The Big Hit

by Jamie Bennett

  I checked my phone. “It’s only been an hour.”

  Davis Blake sighed loudly. “Come inside.” He left the door open behind him as he swung on his crutches back through the dark entryway.

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  Read Julia & Dylan’s Story:

  Stroke by Stroke

  At the pool the next morning, Coach Peter looked like the cat who’d eaten the canary, as my grandma used to say.

  “What’s up?” I asked suspiciously. I wasn’t a huge fan of surprises.

  “Good news this time,” Peter told me.

  So far that spring/summer, the head coach of the Shark group, and head coach of our whole team, had gotten fired for accepting bribes and for having an affair with a parent. Then a car—driven by the same George Whitaker who built our George Whitaker Athletic Complex—had some kind of mechanical failure, jumped the curb, and hit the aunt of one of the Shark group swimmers, a nice little guy named Charlie whom I had coached when he came through my groups. His aunt was ok, but it had all been pretty terrible. And on the personal side, I had already gotten an email that morning that I was no longer being considered for the position at the newspaper. We—I—could have used some good news.

  “Yes? What’s going on?” I asked again. But Peter just grinned and kept his mouth shut after telling me to trust him and that I’d like it. Peter had been my coach as an age-group swimmer when he was just starting out as an assistant like I now was. We went way back, and I did trust him. But I still wanted to know.

  Our swimmers had gathered behind the blocks, but when Peter called them they all dropped their kickboards and trotted over.

  “I have some great news,” he announced, when everyone had settled down and stopped poking each other. “Raise your hand if you know who Dylan McKenzie is.”

  Almost every hand shot up. Including mine.

  “Keep your hand up if you can tell me one fact about him. Just one,” he warned.

  “He was in the Olympics! Twice!”

  “He won seven gold medals! And some other colors, too.”

  “He swims butterfly. Like me.” [“Not like you, dummy. He remembers to kick.”]

  That was all accurate. Dylan held the world record in 200 butterfly and the American record in the 100. But he also excelled in the 200 individual medley, 400 IM, and backstroke, too. And yes, Harrison never remembered to kick.

  “He does the commercial for the car.”

  “And also toothpaste. And that drink that tastes so bad.”

  Yes. NRG+Lyfe was disgusting in any flavor.

  I kept my hand up. “Coach Peter? I also know that Dylan used to swim for this team.”

  Little swim cap covered heads were nodding in agreement. “He was a Shark Pup, like us!”

  “That’s right,” Peter agreed. “He grew up near here, just like you guys. And he worked really, really hard, and became a Shark, then he went to college and studied really hard, and went to the Olympics.”

  Way to sum it up.

  “How would you guys like to meet him?” Peter asked the crowd. We all looked at each other.

  “Dylan McKenzie is back home and he’s going to come here!”

  My heart stuttered as the swimmers erupted in cheers, jumping up and down.

  “He’s going to swim with us!” Peter continued.

  They all went nuts again. I thought I should sit down. I looked at Peter, smiling broadly, looking at all the little kids. He cut through the crowd to talk to me. “Can you believe it? Isn’t it great?” He had to yell to be heard over their happiness.

  I was kind of speechless. “Are you serious that he’s coming? When?” I got out.

  “What time is it now?” He glanced at the clock on the wall.

  “Peter! He’s coming here, at this moment?”

  He looked at me strangely, and I realized that I was gripping his arm. Hard. I let him go.

  “At about ten. He didn’t want anyone to know beforehand, so I had to wait to make the announcement. Do you remember swimming with him?” he asked me, rubbing his bicep where I had grabbed him. I was pretty strong.

  “A little,” I lied. A lot. “We weren’t ever in the same group. I think maybe we went to a few of the same meets, when he was younger. It was so long ago.”

  I remembered every second of every moment that I had seen Dylan McKenzie. I had lingered around after my own practices to watch him. One time I had volunteered to clean out the disgusting lost goggles’ bucket so that I could hang out and see him. Even back then, his strokes were a thing of beauty. He didn’t swim in the water; he flew.

