Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  Eventually, even Lulu seems cold—there’s no snow on the ground right now, but the temperature is hovering around freezing—so we make our way back to the house. When we get inside, I look for Harry, but he’s not with my aunts anymore, and I can’t find him anywhere. I come across Bruce and Paula in the garage, talking to my dad about the elaborate organization and storage system he rigged up in there, but he’s not with them.

  Bela grabs me as I pass through the kitchen. “Have you eaten dinner?” she asks. She presses a plate into my hands. “Eat, mi vida. You can’t do anything well if you’re hungry.”

  Knowing it’s better to do what she says than to argue with her, I heap my plate with tamales, salad, rice and beans, then carry it upstairs with me while I check quickly for Harry. I don’t really expect to find him up here—my new best bet is the basement, where some of my cousins are playing video games—but I open my bedroom door and there he is, sitting cross-legged on the floor near the bed.

  The expression on his face sends an arrow through my heart. He looks so sad. What happened while I was on that walk?

  I sit down next to him and put the plate on the floor.

  “You hungry?” I ask. He shakes his head. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He rests his head against the mattress and points up at the wall. “This is nice.”

  “Thanks. My dad made it.” He’s talking about the custom shelves that hold all my trophies and ribbons and medals. They’re so packed there’s hardly any room for new stuff.

  “Where’s your World Championships gold medal?” he asks.

  “In there somewhere.” But I know right where it is. About a year ago, I covered it up with a bunch of personal-best ribbons from my earliest swimming days, from before GAC even, when Nina and I competed in a local in-house league. Sometimes, I feel like those mean more, because back then I wasn’t trying to win, I was just trying to be as good as I could be.

  “What’s that empty hook for?” he asks. I raise my eyebrows. He nods and says, “Right. Duh.”

  “Mom and Dad probably wouldn’t let me hang an Olympic medal, though. They’d insist I put it in a safe deposit box or something. The hook is more symbolic than anything.” I push a lock of hair back from his forehead and kiss his temple. “Did something happen? You seem upset.”

  “I’m not. I mean, I don’t know, I get this way sometimes. It’s no big deal.” I feel like he’s holding back, but I don’t push him. “I just needed to be by myself for a while.”

  “Do you want me to go?” I ask tentatively. I don’t want to leave him like this, but I feel as though I’ve intruded on a private moment.

  He shakes his head and wraps his arm around me. I hold him, feeling panicky, not knowing what to do. I figure if I wait, he’ll tell me as much as he wants to share.

  “I’ve been feeling this way all day,” he admits. “It’s why I was late. I didn’t want to come. It’s not you, or your family—they’re great. I’m just...feeling lousy.”

  “Do you want to leave?” I watch as he wrestles with the answer. “If you do, that’s okay. I know that being around this many people can be overwhelming sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “You sure you won’t be mad?”

  “Of course not. But I’m worried. I thought you were having fun.”

  “I was. I am. That’s the worst part. I feel both at the same time.”

  I hug him tighter. “It’s been a long couple of months,” I say, thinking that might be what’s gotten him down—the exhaustion of the fall season. Harry’s a junior, which is the hardest year academically. Finals leer at us from the other side of the holiday break. There will be more training, more meets, and he’ll have to start thinking about applying to colleges, if he’s not already.

  The future is so daunting, and time is moving at an unfathomable velocity. I wonder if that’s what’s weighing on him. It’s certainly weighing on me.

  “It’s been a long couple of years,” he says with a deep sigh. I feel a flicker of concern, wondering what he means by that. We’re discovering new things about each other every day—tastes, quirks, passions, history—but there’s still so much unexplored terrain.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” I ask, stroking his cheeks with my fingertips. His skin is warm, and I wonder if he might be developing a fever. If there’s a cold going around, Harry always seems to be the first person to catch it.

  He shakes his head. “Not right now. I kind of just want to go home and crawl into bed.”

  “Okay,” I say, pulling him to his feet. “Go find your parents and I’ll get you a couple dozen tamales to take home.”

  He hesitates. “I don’t want your family to see me leaving and think I’m rude.”

  “They won’t mind,” I assure him. “People have been in and out all day. But maybe it would make you feel better to leave through the garage. That’s where your mom and dad are, anyway. Then you won’t have to spend an hour saying goodbye to everybody.”

  “Thanks, Susie,” he says, putting his arms around me again.

  “Of course,” I say, stroking his back. “Whatever you need.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  170 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  “I’M WORRIED ABOUT this shoulder,” Beth says as an athletic trainer bends my arm behind my back and rotates it in a slow, painful circle. I bite down hard on my lip to keep from wincing. The last thing I need is Beth pulling back on my workouts to accommodate my shoulder.

  “I’ve got a whole pool of swimmers with bad shoulders and bad knees and bad backs,” Dave says. “Susannah’s no worse off, and they manage to make it through two practices a day. I don’t see why she should be different. She can swim through it.”

  I bristle at the suggestion that I’m using my shoulder as an excuse to slack, but the point of having Dave here is so he’ll talk Beth out of making a big deal about this. She’s not afraid of him, but she’ll back down for a while. This is, after all, his club. I’ll worry about what comes next tomorrow.

