Breath Like Water

by Anna Jarzab

  I take a deep breath. “Dave says Harry and I have to break up or I can’t be in GAC anymore.”

  “What?” Amber gasps.

  Even Jessa looks mildly horrified. “That seems like an overreaction,” she says. “What are you going to do?”

  “What can I do?” I shrug like it doesn’t bother me. Like the coldhearted automaton Dave wants me to be. “It’s the Olympics.”

  “Are you okay?” Amber asks. She looks me up and down as if searching for an open wound. “You care about Harry.”

  I love him, I want to say, but don’t. Instead, I tell her, “It’s only five months. After Trials, and the Olympics, maybe we can get back together. If he still wants to.”

  The mere thought of Harry using those five months to get over me is excruciating.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, though? You seem strangely calm about all this,” Amber says.

  “It’s late,” I say. “I need to get some rest. Good night.”

  Jessa is sprawled out on one of the room’s two queen-size beds. It’s her turn to sleep on the rollaway, but I don’t have the energy to argue with her about it, so I climb in and turn onto my side, facing away from them.

  Jessa turns off the lights. I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep. When I hear their breathing slow to the point where I figure they must be out, I climb out of bed and take my phone into the bathroom. Sitting on the floor in the dark, I text Harry: We’re not over, are we? I can’t sleep until I know.

  It takes him less than a second to write back. He’s obviously just as awake as I am.

  NO WAY are we over. I love you, Susie.

  I love you, too. What are we going to do?

  Hide our relationship from Beth and Dave.

  The rest of GAC, too? Amber and Jessa and Avik...if they know, the coaches will, too.

  Yeah, it has to be a secret from everyone. Our parents and Nina, too.

  I wince. Beth and Dave are one thing, but how can I hide this from my family and friends?

  That’s going to be really hard, I tell him.

  I know. But you can’t leave GAC, there’s too much at stake. And we don’t want to break up. This is the only thing I can think of. Can you talk right now?

  I call him and he answers right away.

  “I’m in, like, a broom closet in the hallway,” he whispers. “Where are you?”

  “Bathroom. Jessa and Amber are heavy sleepers.” I sigh. “I wish you were here right now.”

  “It’ll be okay,” he assures me. “It’s five months, six with the Olympics. Once that’s over, Dave will drop it. It’ll go by quick. We’ve already been together six months.”

  “Two and a half months,” I say.

  “I retroactively count the time since we first met,” Harry says. “We were pretty much dating. We were just...negotiating the terms.”

  I laugh softly. “If you say so.”

  “You know, it might be kind of fun,” he teases. “Forbidden romance can be hot. Meeting in secret, hidden messages. Like Romeo and Juliet!”

  “Yeah, because it turned out so great for them.”

  He laughs. “My priest won’t poison you, I promise.”

  “The priest doesn’t poison—wait, your priest? You have a priest?”

  Harry says, “Yeah, Father Bob. I volunteer sometimes at a soup kitchen he runs in the city. He’s been a sort of sobriety coach for me. Nice guy. You’d like him.”

  “You’ve never mentioned him before.”

  “Yeah, well, I try to respect his privacy. I hope you can meet him one day. Because you and I are not breaking up. We’re not Romeo and Juliet, either, because we’re going to live through this. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, feeling sort of teary. It’s almost one a.m. I’m so freaking tired.

  “Love you, Susie. See you in the pool tomorrow. Try not to check out my hot bod too much in front of Dave and Beth or they’ll know you’re not over me.”

  I laugh. “I think I’ll be able to control myself.”

  “Sleep tight,” he says, all soft and sweet.

  “You, too. I love you.”

  I hang up quickly so I’m not tempted to offer to sneak out and meet him somewhere. If we got caught, Dave would definitely tell my parents. I sag against the bathroom cabinet. A secret relationship? Can we really pull this off?

  Dave must know he can’t enforce this ultimatum, but I realized pretty quickly that he thinks he doesn’t have to. He thinks he knows me, that the threat of throwing me out of GAC and ruining my chances at the Olympics will scare me so much I won’t bother to defy him.

