How to Breathe Underwater

by Vicky Skinner

  “Do you see him?” Lily whispered in my ear, but I didn’t have a chance to answer before someone dropped down into the seat beside me. I turned and felt a little sigh escape my mouth when I saw Ben’s face.

  “Hey.” He put his arm around me. “You okay?”

  I nodded. I hadn’t even noticed Marisol and Patrice hovering over us until I heard Patrice’s voice.

  “Ben, come on, we’re not sitting here.”

  It took Ben a second to respond, his face moving slowly up until he was squinting into the sun, up at the girls. “You can be mad at Kate if you want, but I’m not. I’m staying.”

  I swear Patrice growled. “No, you’re not.” Her eyes flitted to me, but I was much too emotionally exhausted to feel intimidated.

  “You don’t own me. Sit wherever the hell you want, but I’m sitting with Kate.”

  Marisol rolled her eyes and gave Patrice a little shove toward the seat on the other side of Ben. I focused down at the grass beneath our feet while they settled in and then leaned in close to Ben. “You should just go with them,” I told him. “It’s not worth it.”

  Ben shook his head. “I’m happy you’re here. Michael will be, too.”

  Did he know that because he had always been particularly perceptive about my relationship with Michael or because Michael had told him so?

  A beep came from Ben’s phone.

  Marisol reached over to smack him on the shoulder. “Turn that down,” she hissed, even though nothing had happened yet. People were still settling, and the podium that stood next to the empty platform hovering over the grave was empty. I forced my gaze away. I thought perhaps the less I focused on the fact that I was currently at a funeral, the less likely I was to cry.

  “It’s Michael,” Ben said, and even though I wasn’t a particularly nosy person, I read over his shoulder. Ben didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to twist his body to give me a better view.

  Out by the hearse. Come over. Alone.

  My eyes immediately flew to the hearse parked directly behind us, on the path that traveled in a circle around the cemetery. It was at the bottom of a steep hill, and I had to sit up as straight as I could in my chair, but I saw him. He was standing on the other side of the car, so that its large hood separated him from everyone else, smoking a cigarette and talking to a man I didn’t recognize. When I analyzed the man’s features further, I realized that he looked a lot like Michael, with dark hair and a thin body frame, and a slight hunch to his shoulders.

  I hadn’t been sure until that point what Michael meant by the one word alone. But when I saw him talking to that man, who I assumed was his uncle, I realized it didn’t mean he was currently alone. He wanted Ben to see him alone. So I stayed seated while Ben got up and went to join them. Michael stamped his cigarette out, sticking the butt in the pocket of his coat when Ben approached. They hugged, and Ben said something that made Michael glance over in our direction.

  I turned around in my seat, completely unable to handle his eyes. The one thing I loved about Michael more than anything else. I pulled my coat close around me as the wind blew in, sending the flowers on the podium and around the grave site fluttering, some of the petals flying away to land on graves farther down the row.

  There was no barrier between Patrice and me now, and I made an effort not to look over at her, not to let the sounds of her sniffling and digging around her purse for something catch my attention.

  Beside me, Lily was looking at the program, a picture of Harriet printed in color on the front of it. “She lived quite the life,” Lily said quietly, and my mother met my eye across Lily’s lap.

  Everything went still then and quiet. Ben took a seat beside me, and then the casket was coming down the aisle, being carried by Michael, his uncle, and four other guys I didn’t know. Michael stared straight ahead, and they lowered the casket onto the platform before taking seats along the front row. Beside me, Ben laced his fingers in mine, and I wasn’t sure if it was for my comfort or for his.

  A priest stood up behind the podium and said a prayer and some kind words about Harriet, talking about her family and Michael’s father and the things she’d accomplished in her life that I knew nothing about. I stared at the grass underneath my black shoes. It was starting to brown from the cold, dry air.

