by Mia Archer
The only thing that stopped me was a look from Alyssa. She’d strategically placed herself behind her mom and she shook her head ever so slightly. She was smiling, too, so I figured whatever she’d discussed with her mom she’d come out on top.
“I’ve also told Alyssa that we’ll be taking her out to dinner honey. You’re okay with that, aren’t you?”
Her dad looked at me and grinned. “That’s fine with me as long as Sarah is coming along with us.”
The reaction from both women in the family was priceless. Alyssa’s eyes went wide as though she wasn’t expecting that, but that was nothing compared to the fury on her mom’s face.
“We were going to have a family dinner Henry,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Right,” Alyssa said. “I told you we were going to have a family dinner and I wanted you to treat Sarah like one of the family.”
“Dear, I think…” her mom started, but she didn’t get close to finishing.
“No, I think that Sarah is coming with us or I’m not going with you. I made that clear in the hall.”
She flashed another smile and I tried to return it, but it was difficult. I knew she was trying to include me and I really appreciated that, but at the same time she was including me in spending even more time with her mom who didn’t seem very eager to spend time with me.
The feeling was mutual.
Oh well. It looked like I was going to have a very awkward dinner with my girlfriend’s parents. Including one half who didn’t even know I was Alyssa’s girlfriend.
18: Lame Party
Alyssa:
I waved my key in front of the door and it beeped at me while a light turned green. That was about the only friendly thing I’d seen on campus this week. I heaved a sigh as I pushed the door open and tossed my book bag onto my loft bed.
We’d reconfigured the room since that first day. Both of us decided that having loft beds on either side with our desks underneath made more sense than having bunk beds and trying to squeeze the desks into the other side of the room. It only took a little convincing to get my dad to change it around.
Sarah was already in the room leaning back with headphones in, though she took those off as soon as she saw me come through the door.
“Tough day at the salt mines?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “You have no idea. It’s like these professors don’t believe in giving you a little bit of time to get used to college before they start throwing work at you, and each one of them thinks their class is the most important thing you’re ever going to do in your entire college career!”
Sarah grinned. “Yeah, how dare those jerks do that. It’s almost like they expect you to learn something in their classes.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. “Yeah well you have it easy with that writing stuff you’re doing or whatever it is.”
Sarah stuck her tongue out at me this time. “Hey. Not all of us can be super math geniuses. Besides, this stuff is hard too.”
She held up a rather thick looking book she’d been reading. It had a picture of some lady on the front that looked like she’d gone out of fashion about three hundred years ago. Reading a bunch of stuff written by a bunch of dead people about a bunch of other dead people, usually about how much they wanted to fuck each other, was not my idea of a good time. Give me facts and figures and something concrete I could turn in any day of the week thank you very much.
It was going to be useful having Sarah around though. I never liked writing essays and I was taking the intro English class that all freshmen were expected to take. Having an English major around was going to be a major help.
“Yeah? Well I’m still jealous of how much those books were. I can’t believe you got away with only $200 for the whole semester. My bill came to close to a thousand! That was my entire book stipend and then some!”
Sarah shrugged. “I offered to help you out with some of my stipend and you said no.”
I made a quick cutting motion with my hands. “Enough. I’m tired of talking about school stuff. I just spent an entire week getting up at the ass crack of dawn to go swim and then spent the rest of my day dealing with facts and figures. Let’s talk about what we’re going to do tonight!”
Sarah rolled her eyes and leaned forward. Her chair squeaked as she thumped that rather large book down on her desk. “Yeah, anything is going to be better than that dinner with your parents last week. I can still feel your mom’s hate gaze on me a week later!”
“She was not that bad and you know it,” I replied.
“She knows something’s going on. You saw how she kept asking you about the nice boys on the swim team,” Sarah said.
I frowned. The boys on the swim team had been less than nice to me so far. At least the one I’d had direct contact with. At least the others didn’t seem to hold it against me that Todd got kicked off the team. I’d already gone in for one meeting with the campus police but that hadn’t gone anywhere yet.
“Sorry,” Sarah said. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
She stood from her chair and wrapped me in a huge hug. A hug that made me feel better for just a little while. Having Sarah’s arms wrapped around me always made me feel good. As though everything that was wrong in the world wasn’t so bad after all.
She pulled away and looked me in the eyes. Actually her eyes darted back and forth between mine as though she was looking for something there.
“You okay? Forgive me?”
I rolled my eyes. Let her figure out what that meant.
“I’m fine. You don’t have to keep treating me like I’m a China doll or something whenever you bring up Todd. He got a little handsy and then you beat the crap out of him,” I said.
Sarah shook her head. “I should’ve beat the crap out of him. That one punch was getting off easy as far as I’m concerned.”
