Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  “What if you ask to train with Beth?” Harry suggests.

  I chew my bottom lip. “She might say no. Or Dave might, to spite me.”

  “Or they might agree to it. Only one way to find out,” he says.

  On the way home, I snuggle up inside Harry’s fleece and start scheming of a way to keep it. It’s soft and comfortable and smells like him, like chlorine and whatever shampoo he uses after practice, and also a little like baby-powder-scented dryer sheets.

  We’re both tired and full, so we don’t say much, but I’m comfortable here with Harry, sitting so close to him our shoulders almost touch, with the faint sound of the Top 40 radio station spilling cheesy love songs we can only half hear.

  Harry pulls into my driveway. “Hey, Susie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t you dare try to steal that fleece.”

  * * *

  Swimming together on Sundays becomes our weekly ritual. We fall into an easy pattern of Harry picking me up at six-thirty, then spending an hour or two in the pool working on form—my backstroke, his breaststroke, which he asks me for help with—and finishing at the diner for breakfast.

  I feel at ease with Harry, much more relaxed when it’s just us in the pool. He gives me a lot of feedback, but I never feel like he’s trying to tear me down. Our time at the diner is even better, because we talk about things besides swimming—family, school, books, music. We become friends on those Sunday mornings. If I’m honest, it feels like we’re becoming something more, but I try not to think about that too much.

  Then one Sunday, with no notice, he doesn’t show up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  261 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  “I’M GOING TO talk to Beth tonight,” I tell Harry as I help him clean up the deck after evening practice. It’s incredible, the mess a bunch of teenage swimmers can make.

  “Finally done putting it off?” Harry teases, punting a kickboard into one of the metal bins. He can’t even perform minor bits of drudgery without turning them into a game. I drop an armful of pool buoys into a bin and take a deep breath, steeling myself.

  “Harry, what happened on Sunday?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”

  I’ve been trying to work up the courage to confront him about this all week, going back and forth between being mad that he blew me off and telling myself it’s nothing—people have lives; plans change last minute. If he’d canceled, I’d have been disappointed, but it wouldn’t have bothered me so much.

  What bugs me is that he didn’t tell me, he didn’t respond for hours when I texted him to check in and then he didn’t show up for school or practice on Monday or Tuesday. I went from hurt to concerned, and when he did come back, he was tired and subdued. Distant. He never gave me a real explanation, so I’m still worried. But he keeps pretending everything’s fine.

  He turns away from me to fidget with a pile of tangled bungees. “I told you, something came up,” he says. He yanks at the knotted bungees until one of them snaps back and hits him in the chest.

  He presses his hand to his collarbone. “Shit, that stings.”

  “Here, let me help you.”

  I take the bungees from him and undo them easily. He wasn’t really struggling with them, he was using them as an excuse not to look at me. He’s embarrassed. I can tell by the way his neck flushes. He won’t turn around.

  Something came up. That’s what he said when he finally responded to my texts. I know he’s not my boyfriend, and he doesn’t owe me explanations. Technically, I’m the one who wants to be friends.

  There’s no denying how I much I like him, though. I know it, and I’m sure he does, too. Despite years of swimming for Dave, I’m no good at hiding my feelings, especially ones I’ve never felt before. I’ve had crushes—I’ve even been kissed a few times, by a boy at swim camp a few summers ago—but nothing close to Harry. I hate myself for not being able to get these feelings under control. But as always, my body is the ultimate traitor.

  Harry takes the bungees back from me and coils them up before placing them in the plastic container at his feet.

  “You don’t need to help me with this, Susie,” he says. “Talk to Beth. I’ll finish up out here.”

  Then he walks away. Whatever’s bothering him, he’s not going to talk to me about it. Maybe I was stupid to think that he would.

  * * *

  On my way to the coaches’ office, I stop by the coolers to heap a spoonful of ground ice into a plastic bag and fix it to my left shoulder. It takes me a few tries to wrap it properly, but it’s necessary. Every day, it hurts a little more. I’ve got to take better care of it.

  In the coaches’ office, Beth is sitting at her desk, scribbling in a warped spiral-bound notebook.

  “Designing tomorrow’s torture?” I ask.

  She looks up, startled, like she didn’t hear my knock, then smiles when she sees it’s me.

  “Hi, Susannah,” she says, setting the notebook aside. “What’s up? Do you want to sit?”

  I take a seat across from her. I feel nervous, like I’m in trouble. I know there’s a real chance she’ll turn me down.

  Beth eyes the ice pack on my shoulder. “What’s going on there?”

  “Nothing. Just some soreness.”

  She nods. “So how can I help you?”

  “Well...” I take a deep breath and let it out in a big rush: “Here’sthethingIwanttotrainwithyou.”

  Beth squints at me. “Repeat that?”

  “I want to train with you. I know I said—”

  “I thought you only wanted to train with Dave,” she says. “That’s what you told me. It’s why I asked Dave to put you in his group instead of mine.”

