Coming Up for Air

by Miranda Kenneally

  For a second my mind flits to Roxy. Are my elbows as high as hers? But then I remember what Dad said on Sunday—if I keep focusing on my rival, it’ll be a self-fulfilling prophesy. The only one I should be paying attention to is myself.

  The workout is hella exhausting. After my shower, I muster the energy to put on my school clothes and pull my hair back into a bushy, wet bun. At least it’s warmer outside than it had been; the water droplets in my hair aren’t going to freeze. I walk out of the locker room at the same time Levi does. He nods at me, jingling his keys on the way to the lot.

  I climb into my dad’s Honda Accord and start the ignition, taking a deep breath. I can do this. I can drive to school. I did fine yesterday. Before pulling out of the lot, I put on my seat belt. Those crash test dummies on insurance commercials wear them, so I should too. I begin the trip back to Franklin, leaning forward in my seat, driving like an old lady. If I ever become a rich, famous swimmer with loads of endorsement deals, the first thing I will invest in is a driver.

  I make it off I-40 and onto the back roads, but when I hit the four-lane road in Franklin a car totally cuts me off. Shit!

  I swerve to the right.

  My car runs off the road.

  It flies into a ditch.

  My teeth crash together, rattling my head, and I lunge forward, hitting the steering wheel, my seat belt pulling me back. Ow. Oh my God, oh my God.

  I lift my head. Spots swim in front of my eyes as I pat down my body. Wiggle my arms and feet. I’m okay. But I’m shaking, my lips trembling. The airbag didn’t open, probably because I didn’t hit anything. I unbuckle my seat belt.

  Someone knocks on the window. It’s Levi. He opens my door, crouches down, and carefully surrounds me with his arms. I lean against his chest. It’s heaving up and down.

  “You okay, Magpie?”

  “I’m fine. Some jerk cut me off.”

  He sweeps a hand up and down my spine to calm me. “You’re gonna be okay.” His voice is calm, but his arms are trembling.

  “I’m never driving again.”

  “You did the right thing. You got out of the way of the bad driver and didn’t crash into any other cars. I’m proud of you. You’re a great driver.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was behind you. I saw the whole thing happen. I can’t believe that asshole didn’t even stop to make sure you’re okay.” His hand cradles the side of my head as he checks my eyes. “You feel all right? Does anything hurt?”

  My forehead hurt a little at first and my arms feel like they were jarred, but I’m okay. “Can you drive me home?”

  “Of course.”

  He collects my bag out of the car and leads me to his truck, where he opens the passenger side door and helps me inside. He even calls my dad to tell him we left the car on the other side of Franklin. Dad panics, of course, and says he’ll meet me at home, but he’s over in the next town, and it’ll take a little while for him to drive back.

  Once Levi and I are on the road, he lets out a long breath and reaches over to squeeze my hand. “You scared me, Magpie.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t be.” At the next stoplight, he rubs his eyes, then looks over at me. “You sure you’re okay? Should we go to the hospital?”

  I pat my body again. “I’m fine, I think, but I’ll let you know.”

  Back at my house, he leads me to my room. He doesn’t even complain about the mess as he tucks me in under the covers. He makes me take Tylenol and sip some water, and after calling the school, he lies down next to me, breathing deeply. Staring at my face, he rests a hand on my arm.

  “I’m sorry, Mags. For everything.”

  “I know.”

  The air is thick with silence.

  “The Rock, the pope, and Queen Elizabeth,” Levi finally says. “Who’s going overboard?”

  Our relationship doesn’t feel normal again, but this at least gives me hope we can figure out a way to be friends.

  • • •

  Coach Woods asks me to stay after health class one day.

  I’m sure she wants to question me about my homework. Our class had to develop individual meal plans for a week, focusing on calories and grams of fat and carbs. Basically my menu consisted of protein bars, pasta, chocolate milk, and really anything I can get my hands on in Chef’s kitchen. If I come into contact with a food, I generally will eat it unless it’s something like frog legs. That’s what I wrote on my report: I will eat anything but frog legs.

