Breathless

by Jessica Warman

  In a few minutes, I’m standing on deck beside Solinger, feeling ridiculous in my full school uniform. At the opposite end of the pool, in a three-lane area sequestered by buoyed ropes, the ninth-grade girls’ phys ed class is running through a synchronized swimming routine to some kind of classical music. They wear identical maroon swimsuits and bathing caps made of thick, fancy latex that covers their ears. They are operating—all of them—on an insane level of concentration. The effect is both eerie and beautiful, all of them wet and cloaked in stinging fluorescent light.

  At first I think Solinger and I are the only people in the natatorium besides the girls. But then I notice somebody swimming in the lane closest to me. His body is parallel with the water, almost beneath it, moving quickly and without too much visible effort, exactly the way it should be.

  Solinger kneels at the head of the lane, waiting for the swimmer to reach us. Before the body can curl into a flip turn, Solinger grabs hold of an ear, tugging the swimmer to his feet.

  I’d recognized him just by the way he moves in the water. But to see his face as he stares upward at us, his faint scowl at being interrupted, his annoyance with the ninth graders at the other end of the pool—all of it combined with the way he looks dripping wet, his hair stuffed beneath a swimming cap so that only a few lone, blond curls escape from a corner behind his ear—only one thought goes through my mind: I love boarding school.

  Drew Bailey spits into the water, his breath heavy. “What is it? I’m in the middle of a five hundred.”

  Solinger, annoyed, says, “Keep your panties on, Bailey. Get out for a minute.”

  Drew pulls his goggles away from his face, perching them on his forehead to reveal big blue eyes. “But I’m in the middle of—”

  “Uh-huh.” Solinger snaps his fingers. “Up.”

  Drew stands between us, still panting, oblivious to a white thread of booger at the edge of his nostril. “What’s up? I’ve got”—he glances at the clock—“thirty minutes before I have to be in chem lab. I’ve got a B minus, and I can’t be late or I’ll lose points, five points for every minute you’re late. Education is the most valuable . . .” He realizes Solinger is smirking at him. “Oh, forget it.”

  Solinger strokes his shadow of a beard. His other hand is on the small of my back. He gives it a reassuring pat, as if to say, I know. What. A. Jerk. “You won’t lose any points. I’ll take care of it.”

  Drew shakes his head. “You said that about trig, and I—”

  “Later.” He nudges us together. “Katie Kitrell, Drew Bailey. Drew is our number one on the boys’ varsity. Drew, this is the girl I was telling you about.”

  Drew nods, looking at Solinger, not me. I’m not sure why Solinger is even explaining any of this to us—I guess he wants to make a formal introduction. Drew and I have been in practice together every day after school, but the girls’ and boys’ scrimmage meets are separate, so we haven’t exactly had a chance to see each other in action. “I know who she is. She hangs around with Estella.” Drew finally looks in my general direction, narrows his eyes, and mouths, “Trouble.” I notice that he’s wearing a thin silver chain with a tiny crucifix around his neck.

  Right away I’m curious about what his problem is with Estella, because Drew’s best friend is none other than Stetson McClure. The two of them are always eating lunch together and talking around the pool, when water polo and swim team practices overlap.

  Solinger couldn’t be less interested. “Shake hands,” he directs.

  When neither of us moves, Solinger reaches out to physically lift our hands and bring them together, pumping our arms in a forced shake. Drew avoids making eye contact for as long as possible. Finally, after we shake hands, he wipes his nose clean and meets my gaze. But he doesn’t smile.

  Drew is a junior, like Stetson. He’s fast, I know, and oh my God is he cute. He’s at least six foot four, strong, and kind of effortlessly graceful, which is why he’s such a good swimmer.

  Solinger takes a step back. “I want you two to practice together, every day. Before breakfast and now, third period.”

  I blink at him. “But I have English.”

  “Not anymore, you don’t. You’ll have study hall, which means you come here. English is seventh period for you now.”

  Drew scratches the back of his head, working a finger beneath his bathing cap. “I thought I could come and go whenever I felt like it. Good God, you’d think they could turn down the Rachmaninoff just a little, wouldn’t you?”

