Watergirl

by Juliann Whicker

  “Yeah, it all started with revenge, but I think it’s a slippery slope. It’s best to forgive and move on. Otherwise…” I shook my head. “Ripping his shirt wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d thought it would be. So, what are you doing here?”

  He gave me a flat look. “I’m debating whether to apologize for punching you, or inform you that it’s not very bright to step into the middle of a fight.”

  “You could do both. Or better yet, neither. You’re right, it was stupid, but I couldn’t let you guys hurt each other over me.”

  “Over you? Seriously?” The look he gave me was so humiliating.

  I blushed as I edged away from him. “My mistake. Sorry. Bernice and Dean said… But I should have known because you told me you wouldn’t fight anyone for me. So, why were you fighting?”

  He shrugged. “It was a bet. He bet me that for all my size and strength, he could still beat me up. If we hadn’t wanted an interruption then we shouldn’t have fought at school.”

  “That’s it? You wanted to prove that you were tougher than him? You both looked so bloodthirsty.”

  “You met my mother.”

  “So, she makes bets with people that she can beat them up?”

  “No, she kills them.”

  I stared at him while he stared back, and I felt something weird happen inside my head.

  “So she’s in the mafia or something?”

  “Something.”

  “She wants you to go to Florence so she can teach you to kill people?”

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes and started giggling. It hurt to laugh with my ribs, but that didn’t stop me from wheezing for way too long. I clutched my ribs while Sean frowned at me. I couldn’t help it.

  “Sean, can you give me a hug? I know I’m an idiot but…” I was going to tell him I was about to hyperventilate and have a mental breakdown thinking about the raw eel and dinner with the assassin, but I didn’t have to because he held out his arms.

  I didn’t cry, so he wouldn’t have his shirt to complain about. He didn’t crush my lungs that time, either. Finally I pulled away, amazed that he would have let me invade his personal space for that long.

  “Thanks,” I muttered without looking at him directly. I did feel better.

  “It wasn’t as bad that time,” he said, sounding surprised.

  I looked up at him and he met my eyes.

  “Not as creepy.”

  I rolled my eyes and started my agonizing way down the hall towards my next class. “You, with your family, can call hugging creepy? What else do you find creepy, peanut butter sandwiches? Dryer lint? Oh, I know. Wrinkled shirts.”

  “Hey,” he said, catching the back of my shirt so I had to stop with a jerk. That hurt. “Are you okay?” He looked concerned when he looked at me, his frown more worried than disapproving. “It was a very solid hit.”

  “I’m fine. I used to spar. I’ve taken worse. After a couple of days I’ll be able to breathe normally and everything. How about you? Oliver seemed to do some damage.”

  “He won technically, because you took that last punch.”

  “What did he win? Does he get to drive your car and get it as muddy as he wants? Maybe you have to wash and iron all his shirts, or better yet, he gets to wear yours.”

  He looked at me, and the frown grew a little deeper as he moved away. “He gets to take me to meet his family during Christmas break.”

  I stared at him. “Huh.” I frowned. “Are you sure you guys aren’t gay?”

  He gestured towards my mouth. “You tell me.”

  “Um, okay. But, why does he want to take you home with him?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  “Why did he let me bite him?”

  He shrugged and started walking faster. “I don’t know that any more than why you’re not still in there, bruising your mouth on him.”

  “He groped me.”

  Sean raised an eyebrow, and I blushed.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not used to that kind of physical contact. Like you and hugging, you know?”

  He frowned thoughtfully. “Interesting.”

  “Isn’t it though?”

  He shook his head. “Get to class, Gen.”

  Right, like there was some point to going to class when you could barely sit up and were dizzy from kissing some idiot foreigner. Ah well. Attendance counted for something.

  After school Junie waited by my locker with a worried expression on her face. No lecture, just a sympathy shoulder pat while she said nothing. Junie didn’t usually say nothing.

  “What’s up, Junie?”

