After a quick debate about the chances of that slug sliming to the top of the tent and falling into one of our sleeping mouths—which we had to stop because Hannah was laughing and dry-retching so hard I thought she might choke—we returned to the all-important subject of me.
I told her I was going to stop swim training and how it was actually exciting because maybe I’d find something that I’d be really good at, something cooler than swimming, I said pettily, and immediately felt bad as she started trying to help.
“International supermodel?”
Yes, well, obviously, I said. That’s plan B. But I’m scared of flying.
Hannah chewed thoughtfully on a cube of Jell-O. “The thing is,” she says, “you’ve been swimming since you were like eight…?”
“Seven,” I corrected her.
“Right. So there’re so many options you haven’t explored! Loads of things you could be amazing at!” She was so excited by how brilliant I’d be. It made me feel tired and irritable and not very brilliant.
Suddenly a shadow loomed against the side of the tent, and Hannah’s dad, Damian, called our names. He unzipped the front flap.
“Are you girls smoking?” He looked at us narrowly.
“No!”
“Make sure you don’t. It’s a filthy habit.” He zipped us back up and left me and Hannah rolling our eyes at each other. Her parents are so weird. You can’t just randomly bark at your daughter, “Don’t do drugs! Don’t smoke! Don’t get pregnant!” and call it parenting.
I laugh out loud now, remembering how last month Dad thought Laverne was pregnant because she was so tearful and shifty. He very sweetly said we could cope with anything as a family.
Lav cried, hugged him, and confessed she’d left her eye shadow in her jacket when she put it in the wash and now all his clothes were glittery.
I suddenly remember I’m in the library, laughing like a loon by myself. The librarian narrows her eyes, and a gang of girls stare at me like I’m insane. I duck my face behind Swimming for Women and the Infirm and pretend I’m engrossed. Oh look, she’s floating and pointing a toe. What an athlete.
The rest of the day is OK; it doesn’t get better, but it doesn’t get worse. I had been dreading going back to school, thinking everyone would be all, Oh my god, you came last in the time trials?! But Hannah got through? That’s so embarrassing for you, are you OK, are you going to cry? What are you going to do now? What’s that coming out of your eye, are you crying??
But, I hate to say it, Lav was right. No one cares. I don’t think anyone even notices. And if that makes my first day back at school sound a little boring, then BINGO! That’s because it is.
I see Laverne heading toward the parking lot at the end of school with a gaggle of friends. I want a gaggle. I join her and give her friends a little wave as they leave, which they’re too cool to return.
They’re the sort of people who always make me feel sweaty and worry that I smell like food or I’ve got something between my teeth.
“How was the first day?” Lav asks.
I give a bland little “meh.” That sums it up.
“I was right, wasn’t I?”
I have to admit it. “Yeah, no one really cares. It’s not a big deal.”
“No, about Amelia Bond’s hairy face mole. She looks normal, but you know something’s missing.”
“Like there’s a ghost on her face?”
“Yes!”
chapter 4
The next few days get a little less “meh”—I make an effort to chat with people in my classes, and they’re not unfriendly. It’s just everyone already has friends and they’re not looking for new recruits, so I spend my lunchtimes hanging out in a largely empty library. I even read the occasional book—seems rude not to—but it’s not the same as having a real-life friend.
By Thursday I’m thoroughly bored of eating a sandwich hidden in a book, and all morning I’ve been thinking about going to see Debs, my coach. Ex-coach.
Six and a half weeks is the longest I’ve gone in years without seeing her, but I felt shy after the time trials. She says things like “Silver is just first place loser!” so I wasn’t sure how she’d treat an actual loser.
Plus I didn’t have swim training, and I didn’t feel I could just turn up on her doorstep: “Hiyaaaa. Let’s ignore the twenty-five-year age gap and hang out! You can blow your whistle at me and I’ll wear wart remover strips if that makes it less weird.”