  Not to mention that he was just about the hottest thing to walk the earth, which became a much bigger deal when I hit about 12. If you’d never seen him in his Speedo, you were truly missing out. Thick, blonde hair that fell over his forehead, hazel-green eyes, cheekbones—the guy could have been on the cover of cheesy romance novels.

  It was no wonder that he had so many endorsements. And unlike so many other famous athletes, Dylan kept his nose clean. He never got arrested—he never even got a traffic ticket. He didn’t get drunk in public, or take compromising selfies. Between his swimming and his looks and his good reputation, he was the perfect package.

  And not only that, but he was actually nice. He was nice to the other swimmers on the team when we were kids, especially the little ones who followed him around like he was the Pied Piper. He would toss them in the water when the coaches weren’t looking, which they found to be absolutely hilarious. He was nice to swimmers on the other teams, even when he had to hang out in the water in his lane for about half an hour to wait for them to finish the race so he could shake their hands.

  By the time I was in my teens and he was heading to college, the coaches had to close the pool and not allow spectators. That’s how popular he was in our area. People would drive in to watch him practice and wait in the parking lot to say hi. We all thought he was going somewhere.

  And he did, to the University of Michigan—that was Division 1 swimming—but he left early to train for the Olympics, where he won his first two golds, three silvers, and a bronze (in freestyle, which wasn’t even his specialty). Then he got famous worldwide, and picked up a ton of endorsements, which meant that college swimming was over. The kids had named a few of the products with his name/face on them, but there were a lot more. His mom and his sister went from living in, well, kind of a shack, to a super nice house right on the lake. His sister Daisy was my age and we had been at school together, but we hadn’t been friends (this was no insult to her, because to make friends you had to be able to speak to people, which had never really been my forte). I had left for college, but I didn’t think that Daisy had gone.

  Anyhoo, Dylan was pretty perfect, in every way. And he was coming to our pool.

  I fought the really, really stupid urge to ask Peter how I looked. Or to try to see my reflection in the pool. It did not matter, at all. But, just in case:

  “I don’t have anything in my teeth, do I?” I bared them like a lion to Peter.

  “Nope.” He raised his eyebrows as I ran my hand over my head to smooth back the loose hair coming out of my ponytail. “You’re not going to do some crazy fangirl thing, are you?”

  “Peter, please!” I scoffed. Yes. “Should we start practice, or wait for him?”

  He looked at the clock again. “Let’s get them in the water.”

  So we were observing a 100 IM kick set when Dylan McKenzie walked in. At first I didn’t see him, because I was kneeling down trying to help Hannah with her goggles. They never seemed to stay over her eyes. Then I noticed Peter walking away from the pool, and a big stir of interest in the parents in the bleachers.

  “Julia?”

  Hannah was looking up at me from the water, and I realized that I was holding her goggles just out of reach.

  “Sorry, here you go, Hannah Banana. Hang out at the wall, I think we’re going to take a break.”

  Her eyes caught sight of Dylan too, and got
as big as plates. “He’s here!”

  That he was. Wearing a swim coat, which meant that he really did plan to go in.

  “Julia, come on over!” Peter called to me. I slowly got up and made my legs walk over to them. “Dylan, this is our assistant coach, Julia Laine. Do you remember her?”

  My cheeks burned. Dylan stared at me impassively. “No,” he said. Then his eyes flicked past me to the water. All the kids were either hanging on the lane lines or at the end of the pool, watching him intently. I couldn’t speak.

  “You were on the team together, but Julia’s a little younger. Let’s meet the kids!” He looked at the pool. “Get off the lane lines!” Peter slapped Dylan on the back, his broad back, and led him over to the blocks.

  The kids swam faster than I’d ever seen them go over to the wall and hopped out to meet the hometown Olympian. They surrounded him, looking like little insects next to his 6’5” frame. And they were all talking at the same time, so they sounded like insects, too.

