In Deep (2 page)

Today my mom's actually crying. I clench my quads tight, and squeeze my rib cage toward my bellybutton a few times. Try to exhale in one long stream. Who knows what's gotten into her. Maybe it's because summer's almost here, though still it's three months or something until the anniversary. It's like the cemetery visits have made Mom more goopily nostalgic than she was when he died. Then, she was just—blank. Weak and exhausted all the time, like everything had gotten sucked out of her. There was nothing I could do. Until Louis came along.

“I'm grateful to him,” Louis murmurs, rubbing Mom's shoulders. “Every day.”

He would squash you,
I think. But Louis is being nice. He's taking care of us. Trying to.

So I stand there, arms down by my sides, counting breaths. Eventually we leave. I don't say good-bye, though Mom does, every time.

MONDAY MORNING, AS SOON AS
the alarm beeps from my bedside table, my mind is up, knowing what I need to do—mentally packing snacks, pulling on my clothes—but I let myself lie there another ten seconds. Thirty. The idea of thirty more is often tempting, but then the training kicks in and I sit up, put my feet on the floor. Thanks to days and weeks and months of this, it doesn't take much to push myself up and through the steps. Bathroom. Pee. Pajamas off. Pull on any kind of clothes—usually cutoff sweatpants and a long-sleeve T-shirt. Make bed, pound pillow. Accept banana and protein bar from Louis, who is drinking his first cup of coffee. Eat. Pull on ball cap hanging by the door. Grab gear bag as we go out into the garage to get in the car, head to school.

I used to complain, like everybody else. I used to moan. When I first started swimming, I hated it. Hated Louis, in particular, for being so peppy about the whole thing, excited to connect with his new stepdaughter, since he'd never been married and had no kids of his own. The swimming thing was just a random project I guess they both picked for me. But then, sometime in the fall of eighth grade, it became clear to me and everyone else that I was actually good. I could go faster than half my team without even trying. I made Junior Cut before anyone expected.

Somewhere in there I stopped complaining and started appreciating how tough I was getting, how lean and strong I was compared to everyone else. I went through puberty like normal, sure, but with all my swimming, everything on me stayed hard and flat. Other girls started getting boobs and hips, but I was shaped more like a two-by-four than a tart. And the weird thing was, it didn't bother me. It was like my body could do this thing that nobody else's could. I was strong and I was fast. I could hold my breath longer than anyone I knew.

I was also reading and watching a lot of interviews at that time—it's stupid to talk about Lochte or Phelps, but it's stupider not to pay attention to winners like that—and they kept echoing what Van was trying to teach me: That to really succeed, you have to not think about winning or losing. You have to think about nothing at all and just swim. And so then I got this idea in my head to see what, exactly, this body of mine could really
do if I got my mind fully out of the way and disciplined myself to do just that. How fast I could go. How far I could swim. How unbeatable I could be.

There were a series of tricks and things I had to use at first—games I'd play with my brain and ways I'd secretly reward or punish myself—but eventually they worked. Now, no matter how tired I am, no matter what's going on, or how tempting another few minutes of sleep might seem, once I get myself up and started, it's like my body just knows what to do.

The best thing is, it always works.

I can't say the same thing for Louis. Unlike me, he needs about three cups of coffee and some kind of sugary carbohydrate before he can function, and every morning it's like he's dragging himself out of the house at 6:45 for the first time. When I get down to the kitchen, he's leaning against the counter and staring into his cup like he can't remember why it's there.

“Louis?”

“Mmph?” Bags under his eyes. Paunch over his belt.

“You ready?” I'm laughing at him. He knows it.

“How many more weeks of this?”

“Five. And then we get to start summer practice.” I clap my hands cheerleader-style.

“It's an hour later than all this noise, at least.”

I pat him on the shoulder and give him a little shove toward the garage door.

•  •  •

It's not that he's not into my swimming. Once I joined the club, Louis was more serious about it than I was in some ways. He even changed his work schedule around so he can take me to school, go into work, and then leave an hour earlier than everyone else to take me to practice. The day after my sixteenth birthday, Louis took me for my driver's test, just for safety's sake, but even though we're better off now, we still can't afford another car. This deal works out okay. That there's a Dunkin' Donuts between my school and his office is an added bonus for him, but he really does care. And I know it.

