Watergirl

by Juliann Whicker

  “Hey, I liked him first,” Flop said lazily, but didn’t bother opening her eyes. She was in the zone.

  “We’re going to tryouts after school,” Junie announced.

  “The only thing trying out today is the swim team.” I stared at Junie with dawning horror. I’d seen posters all over the place; apparently someone had been bored over the summer.

  “Swim team?” Flop sat up and stared at Junie. The zone had officially closed. “You mean the water swimming team?”

  Junie nodded with determination that made my heart sink and my head kind of light.

  “I have choir after school,” I said sounding far away even to myself.

  “Choir will only meet for ten minutes today for you and the other non-newbies. Come on,” she said rolling her eyes. “I’ll go with you and then afterwards we can swing by the pool and see how the swim tryouts are going.”

  “That might be a bad idea,” Flop said in a way that came across more like, have you gone crazy woman? But Junie didn’t seem to mind. When people questioned her authority, she either enjoyed fighting or completely ignored them.

  “I think,” she said, looking from me to Flop with an intensity that made the hairs on my arms stand up, “That this should be a year of facing fears. I am afraid of relationships, and therefore am determined to have one. Flop, you are afraid of functionality and therefore I challenge you to become more weather conscious. Watergirl, you have two things you need to overcome, your fear of water, and your whole hooked on Cole thing. Swim team is a double dose of what you need. Come on, lunch is over.” She marched off while Flop stared at her then at me sympathetically. I looked down at her sandals then up at her.

  “I think you have great style,” I said.

  Of course she had great style but it was more suitable for sitting at the beach somewhere. She had been known to come to school in a tank top, short shorts and sandals in the snow.

  “Do you think she’s serious about having a relationship?” We both stared at Junie where she left a wake of those with weaker wills behind her. I could only shrug and pity the fool.

  Chapter 4

  It took ten minutes of Junie talking and pulling me while Flop looked concerned before I walked through the doors to the pool.

  I had a relationship with water that wasn’t entirely mutual. Water loved me. Just that day as I’d walked past the drinking fountain, the water had sprayed up in the exact place where my face would be because it was a living force that wanted to make me miserable. I knew that was impossible, and the guy drinking from the fountain had something about the fountain having bad pressure, but it was hard not to be superstitious and consider myself cursed when bad water stuff happened to me way more than probability dictated.

  It wasn’t all the time, no, just often enough for me to get careless then water came out and grabbed me. If there was a problem with the plumbing I always ended up soaked. Both times that I’d been to the pool I had to be fished out, once by Flop who could swim from her days training to be a lifeguard before she realized you had to sit in the sun with your eyes open, and once by Bernice, a girl who had been our friend until she’d joined the swim team and got a new group. Her defection bothered Flop much more than Junie and me; we were already used to that kind of thing. It was actually Flop’s concern that made me walk through those doors more than Junie’s pushing. I wanted to prove that there was nothing wrong with me, that I wasn’t cursed, that I was normal.

  It was fine. We sat on the balcony far away from the water. Flop relaxed into her analyzing the various guys and the way they filled out their jammers while Junie stayed silent, only once complaining about how many people the price of the pool would have fed.

  In spite of my nervousness it fascinated me to see people cut through the water like that, people as comfortable in the water as out. I felt jealous of Bernice and the easy way she treaded water while laughing with her friends. Who could laugh when they were busy screaming?

  “See? Nothing bad happened,” Junie said after the tryouts were over and the bleachers were clearing. She was in no hurry to move, and Flop was in her zone, so we stayed where we were for a few minutes. Junie finally stood up and started for the doors which was my cue to poke Flop.