  She scowled suddenly furious, black eyes flashing, so I stepped back. “I’m such a hypocrite. All my talk about pacifism gone the second that idiot showed up. I judged you so harsh, but man, it felt good to shut Dean up. Not that it was right, of course it wasn’t, but…” Her shoulders slumped.

  “Junie, it’s all good. No one’s perfect, not you, not The Captain; you have to allow yourself to really relish these opportunities for self-realization. It’s not every day your inner psyche comes out and punches someone. You have to figure out what it means and let it help you become a better, stronger person.” I had no idea what I was talking about, but it was the sort of thing she would have said to me. “Maybe you should take up meditation. We could do it together,” I added which made her brighten up even while I inwardly groaned.

  Chapter 23

  I was hanging out in Flop’s Bermuda theme room with my feet in the purple foam filled pool when she brought up Oliver.

  “He’s totally stalking you.” Words that always got my attention. “Not obviously if you didn’t know to look for the signs, but he totally plans his route, passing right behind you so he can watch you without you seeing him. Very deja vous with how you were with Cole. So glad you’re not into Cole anymore. Not that he wasn’t hot, but crushes should end a natural death.”

  “Yeah, on to a bigger better obsession.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So, everyone’s saying that you cheated on Sean with Oliver. Do you want to do damage control or ignore the whole rest of the student population?”

  I stared at her. “Someone thinks it would be conceivable to cheat on Sean? It’s kind of stunning how ridiculous all of this is, don’t you think? That people believe I was with him in the first place, me and The Captain,” I shook my head. “I would have been laughing hysterically before all of this went down.” I closed my eyes and sank deeper into the foam. “I’m trying to not obsess about Oliver, you know, I think I’m almost good at the not obsessing thing, but the Sean thing, or the not really Sean thing makes everything more complicated, or not really, but people think it is. He knows about everything with Oliver. So, why do I feel guilty?”

  “Guilty? You feel guilty?” She sat up flinging purple foam all over the room.

  “What? It’s a guilt complex. I’m entitled to those, aren’t I?”

  She narrowed her eyes on me with focus she usually reserved for seriously cute guys. “You like him.”

  “Who? Sean? No. He’s… I mean, I can’t like one guy and obsess about another one. He’s The Captain. He doesn’t like me.”

  She cocked her head thoughtfully. “We’ll see.”

  No matter what I said after that, she wouldn’t lose her annoyingly smug look. She thought she knew what was up, and Flop, well, she wasn’t usually wrong, but this time, she was. You didn’t take someone you liked to dinner with your killer mother. I shuddered thinking about it.

  When I got home my dad had a message for me from Bernice. She wouldn’t be able to meet me for swimming. My heart pounded as I stood there feeling that twist in my stomach, the guilt but also plain anger. Junie was right. Her soul belonged to the swim team.

  The next morning I was at the pool, at 5 a.m. because then I could be in and out without anyone knowing I was there.

  The day was particularly cold, cold enough that a rim of ice w
as on the edges of the puddles I splashed through on my still peeling bike in the predawn air. I got my suit on in the frigid dressing room then padded barefoot over the cold tile to the pool.

  I stepped out of the dressing room then caught my breath as I saw Sean perched on the edge of the diving board, like a bird as he stretched his arms then catapulted off, twisting and flipping in the air until with barely a splash, he slid into the water.

  I felt weird, my stomach twisting while my heart pounded. It was probably because I expected to be alone, nothing to do with the sight of Sean performing like an Olympian to an empty room. I sat with my knees to my chest while I waited for him to come up. Was he waiting for me so that he could give me more pointers? Why did that make me smile? I hadn’t seen him in so little clothes for so long; I’d almost forgotten how beautiful he was.

  The seconds stretched out into minutes until I realized with a shock that he should have come up by then. My mind froze as I sat there then stumbled up, sliding on the tile so my dive into the pool was crooked. I held my breath, fighting down the panic as I searched the pool. When I saw the dark form floating across from me I swam to him in quick, sure strokes, my heart normalizing as I focused, the way you did in kata.

