Brimstone

by Rosemary Clement-Moore

  Dad leaned across the gearshift. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m walking back to school. It’s not that far.” I slammed the door. Dad argued with me through the open window for a while but I took a shortcut between two houses and left them behind.

  By the time I got back to school I was still hot under the collar, but mostly from lugging my gargantuan book bag for five blocks. The angry churning in my stomach had time to die down, too, until I remembered it was time for P.E., and the pool.

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t swim. I could keep my head above the water and move from place to place with all the grace of a Labrador retriever. I’d made it through the past five weeks by stubbornly moving down my lane in a sort of combination dog paddle/breaststroke so I could keep my eyes on the bottom of the pool, and anything that might be sneaking up on me from below.

  The other problem with swimming in P.E., which had nothing to do with my fear of the water, was the difficulty of embarking on this exercise without, at some point, being completely naked in the locker room. Most of us changed in the shower stalls. But even so, to stand there in the buff, for even a transitory moment, while your classmates lurk on the other side of a very flimsy curtain was fifty kinds of vulnerable.

  I had done extensive experiments in changing in stages: Remove pants. Slip suit on while shirt hides important bits. Wiggle arms out of sleeves while keeping shirt down around other bits, then contort out of bra and into remainder of suit.

  Having worked up quite a sweat this way, I bundled up my clothes and bent to pick up my shoes. Gran’s cross swung lightly against my collarbone as I straightened. I’d forgotten about it until then. I debated for a moment, then unclasped the chain and stuffed it into my shoe.

  We made our way out of the locker room and into the cavernous aquatics gym. The administration was always telling us how lucky we were to have a pool. Only they called it a “natatorium,” which is an old-fashioned term for “really expensive indoor swimming pool.” I hate that word. It’s too much like “crematorium” and I have enough liquid issues as it is.

  Some sadist at the health department had decreed we had to shower before getting in the pool, so we trudged through the spigots then stood dripping in our swimsuits while we received instruction from the girls P.E. teacher. Coach Milner had the whipcord-lean frame of a long-distance runner. She’d competed in the Boston Marathon for ten consecutive years. Her age was difficult to determine, because her fitness regime clearly did not include the vigorous application of sunscreen.

  The deal with Coach Milner was that she didn’t just run marathons, she lived them. “Quitters never win,” she had yelled at me as I wheezed around the track. “Never say die,” she hollered up at me as I dangled from a rope trying to climb more than four feet off the mat. “Mind over matter,” she cajoled as I threw up my lunch after taking a basketball to the gut. Fitness was her religion, and she preached these things like the Gospel according to Nike.

  The class lined up like a multicolored, omnisize, Bizarro-world Miss America contest. Coach Milner strode in front of us, our judge, jury, and executioner.

  “Congratulations, ladies. Today we move on to the diving portion of our aquatics unit. We’ll be in the deep pool now, so grab your towels and—” My hand shot into the air. “What is it, Quinn?”

  “I just ate,” I lied. “Aren’t we supposed to wait an hour before going in the water?”

  “Winners never make excuses. That’s an old wives’ tale. Twenty minutes is sufficient.” She grasped the whistle hanging around her neck and blew a rousing note, like Gideon on his trumpet. “Come on, ladies! This way.”

  Coach marched us from our spot beside the lap pool (good-bye, safe haven of only moderate distaste) to the diving area (hello, bottomless pit of liquid doom).

  “Are you all right?” A blur of fingers broke my gaze and I dragged my eyes from the depths and focused on the concerned little moon of Karen Foley’s face.

  “Huh?” That was all I could manage. Behold the wordsmith.

  “You look really pale.” Karen was one of the nicest girls I knew, which was why, though I pitied Stanley, after his spiteful words about her, I didn’t feel much sympathy for him.

  I tried to rally. The champion who faced down Biff et al. should show a little gumption. “I’m always pale.”

  “Yeah, but I think the undertone of green is new.” She touched my arm. “And you’re all clammy.”