  “I know that’s what I said, but I was being stupid. I was afraid of what it might mean if I stopped training with Dave. Like I wasn’t good enough for him or something. I thought everyone would think I was a failure.”

  “What’s changed?”

  “When Dave was out with his back thing and you took over practice, I wasn’t sure what to expect,” I explain. “But I felt so much better in the water with you coaching me. I got faster. And when he came back, and I got put in his group, all that progress stopped. My dream is more important to me than my pride. So...” I spread my hands. “So that’s why I’m here.”

  “You’re here because you’ve decided I’m worth the risk,” Beth says. It’s not a question. And I don’t think there’s any judgment in it, either. “You’ve decided to trust me with your career.”

  “Yup. Bad backstroke and all.”

  “I didn’t say your backstroke was bad,” she says. “I said it needed work.”

  “Will you help me improve it?”

  Beth frowns. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Can I ask you a few questions before I answer that one?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  She turns away from the desk and faces me straight-on. “How long have you been in the sport?”

  “Since I was seven, so about nine years.”

  “And your specialty is...”

  She knows this already. Dave must’ve told her, and even if he didn’t, he keeps files on all his elite swimmers. I’m sure she’s gone through them. But I owe her an apology, and I think playing along with this interview is my way of doing it.

  “Sprint freestyle and butterfly. The 200 IM is my best event.”

  “Dave has you lead off on the 400 free relay, too.”

  I nod. “And I swim fly in the 400 IM relay a lot.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “The relay? Or the 200 IM?”

  “Both. Either. I’m trying to get a sense for what you enjoy swimming.”

  She follows this line of questioning with several more: Is there an event I hate? One I wish I could swim but Dave won’t support
me? She wants to know times, favorite workouts, how I feel about morning versus evening practices, what I think of my teammates.

  Finally, we come to the inevitable: my slowdown. I never want to talk about it, but I think about it all the time.

  “I understand,” she says after I explain. “You got older, your body changed, it got harder. It happens to a lot of female swimmers. Did you ever talk to a therapist about it?”

  I laugh. “No.”

  She cocks her head. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m trying to imagine asking my parents to pay for me to complain to some stranger about how getting boobs ruined my life. They spend enough on me as it is.”

  “That’s not the point of therapy. You were poised for something special, and in a few months, that all changed,” Beth says. “You lost something important to you. Don’t you think you should talk to somebody about that? Figure out how to cope with the loss?”

  “I can get back to where I was if I work hard enough,” I insist.

  If you’ll train me is what I really want to say, but after what I told her before, it wouldn’t be right for me to put this on her. It’s on me.

  “You’re certainly working hard.”

  Beth takes out her notebook and flips to a page with my name on it. My heart lifts. She’s been taking notes on me, paying attention. She wouldn’t do that if she wasn’t still thinking about training me.

  “You kill yourself in practice,” Beth continues, “but you’re making only modest improvements. Given how much you’re in the water, you should be progressing much faster.”

  She puts her hands on her knees and looks me straight in the eyes.

  “I’m going to level with you. You’re never going to be the exact same swimmer you were when you won that gold medal at Worlds. You have a different body, and there’s nothing we can do to change that. But we can take the body you have and make it work in a better, more efficient way.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  “I’ve been watching you,” she says. “I’ve been watching everyone. What I’m looking for are swimmers who have a natural feel for the water and haven’t harnessed their full potential for whatever reason. I think you might be one, and it’s possible I can help you get back to where you were, speed-wise. In fact, I think I can make you faster than that.”

  “Really?” Back to where I was would be a monumental achievement. Faster seems like too much to even dream about. But that’s where I need to be if I’m going to have any shot at the Olympics.

  Beth smiles. “Really.”

  Maybe Beth’s wrong. Maybe she can’t fix me. But there’s a voice inside my head that says, Maybe she can. It’s tiny, but it’s stubborn, an unmovable barnacle of hope on the hull of my sunken career. And anyway, what have I got to lose?

  “Do you think Dave will let me switch training groups?” I ask. I can’t imagine him caring whether he coaches me or not, but he won’t like that I’m asking to be moved. The man’s ego could fill a football stadium.

  “Let me handle Dave.”

  “Then I’m in,” I tell her. “I’m one hundred percent in.”

  “Take the night to think about it. Because I’m not like Dave at all. You got a glimpse into the way I train my swimmers when I was subbing for him, but that’s just the beginning. I’m going to push you way outside your comfort zone, and you strike me as the sort of person who likes what they know.”

  “I want to go to the Olympics. I don’t care how I get there.”

  “Do you know what I mean when I say you have a feel for the water?” Beth asks.

  “Not exactly,” I admit. People throw that phrase around a lot in this sport, but it’s always been an abstract concept to me.

  “Some swimmers want to dominate the water, like it’s something that can be tamed, or beat into submission,” Beth says. “But when you get out of the pool, the water remains. It always wins. The trick is to work with it instead of against it. To free yourself from all the forces inside the pool that want to beat you back. To read the water and figure out the best way to move through it. It requires making small adjustments to increase efficiency without having to think about it. Does that make sense?”