  I stood up and heard a giggle. All right, you hear giggles a lot in high school, but not from Junie. I looked over and saw Junie taking the steps two at a time to hurry down to intercept The Captain. His normally golden hair looked dark when it was wet but other than that he looked like he’d never been in the water. I stared openly at Junie as I trailed her down the steps, Flop snickering beside me. Junie did not giggle. She did not flirt. The Captain gave her a cool smile. I couldn't help but think that if she wanted a real relationship she might want to try one with someone who actually had a beating heart. Maybe spending so much time in jammers around girls in swimsuits had something to do with it. Maybe it took the edge off teen hormones to be immersed in so much near nudity. At any rate, he’d never shown more interest in anyone than the cold indifference he gave Junie.

  The rest of the team gathered around The Captain while he stared above her left shoulder, and Junie gushed about how much potential the team had that year and blah, blah, blah, nothing about politics. Flop smiled up at a guy who was kind of cute and he smiled back at her.

  I, absorbed by the site of Junie flirting, forgot that I was within fifty feet of wet. A girl came up to the group squealing and bouncing about her place on the team. She knocked a guy back who stumbled right into me. I stood at the edge of the crowd separated from Flop and Junie when with arms flailing I felt the edge of the pool under my heels.

  For a moment I hung there, struggling with my balance, but the inevitable pull of water dragged me backwards. I knew not to panic, intellectually, but they don’t call it a panic when you can be intellectual about something. I hit the water, enveloped in its deathly embrace as I sank rapidly however I beat my arms.

  I felt someone wrap an arm around me in the water, pulling me to the surface as he tried to save me, but that didn’t stop me from flailing and breathing water, choking and coughing, then sinking again when I accidentally elbowed the rescuer in his very hard head.

  “Hold still,” I heard someone shout at me when my head came up for a moment, but I couldn’t hold still when I was sinking in water. That’s the whole problem with water: the sinking.

  Someone grabbed me by the back of the shirt and heaved me out, someone with icy blue eyes, perfect tan, and the muscles that made hauling me out look like nothing. He didn’t put me down right away, My shirt dug into my armpits while I dangled, him holding me out away from him like he feared whatever I had might be catching.

  “Tryout is over,” The Captain announced to the room in a voice as icy as his eyes. When he set me down, the only people left were heading out the doors, never looking back because their master had spoken. He folded his arms over his chest while he glared down at me, soaked, gasping, shaking so hard I thought maybe I’d vibrate myself right back into the pool.

  “Hey, are you okay?” The accented voice came from behind The Captain where he stood blocking the pool.

  “She’s fine. Get changed,” The Captain commanded. “Actually,” he said, cocking his head but staring right at me, into me. “Are you all right? It looked like she might have knocked you out for a second.” The accusation in his voice made me shrink in my skin.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, but glared at him. If he’d been worried about one of his swimmers then he should have saved him instead of standing on the side glaring at me.

  “I’m fine. Didn’t see that elbow coming though,” the guy with the sexy accent said with a laugh. I shoved my hair out of my eyes and looked down at the damage. I was soaked, and of course, wearing a white t-shirt so that my hot pink bra was completely visible. Nice. I pulled down the shirt where it had hiked around my armpits, sighing when I saw a ripped seam.

  The captain muttered under his breath before he reached up, sliding his shirt over h
is shoulders to reveal a chest that blocked out the rest of the world.

  Wow.

  It took me a second to register the hand holding the shirt out at me with a disgusted look on his face. Right. The captain didn’t show off his hotness like other guys would, therefore my staring would be insulting. Apparently. Oh. He was still waiting for me to take the shirt.

  I snagged it then he grabbed my shoulders, spinning me around before he proceeded to push me towards the girl’s locker room. The whole process was completely rational but at the same time he didn’t have to push me around.

  “Bring it back as soon as you can,” he ordered before opening the door and shoving me through, closing it firmly behind me.

  I stood there in the dim light shivering until, with a thump and a flare, all the lights came on, Flop and Junie burst through the door, not the one by the pool, the one leading to the main hall.

  “Are you okay?” Flop asked, the concern etched across her face. Her big gray-blue eyes looked ready to weep for me.