  I was almost to him, ready to grab him under the armpits and drag him to the surface when he looked up with his blue eyes, but they seemed dark and strange in the shadows beneath the water. I reached for him, wrapping my arms around his chest while I kicked up, struggling to lift his weight and mine. The surface seemed miles away as I hauled his limp, incredibly heavy body up, lungs bursting, forcing myself to stay calm until finally, I broke the surface, sucking in lungfuls of air as I blinked water out of my eyes. Sean floated on his back while I swam, dragging him to the nearest side. What I would do when I got there, I had no idea.

  “Sean,” I gasped, hardly with enough breath for words once I had the edge under my hand.

  “Hm?” he asked, sounding curious.

  “Are you dead?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been dead so I’m not sure what it would be like. I object if this is heaven. If this is hell… it’s about right.”

  I hit him in the shoulder, hard enough that he should have winced but he just looked at me with curiosity in his ice blue eyes.

  “You were under the water too long. You should have drowned.” I pulled myself out of the pool and collapsed on the tile, glad that it was cold, that I could shiver and lay there limp, although I kept my eye on Sean to make sure he didn’t sink again.

  He pulled himself out in an easy motion that contracted the muscles in his arms and chest. His muscles were absolutely impressive, and getting such a close view was really fascinating. His abdominals… who had muscles like that?

  He hid them when he sat beside me, leaning forward so he could frown at me. “So that was you rescuing me?”

  I blinked at him. “I wasn’t doing anything else.”

  “How long were you up here, watching me?”

  “I wasn’t watching you, it’s not like I haven’t been coming to the pool every morning for over a month. I just saw you do those flip things and then nothing. For how long? Ten minutes?”

  His piercing eyes narrowed at me. He opened his mouth to say something scathing when Oliver’s accent bounced off the tile. “You didn’t see what you thought you saw.”

  I turned my head and felt the overwhelming need to be one with him. Ugh. “Thanks for that, Oliver. Actually, I did see what I saw, but thanks for the vote of confidence. Sean should be dead.”

  “Is that what you want?” Oliver asked, in a low voice with his sparkling green eyes focused on me.

  I stared at him, at a loss for a second. “Yeah. That’s why I dragged him out, so he’d be dead. Way to use deductive reasoning. Are you on drugs, or what?”

  “Drugs. Definitely drugs,” Sean said decidedly.

  I frowned at him as I finally sat up, body protesting. Of course, my ribs still had serious damage, so that wasn’t a surprise. I had no idea what he was talking about. “I’m feeling a little bit like I fell down a rabbit hole. What is with you guys? What are you doing here so early? I came early just so that I could swim without running into anyone.”

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Oliver said, walking closer. It wasn’t fair that he was fully clothed. It made me feel more vulnerable. “You might have an accident, drown, and then where would you be?”

  “At the bottom of the pool, unless I floated when I was dead the way I do when I’m unconscious,” I responded automatically. “Whatever,” I said, standing up. “Apparently this pool is not a place for people like me.”

  “Where are you going?” Oliver asked, but it wasn’t a question, not when he was looking over my shoulder at Sean.

  “Gen,” Sean said, making me turn around and look at him where he sat, comfortably on the frigid tile. Of course he would be comfortable; they were probably the same temperature. “How long do you think that people can hold their breath?”

  I blinked. “Four, five minutes? Why?”

  “I’ve got good lungs. I’m wondering if you happened to check the time so you could tell me approximately how long I was under the water. I might have broken a record.”

  I shook my head as I tried to remember. It had been a little before five when I got there, the clock in the dressing room had shown that, but now, when I looked on the wall at the clock, I noticed that the second hand didn’t move. “I’m sorry, I really couldn’t say. It seemed like ten minutes, but I wasn’t counting, so I don’t know. It was a really long time.”