  When I looked up, Michael was standing at the podium, clinging on to the edges tight, like they were holding him up. “I don’t have much to say.” He stared down at the podium and cleared his throat. “My mom was amazing. When my dad died, she raised me like she was two people. She worked twice as hard as she should have to make sure I got everything I needed and wanted. She loved me, and that’s all I ever needed.” His eyes shifted to the coffin but immediately returned to the podium. “Thanks, Mom. I love you, too.”

  I could hear Patrice crying, and Ben shifted to put his arm around her.

  It was a closed-casket ceremony, and after Michael sat down and his uncle said a few words, they started to lower her into the ground while some of the more religious members of the audience sang old hymns about meeting one another in heaven.

  When it was over, we all got up, and I knew that this would probably be my only chance to talk to him. But what was I supposed to say? We hadn’t spoken in over a week. The last time I saw him, he was standing in a hospital waiting room, breaking my heart over a lie that felt so important at the time. I wanted to go back to that night and refuse to leave his side, even if he hated me for it.

  I hovered in the back while Michael hugged Marisol, a quick half-hearted hug—it was the only time I’d ever seen them touch—and then hugged Patrice, who clutched at him tight. I tried not to be bitter that she’d forgiven him but not me. And then his eyes traveled over her shoulder and met mine.

  But they weren’t Michael’s eyes. Michael’s eyes were full of life and intensity and humor. These eyes were dark and cloudy, and something about them was oddly unfocused.

  “Hi, Michael.”

  He pulled away from Patrice. “Kate. Hey.”

  I wanted to hug him, but I stayed where I was.

  “We’re going to catch up with your uncle,” Ben leaned into Michael to say. “We’ll see you at the apartment?”

  Michael nodded, distracted. “Yeah, I’ll see you over there.”

  Lily squeezed my elbow sweetly. “We’ll wait in the car.”

  Most of the cemetery had emptied out as people went back to their lives or moved on to the small get-together being held at Michael’s new apartment. We were mostly alone in the cemetery, while workers still cranked the casket into the ground.

  “How are you?” As soon as the question slipped out of my mouth, I was sorry I asked. It was a stupid question, but I needed to know. I could see it all over him that he wasn’t okay. He held his body in a weird way, all of him sagging under some imaginary weight. I wanted to put my arms around him and cry with him and feel everything he’d been feeling for the last week.

  “I’m okay.” He took a deep breath and looked over his shoulder at the headstone that was already waiting for Harriet. “I’m kind of glad it’s over, you know? She was always in pain, always sick. She deserves peace.”

  I nodded like I understood, but I just couldn’t. I wasn’t as strong as he was. I was too selfish to understand such a sentiment. “She does.”

  But then his face changed. There was no more calm; there was only misery. “I should have taken better care of her.”

  I took a step toward him, no longer caring if he wanted me to or not. “You took amazing care of her. There was nothing you could do.” I started to put an arm around him, but he stepped away from me so fast, my arm landed on nothing.

  “You don’t know that.” His wet eyes met mine, but then he shook his head, as if he could shake off the whole situation, as if he could shake off everything he was feeling.

  “I’m the one that didn’t do enough. I should have been there with you.” It didn’t come close to the guilt I felt, but I needed him to hear it. I neede
d him to hear that I knew I’d done wrong.

  He shook his head. “No. This isn’t your doing.”

  “But if I hadn’t—”

  He put his hand up, and I could see that his fingers were trembling. “I’m really happy you came. Mom loved you. But I really can’t talk about us right now, okay?”

  I wasn’t even sure how to take something like that. I didn’t think he meant to hurt me, but that was what it felt like. Like I was nothing but a distraction.

  I took a step toward him. “Michael, I just—”

  “Stop trying to help me, okay?” He looked right at me, right through me, his eyes full of tears and anger. “Just go away. Please.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. I supposed a part of me was hoping he would find my presence comforting. I hoped he would see me and realize how much he missed me, how much he needed me, that he would put his arms around me and cry on my shoulder. But that was all a fantasy.