  “Are we boring you, Susannah?” Dave asks me, snapping his fingers in front of my face.

  I thought I was being sly about checking the time on my phone, but apparently not so much.

  “No,” I say, shoving my phone in my pocket. It’s after seven on a Friday night. Harry is waiting for me but explaining that won’t get me out of here any faster.

  “I still think you should take it easy for a while,” Beth tells me. “I’ll take a look at your upcoming workouts—there are probably some places I can switch in some legs-only sets.”

  “I don’t need any adjustments,” I argue. “It doesn’t hurt that bad. I’ll be better about icing and resting, and I’ll do more strength exercises, I promise. Don’t change my workouts.”

  Beth looks uncertain.

  “I’m getting so much faster. Please don’t make me dial back, not now,” I beg. “Please.”

  She sighs and I perk up, sensing I’ve won.

  “Wipe that smile off your face,” she says. Beth rarely snaps at me. I feel guilty, but I can’t let her sideline me out of an overabundance of caution. I don’t have a day to lose if I’m going to be good enough to dominate at Trials.

  “I’m not giving in,” Beth warns me. “We’ll take it day by day. If at any point I think you’re in danger of further injuring yourself, it’s the diving well with a kickboard for you. And I want you in the weight room with a trainer twice a week to build up strength in that shoulder.”

  I groan. I have no time for Harry as it is. He’s busy, too, with swimming and his other mysterious time commitments, but it’s been less than a month since we got together. Two extra weight room sessions a week will eat into the precious few hours we have to ourselves. But it can’t be helped.

  Beth glances at her watch. “It’s late. You can go, Susannah.”

  I thank her
and hop off the exam table. As I’m pulling a sweater over the tank top I wore for the assessment, I try to reassure Beth, who still seems concerned.

  “I’ll be careful,” I promise her. “I don’t want to get hurt, either. And if it gets worse I’ll tell you.”

  She ditches the worried grimace and smiles at me.

  “I know you will. Have a good night. Tell Harry I said thanks for waiting.”

  At the mention of Harry’s name, Dave shoots me a dark look. He’s made it clear he doesn’t approve of our relationship. But I leave the training room without acknowledging his glare or letting it bother me. I’m too excited to be done with the pool for tonight.

  Harry and I are going on our very first real official date.

  * * *

  I find Harry sitting on the floor of the lobby, studying for finals. He jumps to his feet when he spots me walking toward him, gathering his books and notes, clearly as eager to get going as I am.

  He pulls me into a hug, taking care not to jostle my bad shoulder.

  “All good?” he whispers. His breath is warm against the sensitive skin behind my ear. A shiver travels down my back.

  “All good.” I hold tight to him, pressing my face into his neck. He smells like clean skin and chlorine. I smile against the collar of his well-worn fleece. Being with him feels like a reward for every hard moment in the pool. I don’t want to step outside the comforting circle of his arms. But we have somewhere to be.

  I just don’t know where that is.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says, keeping one arm around me as he picks up his swim bag.

  “Where are we going?”

  Harry insisted on planning the whole date himself. It’s not that we haven’t spent time together as a couple, but most of it has been at my house, with my parents in the room or somewhere nearby. Between school and swimming and family stuff, we didn’t get a chance to properly celebrate Christmas. We’re exchanging gifts tonight, but that’s all I know.

  “It’s a surprise,” he says. He shoots me a grin. “Relax, Susie. Don’t you trust me?”

  We bundle into the car. He looks at me, and I look at him, and a second later we’re kissing, as if we’ve been apart a thousand years instead of one hour, like we’ll shrivel to dust and disappear if we’re ever separated. I seem to exist only in the places where he’s touching me; the rest of me is as weightless as a feather on the water. Harry is a current that’s bearing me away, far from the shore of everything I’ve ever known, into the heart of a boundless, long-forgotten sea.

  I surrender to the feeling, believing in my bones that wherever he might take me is exactly where I want to be.

  I’m dimly aware of the plastic console between the two front seats digging into my hip. A strange noise rumbles from the back of my throat; it’s not a sound I ever thought I could make, that I would even admit came from me if I didn’t feel the vibration of it in my chest. Frustrated, I climb into his lap and straddle his hips with my knees, tugging gently at the hair on the back of his head, a cue for him to lift his chin so I can press my lips against the underside of his jaw.

  “Susannah,” he breathes, cupping the back of my head. “Susie, don’t stop.”

  I have no intention of stopping. This right here—touching Harry, kissing Harry, being held by him—feels like what my body was really made for. Not swimming, not beating ceaselessly against never-ending wakes, not trudging back and forth in some miniature, artificial ocean, fighting for every breath, but this magic, us, is my body’s true and destined purpose. How had I not realized it sooner? It’s as if I’ve drowned and been brought back to life.

  Harry reaches down and suddenly the seat drops, pulling us with it.

  “Oof.” The impact clears the fog from my head just a little. We laugh.