  “Pups! Quiet down,” Peter called, and I held up my hand to make the “quiet coyote” signal. I caught Dylan staring at me, so I put my hand down. It took a moment, but finally they settled.

  “Dylan, do you want to address them first?”

  He looked a little startled, then cleared his throat. “I’m glad to be back here. I remember swimming in this pool, just like you guys. I brought something to show you.” He pulled something heavy out of the pocket of his swim parka.

  Holy heck, it was one of his gold medals! He just carried it around in his pocket? “I won this in Copenhagen. It was my first medal.” He casually handed it to seven-year-old Colin, who looked like he might faint from the excitement.

  “Take a look and pass it along,” Peter said, flexing his fingers and kind of reaching for the medal. He wanted to hold it too. Dylan looked at him, clearly done with the speechifying. “Ok, does anyone have a question for Dylan?”

  Almost every hand shot up.

  “How long can you hold your breath?”

  “Did your swimsuit ever fall off when you dove? Mine did.”

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Does eating eggs really make you swim faster? My mom makes me eat them for breakfast when we have a meet.”

  “Do you ever drink the NRG+Lyfe drink? I never have but my dad says it’s poison. Is it really poison?”

  To his credit, Dylan answered as best he could, if a little succinctly.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  My ears perked up. Oh, please, Julia! As if.

  “No,” he answered.

  “So you play the field? That’s what my grandma says my dad does,” Gaby explained. “Dylan has lots of women,” she explained to the other Pups.

  “He’s like a cat,” John called out.

  “How am I like a cat?” Dylan asked, sounding confused.

  “You know, you have nine wives!”

  I found my voice. “I think you’re thinking of nine lives, bud,” I told John.

  “My cat has nine wives!” someone else called.

  “He plays the field,” Gaby corrected him.

  “It’s a myth that cats have nine lives, not nine wives,” I explained. “Dylan doesn’t have any wives.”

  Dylan was staring at us all with his mouth slightly open.

  “How about you show us some swimming?” Peter suggested, and Dylan looked very relieved. He took off his swim coat, then looked around for a place to hang it.

  “I’ll take it,” I said, my voice rough. He handed me his coat, then his t-shirt, and shorts. I clutched it all to my chest as he silently walked to the blocks.

  Many people saw swimmers on TV, like in the Olympics, and they thought, “I could do that! I know how to swim.” Watching from afar, it may have seemed like it was just a matter of taking some lessons, or working on turns, or something. If those same people saw Dylan McKenzie in the flesh, they never would have thought that. Swimmers’ bodies, Dylan’s body, were honed in every way. Shoulders, abs, arms, every part of him was perfectly cut.

  And it wasn’t just working out. There was something that he had that just made him fast. Talent. You couldn’t teach it, or learn it, no matter how hard you tried. As I knew from personal experience.

  Dylan bent and splashed some water on his chest, just like he did before every race. Then he got up on the block.

  “You can do the honors, Julia,” Peter told me, but I shook my head, so he said, “Take your mark. Go!”

  Dylan reacted faster than I’d ever seen anyone do it in person, flew off the block, and dolphin kicked in tight streamline under the water. “Will he ever come up?” I heard one of our swimmers whisper.

  “His head has to come up before that mark. See? That’s fifteen meters,” Peter told him.

  I hugged his clothes tighter. His stroke was so incredible. It was actually an honor to watch him swim. The parents in the bleachers were all standing up, recording him with their phones, and I hoped our swimmers would be able to remember this and appreciate it.

  I realized I was nuzzling my face in Dylan’s t-shirt and jerked my head up. It just smelled so good! I glanced around guiltily, but no one had seen. Their eyes were all glued to the pool, where Dylan was racing through the water. I could tell that he wasn’t pushing it at all, but his “not pushing it” was faster than most people could even imagine.