  Six months ago, he would’ve been right. But he doesn’t know me, not anymore. I’m angry, and I’m in love, and screw him if he thinks I’ll let him take away the one thing that makes me happy. I’ve lost enough for this sport already.

  When I wake up the next morning, I feel reenergized and full of can-do spirit. I can-do this! I can be happy with Harry, even if it has to be in secret for now, and I can kick ass in the pool, too.

  As I glide through the water during warm-up, I think about how much progress I’ve made. I’m swimming better now than I was before my slowdown. I really could go to the Olympics.

  I’m going to make it, I tell myself. I’m going to be an Olympian.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  105 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  WE GO STRAIGHT from training camp to the Pro Swim Series meet in Des Moines, Iowa. There are only three of these big competitions before Olympic Trials, so each swim is important. Each swim is everything.

  To ensure they can get the time off to see me swim in Omaha, Mom and Dad are skipping this meet, and the ones in Richmond, Virginia, and Bloomington, Indiana, too. I wish they were here. I’m tired of traveling. I want to be at home with my family and my animals. Nina texts me pictures and videos of them, but it’s not the same.

  I’m sitting in the ready room, trying to relax before the 200 IM finals, when I hear someone calling my name. I open my eyes and yank out my earbuds to see Beth standing over me. Behind her, there’s a giant TV where swimmers prepping for their next race can see what’s going on in the pool. I’m too nervous to watch, so I’ve been ignoring it.

  “What’s up?” I ask Beth. Her mouth tightens at my tone, which is clipped and impersonal.

  Things have been tense between us since that night on the beach. I’m upset with her for siding with Dave and trying to meddle in my personal life, but I’m also worried about what it means that she did. Since I started swimming with her, I’ve trusted Beth to look out for my best interests. It’s hard to convince myself she’s not doing the same thing now. And she’s almost always right.

  I resist it, but the thought keeps nagging at me: What if she’s right about this, too?

  Beth clears her throat. “Harry’s 200 back is up in a minute. I thought you might want to watch.”

  I’m surprised, given all the drama in Texas, that she’s telling me this. It’s a peace offering, I guess. Maybe an acknowledgment that she doesn’t expect me to stop caring about him just because Dave threatened us into breaking up. I’m still mad at her, but I appreciate the gesture.

  “Thanks,” I say, pulling my chair closer to the TV. She takes a seat beside me.

  Harry is standing behind the starting block, dressed in his GAC warm-ups, cap and goggles, a towel hanging around his neck. He strips quickly, tossing his clothes on an empty chair near the judges. In his suit, with his broad shoulders, arms and abs on display, he looks like a god of swimming, a boy made for the water.

  As he steps up to the block, swinging his long, muscular arms in wide circles, Beth says—like Harry isn’t a touchy subject right now, which is ballsy of her—“He’s doing so well this meet.”

  What an understatement. Harry has three solo events here—the 100 back, 100 butterfly and the 200 back
—plus the backstroke leg of the men’s 400 IM relay, and he blitzed through the prelims in each one. He missed the finals of the 100 fly by a few hundredths of a second, but he’s coming into the finals of the 200 back seeded fourth. If he keeps swimming like he has been, he could win it.

  I knew Harry had this kind of talent in him. You can see it in his swims, that he’s been holding back, but he isn’t anymore. We haven’t spoken in person since the night we “broke up,” but we’ve been texting as much as we dare. Last night before lights out, I asked him about the sudden change. Harry admitted he was doing it to spite Dave.

  He said I’m not good for you because I don’t take swimming seriously, Harry said. Challenge accepted, douchebag.

  I’m proud of what he’s accomplished here, but I remember what he told me about why he doesn’t try harder in the pool. I can’t help but worry, but he asked me not to change the way I treat him now that I know he’s bipolar. It would never occur to me to raise a concern about it before, so I support his decision and trust that he knows what’s best for himself.