  I rolled my own as I turned, pulling off my soaked shirt and my bra with my back to them. I put on the captain’s shirt, ignoring the weird scent of it as I pulled it over my head. “Fine. I’m used to it.”

  “So, the foreigner saved you, right?” Junie asked, looking nothing close to contrite about dragging me into danger.

  “The Captain hauled me out like a stinky fish,” I said, enjoying the way her face fell. Had she thought that I’d hit it off with a guy for rescuing me? Was that the reason she’d dragged me to the try-outs: to make me look helpless and stupid so someone would like me? Where was the Junie we all knew and loved who hated arrogant men and weak women? “I knocked the exchange student out with my elbow.”

  I definitely enjoyed Junie’s expression when she heard that. I sighed as I wadded up my shirt, hiding my bra in its depths as I left the locker room. I hated walking in wet jeans, not to mention my soaked sneakers, squelching with every step. Junie and Flop followed, racing to keep up with me. I wasn’t really mad at them, not when I could have refused and acted like my own person instead of letting Junie have her way, the way I always let her get her way.

  “Do you want to…” Flop began but I cut her off.

  “I’m going straight home to change. I don’t want to do anything but listen to music for the rest of the day.”

  “Watergirl,” Junie began, but I slammed through the doors to outside, glad the sun was hot, that my bike hadn’t gotten jacked, and left them both behind.

  Chapter 5

  I didn’t go home. I wanted to cry and scream, and the walls of my house were too thin for that, not if I didn’t want a pep talk from my dad.

  Stinky Lake was two and a half miles from town, less if you had wings, but I didn’t, just a bike. The road there wasn’t much of a road, more an indentation with the remainder of long ago gravel. Stinky Lake was smaller than most of the ones around my small town, Ceramic Lake being the largest and most popular lake that actually had a white imported beach and a dock. I preferred Stinky, even if it was covered in algae and toxic seaweed half the time. I liked that it wasn’t on maps as a tourist destination. There was only one place boats could launch but usually didn’t because the mud was so bad that they usually got stuck.

  I spent most of my life avoiding water, but for some reason, this out of the way lake where the herons swooped and the wind licked the water into curls was the only place I could relax. I could breathe there.

  I ditched my bike on the bank of the road, following a deer trail through the brush, avoiding poison ivy and rugosa until my hands brushed the strands of willow that hung to the ground like a curtain. Inside, once the strands had fallen back, leaving the rest of the world behind me, I felt the knot in my chest loosen a little.

  I felt safe beneath the green strands that touch the ground on one side and the water on the other. I pulled my notebook out of its place among the roots and curled up against the trunk, opening up to a blank page.

  I bit the end of my pen before I wrote:

  Junie’s been reading romance novels or has turned evil. Her scheme involved me, water, and a cute guy rescuing me. Unfortunately I knocked out the cute guy and ended up being saved by The Captain, or Sean as Junie is now calling him. What’s with him? Like I wanted to fall into the water? It’s not rational to think that every time I get close to water I’ll fall in. He looked at me like I should know better, like I did it on purpose. And Junie. She would deserve him for what she did to me, but no one deserves being with someone who’s so perfect that every one of your flaws is etched permanently across the sky. Not that Junie has flaws. See, they’re perfect for each other.

  I scribbled violently on the page until I felt silly then laughed as I threw down the notebook. The wind rustled the branches but inside, underneath the green arc the wind, the sun felt far away until there was nothing but muted sound: water lapping, leaves rustling, birds calling. I closed my eyes and let the tension ease out of me, forgetting about everything, even my wet shoes. I let myself drift and float while the water lapped beside me with a regularity that soothed, reminding me of my mother.

  I didn’t remember very much, flashes of sunlight on water, bright, but not as bright as her laughter, the warmth of her arms wrapping around me, the press of her kiss in my hair, and of course, the singing.

