by J. K. Wise
But as soon as he can say it, I jump across the water to him, splashing, forgetting to be quiet. I grab his shoulders. “No. Stay, just for a second, please.”
“It’s…cold,” he shivers. “My brain can’t think any other words.”
Just like me during a meet. One word, two words.
“I’ll keep you warm.” Without thinking too much, I slip my arms around his neck and pull my body up to his. I rest my head on his wet shoulder and feel the muscles tighten down his back. I’m around mostly naked athletes all the time, and I never think about bodies except as instruments for efficiency and speed.
Not right now.
This is totally different. The air is cold, but the spaces between us are warm. We slip together, and every time I move my hand on his back, I feel him push back against me.
He pulls back from me just a bit, and when I look at his face, his eyes are wet. Tears.
“What’s wrong?” Stupid question these days.
He shakes him head. “Nothing is wrong. Mel.”
I hang onto him and brush one of his tears away, and he brushes his lips against mine. Tears come to my eyes too. I hold his head in both of my hands as he slips his hands around my waist under the water, making me jump closer to him. I push back harder into him and part my lips. Why did I do that? I think, and then, I stop thinking. We move together, salty tears on both of our cheeks and our lips, a perfect fit. Jared, in the water, in my world with me. No words. No thoughts, except maybe one. Slow down. Slow down.
He comes up for air and pushes me back gently. He is breathless. He swallows hard.
“Okay, okay, Mel. We’ll slow down.”
“Wait. What? Did I say that out loud?” I say out loud.
“It’s okay.” He swims over to the side of the pool, and I feel lost in the water.
“No! It isn’t!” I swim back over to him. I don’t know what I’m going to do, and my heart pounds in my ears. “Jared…”
He turns back to me and wipes the water across my face, cupping my chin with his hand. “Shhh…it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to be anywhere but here with you.”
We lean into each other, the sides of our bodies pressing together, and I set my head on his shoulder. He’s shivering from cold.
“You need to get out of the water. You’re freezing.”
“Only if you’re getting out too,” he concedes.
I push my body up and out onto the pool deck and walk over to his backpack. “You’ve got blankets in here? Come prepared?”
He drops his chin, and I know if I could see him, he would be blushing. “I thought you might get cold. I wasn’t planning on swimming.” He shakes his head and water flies from his dark, spiky hair. I wrap one of the woven blankets around myself and throw him the other one.
Now that I’m out of the water, I’m aware of all the windows facing the pool. Anyone could be watching us. And I kissed him! A lot, actually. Water courage. It dissolves as soon as I’m on dry land again. I can barely look at him. I walk over to a lawn chair in the shadow of a tall cypress tree and sit with my back to the pool. I can hear the splash as Jared get out of the water. Water fills the space left behind as soon as a body leaves. I can feel his hands against my skin, and I shiver with energy, not the cold.
“Mel.” Jared sits beside me on the chair. I can’t look at him. “Melanie, when is State?” he asks.
Whoa. Not the question I was expecting.
“I don’t know. What day is it?”
“It’s Wednesday.”
“The day after tomorrow. State is Friday.” I laugh. “Isn’t that crazy? Everything that I’ve been and done for years was about that meet, and I didn’t even realize that it was going to happen without me.”
“You have to go,” he says.
I turn to him. His face is dark and beautiful and serious. He moves his hand to my cheek like he did in the pool. “Jesus, I can’t stop looking at you. Melanie, you’re so beautiful.”
I turn away. I can’t even address that comment. “I can’t go to the meet. I haven’t been in the pool for days, and I haven’t trained for real since the quake. I’m not prepared.”
He cuts me off. “No one from Tucson is going to be prepared.”
“State means the whole state, duh. The Phoenix swimmers always dominate anyway, natural disasters aside.”
“But you beat their times in qualifications.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“It’s true, right?” He leans against me again, and before I know what is happening, he kisses me again, slowly, with his hand holding the back of my head. He takes the sides of the blanket wrapped around me, and he pulls me closer. I want to crawl into his lap, but I restrain myself, barely and try to focus on this conversation that would normally be the only thing I could make sense of.
I nod. “I broke the state record.”
He rests his forehead against mine.
“I think you can win. You have to swim. Because you can. Don’t let crazy shit like earthquakes and riot gas make the rules for the world.”
Just me in a lane. Breathing in and out. Actions, not words.
“I don’t know, Jared. I feel like swim has slipped away from me these past two weeks.”
He holds me so close, I can feel his heart beating against my chest. His eyelashes cling together in sharp, watery points. “I just saw you in the water. Nothing has slipped. You belong in a lane.”
“I belong in a lane,” I say, amazed how well he gets that. “Would you take me? The meet is up at Skyline High in Mesa. That’s two hours from here.”
“We can leave now if you want.” He starts to stand. “I may want to put on my pants first, though.”
My mind is racing. “I registered online last week, and I have my team suit, but I don’t have any money.”
