Bubbles

by Abby Cooper

  “Slow down,” Kaya told me.

  “Yeah, seriously, Sophie. Are you trying to get the whole pool’s worth of water up my nose?” Rafael sounded like he was joking, but his face looked annoyed.

  I didn’t mean to kick a whole pool of water up his nose. I just wanted him to look at me in that same you’re-cool-and-totally-not-a-grizzly-bear way he was still looking at Kaya the Future Supermodel and All-Around Perfect Athlete.

  Just like her legs, Kaya’s kicks were perfectly smooth. She kept her legs straight and carefully lifted them up and back down, sending the perfect amount of ripple through the water. It was so unfair, so I kicked harder.

  “So, wait, I’m confused. Are we just warming up our feet right now, or are we trying to use them as weapons of mass de-splashitude?” Rafael asked.

  My face burned and tears poked at the sides of my eyes. Even when I slowed my feet down, they weren’t working right. One of them turned sideways a little, so I was accidentally sending water in Rafael’s direction even though I wasn’t trying to anymore. The other one was off in its own foot world. Instead of bopping up and down it rotated from side to side, almost making circles and not making kicks at all. Spinning and standing up and down on the pedals had ten zillion things to remember, but kicking only had one basic rule: kick. And I still couldn’t do it.

  “Okay, enough kicking,” Rafael decided. “We’re getting in the water. Prepare yourselves. It’s cannonball time!”

  He got up, walked to the deep end, and jumped in. Kaya went over to the stairs at the shallow end and very carefully dipped in one toe at a time, even though she’d had her feet in the water only a minute ago. I stayed sitting by the edge and slowly wriggled my body down from the wall into the pool. The water only came up to my belly button, so I bobbed under. The last time I swam, when we were in Florida visiting my grandparents a couple years ago, Mom and I held hands and took a running leap right off the dock and into the ocean. It was freezing. I had never been so cold in my whole life. But we were both laughing when we floated to the top.

  I sure didn’t feel like laughing now.

  I poked my head out of the water and whipped my hair around me. Curls were stuck to my neck, my shoulders, my cheeks, everywhere. I blinked the extra water out of my eyes and tried to see where everybody was. Oh … Kaya and Rafael were both in the shallow end now, splashing each other and laughing like it was the most fun they’d ever had.

  That was … interesting.

  I made my way over and tried to make myself smile, like I was in on the fun, not just standing there awkwardly watching it. My friend who was afraid of swimming was in the pool and she was almost swimming. She was really happy! She wasn’t freaking out or drowning or being mad at me for sorta being the reason she was in this situation in the first place. I should’ve been happy, too. And I was … sort of.

  But also, sort of not.

  “Isn’t this great?” Rafael stopped splashing and karate-chopped the water. “We own you, pool. You are no match for Kaya the Swimming Beast! There isn’t even any noodling happening here. Do you realize that, Kaya? You. Are. Not. Noodling!”

  Neither am I, I wanted to tell him. But I already knew how to swim, so that wasn’t a big deal. This was about Kaya. He was just being a nice, encouraging friend. It was one of the things I liked most about him.

  I just didn’t like it as much right this second.

  But maybe I could remind him I was still here. I didn’t have anything to say about noodles, but I still had good ideas.

  “Maybe we should warm up our arms,” I told them. I waved one arm over my shoulder to demonstrate, and then the other.

  Good thinking, Sophie, said Rafael’s bubble. I didn’t know why he didn’t say it out loud, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they totally still needed me, and they were happy the three of us were doing this together.

  Kaya rolled her right arm over her shoulder in a way so graceful it’d make a real ballerina jealous. For someone who was scared of everything, she was sure good at everything.

  Meanwhile, my arms might as well have been octopus tentacles. They floundered all over the place; it was like I had no control of them whatsoever, even though they were attached to me. Why was I so terrible at this arm thing? And the kicking thing? And the biking thing? And all the things? I stared out toward the deep end, afraid to look at my friends because I might start crying.