There’s a public pool next to my school; the school swim team trains there. I’ve been stumping my way up this path every morning for years, with a heavy sports bag over my shoulder and sleep crust scratching at my eyes. Today I buy my sandwich and head there instead of to the library, rubbing my eyes out of habit.
It seems empty, but I can hear some noise in the distance, girls chatting. I wonder if it’s the girls I used to train with. We weren’t best friends, but after a lonely week, I’d be really happy to see them now. As long as Cammie isn’t there—she’s rude, rich, and mean. She intimidated me and Hannah and we hated that she did.
I follow the sounds and it takes me to the changing room. I push my way through the heavy door and get a big whiff of chlorine and shampoo.
The door shuts loudly behind me and fifteen half-dressed girls with wet hair go quiet and stare at me. The silence hangs, heavy and awkward and smelling of feet.
Not such an exciting smell anymore. Oh, and there’s Cammie. Great. One foot up on the bench, moisturizing her legs, she’s halfway through a story and looks up to see who’s dared to interrupt her.
A couple of girls give me small smiles, but they look a little embarrassed. It’s weird when semi-naked people are embarrassed for you.
I suddenly feel I’m not meant to be there; this isn’t the welcome I’d expected. Everyone goes back to getting dressed. Cammie picks up where she left off, loudly. Following her lead, everyone ignores me.
“All right, Lou?” says a tall, muscular girl who’s drying in between her toes. She says it quietly, like she doesn’t want everyone to hear.
One person cares! (But I can’t remember her name. Aargh!)
“Yeah, I’m good, thanks.” Mellie? Probably not. Who would call a kid Mellie? It rhymes with Smelly.
“I … uh … just came to say hi. So … hi.”
“Hi,” says Smelly. (Mella? Maybe.)
“And also I forgot my … this. Yes, this.” I’m babbling to fill the awkward silence as I open my old swimming locker and find a dusty nose clip. “Excellent,” I say, and pop it in my pocket.
Cammie frowns and says, “Why do you need that?”
There’s a shocked silence and a couple of embarrassed giggles, swiftly muffled. (It would’ve been more polite to not laugh, but whatever.) My heart starts beating harder and I can feel my ears going red with anger, but I don’t let it show.
“Just to block out that smell, Cammie. You reek of eggy hair-removal cream.”
Zing!
Shame I only thought of it before I fell asleep that night.
My actual “sassy retort” was to give a weak smile and leave, closing the door gently behind me. Oooh, burn.
This place is my home, or it used to be. But clearly my pathetic performance at the time trials makes me an embarrassment to the team. Wish Lav could’ve seen that, her and her “no one cares, it’s not a big deal.”
I see how shallow they are. I’m full of rage about how the world isn’t Winners or Losers, we’re all just people, guys, special snowflakes with a lot to offer the world!
To enjoy this self-righteousness, I have to forget that I was exactly like this until a month or two ago. La la la la la la, let’s just ignore that uncomfy fact.
I head for the pool to find Debs. After Hannah, she’s the closest thing I’ve got to a friend. As I enter the pool area, I can hear the splashing of the next swim class. These guys are younger, but they’re still good. I watch them dart through the pool with swift movements and slightly shaky tumble turns.
She spots me and I wave.
She shouts something that I can’t hear over the thunderous noise from the pool.
“What?” I smile and point at my ears.
“No outdoor shoes.”
Um. Right.
“I’ll go, then. I just came to say hi!”
She gives me a brief smile and goes back to watching the swimmers. She was never one for the soft and cuddlies, but I was expecting at least a hug, perhaps a circling back pat at the end? (I would like a hug with a circling back pat at the end, dammit! I deserve one. I’ve had a very hard summer and she should understand.)
She doesn’t look up again, but that’s cool—she’s busy, and I don’t want to be paranoid. So I sit on a bench at the back of the viewing platform and eat my sandwich (quickly, as the humidity makes it soggy. Bit gross.)
