Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  I’m grateful that he stuck around to watch me swim when he could’ve flown home. He leans forward on his elbows and gazes at the pool with deep concentration, as if he’s willing me to victory.

  Our eyes meet and he waves. Then he mouths something, but I can’t make it out.

  “Take your mark.”

  I bend and curl my fingertips around the edge of the block. I tense my muscles, imagine them compressing like springs. Less than a second after the signal sounds, I hit the surface with the force of a torpedo. Water courses over my shoulders and back, and I force my head down, keeping a near-perfect streamline position as I kick to the fifteen-meter mark before powering into my first stroke.

  The ghost of Beth’s voice echoes in my head: You’re a champion, so swim like a champion.

  * * *

  This is how the butterfly works: the arms come out to the side like wings as the head dips and the body undulates like a wave. Then the arms enter the water together, and your hands make a keyhole shape, pushing forward with another kick and gaining momentum for the next stroke.

  Dave taught me to breathe every few strokes, and thanks to Beth’s hypoxic sets it’s easier to fight the urge to lift my head up. I turn my brain off and let my body lead me through the butterfly. I don’t strain or panic when it feels like I’m not going fast enough, and my goggles are fogging, so I can’t see my competition, anyway.

  It’s just me and the water, the truest love story I have ever known.

  As I turn into the backstroke, Beth’s advice comes back to me in pieces, soft and flimsy like tissue paper. I’ve always liked the backstroke because you never have to stop breathing. But in lane eight, with the wake of the other swimmers crashing over the lane line and ricocheting off the gutter, controlling my breaths is the only way to prevent water from going up my nose.

  I concentrate on my technique, everything she and Harry taught me, getting the most out of my arms and centering myself in the lane. The backstroke is over before I realize, and I’m into the next fifty.

  The breaststroke feels like the natural way to move through the water, but it is slow, so swimming it in competition takes concentration and endurance. Of all the strokes, it requires the most technical precision. If your form is off, you can end up practically swimming in place.

  I have to focus. When I get to this point in a race, I sometimes start to founder, like a ship that can’t be righted. I’m not tired, but Harry’s face flashes through my mind as I try to puzzle out what he said to me up there in the bleachers, the words I couldn’t make out. I need to know what they were.

  I also need to tell him things—what I feel, what I want. I’m done hiding it, done running from it. I can swim and be happy at the same time, or at the very least I’m willing to try.

  I bulldoze through the breaststroke in a way that really feels like flying, then I turn into the freestyle leg and let myself go.

  I’ve managed to conserve some energy and I’m ready to sprint hard. I charge through the first twenty-five and know that I’ve clocked one of the fastest splits in my career so far. With my goggles so fogged up, I can’t see anything but the thick black line along the bottom of the pool. I swim harder in the last twenty-five meters of that IM than I ever have in my life and slam into the finish, punching the touchpad so there’s no doubt about when I hit the wall.

  I stay underwater, eyes closed, afraid to surface and look at the scoreboard. If I’ve come in eighth, I’ll die. If my time is higher than the Trials cut, it’ll all be over.

  Panting, I strip off my goggles and rise out of the water. Before I see the board, I see Harry jumping up and down in the stands, and I know I’ve done something good.

  I force myself to look at the board: 2. Ramos—with a time that’s five seconds faster than my qualifying time, and two seconds faster than I swam in the prelims.

  “Oh my God,” I gasp, sinking back into the water. I’m going to the Olympic Trials.

  I’m in Beth’s arms as soon as I hoist myself, sopping, onto the deck.

  “That was fantastic, Susannah!” she cries. “Look at that time. You should be so proud.”

  She shakes her head in amazement. My time is way better than either of us dared to hope for. Something intense and almost magical happened in that pool, but I’m afraid to believe it was me.

  “I am proud,” I say, but I’m so dazed that nothing seems real right now. I tug off my cap and crumple it in my fist.

