Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  “She could train pregnant—Dara Torres did,” Amber says.

  “Not everybody is Dara Torres,” Jessa argues. “Her body’s going to majorly change. It could throw everything off. She might never get back to where she was competitively.”

  The mention of changing bodies strikes a nerve. Of the three of us, I know best how that can affect your entire career. Maybe even end it.

  I want to keep talking about this—I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that Kara Walker won’t be going to the Olympics—but the squeal of a microphone distracts me.

  On the other end of the room, Tucker is standing in front of the kitchen island, which is now entirely cleared of chip bowls and abandoned drinks and other party debris. He’s holding a portable karaoke machine in one hand and a wireless mike in the other. Everyone quiets. Tucker clears his throat.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, his voice reverberating through the tiny speaker. “I give you...the Flow.”

  A familiar hip-hop song starts playing on the stereo and Harry takes a flying leap off a chair positioned in the corner, landing in a crouch on the island. His momentum carries him a bit too far and one of his feet slips, but he rights himself. I suspect he’s practiced this.

  Tucker tosses the mike at him and Harry snatches it out of midair. Then he stands up, closes his eyes and starts to rap. The room erupts in applause and cheers. Most of them seem to have been expecting this.

  “This is his party trick,” Tucker says, wedging himself in beside me. “People love it.”

  That’s clearly true, but the best part is that, despite how reluctant he seemed earlier, Harry loves it, too. It’s obvious how happy it makes him to get the lyrics right, how good he feels slicing the air with his hands in time to the beat. He’s holding the mike like a beloved thing, rolling his shoulders and swaying his hips and dropping rhymes. He looks ridiculous.

  Except, because he doesn’t seem to care what he looks like, or what anybody thinks, he careens right past the threshold of ridiculous and loops back to awesome.

  I feel weightless, like the floor has suddenly vanished from under my feet. Harry is way too cool for me. I don’t know why I thought, for even a second, that we could make sense together. Or that, with my career in such a fragile state, I had any business messing around with a guy.

  No boyfriends until next August, like Jessa said. One mistake can hurt your entire career. Kara Walker is living proof of that.

  “I want to go home,” I tell Amber. Coming here was a terrible idea. All it did was make me hope for something I can’t have right now.

  Amber takes one look at the agony on my face and snaps into mama bear mode. She taps Jessa on the shoulder and says, “We’re leaving now.”

  Jessa, who seems to find the Flow annoying, doesn’t put up a fight. My friends give me a hard time, but when push comes to shove they’re on my side.

  It’s easy to make our way out of the house while everyone’s preoccupied with the Flow. They move when we try to pass, then close back up behind us like a curtain. From his perch on the island, Harry must notice us leaving. He invited me here, and now I’m bailing without even saying goodbye. If it were the other way around, I would feel awful. I turn back, but Harry’s completely absorbed by his performance; he’s not even looking at me.

  Jessa grabs my arm and says, “You wanted to leave, so let’s go.”

  I hesitate, then follow her out the door.

  * * *

  “What happened back there, Susannah?” Amber asks, turning around in the passenger seat to look at me. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know!” I tell her. “It was, like, a moment of fight or flight. Whatever that is, or could be, with him—it’s not a good idea. But I shouldn’t have left like that.”

  “Probably not,” Amber agrees. “I could see how upset you were, though. It seemed wrong to try to force you to stay.”

  I press my forehead against the cool glass of the car window and close my eyes against the memory of what just happened. A wrecking ball of self-loathing slams into me. When I sense a threat to my swimming career, it’s like being poked in an open wound—I flinch, and I panic, and I run. Harry probably thinks I don’t like him. What a shitty thing to do to someone who’s been so nice to me.

  “Was it that awful lip dub? Because that would turn me off, too.” Jessa snorts. “The Flow. LOL.”

  “What have we told you about using text speak in polite company?” Amber scolds her. To me, she says, “It was that Kara Walker thing, wasn’t it? It scared you.”

  I nod. Of course Amber gets it. She’s always been the most emotionally intuitive of the three of us. But I can tell from her frown that even though she understands, she’s frustrated with me, too. All she was trying to do was get me to have some fun, and I ruined it. And Amber would never treat someone the way I treated Harry tonight.

  “There are ways to avoid getting pregnant, you know,” Jessa says. “We shouldn’t have pressured you into going to that party. You take everything so seriously.”

  “I take things seriously?” That’s pretty rich, coming from the girl who made her parents build a lap pool in her backyard because the one they had was too small to work out in.

  “I take swimming seriously,” Jessa says. “Who cares what boys think?”

  “Jess, just this once, will you please shut up?” Amber begs. “You’re not helping.”

  Jessa glances at me in the rearview mirror. “I know it sucks,” she says. “But it’s worth it.”

  “Yeah,” I say softly. “It’s worth it.”

  I’ve always known that earning the right to wear Olympic rings, to have a tattoo and medals like Dave’s, would mean making sacrifices. I’ve made plenty already, and most days I’d be happy to make more, if it meant I could even come close to getting the thing I want most.