I try to add up how many hours I’ve spent at this pool: an hour a day before and after school five days a week, plus the odd lunch hour, then two hours on Saturday morning pretty much every week since I was seven. My mind boggles and I get out my phone to use the calculator.
I think, (a) no wonder my hair is so crispy—that’s a lot of chlorine, and (b) I can’t do math either! What I don’t know would fill a barn, as my old gran would say.
I’ve never sat in the viewing area before. I watch the swimmers and feel drowsy at the repetitive splashing, broken up with occasional short, sharp pips from Debs’s whistle. After all these years I know exactly what each sound means. “Go faster, you’re slowing down, I’m watching you, keep your arms crisp, don’t drag those legs! ALWAYS SWIM FASTER!”
Debs doesn’t have a sound for “You’re doing really well, guys, and remember it’s just a sport, let’s have some fun!” I snicker to myself at the thought of what that would be—a snotty squeak as she choked on her whistle.
My head droops in the warmth. It’s dull watching people swim, and I think about the hours my poor family has spent up here on these uncomfortable benches, slapping supportive looks on their faces like they could not think of anywhere else they’d rather be on a Saturday morning. “What, the park? On this sunny day?! You must be kidding. Let’s go sit somewhere noisy and damp. I’m happy to hug the dishwasher or we can watch you swim again.”
Dad and Lav can both sleep sitting up. They probably learned how to do it here.
My phone vibrates. I bet it’s Hannah. I go to tell her about the girls in the changing room. Then I realize that if she walked in there, everyone would be excited to see her.
I stare at the water until my eyes go blurry and I force myself to not blink, when I have that unmistakable feeling that someone’s looking at me. I must look demented, like I’m in a staring competition with the water.
I glance over my shoulder. There’s a field outside the swimming pool, and right now there’s a boy on it. He’s a few feet from the window but close enough that I can see he’s good-looking, small and sort of cool-without-trying. His skin is so clear he looks like a model. I finger my chapped lips.
He’s kicking a ball against the wall, which I could do—however, he’s looking up at me while he’s doing it, and I’d lose a tooth to a misaimed kick if I tried that. I stare at him gormlessly.
Just then a bigger version of him walks past the door. Aaah, I knew he looked familiar; he must be related to Roman Garwood. Roman is two years older than me. He is basically physical perfection, and if I had more of a grasp on sex (so to speak), I’m sure I’d be feeling all sorts of inappropriate things for him.
I don’t know Roman; he’s never spoken to me. But I’ve overheard him talking to older girls and he’s pretty rude—blunt and prickly. (Why does that make him more attractive?
Roman takes his sweater off to reveal broad shoulders and muscled arms. The shorter boy catches me staring at aforementioned muscles and smiles at me. Even by today’s low standards this is embarrassing. I give him a small, no-teeth smile back. This smile says, “Yup, I was staring at your brother like a dog at a sausage. Let’s never mention this ever again.”
A third boy joins them, pulling off his sweater too, which makes his T-shirt ride up over a muscled chest. I examine my cuticles. It’s hard to know where to look around here.
The new guy, also quite ridiculously handsome, is fidgety; he pulls his T-shirt down, then takes the ball from Small Roman and starts doing keepy-uppies. The three of them seem dejected and look like they’re arguing in a halfhearted way.
Actually, I recognize that third boy! He’s not at our school anymore; he must be three years older than me. But a couple of years ago, when he was still an upperclassman, I had won some big county competition. I’d been messing around in the car with Mom, wearing my medal and pretending her Ford Focus was doing a victory parade for me. I’d forgotten to take the medal off when she dropped me at school, so I sneaked in late to assembly still wearing it. This guy had seen me and said something that had made everyone around him stare at me and then laugh ’til they couldn’t breathe.
I’ll never know what he said, and he probably wouldn’t even remember, but it ruined something important to me.
Pete. That’s his name.
Remembering that is the last straw for me today, and I shoulder my backpack and head back to school, I doubt Debs even looks around. I keep my head down and don’t talk to anyone, don’t answer any teachers’ questions, for the rest of the day. Operation: Make Friends is on hold, possibly forever.
