Normally she remembered interrupting the swim meet the way she would remember a dream, in sharp fragments and with the same loss of logic. She didn’t remember the Emergency Room at the hospital, and she only remembered bits and pieces of the first few days she’d been in the locked ward, like the brownout of being drunk. Now the cloudiness of chemicals, the slow bicycling of legs treading water above her, brought back something she’d forgotten: the car ride to the hospital, her mother and brother sitting on either side of her. She and Luke and her father all dripping wet, the car filled with the sharp yellow scent of chlorine, her mother’s arms around Angie. She’d thought that her mother was filled with admiration and awe, and Angie’s newly enormous love for her mother had been edged with pity. Now she could see that her mother had been terrified. The memory of transcendence felt stronger—more true and clear—than the knowledge that she’d been psychotic. Jesus, psychotic.
She burst to the surface of the pool, gasping.
Two kids were shoving each other at the pool edge, and someone called someone else a faggot, and Jerry said, Okay, gather round, just as one of the shovers succeeded in pushing the other into the pool. Gather round. It was a thin line to hold on to, but one instruction led to another, and in this way she got through practice, and the next, and the next and the next and the next.
“My mom hates this car,” Jess said. “I think she’s hoping I’ll crash it.”
There was no backseat in Jess’s father’s red Miata, so Tris Wu perched on Angie’s lap. Tris had long black hair and an appealingly crooked smile. She was cooler and more popular than Jess or Angie; they’d never been able to decide exactly why she was friends with them.
Jess let the clutch out jerkily; Angie grabbed Tris’s waist and Tris grabbed for the dashboard.
At the radio towers, they parked far down the road; too many cars together and the police would know there was a party. As they hiked back, Angie wished she’d brought Ativan. She’d been trying not to take it because she hated feeling like she needed a pill to get through things. She stopped and found her cigarettes, turning her back to the wind. Her lighter didn’t work at first and she shook it to moisten the wick. When she looked up, Jess was standing next to her.
She reached out and patted Angie’s arm, saying for the fiftieth time, “I don’t care about this party. We can leave any time you want.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m just saying.”
Fireflies hung in the weeds on the road’s shoulder. At the curve, Angie and Tris and Jess turned off the road, jumping the ditch. They shouldered through high grasses, calling when they lost sight of one another. Angie held her hand with the lit cigarette above her head, using the other hand to push grass aside. From all around came the keening of insects.
“I can’t believe you smoke now!” Tris called back. “You’re, like, Super Athlete.”
At last they emerged into a broad cleared field, the radio towers winking atop small hillocks. The moon, almost full, hung low and greenish-yellow. If no one’s parents were out of town, this was one of two places for parties; the other, which they used more in winter, was a house in the woods that had been abandoned after a fire. Clumps of kids stood around drinking from plastic cups. Angie would allow herself one beer. She hadn’t thought to bring water or a soda, any more than she’d thought about Ativan. She hadn’t been to a real party since she got sick.
Someone stopped Tris to talk to her; Jess stopped too, but Angie mumbled hello and continued toward the keg. “Ange!” Tris called, and ran to catch up.
“How are you doing?” Tris asked.
“I’m just going to get a beer.”
“Are you okay?” Tris patted her arm, brows pulled together.
“I’m fine,” Angie said, moving a step away. “I’m just getting a beer.”
Abe McGirr pumped the keg. He didn’t go to her high school—he went to St. Gregory’s, which was private, Episcopalian, all boys—but as kids they’d swum on the same summer team. He handed Angie a cup. Her hand was almost steady.
Stepping away from the keg, he asked, “So, where are you going?”
“Going?”
“To school?”
“Oh. Where are you going?”
“Harvard,” he said, trying to look casual. “I think the coach there pulled some strings.”