  He grabs me by my elbows and yanks me closer. My skin tingles as if it’s waking up after falling asleep—what sensitive things, elbows; I never knew. His mouth meets mine, then opens. His tongue lightly skims the sensitive inner part of my bottom lip. I shiver, stroking the soft, downy skin at the nape of his neck. I think I could be perfectly happy kissing Harry forever. When his tongue grazes mine, my body lights up with pleasure.

  He might be a distraction, but he’s a very, very good one.

  Harry groans. “We should probably get going.”

  “What? Why?”

  I press my mouth to his and he kisses me back eagerly, but a minute later he pulls away again.

  “I had a whole evening planned...” He trails off as I brush my lips along his collarbone. “Come on, Susie, give me a break here. I’m trying to be romantic.”

  I kiss him, once, twice, three times, testing his will to resist. It’s very weak.

  “This is romantic,” I murmur.

  “Yeah, but our night...” he says, laughing. He puts his hands on my arms and holds me firmly at a distance. “I planned it all out. If we keep going like this, it’ll never happen.”

  I smile down at him. “Okay. You’re right. I want to see what you planned.”

  “Thank you,” he says, releasing me. I take advantage of the opening to sneak another kiss. He laughs against my mouth. “Susie! You’re relentless.”

  “You like it,” I tease, climbing off him and dropping back into my seat.

  “You know I do,” he says. He pulls the seat back up and presses the ignition button.

  “Has the car been off this whole time?” I ask. “It’s so hot in here.”

  “Thank you,” he says with a wink. I toss a glove at his head. I was wearing them when I got in the car—it’s below freezing outside—but I don’t quite recall taking them off.

  As the high of him starts to fade, I realize how messy my hair must be. I finger-comb it into place as best I can. The silver lining of having thick, wild curls is that they pretty much look out of control no matter what.

  Harry pulls out of the parking lot, winding his way through the back roads behind the high school before merging onto a highway that leads out of town. I snuggle into my down jacket as Harry blasts the heat. He drives with one hand on the steering wheel and threads his fingers through mine with the other. For the moment, I forget about my shoulder, forget all about the empty hook that’s waiting for an Olympic medal. Right now, it’s just this—him and me. It feels like the only thing I could ever want.

  “Tell me about the evaluation,” he says as we coast down the road.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I say, kissing his knuckles. He smiles. “Same old garbage shoulder. It’ll be fine. Beth’s making me do extra weight room sessions with a trainer.”

  “That sucks,” he says. I can tell by the way his smile flickers that he’s doing the math on how much less time we’ll have to spend together. “You sure it’s going to be okay? I’ve seen you at practice. It bugs you a lot more than you let on.”

  “I can handle it.” I squeeze his hand. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  He’s silent for a second, but then he says, “Okay. We’re almost there, anyway.”

  We turn off the main highway onto a dark side road and I let out an undignified squeal.

  “I haven’t been here in forever! We used to come when I was a kid.”

  Harry looks relieved. “Oh, good. I was afraid you’d think this was stupid.”

  “I thought they took it down after Christmas.”

  “Christmas isn’t technically over,” Harry explains. “Twelve days, you know. They’ll start dismantling the installments on Monday. I called to confirm.”

  “You really did plan this,” I say.

  “Why is that such a huge shock?” he asks with a laugh.

  He turns onto a long driveway and pulls up to a gatehouse. The guard inside is wearing a heavy coat, gloves and a hat, and I can hear the sound of a space heater chugging away in some unseen corner, but he still looks like he’s fre
ezing. Harry hands him a twenty and collects his change. The gate opens.

  “Tune your radio to 93.9 FM and go on in,” the guard says. “Enjoy, and Merry Christmas.”

  I spin the radio dial to the correct station. Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Carol of the Bells” spills through the speakers. Harry pulls the car through the gate, and immediately the lights come into view.

  Marshall House is a local mansion built by some long-ago robber baron right around the outbreak of World War I. It sits on a huge estate with sprawling gardens and deep woods, and every year the mansion—now a museum—allows the city of Beaumont to set up an elaborate drive-through holiday light show on the grounds for Christmas.

  When Nina and I were little, our parents would take us, but we haven’t gone for years. I guess Mom and Dad figured we were too old to think it was cool, but I stare out the window at the decorations, thrilled that Harry thought to do this. I forgot it existed.

  “That one was always my favorite.” I point at an installation made to look like a peacock fanning its feathers. “We called it Mildred.”

  “You know peacocks are always male, right?”

  “Now I do. But by the time Mom told me, it was too late. He was Mildred.”

  It takes about a half hour for us to complete the route. There are literally hundreds of lighted installations and arches, so many that it’s impossible to look at them all. Strands of Christmas lights wind up the trunks of trees and drip like icicles from their branches. Reindeer rise into the sky as if by magic, elves cartwheel across the lawn, and the mansion itself is covered with glittering flecks of light, decorated to give the impression of a gingerbread house with icing along the eaves and gumdrops in the windows. At the end of the road, a larger-than-life installation of Santa Claus waves goodbye.

  Harry glances at me as he pulls back onto the main road.

  “So...you liked it?” he asks, almost shyly.

  I smile. “I did.”

  “Would you say your heart is filled with holiday cheer?”

  “I would say that, yes,” I say, laughing.