  A chorus of giggles made us turn. Jessica Prime and her henchbitches clustered together in a lump of malice. I usually gave the witless triplets a wide berth, but yesterday’s debacle had incurred the wrath of the Jessicas. As much as I wanted to ignore them, I was now firmly on their radar.

  “You’re not scared of a little kiddy pool, are you, Maggie?” Prime taunted, with a toss of her blond head and a smile of parade-float insincerity.

  I gave an exaggerated sigh. “Not everyone has installed personal flotation devices, Jessica.”

  A scarlet flush darkened her perfect tan. I knew that expression; I had a close-up of it on disk. “You’d better watch it, Quinn. No one likes a smartass.”

  “That must make the world a more comfortable place for you, then.”

  “I’m warning you! Someone is going to serve you up a big plate of comeback one of these days. And it’s going to taste a lot like my foot up your butt.”

  “I think you mean a ‘big plate of comeuppance.’ ”

  “What?”

  “Comeuppance. A ‘comeback’ is what John Travolta kept having in the nineties.”

  Jessica showed me her palm. “Whatever. You are such a loser. I should have known you’d watch disco movies.”

  “Let’s keep the line moving, ladies!”

  Holy Cheez-Its. I’d been having so much fun baiting the Barbies that I’d almost forgotten about my imminent demise.

  “Steady there.” Karen grabbed my elbow when my knees threatened to fail me.

  It was Jessica Prime’s turn. She climbed onto the board, waggled her manicured fingers at me, then with a leap as graceful as a gazelle, made a perfect arc into the water. The board applauded with the “wocka wocka wocka” of its spring.

  If I didn’t hate her before, I sure did now.

  Jess Minor took her place with a snotty glance my way. Her dive was true to form: a knockoff of Prime’s perfection. Thespica came after, and I guess there wasn’t a diving portion of the Little Miss Perfection Pageant. But her lackluster effort was still better than anything I could do.

  Finally, there was no one in front of me. Just Coach Milner, her whistle, and the diving board. “You’re up, Quinn.”

  “Uh …”

  “Come on. You’re holding up the line.”

  “Er …”

  “Let’s go, Quinn. Fear is the mind-killer. Get up there and just do it.”

  “Geez, Maggie,” said Jessica Prime, fluffing her dripping hair back into shape, “it’s the low board for crying out loud. It’s, like, three feet above the water.”

  High board, low board, made no difference. It was the indigo invisibility of the water below that kept my bare feet rooted to the tile.

  Coach Milner shook her head sadly, jotting a note on her clipboard. “This is going to affect your grade, Quinn. Quitters never prosper.”

  If she was going to humiliate me, she ought to at least get her clichés right.

  “I’ll go first.” Karen took my place in line with a bracing smile. “After I belly flop anything you do will look like a swan dive.”

  My ears began to burn. Nothing that Milner said shamed me more than Karen the Mathlete climbing confidently up the two steps to the diving board, unconcerned about the water below, or the jiggle of her thighs, or the snickers of the Jessicas.

  “A hippo would look like a swan after her.” One’s hiss was indistinguishable from the others.

  “If she belly flops, there won’t be any water left in the pool.”

  I spun around and whispered in tight, soft
fury. “I swear to God, Jessica, one more word, and that picture goes up on the school Web page.”

  Prime’s eyes flashed, but a movement over the pool caught my eye and I turned back to watch Karen, standing at the back end of the board, taking a deep breath.

  The class broke out of line to watch. I drew a breath with her, and held it as she stepped out. Her stride, her placement at the end of the board, looked perfect. She gathered herself as the springboard dipped down, and then released that energy upward.

  Again my eye snagged on some dark movement—her shadow on the water? I barely had time to wonder, a half-fired neuron of warning, then everything went wrong.

  Karen’s foot shot out from under her and her arms flung out, catching nothing but empty air as she tumbled backward toward the board. The impact echoed through the natatorium as her head smacked the fiberglass. Her limp body hit the water with a splash, and sank slowly into the stygian depths.