  Finally, I find my voice. “The what?”

  He looks at me like I’m stupid. “The music? This is Rachmaninoff’s Ninth Symphony.” His mouth hangs open. “You’ve never heard this before?”

  Before I can say anything else, Solinger interrupts with, “Ladies, ladies, ladies. I want you to work together. Run drills, time each other, keep each other in check. I have intramurals with the freshmen. I can’t be here, and I don’t want you two working completely uncoached.”

  I’m too embarrassed to look at Drew again. I’m just standing there in my uniform, actually sweating because the air in the natatorium is so warm and muggy, but I feel almost naked. “It’s fine with me.”

  Drew is confused and on the verge of furious. “But, Coach.” He lowers his voice. “She’s a girl.”

  “Oh, she is? I hadn’t noticed. Forget everything I said then. As you were.” He gives Drew a light slap against the back of his head. “She’s a girl. So what?”

  Drew opens his mouth, looks at me, looks at Solinger—and says nothing. He only scowls.

  Solinger gives me a wide, satisfied grin, like everything’s just peachy. “Your suit is in your locker, right, Kitrell?”

  I nod.

  “Well? Whatcha waiting for? Go get changed.”

  When I get back from the locker room, Solinger is gone. Drew watches as I slide into my own lane and position my goggles on my face. He nods at the chalkboard to the right of the pool, where a series of drills is written in chicken scratch: 2X100 free, 2X100 back, 2X100 breast. 500 free.

  “That’s today,” he says. “He’ll change it for the afternoon and morning.”

  “Are you going to—” I’m about to ask him if he wants to time me, if he has a stopwatch I can use, but he holds up a palm, stopping me mid question. “Listen . . . Katie. You should know, those friends of yours have a bad reputation. Especially Estella.” He shakes his head, looks at me with exaggerated pity. “You should be careful. That chick is nuts.”

  And before I can say anything in response, he’s gone, his face below water. When I finish my first drill, I stand up in the shallow end of the pool to find myself almost alone, watching a crooked line of tired freshmen as they move single file toward the girls’ locker room, the music playing to the end on low, echoing against every corner of the room, as though addressing me and my ignorance alone.

  The next few weeks are a blur of swimming and schoolwork and scrimmages and more schoolwork—I’m so tired and overwhelmed that I don’t even make it off campus on the weekends. Lindsey and Estella are busy too—everyone is—but Estella manages to go out with Stetson every weekend, and Lindsey often goes home to see her parents. The fact that my only friends in the dorm are gone most weekends makes the time I spend with Mazzie all the more excruciating. She still talks in her sleep, and she still ignores me almost all the time. I get frequent updates from Lindsey about Mazzie’s stellar performance in advanced abstract mathematics, but beyond that, I don’t know the first thing about her aside from the fact that she seemed to appear from out of nowhere and wants to disappear more badly than anything.

  For our entire first week of practice, Drew doesn’t say much to me. Then, on a Monday, after he’s finished swimming and stretching, he takes a seat on the bench beside the pool and watches as I glide to the end of a 500-meter free.

  I stand at the shallow end, catching my breath, tugging off my goggles and swim cap. My whole body feels warm and energized.

  “Nice job,” Drew says
.

  I’m still trying to catch my breath. “Thanks.” I hop out of the water and glance at the clock on the wall. “Wow. We’ve got twenty minutes until next period.”

  When I look at him, as I stand there dripping wet, I notice that his gaze is taking in my whole body, like he’s seeing me for the first time. That’s something about swimming that I’ve always found kind of odd—it’s like you’re standing around in your underwear, soaking wet, but nobody acknowledges that everyone around them is half-naked. I mean, Drew’s in a Speedo. I can see every ripple in his body, right down to the V-shape of his hips, which I do my absolute best not to stare at.

  Right now, it’s obvious he’s noticing me too. There’s nobody here but the two of us, our breath audible and deep, our cheeks flushed. For a few seconds we stay that way, silent, staring at each other’s bodies.

  “So . . . what should we do with the rest of the time?” I ask. “Should we do more drills?”