  The swimmers jump into the pool—the backstroke always starts in the water. As the announcer tells them to take their mark, my fingers itch for Harry’s swim log, which is sitting in the bottom of my bag. When the event schedules allow for me to watch him race, I record his splits and final times in the notebook I gave him for Christmas, and he does the same for me. Beth would notice if I did it now. I’ll have to look up the official record online and fill it in later.

  I don’t need the book to know what Harry’s capable of, though. I’ve already done the math on his times. This is a long-course meet, which means every lap is fifty meters instead of the American standard twenty-five meters or yards. Everyone swims slower in long-course races because there are fewer turns, but this natatorium is one of the fastest pools in the world, built deep with special gutters to minimize turbulence, the sworn enemy of every swimmer.

  Which means my calculations are approximate at best. Anything could happen.

  “He could win this one,” Beth says. I see her glance at me out of the corner of my eye. Is this some kind of stupid test? If it were Dave, I’d say probably. But Beth’s not manipulative like that.

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “Jacob Cawley’s seeded first, and he’s got one of the fastest personal-best times in the country right now in this event. He could blow Harry out of the water if he brings it.”

  “I don’t think he will, though.”

  “Why not?”

  The start tone goes off, and the swimmers fling themselves backward into the water, dolphin-kicking out to the fifteen-meter mark. Beth and I watch the TV intently. My heart clenches, and my stomach does a slow roll.

  “There’s something up with his back. In the prelims and the semis, it started to cave later in the race, which I think means he’s compensating for some pain.”

  Her eyes flick to me again. I wonder if she’s thinking about my shoulder, and how each of my competitors could be having this same conversation about me with their coach right now.

  “If he gives in, it’ll screw with his streamline and slow him down,” Beth continues. “Could open up a gap for Harry to slip through, if he’s not too tired by then to take advantage of it.”

  I lean forward in my seat, as if by getting a few inches closer to the TV I can spot evidence of Jacob Cawley’s injury. If it’s there, the cameras are too far away to catch it.

  What is noticeable is Harry’s slow start off the block. At the first turn, he’s in fifth.

  “Come on, stop dicking around,” I whisper, forgetting for a second about Beth sitting right next to me. All my focus goes toward willing Harry to speed up.

  I know his body. I know the way it moves through the water, its speed, its rhythm. He’s pacing himself, saving his energy, but this is not a long race, just four lengths of the pool and back. By the time he decides to kick it into high gear, he might not have enough room to take the lead. Meanwhile, Jacob Cawley is cruising along at half a body length in front of the field.

  Then Harry starts to motor. Off the second turn, he overtakes the two swimmers in front of him; they fall back, unable to catch up to him, and I can tell they’re done for this race. Now it’s just Jacob, Harry and one other guy.

  By the time he’s halfway down the pool, Harry’s second after Cawley, but the third swimmer’s still in it, straining to pass them. My gaze flicks to Cawley, but he’s in total control of his stroke. Maybe Beth was wrong.

  Going into the final turn, it looks like Harry’s going to lose, and not just to Cawley—the third swimmer isn’t flagging. He could sneak past Harry if he’s got anything left in the tank in the last fifteen meters.

  But Harry bursts off the wall like he’s been shot from a cannon, switching on his mighty dolphin kick and torpedoing out past the flags. In the space of a few heartbeats, he catches up with Jacob Cawley, closing his lead in less time than it takes me to release the breath I’m holding. They’re neck and neck coming down the final stretch.

  This swim must be breaking Harry. I noticed him do a spot check at the turn; he knows Cawley is winning, so he’s throwing everything he’s got into the last twenty meters in the hope of muscling past him. And it’s working. I twist the plastic straps of my goggles around my fingers so hard it cuts off my circulation. He could win. Harry could win.

  There’s a collective intake of breath so loud I can hear it when both boys slam into the wall. Did Harry touch first, or did Cawley? It takes only a few tenths of a second to register the times, but it feels like a freaking eternity. The scoreboard flashes up on the screen.

  Beth pats me on the back and flashes me a brief smile.