  5

  coach Milner dove into the pool, slipping into the fathomless water after Karen. I couldn’t see how she would be able to manage the girl’s limp weight without help. I edged toward the pool, not sure what I could do. Below the surface I could see them, distorted by ripples and depth. Surely some help was better than none, if I could just make myself take that step off the ledge.

  “I got it.” A guy’s voice, someone from the boy’s P.E. class that had taken our place in the lap pool. He dove in while the rest of us were still reeling.

  His action shattered the horrified spell that held us in stasis. I grabbed the girl to my right. “Get the boys’ coach.” The concrete-and-tile vault of the gym was so loud, it might take a while for the news to spread. Meanwhile, I ran to the wall where the life preservers hung, returning just as three heads broke the surface: Milner and the boy, with Karen hanging between them, blood trickling from under her hair.

  I tossed out the life preserver. Milner caught it and draped Karen’s arms over the ring, balancing her. Amanda and Sarah took up the rope and we pulled the three of them to the side of the pool.

  “Watch her head.” The boys’ coach had arrived, with the class following behind, like curious rubberneckers on the freeway. I supported Karen’s head while they lifted her out. As her stomach hit the side of the pool, water trickled out of her mouth, and she began to cough. A relieved sigh rippled outward from the ring of students.

  She coughed until she retched. Coach and I turned her on her side until all the water came up and out, and with it a strange smell. You’d expect puked up pool water to smell funny. But the chlorine odor was mixed with rotten eggs and burnt toast, and my hands began to shake.

  We rolled her back when she started to breathe more easily, in hoarse pants instead of asthmatic wheezes. Someone handed me a towel to put under her head, as Milner ran to call 911. I pressed a second cloth to the gash on Karen’s head. Blood mixed with the water on the tile deck, so that we were awash with it, real horror movie stuff.

  “I’m so sorry, Karen,” I whispered, not really knowing what I was apologizing for.

  Her brow squinched up and her eyes opened slightly. “For what? Did something happen?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “My head hurts.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. I’d been trying not to press too hard on the cut because of the enormous lump that was under it. It looked like a gory Mount St. Helens.

  “Get out of the way, Quinn.” Coach Milner brushed me aside. “How many fingers am I holding up, Foley?”

  My knees had stiffened while I knelt on the deck and I had to struggle to my feet as the paramedics arrived and took over. The tension drained quickly after that. Assistant Principal Halloran showed up to take care of anything official; I bet there was going to be some paperwork on this one. Our classes were dismissed to go change but I hung back, watching silently as the EMTs put a brace on Karen’s neck before they lifted her.

  As the paramedics strapped her down for the ride, I sidled up to where one of them stood writing on a big metal clipboard. “Is she going to be all right?”

  “I can’t really say.” He glanced up from his chart and saw my face. Maybe I looked as tightly wound as I felt, because he added, “She’ll definitely be needing tests and observation for a concussion, but it could be worse.”

  In other words, it was a lot better to have a big bump going out than a big dent going in. The EMTs gathered their stuff quickly, and after a last signature from the assistant principal, they whisked Karen away.

  The air seemed eerily quiet once they were gone. The gym was pretty much empty, and the lap of the water echoed strangely on the concrete and tile.

  I found myself at the edge of the pool, looking for … I don’t know what. Another glimpse of black shadow, a whiff of something other than chlorine. I’m not sure what it would mean if I did smell something. That I was crazy? Or I wasn’t.

  My hand touched my throat. It took me a moment to realize I was unconsciously reaching for Granny’s necklace.

  Was it possible that my dream had somehow been a warning?

  I rejected the idea almost immediately. I was too old to believe in fairies and soothsaying dreams. What I had was very good intuition, and sometimes things I picked up subconsciously play out in my dreams. That was the only logical, adult explanation.

  And I never saw the future. I couldn’t have warned Karen any more than I could have warned my grandparents that night. There was nothing I could have done.

  “Of course there wasn’t.”