  “Let’s stop warming up our arms,” I called over my shoulder.

  But they didn’t stop warming up their arms.

  They were laughing again, at something I hadn’t caught. And their arms were going back and forth a million miles a minute and it was like they didn’t have to put any effort into it at all. Why was it so hard for me but easy for them? And how was I going to remind Mom how great races were when I was awful at everything? How was I going to remind her how to have fun when there wasn’t anything fun about this?

  “I’m going to take a break,” I said, and got out and grabbed my towel without looking at anyone. Not like anyone would be that concerned anyway.

  As I left, though, I glanced back over my shoulder. Kaya and Rafael were splashing around and looking at each other and laughing their heads off.

  I walked away, and they didn’t even notice.

  21

  STEAM

  I stormed through the hallway we’d come from. It still smelled gross, like chlorine, only now it was annoying. That smell was gross. Pools were gross. Everything was gross.

  I went into the locker room and thought about what to do next. Going home didn’t sound so great, but I definitely didn’t want to go back to the pool.

  That didn’t leave a whole lot of choices.

  Then I remembered the giant room of steam. I’d never been in a room made out of steam before. That could be fun. I glanced at the sign—18+, it said. Well, I was almost eighteen. There were only six short years to go. That was like nothing. And if I just went in for a minute, that didn’t really count anyway.

  I looked to my left and to my right, in case there were Steam Room Police standing by. I didn’t see any, so I cracked the door open and slipped inside.

  “Hello?”

  The steam was so cloudy and heavy that you couldn’t see your own arm, let alone any other people.

  A voice laughed through the fog. “You sound like a newbie. Take a seat. Watch out for corners. The bench is closer than you think it is.”

  “Ow!” As she talked, my knee found the bench and I winced. That was definitely going to be another bruise. Now not only had I been beaten up by a fake bike, I had also gotten beat up by a bench. Awesome.

  Okay, well, this had been an interesting experiment. I’d have to tell Kaya about it if I could pry her away from Rafael and Viv and her hairless legs and bazillion new skills long enough to talk to me.

  Thinking about talking to Kaya—and going back to the pool—made my stomach hurt. But I had to go back to the pool. I had to get better at swimming. What was I even doing? I had to win this race for Mom, and I was totally wasting my practice time. You couldn’t just ditch something if it got hard. If Thomas Edison gave up when things got tough, we probably wouldn’t have light bulbs. (Seriously, the guy failed over a thousand times before it finally worked.) But Thomas Edison was actually good at inventing and knew things about electricity. And clearly I knew nothing about sports … or my best friends.

  I was about to push open the door when I noticed something that made my steamed-up eyes almost pop out of my head. How was this even possible in such a hazy place? There were bubbles everywhere. Well, I assumed they were bubbles. All I could really see were the words floating above me in the steamy air. Since I couldn’t see any people, I couldn’t tell which bubbles went to who. Or who the people even were. Or why I cared, to be honest. But the words were practically swimming in my face, begging to be read. I couldn’t ignore them. That would be rude. And like Mom always used to say when she took me to the public library—Adventurous Girls r
ead.

  Don’t. Cry.

  I hope I don’t get caught.

  What was I thinking?

  Where did the time go?

  I should have figured it out sooner.

  I can’t take it anymore.

  There were more, but I didn’t want to read them. They were too depressing, and what had been a sad kind of day was turning into the biggest bummer of a day since the vending machine with all the best junk food got taken out of the cafeteria.

  The air in the locker room was freezing. I wrapped myself in a second towel, then a third. I plopped down on the bench I’d sat on before and let the towels soak up all the steam and sweat escaping from my skin.

  I had to go back to the pool. For Mom, even though she didn’t actually know I wanted to win so bad because of her. For Kaya, even though she wasn’t that scared anymore. For Rafael, who wanted to hang out with me, even though he was kinda acting like he didn’t. And maybe for me, too. For Adventurous Girl Sophie or Regular Sophie or whoever the heck I was.

