How to Breathe Underwater

by Vicky Skinner

  *   *   *

  I was grateful my mother wasn’t home when I got there, and I went straight to my room to call Harris. He was the only one who I thought maybe could make sense of what I’d just done. I just quit swim. I just walked away from ten years of hard work, and why? I loved swimming. I loved being in the pool. But I could never just have the pool. With it came training and competitions and, of course, my father controlling my every move. Everything I did had to be for the next meet and the next goal and the next win.

  And I kept doing it, even when I hated it or wanted it to be over. Because at the end of the day, there were two things I craved more than anything else—the feel of the water as it sucked me under and my father’s affection. And those two things kept me going season after season.

  And it all looked different now. The pool was a prison cell and my father a monster, and there was no going back.

  When Harris finally answered the phone, he was laughing, and then his voice became clear, and he said, “Hey, Kate! Put me on video.”

  Without hesitating, I switched him over, and then it wasn’t just him. There was Chuck behind him, giving me the finger, and Cal (200-yard free and Harris’s closest friend on the boys’ team) over his shoulder, waving at me enthusiastically. I could hear the sound of splashing water and laughter in the background.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as the other guys wandered off. “Are you at the pool? It isn’t practice day.”

  Harris moved, and the noise got quieter until I saw the lobby of the aquatics center behind him. “We decided to meet to get some extra laps in without Coach on our backs.”

  I gasped. I’d been so distracted by the guys and his surroundings that I hadn’t really looked at him. “You shaved your head,” I said. Harris had always been opposed to male swimmers shaving their heads, saying it made them look like walking penises, but alas, there he was in front of me, completely bald.

  He ran his hand over his scalp. “Coach thought it would help.”

  Coach. I felt that sizzle in my blood again. I took a deep breath. This wasn’t about Coach Masterson. This was about me and my best friend.

  “Did you change your workout regimen?” I asked him, squinting at the screen to see him as best I could.

  “Uh, no. Why?”

  The thing about swimmers is they’re lean. Lean and toned, but there is very little muscle bulk compared to most other athletes. And Harris had always been the leanest of us all. But looking at him now, he looked bigger somehow. Bulkier.

  “Well, for starters, your bicep is huge. Are you and Cal lifting? You hate lifting.”

  “Nah. Nothing like that. Just getting more protein.” He sent me a half smile. “Anyway, why’d you call? You miss me?”

  I stared at him for a moment, trying to gather the courage, trying to tell him what I’d done. But the words were buried in my chest under the weight of everything else. Looking at him practically glowing, I couldn’t tell him. Seeing him in his jammers, his goggles hanging around his neck, I could almost pretend nothing had changed.

  “Yep. Just needed a familiar face.”

  He scoffed. “I thought you’d be the star of the team by now. Slow going?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Things haven’t been so great here, either. It’s tense, you know? Coach is on edge, and that’s put everyone else on edge.”

  I stared at him. Why couldn’t we go one minute without talking about him?

  “He’s been the biggest pain in the ass since you left. You thought he was bad before? Now he’s a fucking tyrant. All he does is pace and scream and make us do drills until someone just gives up. He’s fished more than one guy out of the pool this week.”

  I couldn’t look at him. “Yeah, it must really put you in a bad mood to screw around on your wife and kick your family out of their house.”

  He was quiet for a second, watching me. I sighed.

  “Sorry. Swimming is just, um, hard for me right now.”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  I meant having a panic attack in the pool the night before, I meant the way my heart pounded whenever I thought about getting near the water again, I meant having the stress of my parents’ divorce without the comfort of the pool, I meant walking into that rec center this afternoon and feeling like I’d walked into a nightmare I couldn’t escape.

  Before I could answer him, he said, “I know this whole thing is really fucked up, but it won’t be like this forever. You’re the best swimmer I know, a hard-core athlete. You’ll bounce back from this. Give it time.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, because everything else I needed to say felt stoppered up inside me.

  “I should get back,” he said. “They’re calling for me.”

  And I was left staring at a blank screen. Harris was the only one who held my hand when I was trying not to pass out in the locker room; he was the one who snuck me my favorite foods when my father insisted I was taking in too many calories; he was the one who let me whine and complain to him when I didn’t want to go to practice, and I wondered if all Harris and I had was swimming. If to him, like everyone else, all I’d ever been was the swimmer girl. And if so, where did that leave us now that I’d quit?

  *   *   *

  When we sat down to dinner that night with Lily, I was fully prepared to tell my mother about the swim team. I’d spent the afternoon preparing myself to explain to her what I’d just come to realize myself: I couldn’t go back to swimming now that everything had changed. The pool was no longer a safe haven, and the sport had lost its appeal.

  But my mother didn’t ask about Coach Wu, not at first. Instead, she smiled over her plate at us. “Lily, I hope you don’t mind, I invited someone to your wedding.”

  Lily grimaced. “Um, we don’t really have room for anyone else.” She darted a look at me, and I saw the panic in her eyes. “The catering company has the head count already.”

  “Oh, the number won’t change. Didn’t Kate tell you? Harris won’t be there.”