  The moment between us dissolves. Drew tugs off his swim cap. There are those curls again. I love them. “I’m too tired,” he says. But then he stands up, strolls over to the edge of the pool, and sits down, letting his legs dangle into the water. He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. “Katie.”

  “What?”

  “Come here.”

  I have no idea where his interest is coming from; a week ago he didn’t even want to look at me. But I’m not going to argue. Trying my best to be casual, I take a seat beside him.

  He’s still looking at the ceiling. “You’re really good. You know that, right?”

  “Yes.” I dip my legs into the water beside his. “Swimming is the only thing I’m good at.”

  He sits up. “That’s probably not true. You get good grades, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. I guess I meant that swimming is the only thing I really love to do.”

  His gaze drifts to my shoulders, my chest, my legs, and finally back to my face. “I can tell you love it.” He hesitates. “You look really good—really graceful, I mean—in the water.”

  Oh. My. God. I have to struggle to find my voice. “Thanks.”

  He nods. “Do you think you’ll keep swimming? I mean, I’m sure you’ll get a scholarship somewhere, but after college?”

  “I hope so. Maybe I can coach.”

  “You don’t think you’ll try to go pro?”

  He and I both know this isn’t a realistic option—if it were, I’d have been at a swimming academy somewhere since like age ten—so I wonder why he’s even mentioning it. Maybe he’s trying to make me feel good. The possibility makes my face grow hot. “Well,” I say, “I can swim in college, and swim in a league after that, but I’m not good enough to go to the Olympics. I mean, maybe a few years ago, if I’d had a good coach and had been really focused . . .” If my parents hadn’t been preoccupied with my brother as he was losing his mind. I shake my head firmly. “I don’t think I’d want that, anyway.”

  “Oh, no?” His voice seems genuinely interested. “Why not?”

  “Because I love it so much. The fact that I’m fast is just, like, icing. I told you, it’s the only thing I really love to do. And if I had pressure that intense on me—well, what if I stopped loving it? Then what would I have?” I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  Drew narrows his eyes. “That’s really interesting,” he murmurs.

  “You think?”

  He nods. “Did you watch the Olympics this summer?”

  “Of course.”

  “How about that Margo Duvall?” He’s talking about the girl who took home nine gold medals in swimming.

  “I know,” I say, getting excited. “When she finished the two hundred IM, she stood up and looked around, and she knew she’d won, but she—”

  “She wasn’t even breathing heavily!” Drew finishes.

  “I know, right?” I shake my head. “Just thinking about being that fast gives me goose bumps.”

  “But you’d never want to be like her?”

  I shrug. “In theory, sure. But . . . no, not really. Swimming is . . .” I struggle for the right words, amazed that Drew and I are talking so intimately. “It’s mine. I love competing in meets and everything, but once you get to that level, it’s not really about swimming anymore, is it?”

  Drew shakes his head, looking over at me again. “No, it isn’t. You know, I believe that people need to find what they love to do most in the world, what they’re best at, and then they need to use that ability to make the world better.”

  His eyes are so sincere, so hopeful and kind. “That’s amazing,” I say. “I’ve never heard anyone put it that way.”

  Drew nods. “Like, the thing I love to do the most is to be outdoors and to be physical. So I spend a lot of time volunteering, especially for Habitat for Humanity. That way, I get to be outside and do a lot of work with my hands, but when the work is over, I get to watch someone who’s had a way rougher life than me get a nice place to live.”

  I could cry if I let myself. If I squinted, maybe tilted my head a little bit, I could probably see a halo above Drew’s curls.

  “You make it sound so simple,” I say. Our gazes are locked together.

  “It is simple.”

  I force myself to swallow before I start drooling. “But I’m no Margo Duvall.”

  Drew grins. “That’s right. You’re Katie Kitrell.” He hesitates. “I think that’s even better.”

  We sit there in silence for a few seconds. I feel so dizzy that I’m almost nauseous. Drew looks like he’s about to say something else, when his eyes flicker to the clock. “Katie.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “We’re late.” And just as quickly as our conversation started, it ends. He hops out of the pool. “I’ve gotta go.” As he’s heading toward the locker room, he turns around, walking backward, looking at me while I start to towel off. “This was fun,” he says. He stops at the door to the boys’ locker room.