  I sighed. Maybe there were no happy bubbles because there were no happy people. Everywhere I went—the steam room, the sidewalks, school—people were worried or stressed about something, and if they weren’t that, they were sad. They wished things had never happened or had happened differently. And it wasn’t only the strangers. It was people I knew, too. Like Kaya and Rafael. Even though they were having fun now, it didn’t mean they would have fun forever. Even if the triathlon somehow worked out the way I wanted it to, maybe there would always be something bringing me—and Mom—down.

  If everyone regretted everything, I wondered as I got up, then what was the point of doing anything at all?

  22

  SWIMMING (OR SOMETHING)

  “I’m swimming and I’m not that scared!” I could hear Kaya’s excited voice all the way from the Chlorine Hall. You could probably hear it on Mars, too.

  Even though I was upset, I had to smile when I got back into the pool area. She was swimming. And grouchy as I was, I had to admit, it was pretty cool, even though I hadn’t helped her not be afraid like I was supposed to.

  I clapped my hands and cheered. “Woo! Go, Kaya!”

  She stopped, stood up (she was still in the shallow end), and waved.

  “Where were you?” she asked, once she was done coughing up the gallon of water that had ended up in her mouth.

  “I just went to get a drink,” I said. My face felt hot. I didn’t like lying to her, or to anyone, but it was probably better to keep my steam room adventure to myself. Especially the part about seeing all the bubbles. And getting yet another ridiculous injury.

  Kaya waded over to the stairs.

  “I’m taking five. Want a break, Rafael?”

  “No way,” he said. “Breaks are for the weak! Sorry,” he added when he saw my face. “Not like, weak weak. Just like … swimming rules!” He dove under and waved his feet back and forth in the air. Then he pretended that his left foot was chasing his right. Kaya and I giggled. It was hard to stay mad at someone who’d put on an underwater puppet show for you with his feet.

  Kaya and I pulled towels around our legs and sat on some lounge chairs near the door. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was on a warm beach somewhere, a place where best friends were equally good at things and didn’t become friends with people like Viv Carlson. A place where moms were happy and stationary bikes and steam and weird bubbles didn’t exist. I let out a long, slow breath and fully let myself pretend I was there. My fake beach was almost better than visiting Colonial Williamsburg with Mom a couple years ago, which was basically the best thing ever.

  Kaya poked me in the stomach, making my dream place totally disappear, and making me jump about a thousand feet into the air.

  “Since when are you so ticklish?” she asked.

  Since when are you getting rid of your leg hair? I wanted to say, but it came out as a shrug instead.

  “So, how are you doing?” she asked.

  “Fine, how are you? You’re a great swimmer.”

  No thanks to me, I added in my head.

  “Thanks! It’s so much better than I remembered. Are you sure everything’s okay? You were gone for a long time.” She twisted some hair around her fingers.

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek. What should I tell her? Everything I thought of sounded dumb. Plus, I definitely couldn’t tell her how I was feeling left out with her and Rafael, since Rafael was right by us in the pool. I definitely definitely couldn’t tell her about the fluttery heart feelings I had when Rafael was nearby—the kinds of feelings she was basically squashing with her crazy athletic talents and snazzy hairless legs. So I said nothing and stared out into the pool, pretending I was super interested in watching the lady with the bright pink swim cap do laps back and forth.

  Kaya watched me. “Is it about those bubbles you told me about before? Is that why you’re acting weird? Have you seen more of them?”

  Like you wouldn’t believe, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue instead. Yeah, I wanted to tell her all the details, but what if she went blabbing to Rafael or Viv?

  “I’ve seen some,” I said. “Mostly kinda depressing stuff. So yeah, that could be why I’m acting weird.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  That’s when I noticed that one was forming right above her head. The little dots showed up so slowly it was like they were purposely taking forever and being dramatic.