  “Susie!” Harry shouts from upper deck. My head snaps up at the sound of his voice. He points at the door that leads from the bleachers to the pool level and disappears through it.

  “Susannah, go warm down,” Beth instructs me. Instead, I take off toward the locker rooms.

  I sprint through the labyrinth of lockers and benches and emerge into a hallway where people—lots of fully clothed, dry people—are milling around waiting for their swimmers or searching for the stairs to the upper deck. I whirl around, searching for Harry. Someone calls my name.

  Startled bystanders scatter to make a path for Harry as he runs toward me. He’s going so fast he slams into me and knocks what little breath I have left right out of my lungs.

  “You were incredible,” he says, breathing hard. “Total outside smoke.”

  So that’s what he mouthed to me from the bleachers: Outside smoke. It’s the term for a swimmer in an exterior lane who, even though they’re seeded to lose, comes up from behind and wins the race.

  I didn’t win, but I feel like I did.

  “Come here, you dumb jock,” Harry says, pulling me closer. I laugh. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, suddenly shy. The intensity of his gaze makes me feel naked. The warmth of his skin is so acute it’s almost painful.

  Harry presses his forehead against mine. “How do you feel?”

  “Amazing,” I whisper. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Harry leans closer and I think—I know—he’s going to kiss me. But then a hand settles on his shoulder and pulls him back.

  I blink and look up to see Beth standing there. We’re making a spectacle of ourselves, but the part of my brain that registers embarrassment is malfunctioning. I couldn’t care less.

  “I know you’re excited, but this is not the place,” Beth says. “Susannah, you’ve got to warm down or you’ll be sore as hell tomorrow. Harry, back up in the stands.”

  “Okay, okay,” Harry says. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “I’m so, so proud of you, Susie.”

  After my warm-down, back in the locker room, I sit on a bench and bury my face in my hands. My eyes burn, and there’s a lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball, but I hold it all in, savoring the sense of accomplishment and pushing away the fear that comes with having something and knowing how easily it can be lost.

  Once I’m changed, I hurry out of the locker room and find Harry leaning his signature lean, doing something on his phone. The hallway is deserted now. I drop my bag and walk toward him with my heart pounding hard and fast in my chest. I call his name. He lifts his head and smiles. “Hey—”

  Before he can say anything else, I bracket his face with my hands and press my lips to his lips in a long, hard kiss that leaves my head spinning. You can have this, and swimming, too, I assure myself. It’s not a choice, it’s a decision.

  My mind is half a second behind my body, and even though it was my move, it takes me a second to realize what’s happening—I kissed Harry. We’re kissing. He buries his fingers in my wet, tangled hair and my hands drift down his neck, where his pulse quickens under my thumbs.

  When we separate, his eyes meet mine and he smiles again. “Yeah?”

  I nod, speechless and surprised by myself for a whole bunch of reasons. Proud of myself, too. Harry lifts my chin with his fingers and takes my lips with his, easing them apart. His palm comes to rest on my jaw and his other han
d drifts to my hip, drawing me in by the waist.

  Before one kiss is even done, I want another, and another, and I feel this uncomfortable tightness in my chest at the thought of not kissing him anymore, but I have to pull away to catch my breath. I grip his shoulders and command the world to stop spinning, which it stubbornly refuses to do.

  I don’t know where to look, so I fix my eyes on his nose and laugh. “What’s so funny?” he asks.

  “You have freckles,” I say, drawing the pad of my thumb across the bridge of his nose.

  “Oh, yeah. Curse o’ the ginger.” Concern flits across Harry’s face. “You okay?”

  I feel like I might faint, but I can’t tell if it’s because of that kiss or everything that happened in the pool, all the adrenaline sluicing through my veins. My limbs feel loose and heavy. Blood pounds in my temples to the steady rhythm of distant chanting: another race.

  The world is marching on, but out here, in the quiet, empty corridor, it feels like Harry and I are the only ones in it.