  Lily scowled at me. “Harris isn’t coming?”

  I felt that familiar disappointment turn in my stomach. “No. He has a family thing.”

  My mother nodded sagely and then gestured to me. “And after you told me that, I ran into Michael in the elevator, and I invited him to take Harris’s place.”

  I froze, thoughts of Harris vanquished. “You did what?”

  Lily looked up at me, her eyes excited. “Michael, the cute boy at the bus stop?” She turned back to Mom. “How do you know Michael?”

  My mother’s eyes flew between us. “He lives across the hall.”

  Lily looked at me with wide eyes. “He lives across the hall? That’s perfect!”

  “Why is it perfect?” My mother seemed thoroughly confused, and so was I.

  “Because Kate has a thing for him.”

  My mouth fell open. “I do not.” I didn’t think it was a lie. Or at least, I didn’t think I could make a decision about that yet. I’d only know him for a day, and thinking someone was completely gorgeous wasn’t the same as having a thing for them. Unless that thing was serious physical attraction. Then, sure, I had a thing for him.

  “Oh, sweetie,” my mother said like I was a little kid with her first valentine, “I didn’t know you had a crush on Michael. Well, now I’m really glad I invited him.”

  “Mom, I don’t have a crush on Michael, and besides, you can’t go around inviting random people to Lily’s wedding.”

  Lily smiled. “Oh, it’s totally fine. I completely approve.”

  Great.

  “I just thought you’d like the company,” my mother went on. “Seeing as how you won’t really have any friends there. And since Michael is really the only person you know—”

  “Michael isn’t the only person I know,” I said, feeling a little defensive.

  And then my mother gasped. “Oh, of course! The girls on the swim team! I can’t believe I complet
ely forgot. How was your meeting with your coach? When’s your tryout? Not that you need one.” She winked at Lily, like they were sharing some kind of inside joke.

  My brain was so jumbled by the events of the last few minutes that I didn’t have the courage to try to confess everything to her now. It was too much all at once.

  So, stupidly, I said, “It was great,” and hoped she wouldn’t see that I was lying. “No tryout. They had a spot open. Practice starts next week.”

  “Oh, perfect,” my mother said, already going back to her food. But when I glanced up at Lily, she was looking back at me, her eyes narrowed.

  *   *   *

  “Before you say anything,” I said to Michael when I stepped into the hallway the next morning, “I just want to say I’m sorry my mom tried to wrangle you into coming to my sister’s wedding. It was totally uncalled for, and I don’t even know why she thought that it would be okay. I mean, you barely know us, and you certainly don’t want to spend your Saturday at a boring wedding, and I was thinking last night that you have that party going on, so you can totally use that as an excuse, and you won’t have to hurt my mom’s feelings. If you’re worried about her feelings. Which you don’t have to be. She’ll totally be okay.”

  When I finally stopped talking, Michael was looking at me with an amused smile. He leaned against his doorjamb. “The wedding’s at one, right? People aren’t showing up at the pool until seven. Plenty of time for both. And you can come to the party after.”

  “Oh.” Oh. He wanted to come to the wedding? “Don’t feel like you have to come just because she invited you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to come. I mean, if you want me to.”

  I could feel my face heating up. If I wanted him to? If I wanted to spend my sister’s entire wedding with him and then go to a party with him, almost like a date? “Yeah. I’d like that.”

  He did this thing with his mouth, a kind of half-cocked knowing smile that drew my eyes and also made me panic a little. Why was it easier to talk to boys when we were both in swimsuits?

  “We’re going to be late for the bus,” I said, and bolted for the stairs.

  *   *   *

  “So, we were just wondering if you maybe wanted to go.”

  I didn’t realize I wasn’t listening to Marisol until she and Patrice were both watching me, apparently waiting for some kind of answer. I’d been thinking about a wedding and a party and a cute boy. “I’m sorry,” I told them, “What is it, again?”

  Patrice’s eyebrows turned in slightly. “A party. Saturday.”

  I made a motion with my head like, Oh, right, a party. Of course. “Oh. Actually, my sister is getting married on Saturday.”

  Marisol grinned. “Oh, cool. Are you in the wedding?”

  I nodded and picked at the Tater Tots on my plate. “Maid of honor.”

  “Here, in town?” Patrice asked, her eyebrows shooting up.

  “At that Lutheran church right off the highway? Tom, my sister’s fiancé—his family’s been going there forever, so the whole thing is going to be there. Service and reception.”

  When I looked at them again, Marisol looked a little dreamy. She bit her lip and looked over at Patrice. “Do you think that’ll ever be Jesse and me?”

  Patrice’s eyes widened a little, but I saw the moment that she took control of her expression. She smiled gracefully, the way she always managed to, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “That’s my boyfriend,” Marisol said, her eyes shining. “He’s so gorgeous. Right, Patrice?”

  Patrice rolled her eyes. “Not my type.”

  Marisol snorted. “Right. Your type is scrawny white boys.”

  Patrice put her hand in Marisol’s face. “I’m pretending I didn’t hear that.”

  I watched the whole exchange with a smile on my face because I couldn’t help but think that if it weren’t for Marisol and Patrice, I’d be sitting alone in a corner right now, catching up on literature homework.