  I just never banked on meeting Harry or imagined that he would be one of them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  307 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  THE MONDAY AFTER Tucker’s party, I arrive at morning practice to find Sarah Weller and Nash Grol, the GAC cocaptains, standing sentry outside the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms, which never happens. I’m already dreading having to face Harry after ditching him at the party, so all I can think is, What fresh hell is this?

  “Team meeting,” Sarah tells me as I pass her. “Suit up if you’re not already, then head upstairs.”

  Weird. We have most team meetings before evening practice; Dave knows we’d be half-asleep and miss most of what he’s saying if he held them in the mornings. I put my suit on at home, so I shove my swim bag into my locker and proceed to the mezzanine.

  My body feels like it’s made of lead; I practically have to drag myself up the stairs. I spent all of yesterday in my room, beating myself up and writing dozens of apology texts to Harry that I couldn’t find the courage to send. When Bela came over for Sunday dinner, she took one look at me and asked if I was sick. Not sick, I thought. Just frustrated with myself.

  I don’t see Harry in the mezzanine, which is a relief, but Jessa’s here already—no surprise there. She’s doing ab work while she waits. I sink down near her and start my daily prescribed dose of crunches, but I can’t focus.

  “What do you think is going on?” I ask Jessa in a low voice. Something about it being just past dawn, and the mezzanine being almost deserted, makes me feel like I should whisper.

  “No idea,” she says, adding a Russian twist to her sit-up. “But I haven’t seen Dave.”

  Dave likes to prowl the pool deck before practice, like a lion surveying his territory. He told me once that he visualizes the entire day’s sets in fast motion, trying to predict how everyone’s going to perform, and then adjusts based on what he sees. It’s unheard of for him not to be here. Something’s definitely up.

  I’ve switched from crunches to full si
t-ups when Amber arrives. She waves at us but doesn’t speak, only yawns and stretches. She’s no lark of the morning, our Amber. She swims on autopilot in the a.m. and you can’t get a word out of her until eight o’clock.

  When I come up for my last rep, I notice Harry near the door. He looks at me and our eyes meet. I panic, thinking he might try to talk to me about the party in front of everyone. But he turns his back to me, and I realize he never meant to speak to me at all.

  Right. Of course. I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either, if I were him.

  At five-thirty on the dot, Beth calls the meeting to order. Still no Dave.

  “Hey, guys, I’m going to make this quick,” she says. “Dave was doing some repairs at his house this weekend and he twisted his back. He’s in a lot of pain and he can’t really walk, so he’s not going to be at practice for a while.”

  “How long is a while?” Jessa asks.

  Amber mouths at me, Not “Is he okay?” But that was my first thought, too.

  “Probably just this week,” Beth says. She assures us that she’ll work us as hard as Dave would, then dismisses us.

  “This isn’t good,” Jessa says as we wriggle out of our sweatpants and T-shirts in the locker room.

  “Why not? I like Beth,” Amber says. “Don’t you?”

  “I like her fine, but she hasn’t coached world champions and Olympic athletes, and we’re at the point where every practice counts. Don’t you care about qualifying for Trials?”

  “Not really,” Amber replies.

  Jessa and I exchange a surprised look. Every elite swimmer in GAC cares about that. This is the first I’ve heard Amber say she doesn’t.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Jessa scoffs. “Anyway, Susannah knows what I mean.”

  Amber looks deflated. I don’t want her to think we’re ganging up on her, and I’m not sure how comfortable I am being lumped in with Jessa.

  “It’ll be fine,” I say. “Dave’s so controlling I bet he’s still planning the sets. Beth’s just here to make sure we’re doing them.”

  “Actually,” Amber says, “we don’t know who Beth’s coached. I couldn’t find any information about her at all, could you?”

  Jessa and I shrug and turn back to our lockers.

  “Come on, I know you both Googled her,” Amber says. She glares at us with her hands on her hips. “I’m not the only cyber stalker here. Confess.”

  “Okay, I did,” I admit. “But I didn’t find anything.”

  “Me neither,” Jessa says. “Not even any social media. Isn’t that weird?”

  Sarah pokes her head into the locker room and shouts at everyone to get moving. Beth smiles at me as I pass her on the way to my assigned lane.

  I smile back, but I can’t stop wondering: Who are you?

  * * *

  I was wrong about one thing: Dave’s not planning workouts—or, if he is, Beth’s not using them. Dave’s a traditionalist; he believes that the more you swim, the faster you’ll go. Beth doesn’t subscribe to that philosophy. Starting that first morning, she reduces our yardage from eight thousand to five thousand yards per workout.

  That’s not to say the practices are easy. True to her word, Beth works us as hard as Dave—maybe harder—but instead of forcing us to swim endless sets at larger intervals, she has us practicing less at higher speeds that are more like race conditions.

  “You’ll never have to swim like that in competition, so why do it in practice?” she says with a shrug when a group of sprinters and middistance swimmers balk at the change. Only the long-distance swimmers get workouts that look like Dave’s.

  Beth’s regimen also puts a lot of emphasis on the mental aspects of the sport, which Dave never bothered much with before, apart from the occasional criticism for “not thinking like a winner.” She makes sure we understand why we’re doing certain things and asks for our input so we don’t feel like we’re just blindly following instructions.

