Surfacing (11 page)

But there Meghan was, just puttering around on her green, green lawn in her purple Gap shorts and matching T-shirt. And even though Maggie herself had invoked Meghan to entice Leah outside the apartment, Maggie also understood this to be big trouble.

Before Leah stepped into the pool, Maggie remembered thinking — realizing for the first time — how wrong it was to want someone you didn’t like, someone who didn’t like you. Maggie realized this was her first real
grown-up
thought, and it had come too late to do anything about it.

And just as Maggie was processing the newness of a thought that was so profound and complex, Leah went into the water. She didn’t step in or slowly submerge one body inch at a time, as they sometimes did together.

Toes, ankles, shins.

Shins, knees.

Shins, knees, thighs.

Shins, knees, thighs, tushy.

No, Leah dove in off the first step, and when she poked her head back out, her hair was slicked back and long down her back. Water trickled down her nose, and the sun reflected off her wet cheeks, and Maggie remembers thinking her sister was the prettiest, most special big sister in the whole world.

If Meghan Liggett wasn’t jealous by now, she should be.

“I’m not stupid, Maggie,” Nathan said. At Maggie’s request, they walked around the track, close but not touching.

Yes, he wanted to see Maggie again, but he was hurt. She had avoided him all Thanksgiving break. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve that. When she saw him in the cafeteria Monday morning, Nathan reluctantly agreed to talk.

“My dad has this saying,” Nathan started. He was prepared.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, well, my dad has a lot of sayings, and he’s always saying them and some of them make a lot of sense.”

“Well, tell me one that doesn’t make sense first, then,” Maggie said softly, as softly as she could.

By this point they were on the far side of the football field, the school, the tennis courts, and far from anybody who happened to be out at this time. Without saying so, they both slowed their pace, nearly to a stop.

“OK,” Nathan said. “It is what it is.”

“Huh?”

“That’s the saying. He says it a lot. He says, ‘It is what it is.’ And I tell him that doesn’t make any sense. It’s redundant and meaningless.”

Maggie laughed. “It’s just like saying, ‘Get over it.’ Deal with it. It’s not going to change. It is what it is.”

“Like ‘Fuck it,’ ” Nathan added.

“Yeah, ‘Fuck it.’ ”

Nathan stopped. “But you don’t strike me as a ‘Fuck it’ kind of girl. So why did you stop talking to me? What happened?”

She wouldn’t tell him, not the whole of it. There are certain ways to lie without lying at all, though it wasn’t telling the truth either. Lies by omission. Telling a version of the story that sticks to the facts, like syrup running back down the inside of the jar.

“I got overwhelmed by practice and my parents fighting all the time,” she offered. All true.

“I didn’t know,” Nathan said.

“And the coach has a lot of expectations. A lot of them on me.” Maggie tried kissing him, or she thought about kissing him, hoping she looked kissable and he would respond.

“So what’s the other saying?” she asked him.

“What other saying?”

“The other saying your dad told you.”

“Oh.” Nathan pulled her tightly toward him. He returned her almost kiss, his lips cold from the air and warm, both, and they started walking again. Side by side, bumping hips, brushing arms. “He says, ‘Never sell a good thing twice.’ ”

A television advertisement for some automobile or new food processor came to mind, with confetti and balloons, and then, finally, she got it:
Never sell a good thing twice
.

“Oh, you mean,
you
. Don’t sell yourself. Twice,” Maggie said. “Don’t sell yourself more than once, because once should be enough? Because you’re worth it, right?”

“Right. And this is twice already. I can’t go for three.”

Maggie told him, “You won’t have to.”

Nathan let his hand drift back and reach for hers. He held it out and waited. It was the quietest, kindest invitation.

“It must be nice to know you’re worth it,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Maggie took his hand, wrapping her fingers between his, and held it tight.

Lucid dreaming had become easier. By the time she came home from practice, ate dinner, and stayed up doing homework — well past the hour her body wanted to sleep and dreaming was within reaching distance — Maggie would lay her head down and had to spend most of her concentration trying
not
to fall asleep, not yet.

Not so fast
, she willed her mind.

But now, instead of creating scenarios that she wished would come true, she dreamed of moments she had spent with Nathan, moments that had already come true. She relived them, retold them, until she could feel them again. The one or two she liked best, she kept repeating, like a favorite book on the nightstand.

Behind her eyes, the images were not made of light waves or words, not sound the way sound travels through the air in waves, but something beyond language and beyond sight. Pure feeling. Maggie moved her hand to her belly and felt her own skin, soft and, between her legs, warm. The story began as memory. Nathan walked up behind her, turned her around, and placed his hands on the sides of her face, his fingers touching her neck, pulling her toward him. When she felt his lips on her forehead, then the bridge of her nose so that now she could smell him, the cotton of his clothing and the scent of his breath, a sensation drove through her body, all beginning and ending between her thighs. Nathan moved beside her, keeping one hand on her face and putting the other on the small of her back, so she felt trapped and supported. She felt both possessed and more powerful than she had ever felt before. He came to lie beside her, face-to-face.

When he pulled her to him, Maggie could feel the heat of his mouth on hers. She could feel the pressure of her own hand and hear her shallow breathing quicken.

In those words beyond language, Nathan told Maggie he loved her, and she felt it wholly as it flooded her entire body.

“You’re not eating,” Mr. Paris commented. Maggie’s dinner plate looked untouched.

“I’m waiting for Mom to come in.”

Mrs. Paris still had not sat down. They could hear her scraping plates, moving dishes around.

“Mom, come and sit down,” Maggie called into the kitchen.

“Be in in a minute. Just want to get these pots soaking. You know how brown sugar sticks. It’s something about the sugar caramelizing in the high heat. If I don’t get it soaking, it will never come clean.”