  “That was a good swim,” she says. “He should be proud.”

  I drop my head and cover my face. Happiness sloshes through my body as I grin into my hands. I always knew Harry had it in him to be one of the best swimmers of his age group, but the confirmation is twice as sweet. I want to run out on the deck and grab him, pull him to me, give him the victor’s kiss he so clearly deserves. Instead, I’m stuck back here.

  I watch as Harry luxuriates over his victory in the pool. He pulls himself up on the lane line and pumps his fist in the air, shouting and crowing. Then he loses his balance and tumbles into Jacob Cawley’s lane. Jacob drifts over to shake Harry’s hand, even though this loss must be killing him. A single one-hundredth of a second is an absurd, unbearable amount of time to lose by, but in swimming, that’s often all it takes.

  Dave nabs Harry as soon as his feet hit the deck. He cuffs his hand around the back of Harry’s neck and speaks into his ear. Harry nods. Dave gives him a job well done pat on the back and Harry lights up like a kid on Christmas morning, which surprises me. I thought Harry decided to swim well to troll Dave. It never occurred to me that Harry might want Dave’s approval.

  Well, now he has it. Dave can’t dismiss him as a slacker anymore. My guts tighten with unfamiliar jealousy. I shake it off and paste a smile on my face, grinning so hard it hurts.

  I’m thrilled for Harry. Why wouldn’t I be?

  * * *

  Harry’s win has stoked my competitive fires. I stride onto the deck in a storm of confidence, wearing my GAC parka like a superhero’s cape, or the robes of an arrogant queen. By the time I step up on the block, I know this race is mine.

  It happens early, during the second half of the butterfly leg of my 200 IM. There’s no warning shot across the bow, no rumbling ache to herald disaster. One second, everything is fine—I’m soaring over the water, skimming along the surface like a stone skipping across a lake—and the next, a lightning bolt of pain lances down my arm, tearing through me like fire racing along a trail of gasoline. A dense cloud of agony mushrooms through my body as I hobble through the rest of the race.

  Everything after appears only in flashes as my eyes flutter in time with the pulses of pain that roll over
me in unceasing waves. A blur of color as people run along the deck. The rustle of voices like birds’ wings against a gray sky. Familiar faces seen only in glimpses as people hover over me at the end of the lane: Amber, Jessa, Beth, Dave.

  And Harry, who says, “Hold on, Susie. I’m coming to get you.”

  The next thing I know, he’s behind me in the water. I flinch, thinking he’s going to touch my shoulder, but he rests his hand on my waist and puts his lips right up to my ear.

  “Relax,” he says. “I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to lift you so Dave can pull you out, okay?”

  “My shoulder...” I begin to shiver. The smell of chlorine is so thick I feel like I’m choking on it. I try to pull away from Harry and realize: I can’t move my arm.

  “I’ll be gentle,” he says. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  He bends for leverage, resting his forehead against the nape of my neck. He takes a deep breath. “One...two...three.”

  The next time I open my eyes, I’m in the backseat of Dave’s rental car as he speeds toward an unknown hospital in an unfamiliar city where I’m suddenly, bewilderingly, alone among strangers, with only the pain to keep me company and remind me that I’m human.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  105 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  “LEFT GLENOID LABRUM,” Dr. Pfaster says, tucking a clipboard under his arm. “It’s a rim of cartilage that surrounds a socket in your shoulder. It helps stabilize the joint where your upper arm bone meets your shoulder blade. You’ve torn it.”

  He pauses as his words fall limply into the silence of the room. I’m at the hospital with Beth and Dave, and Mom, whose flight to Des Moines landed an hour ago. She rubs my lower back, partly because it usually comforts me, and partly because she doesn’t know what else to do.

  She blazed into the room not long before Dr. Pfaster arrived, looking to fix whatever trauma had befallen me. But she couldn’t hug me, I wasn’t in much of a mood to talk and Beth had filled out most of the insurance paperwork already; they keep that sort of information on file for just such an occasion. Mom ended up with not much to do other than watch me suffer.