  “Is this about my meal plan? I’m sorry I didn’t follow the instructions to stay within specific fat grams but—”

  “Your plan looked a lot like mine when I was your age,” Coach Woods replies. “I ate all the time. Especially at Joe’s All-You-Can-Eat Pasta Shack.”

  “Oooh. I love that place.”

  “I still love it, even though I shouldn’t be eating like that since I don’t practice every day anymore,” she admits. Then she asks, “Your parents run a catering company, right?” I nod. “My fiancé and I are getting married this summer, and he’s dead set on our friend Carter catering the wedding out of his taco restaurant.”

  “Sounds delicious.”

  “Right? But we can’t only have tacos and tortilla chips.”

  “You can’t?” I joke.

  “Well, I need to find a groom’s cake, for one. And I want to do some different appetizers. Like chicken fingers and pigs in a blanket.”

  “My dad loves catering ‘Americana,’” I say, making finger quotes. “He’s all about the classics.”

  “Me too,” she says. “But we haven’t done a very good job of planning for a tent…or silverware or plates… Really all we have planned are Carter’s tacos, and Sam’s sister is going to play guitar when we walk down the aisle.”

  I write down Dad’s phone number on a piece of paper and give it to her. “You can call my dad if you want. He’s really into creating themes, so if you want something special for your wedding, he can pull it off. Last summer he did a Disney-themed wedding. This summer he’s doing a Harry Potter one. They’re serving butterbeer.”

  Her eyes grow wide with excitement. “I could do a football-themed wedding?!”

  “Sure, yeah, I guess,” I say. “The table names could be football teams. And the signature cocktail could be an Old Fashioned Football.”

  “Ooh. How’d you come up with that?”

  “I grew up with my parents,” I say, and she laughs.

  “By the way, congrats on winning at state,” she says. “The principal was telling me we’ve never had anyone win a state swim meet until you and Levi.”

  “Thank you.” I adjust my backpack on my shoulder.

  I must sound a little deflated because she asks, “What’s wrong?”

  “Did you ever have a rival?”

  Coach Woods laughs into her fist. “You won’t believe it. My senior year, when I was quarterback of Hundred Oaks, this new guy, Ty, showed up wanting to join the team, and he played quarterback too.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “And he was better than me.”

  I gasp. “What did you do?”

  “I played harder than I ever had in my life and showed him who was boss. I let him get some playing time too because I was captain and needed to give other kids opportunities, but I made sure he knew it was my team.”

  “That worked?”

  She picks up the football from her desk and tosses it to herself. “I wanted to play. I wouldn’t let anyone stand in my way.”

  “That guy, Ty, what happened with him? Was he upset he didn’t get to play much?”

  Coach Woods smirks a little. “We dated for a while. So, yeah, he was mad, but not that mad. And now he plays quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals. I’d say he’s doing okay.”

&nb
sp; “Uh, wow.”

  “Why’d you ask about a rival?”

  “This one girl always gets in my head. I lose to her more often than I should.”

  “You need to be racing yourself, not her.”

  “That’s what Coach Josh says.”

  “So what’s the issue?”

  “I dunno…she humiliates me. She flirted with Levi—my best friend—right in front of me. She brags online that she’s better than I am. She says mean things to me in person.”

  “Sounds like she’s trying to prove she’s better than you…but she’s not doing it in the pool.”

  “She beat me at state, though.”

  “Were you at your best during that race?”

  I shake my head. I’d been crying over a boy. I was nowhere near my best.

  Coach Woods sets her football down on her desk. “Are you one of the best swimmers in Tennessee?”

  I don’t hesitate to say “Yes.”

  “You have a coach who gets up early every morning before dawn to practice with you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He believes in me.”