  On the more woo-woo end of the spectrum, she forces us to do affirmations, which are like silent pep talks: I’m going to win this race; I’m going to break 2:10 on my 200 IM; I’m going to ace this test. Beth believes in putting positive energy into the universe.

  Focusing on the good does not come naturally, so while I can’t say affirmations do much for my swimming, they do make me feel better sometimes.

  In my years of competitive swimming, I’ve never been treated like a partner in my own coaching. It both energizes and unsettles me. How can I possibly know what’s best? But the really wild part—the part I tell myself isn’t true for as long as I possibly can—is that I’m improving. Because we’re practicing at closer to race speeds, I can see my progress in every workout.

  I’m getting stronger, and what’s weirder is that I’m getting faster.

  * * *

  We have a meet most Saturdays, and this week it’s a dual with Harry’s old club. The Beaumont Bruins are only a few towns away, so we swim against them pretty frequently, but our old assistant coach runs the show over there now and the whole team is writhing with excitement to beat him. For most people, it’s good-natured competitive spirit, but I can’t stand the thought of falling to one of Mike’s new swimmers in my best event. I have to do well.

  It’s a home meet for the Bruins, so we have to travel to Beaumont. A pipe broke in our kitchen this morning while Mom was at study group and Dad was at the vet with Lulu; the chaos that ensued makes me late to meet the rest of the team in the school parking lot. When I finally board the bus, Beth gives me a stern look.

  “We waited for you,” she says.

  “I know, thank you, sorry,” I pant. Dad was late, too, for a shift at the restaurant, so he dropped me off at the front entrance of the school and I had to run across campus to get to the bus.

  “Take a seat, Susannah, so we can get going,” Beth says, checking me off the attendance list.

  I make my way gingerly down the aisle, trying not to smack people with my overstuffed swim bag, when I discover a problem—there’s only one empty seat on this bus. The one next to Harry.

  My chest tightens and my legs go numb as my nerves kick into overdrive at the prospect of having to face him. My friends are sitting together in the back, and Amber catches my wide-eyed stare. Do you want me to move? she mouths. I shake my head. I can see Harry looking at me out of the corner of my eye, and I don’t want him to think that I don’t want to sit next to him.

  Harry gives me a polite smile and pats the empty space next to him. It reminds me of that night at the pool when he invited me to sit next to him on the bench.

  “All yours,” he says.

  “Thanks.” I shove my swim bag under my seat and slump against the headrest. I’m in good shape, but running is not my sport. I’m still catching my breath.

  Harry turns to look out the window as we pull onto the street that leads to the highway, ignoring me completely. I don’t blame him, but I can’t sit here in silence for half an hour, imagining what he must think. I can’t explain about Saturday, either; that’s a private conversation, and there are too many people around who could hear. The bus is so quiet I can hear Jessa snoring in the back.

  Think of something to say! I command myself. My stomach is churning. This is torture.

  I clear my throat. “So, uh...are you excited to be back in your old pool?”

  I figure that topic has to be safe, but Harry says, “Not really,” without turning away from the window. The dismissal stings, but I expected it. I need to keep trying.

  “Why not?”

  Harry sighs, like I’m annoying him, but he does look at me this time. “Because,” he says, “I didn’t love swimming there. The people weren’t very friendly.”

  “I’ve noticed that.” I lower my voice. “Around here, we call them the Beaumont Bastards.”

  He struggles not to smile. “Yeah, well, we called you
guys the Gilcrest Asshole Club.”

  I laugh. “Not entirely inaccurate.”

  Harry looks me in the eye. “No?” he asks with feigned casualness. I don’t think we’re talking about swim clubs anymore.

  I shake my head. “We act like assholes sometimes,” I say. “But we don’t mean to. And we’re sorry when we do.”

  Things are silent between us for a beat or two while Harry ponders this. Finally, he says, “Good to know.” Then he settles back against the window and closes his eyes.

  I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Clearly, this conversation is finished. And I don’t know if it changes anything between us. Maybe he’s still angry with me. But at least it’s a start.

  * * *

  Duals with the Bruins aren’t very exciting. We’re a much better team than they are, and we often outscore them by one hundred points or more. This meet is no different. The only wild card is Beth, and the effect she has on the team. Dave is a shouter, a shit talker and a hothead—he thinks it’s motivational. Beth, on the other hand, is calm and supportive, so the anxiety we feel when Dave’s running the show is eerily absent today. I like it, but I don’t trust it. If my body isn’t thrumming with nerves and fear, what’s going to fuel my race?

  While I’m swimming it, I don’t think my 200 IM is going particularly well. I feel stiff and slow at first, and only sink comfortably into the swim halfway through the breaststroke—too late, by my calculations, to touch the wall with a good result.

  But when the race is over and I raise my head to look at the scoreboard, what I see floors me: not only did I win my heat, I shaved two seconds off my most recent personal best.

  It’s off from where I was two years ago, and not enough to qualify for Trials, but it’s still a monumental accomplishment. More important, it’s progress. As I climb out of the pool, I start to wonder: What if Dave’s not the coach who will get me to the Olympics? What if Beth is?