“I have some money, and Robbins is always loaded with cash. We can make it happen. Everyone knows the chaos that is going on down here. If we go up there, at least you’ll know you tried.”
I lean back into the lawn chair and look at Jared. The moon is rising over the low buildings around this backyard where we are trespassing. “Everything is unbelieveable. The earthquake, the riots, and now, you.”
He laughs. “Wow, I rank right up there with natural disasters and felonous behavior. You’re such a romantic.”
I hit him in the shoulder. “You know what I mean.” The light of the pool reflects off his eyes and shines at me. “How is this happening? With you and me?”
He drops his smile and looks at me from under his long lashes. “I don’t know. But I can’t imagine living through any of it without you.”
I should look away. I should stutter and spit. That’s what I always do.
But right now, I don’t. I lean forward, drop my blanket and wrap my arms around his waist. No more words. I can’t help it anymore. I climb into his lap, rest my head on his strong shoulder, and exhale.
“You’re going to need somewhere to train tomorrow. Let’s go around front and see if we can talk whoever lives here into letting you use their pool.
“One day of training is better than nothing, I guess.”
After we dress, he takes my hand, and we walk around to the front of the large, pretty house.
Jared rings the bell near the front door for the large sorority house. We’re still dripping wet. A pretty girl named Sydney opens the door with a frown. Jared does most of the talking. He explains that we went swimming in their pool and tells Sydney about me and the State Meet on Friday. A few other girls trot down the large tiled staircase into the foyer. While
Jared talks, I try not to notice that they are staring at us. They stand back, arms crossed and whispering.
“…So she only has one day left to train, and if she could use your pool for a few hours tomorrow…” But as he’s explaining, the darker haired girl speaks out, pointing back and forth between Melanie and me.
“It’s you guys. From TV. I just saw you on the news. You’re Jared and Melanie.”
I blush deeply even as I’m shivering and nervously braiding my hair.
“Yeah, the Safeway footage. I haven’t actually seen it. I heard it’s all bullshit, like that I was pushing Melanie down in the store. That didn’t happen,” Jared says, squeezing my hand.
The girl speaks again. “No, I mean the interview. It’s all over the place, how FOX spun what happened to you guys. And oh my god, was that true when you said that you saw a guy get shot in the street?”
“Yeah,” Jared mumbles.
“And here you are together, that’s so sweet,” she croons, leaning her head to one side.
The other girl speaks up. “Good for you. Someone had to shout stupid.”
“We didn’t talk to anyone from TV,” I say. “We talked to the Arizona Daily Star. The newspaper guy said he might run a little piece about us in tomorrow’s paper.”
“It’s way bigger than that. You wanna see?” the blond girls asks.
I nod. Jared and I follow the three of them into a large, formal living room. Another girl grabs the remote, clicks on the channel.
There we are.
Jared, Chris, Will and I on the campus lawn with Matt Randle from the Daily Star. The shrine glows behind our backs. I can’t hear what we’re saying, because a reporter is voicing over the video.
The on-air protest statement from these two, young high school students has gone viral in a matter of hours. Stores are looted. People are homeless. Everyone is afraid, but not these two.
Jared and Melanie are being called the Romeo and Juliet of the disasterous events that have continued to escalate in Southern Arizona. Together, they will not be stopped even in these violent, racially-charged times.
Romeo and Juliet? Don’t they both end up dead? We just had our first kiss today. Death seems a little extreme.
There I am, standing in front of a field of candles and holding a white rose. I did that earlier and didn’t think anything about it. Looking at the video now, I look like such a phony. I want to throw up.
“Of course you can use our pool tomorrow. I don’t know if the chlorine is right or anything. It’s so cold, no one’s been swimming in it for weeks. Just come over anytime.”
Jared points at the TV. “Mel, is that Corrina?”
My head jerks back to the screen. I gasp. Corrina stands with a whole crowd of Northside students I recognize from school. Behind them is a familiar porch.
A growing gang of hundreds chants “Ja-red and Mel-a-nie” in front of Theta Chi. Under the feed, the word “LIVE” glows.
Classmates of Melanie and Jared are here to show their support of the couple’s great bravery. Their school is gone. Their neighborhoods are divided. But these teens are here, brought together by Melanie and Jared, two young heroes who are not afraid to speak out against the rising violence. Standing together, these teens are showing Tucson and the rest of the world that they will stand together for what they think is right.
“I think I’m going to throw up. Who writes this stuff?” Jared groans.
“I think it’s cool,” says one of the girls.
I don’t care. I’m just happy to see Corrina on the screen. Until now, I didn’t realize how much I’ve been carrying around fear since I was seperated from her yesterday. What would I have done if something happened to her, knowing that I watched her go into that wash alone? My throat tightens. I want to see her right now.
“Come on, let’s go get Corrina,” I say, pulling on Jared’s arm.
“And meet our adoring fans?” Jared says, shaking his head.