I suspect this school is tragically and unluckily full of dickheads and is no place for me to find a friend. Maybe I’ll just sit tight and hope Hannah flunks out of training camp!
I don’t mean that.
I think I do.
She could just get a muscle injury. Not disabling, but permanent, so she’d have to give up on her dreams and I’d have someone to talk to at lunchtime. (No, you’re selfish.)
That night Dad makes us savory pancakes because Mom is out on another date. I lie about how well school is going (I’m sure Lav knows the truth, but she says nothing) and head upstairs after watching a movie with Dad.
I lie in bed listening to Lav texting and WhatsApping (so many pings!) and settle down to sleep. I can hear Mom come in. She must’ve had a few drinks, because she’s loud, clattering around getting her shoes off.
I know, without even checking, that Dad was waiting up for her. She heads straight to the kitchen, immediately in full flow, ranting about her evening. Not a great date, I guess. I hear Dad laugh, the fridge clunks, and then there’s a tiss tiss as two beers are opened.
I hear my parents chatting and laughing as I drift off. It’s nice. I’m glad they’re still friends. I remember when we were younger and they’d have polite conversations over our heads, Mom gripping my shoulders so tightly it hurt. I remember …
Suddenly: “Just to block out that smell, Cammie. You reek of eggy hair-removal cream” pops into my head.
And a minute later:
Melia! That girl’s name is Melia.
Thanks, brain.
chapter 5
The next day I wake up feeling less pathetic. I’m going to have a talk with Debs. I was her favorite swimmer—I will make her care about me again! I’m going to catch her when she’s not busy, first thing in the morning, before classes start. When I head downstairs, there are four empty beer bottles in the kitchen. Mom and Dad will be grumpy this morning. Glad I’m missing that.
I leave Dad a note saying I’m walking to school and head off, feeling adventurous in the chilly, damp morning.
I go straight to Debs’s office, which is unlocked and has coffee cooling on her desk. Excellent, she should be back soon. I sit in a chair (although not the one behind her desk—I wouldn’t dare). She takes ages. I’m stuck eyein
g her bookcase full of trophies for fifteen boring minutes. Eventually she walks in.
“There you are!” I shout.
“ARGH!” she shouts back. OK, that was a little bit of an ambush.
She holds her heart and looks irritably at me as she heads to her seat and flips open her laptop.
She doesn’t seem delighted to see me, which is pretty flat lemonade from a woman who threw me in the air when I won gold at the County Championships last year. No one has attempted to throw me anywhere since I was in diapers, and even then there were probably anxious people yelling, “Lift with your legs, not your back!”
“Nice summer, Lou?”
NICE SUMMER?! How very dare she.
“Not great, Debs.”
“Have you spoken to Hannah?”
Woohoo, someone else who wants to talk about Hannah.
“Yeah, she seems fine. Now, I…”
“I hear she’s shaved a second off her personal best in individual already. I’ve said if she stays focused, she can almost certainly take another one off, although of course it won’t be as quick as the first improvement. It never is.”
She looks at me intently as she talks about Hannah. Now I have her full attention. I feel small. I look down at my hands and pick at a cuticle.
“Aaaaanyway, Debs.” (Back to me, please.) “It’s weird not training every night. I don’t really know what to do with myself.”
I’m hoping she’ll understand and say something helpful. I look up from my hands and all I get is a view of the top of her head. She’s checking her email.
“Yeah, my last bunch of burnouts said the same. I think they all got boyfriends!” She laughs as if she’s said something funny. I must’ve missed that part.
“I’m a burnout?” I say, noticing how wobbly my voice has gone. She finally looks up.
“Lou, are you upset with me?”
“No,” I lie. “Are you disappointed in me?”
“No,” she lies. “But your turns weren’t tight enough and your backstroke was nowhere up to your usual standard. Your arms just weren’t strong enough on the day. So you got the result you got. You burned out, it happens.”
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