  I opened my eyes and realized that the light beneath the tree was dim. Soon there would be lightning bugs and I’d feel the pull, the need to go to my rock. I waited with my arms wrapped around my knees until the golden sky faded to dusky blue before I pushed up from the ground and stepped out into the night. I walked through the grass following the curves of the lake. When I reached my rock, I climbed up the side, feeling the crumbling moss under my fingers until I’d made the top and lay on my stomach looking down over the darkly glistening water.

  A strange stillness spread over the world, not even the birds or frogs making a sound. I felt the song swell in my throat starting out like a sigh, a breath, a breeze. The words made no sense to me except in a dream way, words my mother sang to me about the pretty birds, the pretty sky, while the sweet fish swim. The sound grew until I felt it was my breath, my voice rustling the water below me, stirring it into curls and ebbs.

  I sang until my throat tightened and my breath came short. My song faded into a whisper as I rested my cheek against the still warm stone until my heart beat evenly and my breath became a regular in and out, in and out. Then I could go home.

  Chapter 6

  When I pulled up at my house, coasting to a stop, I stared at the front window where a light burned. My dad was up, waiting for me. My pants weren’t soaked at that point, mostly damp. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. He didn’t pay very much attention to things like clothes, but The Captain’s shirt was way too big for me. If I’d laid out my shirt when I was at the lake it would have been dry, but I hadn’t thought about it.

  I hesitated a few more minutes before dropping my bike and clomping up the front steps, the wood sagging beneath me as I crossed the porch.

  I was going to kill him. Not my dad, The Captain.

  My father flung open the door for me, stopping me dead as that look on his face made his brown eyes flat, angry, the eyes of a stranger.

  He gestured to the ragged brown couch then stood waiting, tall above me as he crossed his arms over his chest, reminding me of The Captain. My dad usually had a smile and a gentle pacifistic outlook, even when he was breaking boards and teaching some cocky kid humility in the dojo, but at that moment, he looked different, like a stranger as he asked me questions for an hour until he finally let me eat cold mac and cheese then go to bed. He didn’t usually ask so many questions, but he wanted to know where I’d been, because he’d called Junie and Flop and knew I wasn’t with either of them, what I’d been doing, no, hanging out was not an acceptable answer, and all because the fantastic leader of the swim team had come over for his stupid shirt. Yeah.

  The Captain had come to my house and told my dad
all about how I’d fallen into the pool at school then gone on about how I should take swimming lessons.

  The questions weren’t as bad as the guilt stuff. No, not guilt tripping me, but himself.

  See, my mother drowned.

  She drowned but he wouldn’t let me learn how to swim. My mother knew how to swim, was a fantastic swimmer, but it didn’t save her, so he figured it wouldn’t save me either, best I stayed away.

  Finally, my dad swiped a hand over his forehead, pushing back his brown hair to reveal the worry lines I’d put there. “I know things are hard for you and that sometimes you need your privacy, but I can’t help but worry about you. I need to know where you are. If you can’t be responsible and let me know, so I don’t have to worry, we’ll have to sell your computer so you can get a cell phone then I can call you and make sure you’re safe.”

  The computer had my music on it, not an amazing program, but good enough that I could make something with the software, something that gave me dreams of composition classes in college someday, if I got that far. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a cell phone, but I needed the computer.

  I felt worse and worse as he talked, knowing he’d have an aneurism if he knew where I’d been—high on a rock over the lake when I couldn’t swim. He never yelled which only made it worse.

  The next morning I rode my bike to school early, Sean’s shirt in the top of my backpack. I waited in front of his locker, feeling like an idiot but refusing to notice the looks people gave me: look, there’s weird Watergirl, now stalking the captain of the swim team instead of the star quarterback.

  He finally showed up, blinking at me with a frown while I shoved his shirt at him.

  “Here’s your precious shirt. I’d hate for you to spend another moment of your life without it.” I hadn’t meant to say anything but the words came out before I could stop them. I spun around to leave but he fell in beside me, having no trouble keeping up with my near run.