  Sean stared at me with his blue eyes until he finally nodded then looked past me at Oliver. “I think we’re good here. Gen,” he added, standing up. “I think that with the whole me punching you thing, it would probably be best if we were no longer together. Do you understand?”

  I took a step back before I shook my head. “What, you’re not going to ask me what a smart girl like me is doing acting like an idiot over you?”

  He smiled, a stunning smile that was really wasted on me. He should have found someone he liked. Maybe he had. “That would be calling you smart. Since when do I do that?”

  I rolled my eyes and turned to leave, stopping abruptly when I realized Oliver had been right behind me. “Excuse me, I’m going to leave before I burst into tears from Sean breaking my delicate heart.”

  Oliver stared at me for a long time, a strange look that felt like he was weighing something before he stepped aside.

  “I’ll see you later,” he said, quietly.

  I ignored the goosebumps his voice gave me. Who could distinguish a few goosebumps from the shivering? “Not if I see you first.”

  The sound of his laughter followed me out of the room. I stood under the hot water from the shower for a long time, hating that I could only warm up half of my body at a time. That had been really weird. If Sean hadn’t been drowning, it was horrible of him to make me drag him up, not that him being horrible was weird, it was afterwards with Oliver. He’d acted like I was trying to drown Sean. That was a mind-boggling idea: me taking on Sean in the water. Sean had told me, not me really, but Oliver, that we weren’t going out. It had seemed like there was a lot of communicating between them that I wasn’t getting, but whatever. I slammed off the water. If Sean didn’t want to date me, if he’d found someone better, more perfect like him, then I was happy for him. More than happy, ecstatic. I dressed hurriedly then hurt my wrist shoving open the door. Oh well. It would go with my ribs.

  I spent the rest of my time before class sitting in front of my locker doing homework. My teachers would be so impressed. I was putting my extra books in when Cole came by. In the old days I would have stared at him while he looked through me, but now he put a hand on my shoulder, making me drop a book.

  “So, Vee, how’s it going with Sean?”

  “It’s not,” I muttered, picking up the book from the bottom of my locker and putting it back on the top shelf. “We aren’t seeing each other anymore.”<
br />
  “Because he hit you? You wouldn’t take that personally. So why?”

  “How is this your business?”

  He leaned against the next locker, apparently not going anywhere soon. “I liked you with him. He’s a good guy.”

  I stared at him. He was still hot, gorgeous really. Why was I surrounded by hot guys now, none of whom liked me? Torture. That’s what it was. I had done something evil in a former life, so this was my punishment. I shrugged. “I don’t really know. I think it had to do with…”

  “The girl on his team? Are you jealous?” I stared at him. “Bernice, right? She’s cute, but not really…” he wrinkled his nose. “He likes her, but not seriously. Like us, you know?”

  My eyeballs were going to dry out and drop out of my head if I didn’t blink at some point. I blinked. “Yeah. Like us. So, was there a mass hallucination I missed? I have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re like, nothing. And Sean and Bernice are like family. Swim family. You ditched me when I needed you most. Sean would never ditch one of his own, not if they needed him.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Like I said, he’s a good guy. But that girl, she’s not like him, or you. She’s like me.” He gave me a half smile. “I’m not the only one who bailed on you. I’m just the hottest.”

  And on that note, he left me alone to fight the need to bash my head into my locker.

  Chapter 24

  I made it through the rest of the day, but I didn’t feel so well, probably from the freezing cold tile. The way other girls looked at me didn’t help. There was so much, ‘hah, like you thought you were good enough for Sean but you’re still the freak, Watergirl,’ that I could barely take it. At home, after wandering around the house for awhile, it was time to go to the lake. Just me, my notebook and my super sore ribs. I wore my warmest parka, the one I’d stolen from my dad, military surplus or something. The ride was hard because breathing hurt. Stupid Sean. I parked my bike and found the willow looking naked with stringy branches hanging down, stripped of green. Oh well. I slipped under them anyway. My music and poetry weren’t really coming but the questions were.