  “And he believes in you because you’re good. You wouldn’t have won that race at state if you weren’t an excellent swimmer. Your strength has nothing to do with your rival. It’s all about you. When you’re in the pool, you have to block out everything except your hard work.

  “When I first met Ty, I was scared when I saw how far he could throw and that he was taller and buffer than me. But I had put in the time. My coach and team believed in me. So I believed in myself and kept playing hard and working to get better. It was all about me.”

  I smile at her. “I get that. I try to stay focused on improving, on my times, but sometimes I mess up and forget.”

  “There’s only one way to fix that.”

  “What?”

  She tosses me her football. “Practice.”

  Ariel and Tarzan

  Coach Josh is all about keeping us lean.

  He has us do a lot of high rep, low intensity weight lifting. When we were younger, we only swam and did cardio, but once we turned fourteen, Coach made us start working out with trainers twice a week at a Nashville gym.

  At first, I hated it. I worried lifting would make my shoulders huge and that cute dresses wouldn’t fit right anymore. But once I saw how much it toned my body and slimmed me down, I fell in love with it. On top of that, it stripped away the body issues I had in middle school. My butt looks great in a suit, and I know it.

  During training, Jason is spotting me on squats. With both hands I balance a bar holding two weights across my shoulder blades. Up I go. Down. Up I go. Down.

  I can see Levi in the mirror. He is lying on a weight bench, doing chest press with two big barbells. I try to avoid noticing how great his chest looks in that snug T-shirt.

  Coach worries about swimcest because we’re often in the water wearing little more than a scrap of bathing suit. But to me, the weight room—where guys act like cavemen, throwing weights around and grunting, is a lot sexier than Speedos.

  “Roxy was bragging online again,” Jason tells me. He still follows her on Snapchat and Twitter. “She posted a picture of you at state. Do you want to know what it said?”

  Part of me does, part of me doesn’t.

  Levi sits up on the bench, resting two free weights on his thighs. “Maggie doesn’t want to know, idiot.”

  “I can answer for myself.” I finish my twelfth squat and place the bar back on the rack. “And no, I don’t want to know.”

  “Are you going to tweet or compete?” Coach Josh asks from across the weight room. He hates social media almost as much as swimcest, so we have to suffer through his corny catchphrase lectures.

  “Don’t mention Roxy again,” Levi tells Jason.

  “Levi, seriously,” I say.

  “Less talk, more reps,” Coach Josh calls.

  Keeping our mouths shut is the hardest part about lifting weights. You can’t talk under water. It’s easy to get lost in conversation on dry land. But you should always focus in the weight room; someone could seriously get hurt if you aren’t paying careful attention.

  Jason adds more weight to the squat bar and moves into position. I spot him from behind. He makes it through six reps, then puts the bar down with a loud grunting sigh.

  “You okay?” I ask. He was supposed to do twelve reps. “Dehydrated?”

  “My heart’s not in it today.”

  “What’s wrong?” I ask quietly.

  “Dad got pissed I came in second at state to Levi and didn’t place in my other events. He said I’m a fuckup.”

  “But you beat Levi at regionals. Your dad was happy about that. I saw him slapping your back and celebrating.”

  “He was happy, and now he’s not.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Jason does the same workouts we do every single day but has never seemed as focused as Levi and me. Sometimes I wonder if his heart is in it at all. It has to be, to compete at this level. But I’ve often thought it was his father who was invested, not Jason. I mean, I’d never tweet something like, “God I hate swim practice!” which Jason has been known to do.

  Nobody’s forcing me to swim. I love it. I want to keep doing it in college and maybe even professionally—if I’m good enough.

  “Jason,” Coach Josh calls. “Quit dogging it. Get back to work.”

  With blank eyes, Jason finishes the other six reps.

  After removing the extra weights he used, I step back up to the squat bar. Through the mirror, I can see Levi still sitting on a weight bench staring my way.

  He watches me as I go up and down.

  I tell myself he’s probably watching my form, making sure I don’t hurt myself.