Abe had protruding, froggy eyes and brown hair that went in every direction. Back when they’d swum on the same summer team, they’d both been singled out at ten to swim the thirteen-and-up practice, which had meant that Angie had been very aware of Abe while at the same time carefully avoiding him. He’d avoided her also, both of them wanting the acceptance and company of the older kids. When his family had moved to the other side of town, and therefore a different summer team, she’d been glad.
She said, “I’m-taking-some-time-off-before-college-what-are-your-summer-plans?”
“My summer plans?” he asked. He was grinning at her, as though she might be joking, but then he seemed to realize she wasn’t. The question must have sounded like one a parent’s friend would ask, and his answer sounded polite in the way you’d be polite to a parent’s friend. “Well, I’m swimming for Patton. I’m working at a record store. You know Stars?”
“Me too. I mean, I’m working. At Full-Beli Deli. It’s very orderly.”
Abe laughed.
“What?”
“Oh.” He stopped laughing. “I thought you were making a pun. Very orderly? Orders? Like lunch orders?”
“I meant more like you don’t have to make choices. People say white bread or rye or wheat bread, and you do that. Fritos or potato salad.”
“It must be boring.”
She raised her cup to her mouth too fast, slopping some beer onto their shoes, onto the ground.
“Whoa. Slow down a little there.”
“I’m going to go find my friends,” she blurted.
Abe leaned toward her. “Do you want to know a secret?”
“I don’t know. Do I?” He was so close they almost touched.
“The cameras in the record store? The ones that’re supposed to keep people from shoplifting?” He looked around exaggeratedly, then leaned close again. He raised the collar of his shirt and behind it whispered, “Fake.”
“No.”
“I shit you not.” He straightened, dropped his collar, and said in a normal voice, “A real closed-camera system would cost like a thousand dollars, so they just have these plastic cameras. They have a battery that makes a little red light flash, which makes it look like they’re on and doing something.”
“Does it work?”
“I have no idea.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you something about the deli.” She lifted the neck of her T-shirt, but the only images she could summon were spreading mayonnaise with a rubber spatula, the bleach-soaked paper towels laid over the counters at night, the black grease pencil she used to write sandwiches’ names on the white paper in which she’d wrapped them. She whispered, “Actually, there’s not a single thing to tell.”
“That’s a disappointment. It looks so sinister.”
“Right. Is it the Coke signs that look sinister or the pictures of football players?”
“Football players,” he said. “Definitely.”
She had said something semi-clever. It had never occurred to her to find Abe McGirr attractive. She wasn’t sure whether she found him attractive now or whether she was responding to being with someone who didn’t know what had happened last winter.
Down at the edge of the field, Luke emerged from the tall grass. A moment later Khamisa followed, brushing chaff from her curly hair. She was a sophomore. No: a junior now. Luke was going to be a senior. Jess was going off to Bates, Tris to UNC. Violet, Luke’s ex-girlfriend, was going to some California school—Pomona, or maybe Pitzer? It was as though Angie had traveled away on a rocket, returning to find everyone but her had aged and moved ahead.
Luke said something to Khamisa and left her t
o come over.
He and Abe greeted each other, shaking hands. “How are you doing?” Luke asked Angie.
“I’m fine,” she said, giving him a warning look: brows raised, eyes hard. “How else would I be?”
“Are you supposed to … is that okay?” He nodded at the beer.
Abe said, “Well, it tastes like horse piss.”
“Drunk much horse piss?” It came out more barking and aggressive than she’d meant. Abe straightened up.
There was an awkward silence. Then Abe said, “I’m going to go say hi to some people. So. I guess I’ll see you around.”
Abe loped down the hill and she turned on Luke. “I’m allowed to have one stupid beer,” she said.
He touched her shoulder, about to speak.
She shook him off. “Why does everyone keep patting me?”
To her surprise, Abe came into Full-Beli the next day. Later in the week she went and bought a CD at Stars—when he was watching, she pretended to stuff the case under her shirt. Real life, her brain was singing. On a night she worked late, he picked her up from the deli and they walked around the closed and quiet downtown, looking into the windows of stores.