  I nod. “Yeah, it was.”

  He gives me another smile. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay?”

  On a Friday afternoon, I’m sitting in art class, putting the finishing touches on my handmade mosaic of what’s supposed to be the Woodsdale Academy Insignia. Our teacher, Mrs. Averly, who is at least in her seventies, pauses over my shoulder. I don’t say anything as I squint at my project, trying to force an already glued maroon square into a better position.

  She clears her throat. “Kathryn?”

  “Katie.” I push the mosaic away, sighing. “Yes?”

  One of the things that’s interesting about Woodsdale is that you can take your electives whenever you want throughout all of high school. So what ends up happening is classes get filled with students from all different grades. There’s some kind of educational philosophy behind it, I’m sure, but I know I’d much rather be with people my own age who aren’t so intimidating. I’m at the same table with Grace Waugh, whose mosaic is flaw-less, and her best friend, Leslie Carter. Leslie’s father is on Woodsdale’s board of directors.

  The two of them nudge each other, their grins spreading as Mrs. Averly says, “That is really very poor work. It looks like you haven’t put the slightest bit of effort into—”

  “I think she’s been distracted, Mrs. Averly,” Grace says.

  “Oh? By what?”

  Grace gives me a demure smile. “By Drew.”

  Drew is on the opposite end of the room, working on his own, perfect mosaic of a big white cross surrounded by small ceramic depictions of what I assume are robed Christians. Drew is the president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and seems genuine about his faith. Before every swim meet, he leads a circle of swimmers in a prayer. Even though I’ve started to do almost anything for a chance to be near him, I never join in; Will and I decided a long time ago that religion just wasn’t for us.

  The thing that gets me is, Grace is right; I have been distracted by Drew. He and I have been finishing our drills early most days and talking more and more. We both seem to know, withou
t openly acknowledging it, that there’s something happening between us. And for the past few weeks in art class, we’ve been glancing in each other’s direction, smiling. If we didn’t have assigned seats, I might have the nerve to sit with him.

  Mrs. Averly looks at me, then at Drew. Everybody loves Drew, especially the teachers. She beams at his mosaic. “Well . . . you’ll have to redo that, Katie, if you want to pass the assignment.” She pauses, then adds, “It looks like a pentagram.”

  Once Mrs. Averly is out of earshot, Grace and Leslie engage in deliberately loud conversation.

  “I think she likes him,” Grace says, “because he’s the captain of the boys’ team, and she thinks she’s going to be the next captain of the girls’ team.”

  “Really?” Leslie asks, her tone mockingly innocent. “And then I guess she thinks they’ll be boyfriend and girlfriend, like Estella and Stetson?”

  “Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what she thinks.”

  I’m humiliated. I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before, and what’s even worse is that Drew can hear every word they’re saying.

  “Do you think that might happen?” Leslie asks.

  “Oh, no. I mean, first of all, she won’t be captain because nobody else on the team likes her enough to vote for her.”

  What she’s saying doesn’t make sense—Solinger is the one who chooses the captains—but I don’t even have the nerve to look up, let alone say anything.

  “And if she isn’t captain, then it seems dumb to think that Drew would go out with her, doesn’t it?”

  “Well,” Grace says, “even if by some miracle she did make captain, he still wouldn’t go out with her.”

  “Oh yeah? Why not?”

  “Because,” Grace says, and now she raises her voice a little higher, just to be sure everyone around her can hear. “Where do I even start? First of all, she comes from trash. Her brother was killed in some kind of crazy car accident. I heard he was drunk. And Drew would never date someone like that. Besides, she’s not even pretty enough for him.”

  My hand is closed around my sloppy mosaic, ready to hurl it at Grace’s face. But then what would happen? I’d get in trouble—I could even get expelled, maybe. In the meantime, though, I’m sitting there with my head down, and there’s no way I can stop them, the tears are coming, hitting the table and rolling off the edge and landing in droplets that hover unabsorbed on the surface of my wool skirt. I don’t know what else to do. I get up and leave the room. It takes all my willpower not to break into a run before I reach the door.