  He finished a fifty fly in about nine seconds and everyone burst into applause. Dylan pulled off his goggles and shook his head, like a dog, then hoisted himself up out of the pool. Water streamed off him, rivulets running down his washboard stomach and down his legs. I watched it, in a kind of perverted way, then caught myself and looked back down at my flipflops. Knock it off, Julia!

  Hannah rushed over and handed him her pink butterfly towel, and for the first time, I saw him smile a little. He draped it over his shoulders, where it looked about as big as a napkin. I stepped forward and handed him his parka. He nodded at me, smile long gone. I nodded back.

  “Does anyone have any other questions? Only about swimming?” Peter said.

  They had a few more, then the kids lined up and showed Dylan how they could swim. He was pretty quiet, but he did give a few of them pointers. I took a bunch of pictures for our social media pages. Then he let the kids take pictures with him, either kneeling down next to them, or for some of the smallest swimmers, picking them up to sit on his strong arm. It was the cutest thing.

  Everyone was reluctant to leave, but finally we kicked everyone out, even Ruby the lifeguard, who suddenly found a lot of things she had to keep doing around the pool rather than taking off when her shift was over. I cleaned up around the pool deck, then slowly walked over to where Peter and Dylan were talking.

  “Stay,” Peter was saying to him. “Julia is going to do some laps too, and she can lock up after you’re done.” He waved me closer. “Jules, Dylan needs to get in some practice. Didn’t you say that you were swimming today before your lessons?”

  My heart was about to beat out of my chest, and I nodded at them. Talk! “Yes, I was going to stay.” They were both staring at me. “I can lock up.”

  Dylan sighed. “Good,” he said flatly.

  I noticed something. “Um, Peter?” I pointed to his hand.

  He was still holding the gold medal. “Oh! Here you go,” he said, grinning ruefully. “I never thought I’d see one of those in person.”

  Dylan took it, and carelessly dropped it on the pile of his clothes that I had neatly folded and put on a chair. “Can I come in tonight, too?”

  “I can check with the lifeguards to see if they can let you in,” Peter said.

  “I can do it. I can let him in,” I said to my flipflops. “After I’m done teaching my lessons.” I peeked up.

  Both men stared at me. “Thanks, Julia!” Peter said. “I’ll leave you two to figure out timing. Great to see you, Dylan. If I don’t run into you again, good luck at the Continental Championships.” They shook hands, and Peter waved to
me over his shoulder as he hurried out. He had two little kids, and he and his wife, a large animal vet, ran a tight schedule of splitting the childcare duties so they could both work.

  I walked over to the double doors and locked them behind him.

  “I’m doing about five thousand yards,” Dylan advised me.

  “Ok, sounds good,” I said back.

  “What?”

  “Sounds good!” I made myself yell. I was facing away from him, messing with my swim bag. I turned back around when I heard a splash and knew he was back in the water. Then I quickly took off my clothes, pulled on my cap and goggles, and also got in.

  One thing about swimming, it cleared my mind. Some people meditated or prayed; I swam. I went back and forth, starting with freestyle, moving to breaststroke. I switched to two kicks, one pull, slow and easy. I closed my eyes behind my goggles, just feeling the water.

  “Your hands are going down,” a deep voice told me, very close to my head.

  I flailed, sucked in some water, and started coughing.

  Dylan was hanging on the lane line, goggles pushed up on his forehead. “You’re pointing your hands down.”

  I grabbed the lane line too, and tried to clear my lungs. “I am?” I had been three lanes over from him. How had we ended up next to each other?

  He nodded at me. “Watch. This is you.” He did a few strokes, and I could clearly see the mistake.

  “Ok. I get it. Thank you.”

  “Your pulldown sucks, too,” he said, then continued down the pool.

  I couldn’t say anything. I remembered Dylan as a kid. I remembered him comforting me after I had gotten my first (and only) breaststroke DQ when I was nine. Where was that guy?

  Because this guy? He was kind of a jerk.

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