“My mom hates these places,” Angie said, outside of the Sandpiper, which sold candles and silver-plated shells and pretty cards. “Actually she hates a lot of random things.” Even though it was true, she felt guilty saying it; she remembered at the farm how relieved she’d been every time she heard her mother’s familiar low voice on the phone.
The bank fountain was still on. They sat on its lip, feet in the water. The plashing water sent up a mist that dampened her face.
They looked at each other seriously, then laughed and looked away, then looked at each other again and kissed. Angie could feel coins beneath the soles of her feet.
“I can’t believe how beautiful you are,” Abe said. “I didn’t know if … I thought you might just want to be friends.”
Truthfully, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. A year ago, she wouldn’t have been interested in Abe. The granite lip of the fountain was cold against the backs of her bare legs. Slipping her hands under her thighs, she leaned forward and kissed him again.
New Hampshire’s summer days were hot, muggy, the high chatter and whine of insects all around. She worked at the deli from nine to four-thirty, coming in with her hair wet from morning practice and leaving just in time to bike to afternoon practice, sun glancing off the downtown windows. Saturdays, she had meets in the mornings. She came in to work around two, still vibrating from competition, and worked until close.
Wednesdays she was off, and Abe changed his schedule at Stars so he could take Wednesdays off too. They liked to go to matinees, the sudden cold of the dim theater lobby. They brought sweatshirts to wear over their T-shirts, and sometimes, as one movie finished, they strolled as casually as possible to the next screening room, coming in at the middle, watching through to the end. If it seemed worth it, they’d stay through the emptying of the few occupied seats, the straggling in of the next small audience, and see the movie over from the beginning, pushing right up until four-fifty, when they had to run from the theater to Abe’s old Galaxie 500 and drive to the pool for Angie’s afternoon practice.
Angie argued for her lithium to be lowered, and as her dose went from 1200 milligrams to 900 and then 750, she felt a heaviness lift from her shoulders. At the deli, she was pleasantly bored, arranging salami in overlapping circles, tossing crusts into the crust bag, wrapping sandwiches in white paper before slicing them in half, the sliced edge of paper instantly soaking yellow with mustard. A soft-rock-from-the-seventies radio station crooned meaninglessly in the background. She remembered Sam Manning saying, No voices. She’d liked the farm, but now it seemed like quicksand she’d been lucky to escape, and she held her eyes wide for a minute, breaking off the memory, focusing on the next sandwich. She performed the same actions so many times they followed her into sleep; all night she dreamed of making sandwiches of rb or tur, with am ch or sw.
One morning she and Abe went to Cort’s Historic Village Green, which had a new-made-to-look-old sign proclaiming it as such. They sat on the steps of the gazebo, where some nights a swing band played. Facing the square were a steepled church, the town hall, the public library, all of them white with shutters and doors painted a green so dark it was almost black. Later would be stunningly hot, but at 6 A.M. a chilly haze hung in the air.
Sitting hip to hip, they drank from a shared Styrofoam cup of coffee. Abe would leave for Harvard in three weeks. He’d gotten a postcard from the housing office with his roommate’s name: Evan Johansson, from Bemidji, Minnesota. Angie took the postcard, turning it over in her hands.
“He’s a seven-foot-tall cross-country skier,” she said. “He’s going to wear Nordic sweaters and drink lite beer and seduce a different girl every night.”
“They won’t put me with another athlete.” He took the postcard back from her, tucking it into the front pocket of his sweatshirt. “He stutters. He’s like five feet tall and he’s a virgin.”