“Can we please stop talking about this?” I asked, a bit of testiness creeping into my voice. It annoyed me more that she thought I should have some huge overblown reaction to what happened than it did thinking about what actually happened.
“Fine,” Sarah said. “So what do you want to do tonight? It’s our first Friday on a fully stocked campus and we don’t have any parents coming into town to ruin our groove.”
“We could go out to the house parties off campus,” I said.
Sarah shook her head. “Are you serious? No way. Not after what happened last time. Besides, we have practice early in the morning and I don’t really want to show up to that hung over.”
“A fair point,” I said.
I looked around the room and then down to my desk. Particularly at a pamphlet the university handed out to all the incoming freshmen at dorm orientation talking about all the fun things there were to do on campus. Notably absent from all those fun things to do were all the off campus parties that gave this school something of a reputation in the state. There were still people who came here precisely because the school had been ranked as a top party school in Playboy like twenty years ago or something, as though that mattered now.
I picked up the pamphlet and flipped through it. There were all sorts of advertisements for clubs and things to do, but then I came across a page advertising something that looked interesting.
“What about this University Nights thing the school puts on?” I asked, holding it out to Sarah.
She snatched the pamphlet from my hand and read through it. “University Nights? Isn’t that the lame thing everyone is always talking about? The thing they put on so people don’t go out and party?”
“I think it is,” I said. “It looks pretty fun though. Free food and drinks with no alcohol, and they have a lot of fun stuff set up for people to do.”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said.
I stepped forward and snatched the pamphlet out of her hand. Looked up at her. “Look. Aren’t you the one who was just saying you didn’t want to get drunk or get hung over because you were worried about practice in the morning?”
<
br /> “Well yeah,” she said.
“So doesn’t that make us exactly the sort of lame student who would be a perfect fit for a university thing?” I asked.
Sarah sighed. “I guess you’re right. We are lame, aren’t we?”
I grinned and pulled her in for a kiss. About a minute later when we were done, kisses in the dorm room were never a short affair, I giggled. “At least we’ll be lame together, right? That’s all that matters to me.”
“You’re right,” Sarah said. “Let’s get dolled up and go to the lamest party on campus!”
I looked down at the pamphlet again. There was a tagline there. “The most awesome party on campus!” Whoever wrote that ad copy was reaching just a little bit.
“Fine. Let’s go!”
A half hour later we walked into the student center and saw something that looked like it was actually a bit of fun. Most of the students looked like they were freshmen, something told me the university was going to have a tough sell getting older students to come to this sort of thing, but it still looked like a good time. We got wristbands after we showed our student IDs and then we were off.
“So what do you want to do first?” Sarah asked. “There’s supposedly bowling down on the first floor and they have an arcade on the second floor.”
I glanced at a big flat panel they’d set up with information about all the stuff that was on offer. Putting the schedule on a TV instead of a board, but I suppose that was our college dollars at work.
My stomach rumbled as I looked at the activities, but I saw something I definitely wanted to try out.
“I think we need to go get some food first, and then after that it says on that screen that they have bounce houses and a bunch of inflatable obstacle course stuff set up behind the student center. That’s where I want to go!”
The food was surprisingly good. Fried chicken and hamburgers and all sorts of stuff you’d expect to find at a cookout. Whatever part of the university dining department put all this together had really outdone themselves. I was giddy with anticipation as we walked out the back of the student center munching on food that would send Coach into conniptions if he saw us eating it.
I saw the bounce houses and obstacle courses and had to fight back the urge to squeal like an excited little girl. I’d always loved things like this, and one of the suckier things about getting older was that it was no longer appropriate to like things like this.
“You going to be okay Alyssa?”
I looked over to Sarah, my mouth stuffed with a combination of hamburger and fries. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” I asked around the food. It came out a little muffled since my mouth was still full of junk food.
“You looked like you were about to have an episode or something looking at those bounce houses,” Sarah said.
“I’m just really excited,” I said. “It’s not every day you get to do this kind of stuff.”
Sarah grinned. “Well then finish that hamburger and we’ll get to it!”
I wolfed down the rest of my burger and fries. It’s not like I had to try very hard to do it. With the workout routine I was doing as part of my swimming duties we had to have a significant calorie intake. It was going to kill me on that dark day in the future when I stopped swimming so much and had to stop eating like I was a severely overweight man in his forties or something.
That day wasn’t today though.
I looked at all the fun things on offer. There really was a bounce house. And not just a bounce house for little kids. We’re talking a massive thing big enough to fit a bunch of college students who were bouncing around and having a good time. There were obstacle courses complete with runs, bridges, climbing walls, slides, and all the fun stuff that everyone still loved to do even if they pretended they weren’t into it right around the time they turned twelve.
“We need to do that obstacle course thing first,” I said. “That looks like a good time. Reminds me of the Playscape back home.”