We leave our neighborhood, the radio droning classic rock, though the volume's barely up. As we pull onto Monroe, I point to a dusty maroon station wagon with a low-hanging back end.

“On his way home from a janitorial shift at one of the office complexes downtown.”

This is our game. A way to not just sit in the car silently focused on how tired we are or feel like we have to talk about anything else, either. I started it my first summer practice with the club as one of the ways to trick myself. Louis still enjoys it, even during the school year. It's another thing that's comfortingly automatic about my life: playing this game with Louis every morning instead of anything else.

“Which complex downtown?”

“Um . . .” I try to remember any names.

Louis makes the sound of a buzzer and slaps the meaty heel of his hand on the steering wheel. “Too slow, too slow. What about her?”

We're passing the gas station that's a famous hangout for hookers and drug deals.

I make the buzzer noise myself. “Too easy.”

“Okay, this guy.”

And like that, all the way to school.

THAT I DON'T CARE MUCH
about school is an understatement. But it isn't because I'm so absorbed in my swimming. (Though that is a mighty convenient justification, for many teachers.) Instead it's the senseless, mind-numbingness of the whole situation. The timed bells. The shuffling to the lockers. The disgusting cafeteria. The way we're all supposed to be so excited about cheerleading and baseball scores and yearbook and all that. People say sixteen is the best year of your life—they make such a stupid deal of it. But sixteen? The pinnacle? Not for me, thanks. Of course it's true that even the best swimmers have pretty short careers, but that's why I'm looking for a swim scholarship to a decent college, away from here. It's not like I haven't thought this through. Whether my high school peers
know it or not, there needs to be something beyond all this, and for me swimming's the way I'm going to get it.

Maybe it's the classes I'm in—why school mostly sucks. Maybe in AP and IB and Advanced Gifted Superfantastic Film Studies it's all academic overabundant enthusiasm all the time. But I wouldn't know. A lot of the other club members are hard-core students. They do nothing but swim and homework. They obsess about their GPAs, their academic standing, and being in the tenth percentile. Eight hours of sleep a day, and all that. But when I decided to stop thinking and just swim, school fell under the no-thinking umbrella, too. I just didn't see the point. Not here. Not in this place, with its cookie-cutter conversation and overworked, underpaid teachers tiredly reigning over classrooms full of kids whose parents call to hassle them if their precious baby gets less than a B+.

So I don't get to talk about
The Great Gatsby
with Mrs. Bowles and all the lit heads. I don't frown over string theory in Advanced Physics II or whatever, and I don't get to solve the math problems of the universe in Quadruple Trig 1000. Instead I'm as basic as they get: regular English (Mrs. Drummond, who thinks that twenty-first-century high school students are still interested in Newbery Medal–winners from 1964); PE (ha); Math for Dummies (really it's Algebra II with Dr. Herrington, who was cool about it when he failed me last year, and let me take it again instead of doing summer school); Spanish II (easy,
because Señora Gupta is half-blind); Enviro Science (with Ms. Chu, who's actually pretty cool); and the one semi-interesting class, Dr. Woodham's U.S. Conflicts, which is just one of the many alterna-history courses this school is famous for offering.

As long as I make it through without fucking up enough to get me thrown out of the club, and as long as I nail National Cut at State next month, it doesn't matter. It's not that I don't want to learn something halfway useful or interesting. It's just that I know I can't do it here. So I get up early and walk through my classes. I don't make myself a disciplinary problem, but I don't really make an effort, either. When the bell rings at the end of the day, I walk out the door and take myself to the pool, which is where I'll earn my way to something better, pretty much anywhere I want.