  Then the big bubble formed, then the words. I tried so hard to keep eye contact with Kaya. If anyone would notice that I was actually looking above her head, trying to make out the little words that appeared one at a time, it would be her. And I had a feeling that this was going to be something I was going to want to keep to myself.

  My life is amazing! I can swim and Rafael is my boyfriend!

  I snapped my mouth shut, stood up, and then everything went black.

  23

  SPLAT

  I was pretty sure my armpit was broken.

  Can you even break an armpit?

  Also, what good are they if they break?

  (Actually, what good are they anyway?)

  My ankle hurt, too. A lot. I bent down to rub it, but the stretch made my armpit hurt more.

  Kaya and Rafael gathered around me like it was all over. So long, Sophie, their eyes were saying. It was nice knowing you. Now go away already so we can concentrate on our triathlon and our new friend Viv and also going out, because apparently we do that now.

  I felt a second wave of dizziness so I leaned back in the chair. Dizziness had caused this in the first place, I was pretty sure, and I couldn’t risk a second broken armpit.

  “You really fell,” said Kaya, as if I didn’t know.

  “Yeah, when you try to stand up, you’re supposed to, like, stand up,” said Rafael. “Not get tangled up in the chair and land all…” he spread his arms out and waved them like he was doing a goofy dance. “Splat on the ground.”

  I clutched my shoulder as pain shot through the inside of my armpit and sped down my side. At least it wasn’t another bruise on my leg. But maybe that would have been better than a broken armpit. Where would they put a cast, anyway? And my ankle. I definitely couldn’t do a triathlon with a broken ankle. Although it was kinda looking like I wouldn’t be able to do one even with an ankle that worked.

  The pool door creaked and two people walked in. I held my armpit and squeezed my eyes shut. Whoever the people were, I didn’t want to see them and I didn’t want them to see me. Closing my eyes wouldn’t make me invisible, but I could pretend.

  “Whoa. Now what happened?”

  I knew that voice.

  “Did you fall off, like, a noodle? I don’t get this.”

  “I can take a look, if you want.”

  I knew that voice, too. It sounded like snootiness mixed with the color orange.

  “I have a background in sports medicine,” Viv’s mom continued. “Were you swimming when this happened?”

 
; I shook my head, eyes still shut.

  “She was getting off the chair,” Kaya told her.

  I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter, like that would somehow make everybody go away. I’d rather be alone with my broken armpit and swollen ankle than be with traitor friends and people who thought my serious injuries were more entertaining than watching the world’s first movie (which came out in 1888).

  “I’m going to get some supplies.” Viv’s mom pointed at Kaya and Rafael. “You two, come with me. Vivian, stay with the patient.”

  I opened my eyes just in time to see a bubble appear over Viv’s head. Mom thinks I can stay alone with the patient? Maybe I could be a doctor someday. I can be anything I want!

  Ugh. I thought I would have rather gone with Viv’s mom, even though I couldn’t exactly move.

  Viv and I stared at each other for what felt like forever.

  “So … do you feel okay?” she finally asked.

  “Delightful.”

  A little redness crept onto her cheeks, and she looked all around, like she was wondering what was taking everybody so long. I was wondering the same thing.

  I glanced down at Viv’s legs. Hairless. Of course.

  “Do you want me to hold your ankle or something?” Her voice was all high and squeaky, and now her cheeks were even redder than her hair. Was Viv Carlson, master of spinning and sports and all the things ever in the universe,… nervous? Did she think I was going to fall off the chair again and hurt myself more and she’d have to deal with it all by herself? And if she wasn’t worried about that, then what was she worried about? Maybe she knew I was onto her and her rotten project.

  “No thanks.”

  “Are you still glad you’re doing the triathlon for the project?” the Friend Stealer asked.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  I sat up a little straighter as I realized something: this was my chance. Maybe I could get her to admit it, to get everything out in the open. Then I could nicely tell her to go find something else to do. “Hey,” I said as casually as I could, “you never told me what you’re doing for your project.”