I gulp. “I guess so.”
Chapter 30
To the Light
I’m not tired anymore, not even a little bit. All of the exhaustion I’ve felt for the last few days is gone as I run after Melanie down the sidewalk towards Theta Chi. When we turn the corner, I can hear a crowd chanting our names from a block away. Ja-red, Mel-a-nie. It reminds me of the grade school taunt, Jared and Melanie, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
When we get to Fraternity Row, the crowd is thick, filling the whole street. The vibe is rowdy, mostly teens, chanting and clapping. We walk through the mayhem toward the back door. No one pays us any attention at first, but then, someone yells out.
“That’s them! They’re here!” A girl I recognize from school points at us. “Hey, Jared!” she calls out in my direction before facing back into the crowd. “Guys, it’s them!”
Eyes follow her pointing finger to us, and everything explodes. The crowd screams and claps, chanting louder and jumping up and down.
Melanie freezes, and I pull her closer to me to keep her protected from the cheering gang around us. I wave at the girl, and she screams like I’m the star of some freakin’ boy band or something. This girl sat next to me in Calculus all year. I think the most interaction I’ve had with her is asking to borrow a pencil. Still, here she is, losing her mind in the me-and-Mel frenzy. What the hell is going on? I’ve entered another dimension or something.
“C’mon, let’s keep moving,” I say in Melanie’s ear.
“What is this?” she asks, frozen in her place.
I pull on her hand. “I don’t know. Let’s get inside.”
People are holding up their phones, recording us. The bright lights blind me. When I look up, camera crews shine bright lights down from ladders, focused on us as we make our way through the crowd. I put my head down and hold tight to Melanie’s hand.
“Hey, let them through,” a familiar voice shouts. I look up, and Robbins is elbowing through the people. I’ve never been so happy to see that guy. Will is right behind him.
“Let them through, give them room,” goes through the crowd. People push back and we meet in the cleared space.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask Robbins.
“You’re an overnight celebrity, douchebag,” he says, smacking the back of my hand and pounding my fist. “You’re Tucson Romeo.”
I’m in some kind of alternate reality. This can’t be all for us. “We’ve only been gone an hour. No one even cared about us when we left after dinner, and definitely not our whole high school.” I pull Melanie closer, and in reaction, all the girls in the crowd squeal in unison.
“But then the six o’clock news came on, bro. You can thank our buddy Matt back on the lawn. Looks like he sold the transcripts of that little interview you gave. A TV camera was filming you and Melanie during the whole thing on the mall, and in a few hour’s time, you’re the new big thing.”
“No way.” A few hours? It takes longer than that to spread the news about a party at the Carter’s place…”
“Yep, well, people care about the wronged brown boy and his fair white girl,” Robbins says. He looks so smug, it’s like he believes he cooked up all this crazy himself.
“Seriously? What do they want?” I ask, because from where I stand, it seems like they just want somewhere to stand and scream.
Robbins clears his throat and his face turns serious. “A leader, dude. They want a leader.”
Melanie looks like she’s going to break in half. Behind us, I hear a girl screaming her name. When we turn, I see Jennifer Hepburn standing on a wall.
“Melanie! Melanie!” she calls. Melanie looks confused, bu
t she waves at her. The crowd screams, “Kiss him! Kiss him!” Melanie turns so white under her tan, I swear, she’s going to pass out.
Someone breaks out of the crowd and runs straight at Melanie. She throws her arms around Mel before I can get between them. I move to push her off, but Melanie hugs her back before I can get there.
“Corrina!” Melanie screams, and the two of them jump up and down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her as animated.
“I saw you on TV, and I came right here. Are you okay?” Corrina asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine, but what about you? I’ve been so scared for you. I couldn’t get back to you.” Melanie’s eyes shine with tears in the bright TV light.
“I know, I know. I was fine. I got to my Tia’s house. The kids were there. I’ve been waiting to hear from you. Your parents are freaking out. I’ve talked to them practically every hour. They’re on their way here right now. They called me as soon as they saw the news.”
I feel Melanie tense up when she hears about her parents.
“What about my parents? Did they see us too?” I ask Corrina. She shakes her head and says something, but I can’t hear her. The crowd is getting louder and pushing closer.
“We need to get inside,” Will says. “I’ll try to push our way through. Follow me.”
Chapter 31
Three Quick Steps
Still holding Jared’s hand, I follow Will through the crowd towards the Theta Chi house. “Where are the police in all this?” I ask.
Jared turns to answer me as we push forward, but his eyes catch something just over my head. His eyebrows knit together, and he shoves me past him and down to the ground. My shins hit the pavement. His hand is heavy on my shoulder, pushing me down.
“What—” I can’t finish my words, because in that moment, the crowd screams. Everyone flattens to the ground, and an instant later, past Jared’s shoulder, I see why. People run from the small circle made by Jared, standing, and me, kneeling behind him.