So her parents were fighting again.

Her mother’s voice arched in that false, high-pitched, overly explanatory way. Her father wouldn’t make eye contact when he talked, but he spoke as if nothing were wrong. Maggie wondered if they really thought they were fooling anyone. Or just themselves.

“Maggie, just eat. You know how your mother is,” Mr. Paris said.

A pot banged in the sink.

The boys had already finished, or hardly eaten, and darted from the table, diving onto the couch that acted as a separation to the living room. They were allowed to turn on the TV but had to keep the volume down. Lucas popped his head up with Dylan right beside him.

“Love Maggie is in,” he said.

Dylan finished: “Why that is she won’t eat.”

Mr. Paris raised his eyebrows, first at the boys, then at Maggie. But he seemed happy to have something to redirect the tension away from him.

“You have a boyfriend, Maggie?” Mr. Paris asked.

“No, Dad. I don’t have boyfriend. It’s just a boy I know.”

Mr. Paris smiled. “You kids. I don’t know what’s changed. When did it become uncool to be dating?”

“Nobody dates, Dad.”

“I believe you. I just think it’s sad, that’s all. Love is a beautiful thing.”

Maggie thought her mother might have clanked another plate into the dishwasher with a bit of extra aggression, but she couldn’t be sure.

Mrs. Paris appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. She had a wet dish towel flung over her shoulder, just in case anyone should doubt the work she had been doing. She put her hand on her hip.

Mrs. Paris looked at her husband, then at the heads of her two twin boys peering over the couch, and then at her remaining daughter. “Well, Maggie, invite him over for dinner sometime. Even if he’s not your boyfriend, he must have to eat,” Mrs. Paris said.

The girls’ swim team was granted permission to miss the second half of last period in order to get on the bus and make the two-hour drive to the Wilton YMCA. Large meets were, at least, less boring. There was more going on. Usually a sports store set up shop in a corner, selling bathing suits, caps, and goggles. Music might be pumped in. Hot dogs cooked. Cookies sold. There were swimmers in all stages of chlorine saturation and in various colorful outfits. A lot of the girls were decorating their pool shoes with plastic fruit or toy animals, which flopped around with every step.

Maggie walked around between races, imagining how she would report it back to Nathan, which things he would find funny or interesting. She had located the most remote toilet right away, a single handicapped bathroom on the opposite end of the building, which, thankfully, someone forgot to lock.

“I’m sorry I can’t be there,” Nathan had told her. He skipped last period to walk her to the bus. “But, here, take this.”

Maggie held out her hand. “What is it?”

“It’s something of me, so I can be there with you when you win. Don’t open it until you win.”

“And what if I don’t?” A bunch of faces were already looking out the windows of the bus. “What if I don’t win?”

“You will. Then you’ll open it.”

Her first event was the 800 free. She took second, a good seventeen points for the team. A win, certainly. Maggie dried off her hands and reached into her swim bag for the brown-paper package Nathan had given her. Underneath the first wrapper was a rectangle of aluminum foil, and inside that, covered in cellophane, was a perfectly shaped, perfectly baked loaf of oatmeal chocolate-chip banana bread. A small yellow Post-it note was pressed on top, with
A piece of me for you
written in boy scrawl. And just as she thought of needing one, Maggie noticed a white plastic knife wedged on the side, which brought an enormous smile to her face.

“It’s looking good.” Julie bounced over to where Maggie was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the Y lobby. “Ooh, what’s that?”

“It’s banana bread.”

“Yum, it’s all good. And hey, with your win, we only have to place in the four-by-one-hundred medley relay and we go to the state semifinals, and if we win those, we go to the state finals, and then to Nationals — and that’s in Florida. Cecily is already talking about getting us a side trip to Disney.”

“That’s cool. Wanna slice?”

“Of course,” Julie said. She picked up the Post-it. “Nathan? My God, he bakes, too?”

“Apparently so.” Maggie thought about a little boy burning himself at the stove who now makes banana bread, and she smiled.

“Oh, my God. With chocolate chips.”

“Umm, I know.”

“You deserve this, Maggie.” Julie licked the crumbs from her fingers. “OK, maybe you don’t — but I do.”

“I know.”

Since the backstroke begins in the water, it is always the first leg of the relay, to avoid a second swimmer landing on anyone’s head. After that, the relay is arranged by speed: breast, fly, free. Maggie had the last leg, the fastest time and stroke: front crawl.

She watched Natasha Beard coming in a few lengths behind the lead swimmer. Natasha had a powerful kick. It propelled her out of the water, her arms arching, her mouth wide open to suck in that beautiful air, but there would be seconds to catch up, fractions of a second to pass. The sounds across the water were deafening: people were not only cheering but screaming. One team would advance; one would see the end of their swim season.

The key was to launch yourself off the starting blocks at the exact perfect moment that your teammate touched the automatic touch pad. A second too early and you risk disqualification; a second late could cost the race.

The splashing became louder, each water molecule spinning, shaken from its principle and sent off into space, longing to return to become one again. It was as if Maggie could hear each one calling to her, pleading with her, telling her when to dive, propelling her through the water.

The ride home was quiet. Coach Mac asked everyone to save their celebrations and focus on what they needed to do to win the state semifinals. Most of the girls were exhausted at this point, leaning their heads against the window or one another. It was nearly ten p.m. Some of the team had been allowed, with prior written permission, to go home with their parents, but most of the girls rode the bus. The next meet, which would leave only six teams competing in the finals, was less than a week away.

Maggie had told her dad he could drive straight home. She told him she had a ride. She knew Nathan would be waiting for her in the high-school parking lot, and he was.