  My heart slammed against my ribs. I jumped, too, arms windmilling to keep myself from somehow defying physics and falling into the water three feet away.

  “Whoa! Careful.” Big, tanned hands caught my waist. Well, where my waist would be if I wasn’t wearing the World’s Most Unflattering Swimsuit.

  As soon as I was steady, I backed away, my heart still pounding. Mostly I was startled. But it may have had a little to do with the blue plate special of hot, athletic goodness standing in front of me.

  Finally, I had a good look at Bobby Baywatch. The lifeguard patch on his well-worn swim trunks explained his quick action earlier, as well as his bronze tan, washboard stomach, and muscular shoulders. He had a great face, too—good bones, blue eyes, and a mouth that looked like it smiled more than not.

  It was also a familiar face, and my brows pinched together as I made the unwelcome connection.

  “Oh Hell,” I said. “You’re a Jock.”

  With a capital J. As in, one of the Jocks and Jessicas, a lord of the watering hole.

  He didn’t pretend he didn’t know what I meant. “Maggie, right?” I nodded. “Look, Maggie, I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. Brandon went too far, and …” He faltered and finished weakly. “I’m just really sorry.”

  I could see plainly that he was repentant, embarrassed, and a little ashamed of himself. But that wasn’t my problem. “I don’t need an apology. You didn’t do anything to me.”

  “I know. I’ll apologize to Stanley, too. But I just don’t want you to think I’m like those other guys.”

  I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye. I’d had a craptastic day, and there was enough weird stuff going on in my life to fill an episode of the Twilight Zone. I didn’t have the patience to coddle his guilty conscience.

  “I don’t know why it matters to you, but here’s the deal. You may not have helped, but you stood there and did nothing while the people you call your friends demeaned and physically assaulted someone weaker than them.”

  He flushed guiltily and looked away. “I just didn’t know what to do that wouldn’t make things worse.”

  His whipped puppy expression made me feel guilty, too, for lecturing. “Yes, well, I don’t want to be late to class, so …” I gestured for him to move out of my way. If he thought it was strange that I didn’t go around him on the pool side he didn’t say so, but just backed up to open more ground. I hadn’t gone far, though, when he called, “Hey, Quinn!”
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br />   I turned back, lifting my brows in inquiry.

  “It’s not the same thing,” he said.

  “What’s not?”

  “Yesterday and today.” He closed the gap between us, looking down at me with spectacularly blue eyes. Not that it changed my opinion of him, of course. “I heard you talking to yourself. It’s true, there was nothing you could have done. If you had jumped in, we’d have had two people to pull out instead of one.”

  “I can swim.” If your definition of swimming was broad enough.

  “Swimming and rescuing are two different things.” He smiled, a little ruefully. “I thought it was cool that you thought about it, though. I guess that’s why I wanted to … make an excuse, I guess.”

  I understood that I’d been paid a compliment of a sort. By a Jock. The Weirdness just went on and on.

  I didn’t know what to say so I settled on, “Thanks. I think.”

  With all that had happened that day, I had much more important things to think about than how my rear end looked in my bathing suit as I walked to the locker room. But I worried about it anyway.

  I had less than five minutes to change and get to my next class, on the other side of the planet from the pool. I unlocked my stuff and hauled it all into one of the shower stalls. I had no time for Victorian hang-ups about nudity, or wrestling matches with my clothing. I shucked off my suit, pulled on my panties and had just fastened my bra when the curtain flew open. Jessica Prime, head bitch of the universe, snapped my picture with her camera phone.

  That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, in one short day—eight short hours, actually—I’d gone from worrying that the demonic forces of the universe might be appearing in my dreams, to wondering whether, by six o’clock tonight, most of the student body would have received an e-mail attachment of me, looking like a deer in the headlights, wearing my washday underwear.

  6

  she text messaged me between classes: NOW I’VE GOT A PICTURE, TOO. Hello Queen of the Obvious. But I understood the implied threat. If I went public with her impression of a screaming baboon, she’d broadcast me and my Hello Kitty underwear to her entire friends list.