  FOOLFORTHEPOOL.COM

  The #1 Source for Swimming News on the Web

  Susannah Ramos’s Surprising Surge to the Finish at National Championships

  By Kris McNamara

  Posted December 10

  Don’t call it a comeback! We love it when someone we’d written off a long time ago as a one-hit wonder comes out of nowhere and proves they’re not dead yet.

  That’s exactly what happened at Nationals today in Greensboro, North Carolina, where Susannah Ramos of the Gilcrest Aqualions Club came out of nowhere after limping into the A Final of the 200 IM seeded eighth to grab a second-place finish and an Olympic Trials qualifying time.

  Ramos still has a way to go if she wants to wear rings this summer, but it hasn’t escaped our attention that the former phenom has a new coach and an updated training routine. It seems to be working, but Ramos can’t rest on her laurels. There’s a hard season ahead with big meets lined up like dominos through the spring, and this summer’s Trials are shaping up to be one of the most competitive to date.

  Here’s hoping she can pull it out in the end. We’ll be keeping a close eye on Susannah Ramos, and we know you will be, too. Because none of us can resist an underdog story.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  189 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  ELEVEN MONTHS OUT of the year, I’m the only serious athlete in my house, but my parents feel about Christmas the way NASCAR fans feel about the Indy 500, and when the clock strikes 12:01 on the day after Thanksgiving, they turn into Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Danica Patrick, with Nina and me as their pit crew. Nationals was my excuse for wriggling out of the more time-consuming tasks—like hanging the lights on the front of the house, a chore I loathe—but when it comes to the Ramos family annual tamalada, it’s all hands on deck, school and swim practice and boyfriends be damned.

  Harry is my boyfriend. It’s so new it still feels completely unreal, but I have a feeling that introducing him to my whole family at the tamalada will give it a sudden, juddering actuality. We’re something different now, and the Ramos and Ramirez clans can’t wait to put their fingerprints all over it.

  I avoid inviting Harry to the tamalada for as long as I can, but when Mom threatens to call him herself, I give in. One way or another, Harry is going to meet my parents for longer than ten minutes...and my sister...and about fifty or so assorted grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It’s a lot, and I wouldn’t blame him if the mere thought of it made him want to take off running, but when I tell him about it, he seems less than thrilled, and I feel strangely disappointed.

  “What is it exactly?” Harry asks, snatching a hash brown off my plate. It’s Sunday morning and we’re doing our homework at the diner postswim. I menace him with my fork.

  “Hands off my potatoes,” I warn him. “I need those carbs for energy.”

  “So do I!” He pouts and strokes my calf under the table with his foot, as if that’s going to convince me to sacrifice my breakfast to his bottomless appetite—not a chance.

  Still, the flirty gesture makes my chest feel tight and warm. We touch each other now for no reason except that we want to. It’s almost too good to believe. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my entire life.

  “Then order your own. A tamalada,” I explain, “is a tamale-making party. My parents throw one every year before Christmas. People from both sides of my family come, plus neighbors and friends and Mom’s and Dad’s coworkers. I invited Jessa and Amber, too.”

  “Will I be expected to make tamales?” Harry asks. “Because I don’t know how to do that.”

  He keeps doing that stroking thing with his foot on my leg. It’s hard to concentrate, but concentration is overrated. He’s got sneakers on, and I’m wearing jeans, and we’re in public, but the image of his bare foot gently touching my bare leg as we lay wrapped around each other in bed keeps flashing through my mind. I feel a sudden, strong desire to speed through the next two and a half years until we’re in college and can be together in private whenever we want.

  I shake my head to clear it. We’re supposed to be having a conversation here.

  “Everybody pulls their weight. But everybody goes home with tamales, too, so it’s worth it. And don’t worry, my aunts will be lining up to show you how. Tía Lillia’s going to insist you knead the mole into the masa, because you’re ‘un chico muy fuerte,’” I tell him, giving his bicep a playful squeeze.