  “But I…” I loved him. That was what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell him that I loved him. Because even if it didn’t make him feel better, I thought it might help soothe whatever was dying inside my chest.

  I took a step back, but Michael wasn’t even looking at me. He was watching his mother being lowered into the ground. The look in his eyes made me think the Michael I knew was being buried along with Harriet.

  I turned and rushed down the hill. By the time I got to the car, Lily and Mom were settled in. But I couldn’t go through with the rest of it. I couldn’t go to Michael’s uncle’s apartment and eat finger sandwiches and sit there while I wanted to be sick to my stomach.

  “Can we just go home?”

  I saw them exchange a glance but ignored it.

  “Are you sure?” Lily asked, craning to look over the seat at me.

  I nodded and looked up the hill at Michael, but he hadn’t moved from his spot. There was only one change: He was now bent over, crying.

  Twenty

  I stared down at the pool, which was rippling just slightly under the light breeze. It was so cold outside, and even though I knew the pool was heated, I stood at the edge, clad in only my bathing suit, looking down at it. Every muscle in my body was ready for it. I wanted to feel the slickness of it along my skin, the weightlessness of my body in the midst of it, the pull of my lungs as I pushed myself.

  But I couldn’t do it.

  It’d been a month since Michael moved to Vancouver, since the funeral, since we had last spoken. I’d thought about calling him a million times, staring at my phone and typing out elaborate text messages that I immediately deleted. I’d thought about sending him a letter, but I was too embarrassed to ask Ben for Michael’s new address.

  I was too afraid. I didn’t want to hear him say he didn’t want me again. Most of the time, I was able to distract myself enough to forget about it. Ben and I had taken to meeting at least once a week for dinner and homework. We sat in Ben’s living room and ate pizza while we quizzed each other for tests and helped each other outline essays.

  But then there were times, like now, when I had too much time with my thoughts. I looked down at the water, and it felt like I could jump in and drown. I had never been so scared of it before. I put my face in my hands and tried to breathe, but the panic was rising in my chest. I gulped in air, cold and clean and painful.

  When I was seven, I fell into the community pool and sank to the bottom. I wasn’t scared as I held my breath and watched my father’s shadow dive in after me. The world underwater was something unexplainable, and there was no substitute for the way it made me feel, alive and full of magic.

  Six months later, I was in a swim program, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that when I swam hard and excelled above all the other swimmers, my father seemed to love me more. And my unquenchable desire for the water was just a bonus.

  But after ten years, the only time my father showed me affection was when I made him proud in the pool, and the only thing that kept me going was my need for his approval and my need for the escape of that underwater haven.

  But all the hard work had gotten me nowhere. I was still here, without my father’s favor. Nothing I did was ever enough.

  But maybe it was enough for me.

  Since coming here, I’d fought for myself and for what I wanted even when it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I’d never fought for myself before, but now that felt like all I’d done. I might not have gained anyone else’s approval. But I gained my own, and that felt good.

  I was free.

  I wiped my face and steadied my shaking limbs. I had to let the old me go. I wasn’t going to be scared, and I wasn’t going to lie, and I wasn’t going to let this world dictate who I could or couldn’t be.

  I took a deep breath and dove into the deep end.

  I came up out of the water with a gasp and pressed my back to the wall. I looked up at the sky, feeling calm, feeling steady.

  I set my head back against the concrete and closed my eyes, breathing in the chlorine and the cold night air. I picked up my feet and let myself float on the surface, my stomach and shoulders going cold while I stared up at the sky, the stars twinkling bright to battle the city lights.

  My feet hit the wall on the other side, and I pushed off, flipping myself over and starting to swim.

  *   *   *

  I had been visiting O’Dell’s pretty regularly since Marisol and Patrice had taken me there over a month ago. Since Lily had found her own place and Mom had been getting more and more hours at work, I had become accustomed to spending evenings alone if I wasn’t with Ben. I had had more than one lonely evening when I didn’t think I could do my homework in our silent apartment, and I found that the atmosphere at the coffee shop helped.