  Patrice turned to me then. “Are you sure you can’t come?”

  “Sorry. After the wedding, I have this thing.”

  Marisol gasped. “Oh man. I’ve seen that look before. Are you going on a date or something?”

  I was quick to shoot that idea down. I’d decided this was definitely not a date. How could it be, anyway, if we were going to be surrounded by people the whole time? My family would be at the wedding, and his friends would be at the party, or whatever it was, and there was no way it could be even remotely considered a date. Right?

  “Nothing like that. Just a hangout thing after the wedding. Meeting people, you know.”

  Patrice nodded. “Good. You’ll make a ton of friends, I’m sure. But if something doesn’t work out, you’re more than welcome to come to our thing. I can absolutely hook you up with a cute boy. We have quite a few in our circle.”

  Marisol bit a Tater Tot off the end of her fork. “But you can’t have either of ours.” She smiled at Patrice, but Patrice looked weirdly uncomfortable. Marisol’s smile vanished. She put her fork down. “Hey, is everything okay?”

  Patrice shrugged, her whole body slumping. “I don’t know. He’s acting funny again. Probably nothing. You know how he gets.”

  Marisol pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in my direction. “That, I do.” She rubbed Patrice on the back, and Patrice sighed.

  “Forget I said anything,” she said, trying to smile again but failing miserably.

  “I’m not going to forget you said anything.”

  Patrice seemed to wilt even further. “Boyfriends are hard work,” she said, staring down at her plate.

  I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable, partly because I didn’t know anything about her boyfriend (and boyfriends, in general), so I couldn’t exactly agree with her and partly because I was just terrible at consoling people. “I’ve never had a boyfriend,” I said because I had no clue what else to say.

  Marisol’s eyes turned on me, wide. “Really? Never?” She said it like I was divulging this information at thirty-five instead of sixteen.

  “Never. But my best friend is a guy, so I know how it is. Plus, I had to put up with a whole swim team of rowdy guys all the time, and I know what a pain it can be. It was like having fifteen older brothers all the time. And I know that’s not really anything like having a boyfriend, much less fifteen of them, but I get the basic idea that guys are hard to deal with sometimes.”

  When I finally stopped blabbing, Marisol and Patrice both stared at me. Yes, I was terrible at consoling people.

  “You know who would be perfect for her?” Marisol finally said just as the bell rang. She was looking at me, but she was obviously talking to Patrice.

  “Who?” Patrice stood up, grabbing her tray.

  “Ben.”

  Patrice’s face split into a grin. “Oh God, you’re right. It really sucks that you can’t come to this party on Saturday. We could have totally introduced you to Ben. Maybe next time.”

  “Next time,” I said to myself as I followed them to the trash cans.

  Five

  The morning of Lily’s wedding, I woke to a notification on my phone. It was from Harris, and it was a picture of a calendar. His swim schedule. And next Friday was circled in thick red marker. Written in the little square were the words Home Meet. Johnson Aquatics. 7 p.m.

  I stared at the picture for a long time. Harris wanted me to go to their first meet. And I guess I got that. I guess it made sense that he would want me there, since we’d never even been to a meet without each other. But the thought of being there, of seeing my father coaching the team, of watching them compete without me. It would be too weird.

  I didn’t answer him right away since I had to get up and start getting ready for the wedding, and by the time I remembered that the text was there, we were in the car on the way to the church. Lily sat in the front seat, completely silent, her hands clenched in her lap and her eyes on the passing streets as my mot
her drove.

  I pulled out my phone to find that there was another text with a picture attached. This time, it was a picture of a picture, one that I recognized in its frame. I knew it hung on the wall of Harris’s grandmother’s house, as I’d seen it there half a dozen times. The picture was of Harris and me when we were in middle school, sitting by the pool, dripping, with our arms around each other.

  Remember this? Harris’s text read. You were already a cocky brat.

  Maybe on any other day, his words would have made me laugh. I had been a cocky brat, just like my father taught me to be. But it didn’t seem funny anymore. Looking at myself in that picture, all I saw was a girl who was completely confused about what she wanted. Swimming with Harris might have been fun, but my father was already running me hard, and it took a lot to keep that smile on my face.

  I didn’t answer him. I followed Lily and my mom into the church, ignoring the nerves in my stomach that I couldn’t decide on the source of. Was I nervous about the wedding? Or was it because my mind kept flitting back to Harris’s texts?

  I waited patiently in the corner of the room while my mother set a string of pearls against my sister’s neck and clasped it—my grandmother’s pearls. I knew them well from the pictures from my parents’ wedding, my mother and father smiling, so happy you’d never have suspected how it would end.

  I pushed the thought away. Now wasn’t the time for bitterness.

  When Lily reached up to touch the necklace, her fingers trembled slightly. While I watched, she pressed her hand to her stomach and then clenched it into a fist by her side.

  My mother turned to me. “You’re all set, right?” The nervous energy that was rattling Lily seemed to be having the same effect on my mother. Her movements were jerky as she snapped the necklace case shut and stuffed it into her purse.