“I only went there a couple of times,” Sarah said. “My parents always said it was too far away, and besides I could go outside and play if I wanted to have a good time.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “You poor thing. I guess your parents weren’t as cool about stuff as I thought.”
“Yeah, well I’d much rather never go to the Playscape than grow up with your crazy mom. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said with a grin. “I grew up with her. I know what she’s like. But let’s not talk about that. Right now we need to get to that obstacle course! I’m going to kick your cute ass!”
“Like hell you are!” Sarah said. “Want to make a bet on who comes out first?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “What sort of bet are you talking about?”
Sarah leaned in and whispered a couple of things that had me blushing immediately. Blushing and shaking as I thought about trying some new things with her. Damn. The imagination that girl had on her was going to be the death of me.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go!”
We turned and bolted for the entrance to the obstacle course. Though we didn’t bolt for too long. There was a line to get in and a helpful volunteer pointed us to the end of it when we went right up to the entrance. I frowned and both of us were bouncing with energy as we moved closer and closer to the entrance.
Finally we were there. The entrance was a series of climbs leading up into the obstacle course proper which looked like it had been designed for four or five people to go through at the same time. The volunteer almost tried to put me and Sarah in separate groups, but I put a stop to that pretty quick. Finally the two of us stood side by side waiting for the volunteer to give us the go ahead.
It was weird. It felt like before I started a race. It felt like I was in competition with Sarah again just like the old days. Judging from the crazed look in her eyes she was feeling the same way. This was the first time we’d gone against each other since that fateful race at sectionals the year before that had put an end to her high school swimming career.
And she looked like she was ready for the rematch. Well I was going to show her!
The volunteer dropped his hand and we were off. I climbed up the thing and inhaled the vaguely plastic smell of the place as I scrambled up. Then I was moving across a rope bridge. I glanced to the side and saw Sarah slightly behind me and grinned. This was going to be too easy! I threw myself down a slide and then sprinted for a climbing wall. In a flash I was up, but I could see Sarah was gaining on me.
On the bright side it looked like it was no contest with everyone else. We were way ahead of the next person behind us. Good.
I got to the top of the climbing wall and found that there was another rope bridge, only this one was literally a rope bridge. It was a rope strung out over some cushioned foam down below with a rope overhead to balance on. We’re talking the sort of thing you usually only see on a TV show where they’re testing people or something. Damn.
I had no doubt I’d be able to do this too though. I grabbed the rope overhead and stepped out. I was about halfway across when it hit me. The same dizziness I’d felt at the state championships. The dizziness I thought was gone for good. I thought the rest I took between finishing up in high school and starting swimming in college was enough to banish it for good.
As the blood pumped behind my ears and I looked towards safety on the other side of the rope bridge I realized how wrong I’d been. I felt lightheaded. That pumping behind my ears grew louder and louder and I knew it would be a matter of moments before I lost it again.
I gritted my teeth. Tried to fight it. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t supposed to happen right now. These dizzy spells only came when I was really exerting myself. Not when I was going through a stupid obstacle course.
I couldn’t help it though. Stars danced at the edge of my vision and then they moved in and covered my whole vision and everything went black.
19: Rescue
Sarah:
I saw her go down out of t
he corner of my eye. For a moment I couldn’t believe it. One moment Alyssa was sprinting across the rope like she was on an episode of that ninja warrior show and the next moment she went completely limp. She fell forward and hit the rope before rolling around and falling down into the foam blocks below.
It was a damn good thing someone thought to put those foam blocks there. Otherwise she could’ve really hurt herself. As it was I was worried that she might’ve done some damage when she hit that rope and rolled around. I was painfully aware that it didn’t take much to ruin a swimming career for good, and the last thing I wanted was for Alyssa to ruin hers before it even started.
Especially when she had a full ride riding on it!
I let go of the rope and jumped down next to her. When I popped up from the foam, it was really difficult to move around in that stuff, I moved over next to her. She was out cold. I didn’t know if that was from the fall or if she’d gone out before she fell. From the way she went limp I’d be willing to be the chain of events was pass out then fall.
“Help! I need help!”
I yelled it at the top of my lungs. I was worried. Really worried. Little things like this seemed to keep happening with Alyssa and there was a dark fear in the back of my mind whispering that this could be something bad. I pushed those fears away. Right now I needed to be there for her. I needed to help her.
I was about to pull out my phone and dial 911 when someone appeared beside us. Someone in a campus polo.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “She passed out and fell into the blocks.”
“Shit,” the guy said. He pulled up a radio and started talking into it, but I didn’t hear anything he said. I was too focused on Alyssa. Focused on making sure she was still breathing. There wasn’t much else I could do beyond that. I’d taken a lifeguard class in high school, just about everyone on the swim team had, but none of that training was much good now.