  “Perfect sense.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I want so badly to learn. Nobody has ever talked to me like this about swimming before. With Dave, it’s all about yardage, how far you can push yourself daily in the pool.

  Beth squares her shoulders. “My dad is Grady Watson. Do you know who that is?”

  “Of course.” Grady Watson is a legendary coach. It seems like half the best swimmers in the country train at his Southern California club. “But I thought your last name is Ramsay.”

  “It’s my mother’s maiden name. They’re divorced,” Beth says. “Grady was my coach until I was eighteen, and even when I was in college, I went back to his pool every summer. During the school year he still had a big hand in my training. He’s a traditionalist, like Dave. Maybe he was extra hard on me because I’m his daughter. I don’t know. But by the time I was a senior, I was so burned out on swimming that I quit. I changed my name and we haven’t spoken since.”

  I squint to bring Beth into sharper focus. It’s easy to forget coaches have lives outside of swimming, that anyone does. But this explains why, despite endless Googling, I haven’t been able to find any information on her.

  Beth smooths her long hair back into a ponytail and tugs it self-consciously.

  “I’m convinced that the way I was brought up in the sport was fundamentally flawed,” she says. “It’s not about how many yards you can swim per day, or how many times a week you practice. It’s about technique and understanding the best way to move through the water.

  “You’re not getting any faster because you force your way through races instead of listening to your body and doing what feels natural,” she continues. “You’re trying to swim the same way you did when you were smaller, using the same style and mechanics Dave taught you when you were a guppy. But when I tell you to change something, you adjust without hesitation. That’s not easy. If you do train with me, we’ll need to break down your old habits and build up new ones. I want to change the way you move, the way you think, the way you interact with the water on a material level. I want to redefine the physics of your swim. But I can only do that if I have your full cooperation and trust.”

  “You do,” I assure her.

  “Anyone can be a machine,” Beth tells me. “I want you to be an animal. Because that’s what you are. Animals don’t overthink—they react, and they adapt. But you have to be present. You have to be willing to forget everything you know and come at this with a beginner’s eyes.”

  What Beth is talking about, it’s the sort of thing Dave would call “touchy-feely bullshit.” He’s all about pushing us past our limits in order to establish a foundation of endurance and stamina that’s supposed to help us go faster. He’d balk at Beth’s theory that skill is more important than power.

  “Does Dave know about any of this?” I ask.

  “Dave agreed to give me a certain amount of leeway,” Beth says. “I think he sees the value of experimentation. He might be less rigid than you give him credit for.”

  “I doubt that,” I say, but I feel lighter already, and even though I’ve had some hard practices today, I wish I could get back in the water.

  “You’ll find my methods unorthodox,” Beth warns me, but I know that already. Amber’s in her training group, and she’s told me all about Beth’s training regimen. It’s pretty bizarre, but it worked for me before.

  “I want to go faster,” I tell her. “I don’t care how it happens. I’m sick of feeling like a loser.”

  “It would be irresponsible for me to promise you anything,” Beth says. “But there’s no reason you can’t have what you want if you’re willing to do what it takes to get it. You’re no
t a loser, Susannah. Don’t ever let anyone convince you that you are—especially yourself.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  241 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  BETH WASN’T KIDDING when she said her methods were unorthodox. Aside from the dramatic reduction in yardage, which I expected, and the return of affirmations—not my favorite thing in the world, but harmless—once Beth is in charge of my workouts, the rhythm of my life in the pool completely changes.

  At my first practice with her squad, Beth warned us her entire focus for the next few weeks will be breaking down our preconceived notions of how we should conduct our lives as swimmers, in and out of the water. That included cutting our practice time...in half. When I told Beth she couldn’t dismiss us early or tell us not to show up because we’d get kicked out of GAC, she gave me a look of such deep disappointment I felt like a fairy-tale character who’d failed a test of faith.

  But she didn’t yell at me, like Dave would if I dared to disagree with him. She told me to do what I wanted, but she’d be training me in the water five times a week. If I wanted to swim more than that, I could do it for Dave. I skipped the practices she told us to skip and Dave didn’t say a word. In fact, he hasn’t spoken to me at all since I changed coaches. Harry thinks I should be relieved, but I don’t know. It feels ominous, like threatening storm clouds on the edge of the horizon.

  Thankfully, the shake-up didn’t last long, but when we resume our twice-daily workout schedule at the end of October, I do feel more energized and well rested.

  We aren’t idle outside of the pool, either. Beth increases our dry-land work and weight training and enrolls us in Pilates classes. We even take a few boxing classes to spice things up. It’s all in service, Beth says, of strengthening our cores and teaching us to think more deliberately about how we hold our bodies, how we maintain balance. Then she applies those same ideas to our swims.

  Practice becomes less arduous, because Beth believes in variety, always keeping things fresh. One day, she empties a jar full of pennies into the diving well and makes us compete to see who can collect the most coins in the least amount of time—a game that doubles as a hypoxic exercise. Beth’s all about increasing our lung capacity and training our bodies to breathe only when necessary.