  “I’m going to assume that means ‘a super-hot guy we totally approve of.’”

  “You really should be taking Spanish,” I say, turning back to my history notes. “It’s the second most commonly spoken language in this country.”

  “I know, but look on the bright side—now you can teach me.” He smiles at me. He’s incorrigible, but it’s hard to resist, that smile. “Are you fluent? I never thought to ask.”

  “Not fluent, no,” I say. “My parents are, but we speak English at home. I understand it better than I read it, and I read it better than I speak it. There’s something about languages that’s...slippery. It’s hard to hold on to the words. I try to talk to my abuela in Spanish sometimes, but a few sentences in it’s like my brain and my tongue get all tangled, and we usually end up going back to English.”

  “I’m not very good at languages, either,” Harry says.

  “I wish I were better,” I admit. “It feels like I’m not doing enough to hold on to my culture. I want to be fluent. I want to be able to write emails in Spanish to our cousins in Mexico, like my mom does, without having to put half my sentences through Google Translate. It’s embarrassing. But to get better, I’d have to practice, and to practice, I’d have to mess up a lot, and you know I hate that.”

  “I do,” Harry says fondly.

  “Anyway,” I say, “it’s okay if you don’t want to come.” I love the idea of introducing Harry to my heritage, but that would mean putting him under the glaring spotlight of my family’s attention. Part of me wants to keep him to myself a little bit longer.

  Harry chews his lip, which means he’s thinking something he doesn’t know if he should say. If I press him, he’ll back away from it, so I wait for him to answer.

  “It’s not that,” he says. “It’s just, you know, I’m nervous about meeting your family now that you’re—that we are—”

  “Yeah.” Why am I so bummed about this? I didn’t even want to invite him, for precisely this reason—I thought it might make him uncomfortable. But now I’m afraid that it means something that he doesn’t want to come. Maybe he’s second-guessing us. Maybe he’s wondering if he’s gotten himself in too deep. Meeting the family is, like, a step. Maybe he’s not ready to take it with me.

  Harry reaches across the table and takes my hand, turning it palm up and tracing my lifeline with his thumb. It tickles in a way I don’t expect, and sends a pleasant shiver down my back.
/>   “I’m afraid of being a curiosity,” he says softly. “Don’t ask me why, I just...am.”

  “No, I get it,” I say, feeling relieved. This doesn’t have anything to do with us. I give his hand an affectionate squeeze. “Nina’s brought guys she was going out with to the tamalada before, but my family has never seen me with anybody. All they’ll want to talk about is Susannah’s new gringo boyfriend.”

  “What if they don’t like me?” he asks. “Will that make you like me less?”

  “First of all, they’ll love you,” I assure him. “You’re so handsome and charming, ugh, they’ll want to trade me in for you. Actually, don’t come, you’ll only make me look bad.”

  Harry grins. “I like the sound of that. And second of all?”

  “Second of all,” I say, “nothing could make me like you less.” He laughs. I shake my head. “No, wait, that came out wrong. What I mean is, nothing is going to diminish how I feel about you, Harry. Certainly not my abuela’s review of you, which—and I would literally bet all the money I will ever have in my entire life on this—will be glowing.”

  “Well,” he says. “Since you’re promising me the undying love of all your female relatives and tamales, how can I refuse?”

  I lean across the table and press a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you. But you have to work for those tamales. They don’t make themselves.”

  “Noted,” he says with mock-seriousness.

  Harry returns to his math homework, and I go back to my history, but I keep sneaking glances at him, trying to puzzle him out. Harry’s not shy, and I’ve seen him do the Flow in front of an entire party of captivated strangers, so I don’t think he’s unaware of his effect on people, either. He knows how magnetic he can be.

  Maybe he’s intimidated by meeting my family, but my gut says there’s something else going on here, too. I’m starting to realize that a real relationship might be more complicated than I imagined when I kissed him that day in the hallway after my race.