Abe’s leg, pressed against hers, was tanned and muscular, with pale curly hair. Angie was in love with Abe’s legs. She wasn’t sure if she was in love with Abe, only that she wanted to see him every day. After he dropped her off at night sometimes he called to say good night, and her heart leapt (really, her heart leapt) with gladness. Did that mean she loved him? They’d had sex for the first time a week ago, in the backseat of the Galaxie, sweet and awkward. He’d hit his elbow once, hard, on the window, and they’d laughed. Afterward, he’d clutched her, breathing raggedly. “Thank you,” he’d said. “That was … thank you.”
She was going to tell him about the hospital. A car passed, then another. When a third car went by she’d say it.
“You’re awfully quiet this morning.”
She faked a yawn, stretching out her arms. The faked yawn set off a real yawn, which made her smile. “I never get up this early,” she said, and then realized she used to get up this early at the farm. For that matter, she’d gotten up this early all the way through high school because of swim practice. She blushed. A low blue station wagon passed, rattling. “Can I have the coffee?”
He handed her the cup. She drank the dregs, silty with sugar. A fourth car passed. Seven cars and she’d say it. Angie pushed off her flip-flops and tucked her knees to her chest, pulling her sweatshirt down over them.
Abe claimed he’d had sex before, with a girl on a ski trip. Angie didn’t believe him, but it made her feel affectionate rather than annoyed, especially since he immediately said, “But it was nothing like this.” She said, “Me either.” She’d lied in the other direction, reducing her experience to just her ex-boyfriend Thad, editing out the freshman boy at a party and Luke’s friend Cole and a half-memory, possibly a dream, of desperately rubbing against someone, a girl, in the hospital Activity Room. She’d been manic during that time, so she wasn’t exactly lying; she was telling an alternate truth, what should have been true.
The sprinkler bowed, sweeping a slow silver parabola of water across the dark grass. Abe stood and pitched the empty cup at a green metal trash can. “I need to get you to the pool.” He reached down quickly, touching his toes. “Will you visit me?”
“At Harvard?”
He pulled her up and kissed her, running his hands down her sides. “If Evan Johansson is such a stud, I’ll have the room to myself sometimes.”
“I was in the hospital for a few days,” she blurted. “About ten. I mean, I was in the—the hospital was … on a psych unit. It’s called bipolar, there’s—I have a chemical missing, like diabetics don’t produce insulin?” She took a breath and finished lamely, “So anyway, that’s what I wanted to tell you.”
“It’s okay.” His hands rested easily on his hips.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
He raised and dropped his shoulders. “I knew.”
“You knew? Who told you? You knew?”
“No one told
me. I don’t remember who told me. I heard about it last winter.”
“You’ve known the whole time?”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Abe said.
She walked away. The grass was cold and wet and stuck to her bare soles. She moved as fast as she could across the green. Catching up, Abe put his hand on her arm. She shook him off without slowing; he caught up to her again. She was beginning to feel melodramatic, like a bad music video, so she stopped and turned. Not out of amusement or happiness—she guessed out of embarrassment—she couldn’t stop smiling. She hid her mouth with her hand.
“It doesn’t matter,” Abe said again.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?” Her face burned, and an awful giggle escaped.
“I thought you knew I knew. Cort’s not that big.”
“Oh, shit,” she said, and began laughing in earnest. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I guess everyone knows. Shit.”
She laughed until tears began to leak down her face, and then she forced herself to stop. Abe’s face, its suspension between relief and worry, almost set her off again; she turned around, took deep breaths.
Tentatively, he reached out, gathering her hair into a bunch behind her. “Blow off practice. Let’s get breakfast.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. What’s your coach going to do?”
Nothing. She’d known since the first day of the season, when Jerry had decided not to say anything about the missed practice. Anyone else would have had to do extra laps or pick trash off the lawn. Exactly because there would be no consequence, she couldn’t blow off practice.
She went back for her flip-flops. They were quiet most of the ride to the pool. Angie usually took meds now, at seven. She’d only skipped that one dose, the day Jess visited her out in Sheepskill, and then had been awake all night sure she was going to become manic and end up in the hospital. She might as well take her meds in front of Abe, since he knew.
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