Having Charlie with me at school has helped—at least, lately. We met on the school team at the start of freshman year and became team pals right away. We rolled our eyes together behind the coach's back, joked around. Buddies, whatever. But I didn't stay on that team long, because, honestly, the team sucks, and I'd heard about the club, which was way more vigorous. Charlie had a girlfriend on the team, this girl Sarah. They were pretty inseparable. After I quit, I didn't see much of him, even though he lives just a couple blocks away. I didn't even know he and Sarah had broken up until Coach Brubeck asked me to go to a meet with them at UGA last month, just to help up their scores and times. On the bus back, tired and pizza-drowsy, Charlie told me
all about it—how serious Sarah'd gotten, talking about the future all the time. He said he missed me being around, that the team wasn't the same since I'd left. And I ended up kissing him. I don't know. He's good-looking and funny. A relationship-relationship isn't anything I have time for or interest in, but having someone to get it on with is way better than not, and plus, the extra tiredness after we hang out helps me sleep better.

Today at lunch he's at our table before I am, and as soon as I walk into the cafeteria, he smiles and raises one hand in greeting. I go over, drop my bag in my chair, and head straight for the rack of still-warm plates at the end of the salad bar. Following me in line, he rubs the tight spot between my shoulder blades, but I roll myself out from under his hand, pretending I'm stretching.

“You okay?” I can sense, just by the tone of his voice, that his dark eyebrows are scrunched down.

“I just don't understand why every teacher has to give us a fucking progress report today. PE? Are you serious? Do I care that I have a C in that class? Absolutely not, Coach Bradley. Not in the slightest.”

I'm practically flinging banana peppers onto my plate. And, screw—most of the spinach is wet and wilted.

“Month of school left,” he says. “Some people want to know.”

“Yeah, well, I don't. Just gimme my 2.75 and let me get out of here.”

“You worried about Conflicts?”

I ignore him, continuing down the salad bar to the black olives and the feta, mounding my salad high and dousing everything with plenty of oil and vinegar.

“I'm sure it's not as bad as you think,” he tries again when we're back at our chairs. “And if it really is, you still have time. The exam's the main thing.”

Charlie took U.S. Conflicts last year. This year he's on to Modern Presidential Campaign Strategies or some crap like that. The AP version, I think. If they have that.

“Woodham's not the extra-credit type,” I remind him. I know. I asked about it when my third D shook a bit of my confidence about gliding through this class like the others.
Why would I give you extra, Ms. Polonowski,
he'd said,
when it's apparent you're barely interested in getting any credit at all?
Pompous prick-mouth.

Charlie chomps a forkful of red cabbage. There's a glaze of French dressing along the right hump of his upper lip. He talks around it. “Maybe I can help.”

“You'll really give me your tests from last year?” I feel halfway hopeful.

He fake-glowers at me. “No. But I can look at yours, give you some pointers, and let you know what to focus on for the next three weeks.”

“Jerk.”

He pauses, about to put another bunch of cabbage into his mouth, still amused. “You're gonna have to learn sometime, Ivy League.”

“You know I don't care about Ivy League.”

“Sure you don't.”

He's teasing, but it's stupid.

“You may think that the National Merit Scholar Jerkoff Program sounds like fun,” I say, “but I'm not interested in spending four years pretending I care about the Pythagorean philosopher's pee hole. Or even discovering nuclear fusion. It just needs to be something besides some Podunk community college around here, is all. I'm not going to turn into my mom.”

“Whoa, okay.”

I stab my salad. Charlie waits. When he starts up again, instead of being snarky or impatient, he's calm and almost sweet. “No matter where your swimming takes you, you're eventually going to have to study, Polo. Woodham's good practice. And you like that class.”

“Woodham's a good asshole is what.”

“All you have to do is pass the exam, Brynn. It's not that big a deal.”

“I know,” I grumble.

“You won't have to go to summer school. Your training will be fine.”

I spear the olives and peppers on my plate. I know Charlie
wants me to look at him. I know he wants to try to calm me down, reassure me, or whatever he thinks I need right now. But the only thing that'll make me feel better is getting into the pool and swimming this off. Part of what we're also not talking about here is that since I'm a better swimmer than Charlie is, it's possible I could get into a school that rejects him, even though he makes way better grades. Even if there has to be summer school, which of course there can't be.