  That Saturday afternoon however, I wasn’t there for the homework atmosphere.

  “Just a small mocha cappuccino, please,” I said to Leo, the guy behind the counter I’d come to know from my many visits.

  He rang me up, and I pulled off my gloves to pay him. It wasn’t nearly as cold as it could have been, as it would be in a month, but my fingers and toes were sensitive to the weather, so I stayed bundled if I could.

  I watched Leo mix the cappuccino behind the counter. “Doing okay today?”

  “Yeah, I am. Thanks.” I took the proffered cup and turned to head back out, where Lily’s car was waiting. I’d borrowed it for the weekend. I was so busy stirring my coffee that I didn’t even realize there were people in front of me, between me and the door, and that those people were Marisol and Patrice.

  For a second, my heart leaped, the way it did every time I saw them, thinking maybe everything had been a dream, and they still liked me, and we could still be friends. But then they would snub me, completely pretending I didn’t exist, the way they did in Chemistry and lunch, and I would be reminded that in the world inside Lincoln High School, I was completely alone.

  Standing before me, their eyes at least were on me, so they weren’t pretending they couldn’t see me at all, but they said nothing, just stood there in my way, like Greek statues.

  “I was just leaving.” I moved around them and headed for the door before they had a chance to say something insulting, like they had on occasion when they were feeling particularly wounded.

  But when I reached for the door, I stopped. I didn’t want them to feel wounded. I didn’t want them to hate me. Even if we couldn’t be friends, I didn’t want to be enemies anymore.

  “Patrice, could I just—”

  Marisol moved to step between us, but to my surprise, Patrice reached out to stop her. Their eyes met, and I saw the tension in the way Patrice gripped Marisol’s arm.

  “It’s okay,” Patrice said, her voice soft even while her face was hard. “Get us coffee?”

  Marisol eyed me for a second, and then she turned and walked to the counter, leaving us alone.

  Patrice turned her stern eyes on me. “What do you want, Kate?”

  “I just want to apologize.”<
br />
  She stood there, silent, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket.

  “Patrice,” I started again, a little more confident since she hadn’t walked away yet. “I want you to know that I didn’t mean to hurt you. You were so nice to me when I got here, and I liked you so much, and I didn’t know that Michael was your boyfriend at first, and I swear, I didn’t mean for it to go down the way it did.”

  Someone shuffled past us to get to the door. Patrice reached out a hand and pulled me out of the way in such a companionable away that it was unbearable. I wanted to hold on to her, but she pulled away. “Marisol said you told her nothing happened while Michael and I were still dating.”

  “That’s true.” I felt desperate now. She was listening to me. She was letting me talk. She was letting me apologize. “I know we crossed a line, and I know I was awful to you, but I never wanted you to get hurt.”

  She sighed, and for a second, I saw the old Patrice, the one who’d befriended me on my first day and invited me to this coffee shop and been heartbroken when Michael broke up with her. “Look, I’m not stupid. I know things weren’t working out between Michael and me. Things weren’t great before you came along. I knew it wasn’t going to last. It felt that way since the beginning. It always felt like Michael just said yes because I was already there.”

  She wasn’t getting angry at me, and she wasn’t telling me how I ruined her life, and that alone was enough to make a lump form in my throat.

  Her eyes met mine then, focused laser beams that made me want to back away from her. “I know it’s not all your fault. I should be mad at him, too. But I’ve loved him for so long, and I guess it felt like you ruined my shot even if you really didn’t.” She shrugged. “All this time, I think Michael was just a little lost.”

  I thought of that first day, Michael bent over his mother in the parking garage, the fear and worry on his face, the way he was so good at hiding it with his smiles and his charm. He was so good at not talking about himself that I didn’t know he was falling apart until it was too late. Or maybe I was just blind to it. I felt something burrow into my chest: tears, anguish, desperation.