  Secretly I wish he was staring at me for more romantic reasons. It’s been two weeks since we last kissed. I miss it. I miss him. But I care more about Junior Nationals in Huntsville next weekend than romance.

  I’d been willing to figure out how to balance swimming and a relationship, but Levi wasn’t brave enough to even have that conversation. I’m not putting myself out there again for someone who wasn’t willing to simply talk.

  I finish my reps and set the squat bar back on the rack. Breathing deeply, I catch my breath and wipe the sweat off my forehead with a towel.

  Our eyes meet in the mirror.

  I can’t let him distract me, no matter how much I wish he would.

  • • •

  It’s five days until Junior Nationals.

  My first opportunity this year to get an Olympic trial cut and Levi’s first opportunity to prep for the trials in a long course meet. We both have a lot at stake.

  Monday afternoon after practice, Coach calls me into his office to watch a video. He makes me sit in the chair behind his computer as he works the mouse beside me. Footage of a meet appears on the screen, but I don’t recognize any of the swimmers.

  “Who’s this?” I ask.

  “This girl won the Indiana 200 back state championship. You’ll be up against her at Junior Nationals.”

  I watch the video. She’s on fire, tooling across the surface of the water, but her finish time was an entire second slower than mine!

  The next day, Coach calls me in to watch another YouTube video. It’s another swimmer, the girl who won the Washington state 200 freestyle race. My time was half a second faster.

  Coach keeps up this routine all week, including during our van ride to Huntsville. Seven of us qualified to compete in this meet, so it’s a rowdy trip with the guys telling raunchy jokes and threatening to moon other cars and Susannah and me yelling at them to stop. From behind the wheel, Coach tells me to look up a particular swimmer on YouTube who lives in California and did very well at her state championships. I watch
a couple of her recent videos. My times are comparable to hers.

  “Okay, I get it. I’m good.”

  Coach Josh smiles at me in the rearview mirror. “I’m glad you believe it.”

  When we get to Huntsville, Coach checks us into our hotel rooms and tells us to meet in the lobby in fifteen minutes for dinner and a team meeting. As far as hotels go, this one’s pretty nice. My bed looks comfy and clean. I should sleep well here.

  After Susannah and I finish getting settled in our room, we take the elevator back downstairs. With so many teams here, there’s a lot going on and plenty of people to check out. Guys from other teams say hi to Susannah and me as we walk by. I smile, feeling more confident than I used to around boys. I’m not interested in hooking up with anybody—this meet is way too important to me, but my lessons with Levi paid off in terms of my confidence. Physically, I know what I’m doing with boys now.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I keep a look out for Roxy. Then I shake my head and think about the videos Coach showed me and my new gold state championship medal for 200 free that’s hanging from the vanity in my bedroom. I’m not going to concentrate on her anymore.

  I’m going to focus on the qualifying cuts for the trials: 2:02:39 for 200-meter free and 2:16:59 in 200-meter back.

  On top of that, Coach Josh is putting me in the prelims for 50/100/200 in free and back, just to see how I do. I am pumped.

  Coach drives us to a nearby pizza place for dinner, where the waiter is thrilled to serve a bunch of boys and girls who eat entire pizzas on their own.

  While waiting for our food to arrive, Jason decides to conduct a Twitter poll on his phone. He posts: Which Speedo should I wear tomorrow?

  • Red

  • Black

  • Purple

  • Pink

  We all get out our phones and start voting for pink. By the time our pizza comes, he has three hundred votes, and pink is winning at 90 percent.

  Once we are carbed up for tomorrow, it’s team meeting time. Otherwise known as a lecture on common sense.

  Coach looks at each of us one by one. “You’ve worked hard to get here. Don’t screw it up. Everyone better be in bed by nine o’clock tonight. I’ll be checking your rooms. And no sneaking out.” Coach looks pointedly at Jason, who’s rooming with Levi.