performance at the Open Water Nationals. Had seen my abilities. And somehow, I was attending Rosemore on a grant. A big grant. It covered one hundred percent of the fees, including the stupid uniform I had to wear, and all the gear I needed for sports—Kenny, my foster brother, was beyond jealous.

  Adam had turned my life around a full one-eighty. It was like a dream. A beautiful fairy tale.

  Until it wasn’t.

  When I walked into the girls’ locker room the first day of school, I got the cold shoulder. But I’d expected that. I’d expected to be disliked because the new girls always were, and I’d been to enough schools to anticipate their reaction.

  What made it worse was Maria Lopez was queen bitch of my year, and I’d knocked her out of a spot on a team that was training kids to aim for the Olympics.

  Because Adam had warned me on that score, I’d worn a swimsuit under my uniform so I wouldn’t need to get naked in the locker room. Kids did the meanest shit, and I didn’t want some nude selfie floating around of me just because Maria was sucking on sour grapes.

  So, I stripped off my clothes, shoved them in a locker before I jiggled the padlock to make sure it was secure, and snapped the rubber bracelet complete with key around my wrist.

  To be honest, I expected there to be misery by the end of the day, so I’d packed another uniform in my locker out in the hall and had left my phone in there so they couldn’t get to it. Adam was also under instruction to wait for me. We had lunch after practice, and he knew that if I wasn’t out on time, then they’d stolen my uniform or done something to me. He had the key to my locker, too, so he could get my clothes if necessary.

  Even to me, the lengths I was going through to protect myself sounded crazy, but I’d been the new girl too many times not to know how people worked. Being vigilant would just stop me from having to wear a uniform patched together from the lost and found.

  The school was like something from a dream. There were no shouting kids, no angry security guards scowling at known troublemakers when we walked in. Everyone just handed over their bags and carried on without the arguments there had been at Madison Winthrop. The security guards even smiled at me and wished me a pleasant day.

  The grounds looked like they belonged in a gardening magazine, the building like we were in some kind of photoshoot for a fancy TV show, and the kids? Well, hell, this was like Gossip Girl on steroids.

  I’d never seen so many designer bags… and these people were under eighteen, for God’s sake.

  The money within these walls was obscene, and somehow, I was a part of this madness.

  A madness that was loaded with promise.

  A promise that I needed if I was going to lead a different life, and I wanted to. I wanted that so much. I wanted to free myself from a past laden with misery and grief. Wanted to change my fortune from that of a traveler into someone with roots, someone who belonged.

  That was all possible because of Adam. And these possibilities were made bearable by him too.

  So, even though I was arming myself for a war with the school bitches, I was kind of happy also.

  How foolish I was.

  I’d anticipated the hazing.

  What I hadn’t expected?

  For the hazing to be as bad as it was.

  When Maria took me down, I hadn’t expected it. I’d thought she’d try to humiliate me, not physically hurt me. One second, I was on the floor, my knees aching from where they’d collided when she’d kicked my feet out from under me, and the next, my face was in the water. My head held under.

  I didn’t panic. I didn’t need to. I could hold my breath for a long time beneath the surface.

  And as crazy as it was, I was calm, calmer than when she let me up. My lungs, sensing I could breathe, began to bellow, and the urge to grab as much oxygen as I could was one that had me gasping long and hard.

  Then he appeared.

  My savior.

  Adam.

  Only, he wasn’t. He didn’t save me. He walked toward me, took over the grip on my hair that Maria had, his hands shackling my wrists, and shoved me down, his foot going between my shoulders so he could hold me under without having to exert much effort.

  This time, there was no calm beneath the water.

  I panicked because this was Adam.

  My Adam.

  And everything stopped.

  My heart.

  My brain.

  Time.

  It all stopped working.

  And the damage was done.

  THEA

  I didn’t have it in me to regret healing Charles Linden even if, the following day, for the 800m freestyle, I felt shaky as hell.

  While I was grateful Adam had been there to help me, to get me back on my feet faster than I would have on my own—fate toying with me once again—I wished today wasn’t race day.

  He’d helped, but I still felt off. My talent with auras and healing wasn’t something I practiced often, because of the aftereffects, but when someone around me was ill, there was nothing I could do other than help. No matter the aftermath or the toll it took on me.

  But at the Olympics?

  Fuck.

  Talk about shitty timing.

  “I don’t get what’s so special about it.”

  The sneer came from Rachel Lewis-Hove. She and I competed in almost identical races, but I was ten times faster than her so that gave her a boner for me—and not in a good way.

  “What’s to get?” Lori questioned, and I could hear the shrug in her voice. Not only because she didn’t like Rachel, but also because she didn’t care about whatever she was bitching about.

  I shoved my feet into my flip-flops and started to tuck my hair under my swim cap. Next, I slipped my AirPods into my ears, following through with the routine that never changed, that couldn’t change because it was my ritual. We all had them, and I was no different.

  Once I was ready, I turned around and saw Rachel was staring at a picture on her phone. One glance, and it registered what she was moaning about.

  The picture of Adam and me after my first gold medal race.

  I sucked in a breath at the sight, the connection between us never failing to send shivers down my spine. But, even though it triggered a visceral response in me, I just said, “People like to speculate.”

  “He’s married. They shouldn’t be speculating about anything.”

  As always, my heart went pitter-patter in my chest at those words, but because I’d long since forged a powerful poker face, I just shrugged. “I have no control over what people think or do.”

  She huffed. “It’s gross.”

  “Don’t look at it then. It’s not like anyo
ne is making you,” Lori groused, shoving her own hair under a swimming cap. “What the hell are you doing over here anyway? Your locker’s there.” She wafted a hand in the distance, and Rachel sniffed then flounced away.

  My lips twitched in amusement. Sure, what she’d been saying was shitty, but I’d heard worse in my time.

  Lori caught my eye then rolled hers, making me snicker.

  “Thanks,” I told her with a wry grin.

  She shrugged. “Gotta protect my star swimmer.”

  This time I didn’t just snicker, I fucking laughed. “Oh, that’s all it is, huh? Nothing to do with three years of friendship?”

  The twinkle in her eye deepened. “Nope. Nothing to do with that.”

  Shaking my head, I let her haul her arm around me, even though I wanted to shrug it off—being half-hugged wasn’t part of my ritual.

  Still, she was partly involved in hers, so I slipped on the right track on my iPhone and waited for us to be called out. I hated this part. Hated waiting and hated letting my nerves run away from me. It sucked. Totally sucked. If I could have just started in the water, I’d have been fine, but having to hang around people always screwed with my head.

  Evidently hearing the loudspeaker when I was miles away, Lori squeezed me, and I realized it was our time.

  We all gathered into the appropriate clusters before we marched out to our respective lanes. Rachel was going first, then Lori, then Jamie, a really cool sixteen-year-old who was all big eyes at being here, and then me. To make up any shortfall in the times.

  Shame that I was feeling like one big shortfall today.

  Hoping I’d improve once I was in the pool, I began to strip, focusing on my calming breaths for a few moments just as the others stopped streaming out of the locker room and were on their lanes.

  Standing in my swimsuit had me shivering, and I pulled on my goggles, hoping to fuck that I wouldn’t wimp out in the lane. Lori was strong, so was Jamie, but Rachel could lag if she was having a bad day.

  I gnawed on my lip for a second, then did what I never do—looked out into the crowd.