Surviving High School (19 page)

Sara had proved that you could be a record-setting athlete while still living a full life, albeit in secret. In the end, she’d died too early, but it had been an accident, something that could have happened to anyone. Emily couldn’t go on living her life based on a random car crash. Sara was dead. Nothing would change that. But Emily was alive, and it was up to her—her and no one else—to build the kind of life she wanted.

“I’m not going.” Emily said it looking right across the dinner table at her father, daring him to blink first. The family had gathered around the table to make sugar-free, flaxseed-infused gingerbread cookies, the only holiday treat Emily was traditionally allowed to eat.

“Going where?” asked her mother, pressing a snowman-shaped cookie cutter into some rolled-out dough.

“To Junior Nationals.” Emily, favoring a knife over the cookie cutters, was carving out a girl in a pretty dress.

“You’re not going?” asked her dad. And then louder. “You’re not
going
?!”

“Oh, so you
can
hear me from time to time.” Emily finished carving the hem of the dress. Not bad. Maybe if she stopped swimming, she could take up baking.

“Since you were old enough to walk—even before that—you’ve been swimming, trying to win races,” said her dad, pressing a Christmas-tree-shaped cookie cutter angrily into his dough. “And now you’re not
going
?”

Emily took a bite of raw dough, then slowly and deliberately started rolling out a fresh sheet before responding.

“You were the one who didn’t come to practice today,” she said. “You said it was over.”

“I was
hoping
you’d redouble your efforts!” he shouted as he stood. “Usually when someone tells you that you can’t do something, people in
this
family react by proving them wrong. I remember telling Sara once that she should just give up. She wouldn’t get out of the pool until I practically fished her out with a cleaning net!”

“Right,” said Emily, mashing a snowflake-shaped cookie cutter over and over into her dough. “Because Sara was your perfect daughter, right? Never broke the rules. Never did anything wrong.”

“That’s right!” he said. “She didn’t argue. She didn’t break her regimen. She didn’t waste her time sneaking around with boys when she should have been sleeping!”

“Do you really believe that?” asked Emily. She kept mashing down the cookie cutter, pressing overlapping shapes over each other, so that her dough was nearly shredded. “Really. I’m curious. Because I want to know if you’re just lying to me, or if you’re also lying to yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

For a moment, Emily looked away from him and at the empty chair that had once been Sara’s. For the first time she could remember, her sister’s absence didn’t physically sting her.

“I talked to Nick Brown today,” she said, putting the cookie cutter down. “He showed me photos—”

“How dare you bring up that boy’s name in my house!”

“I’ll say his name all I want, Dad! Now tell me. Did you know?”

“I didn’t want you to think of her like that,” he said, his voice shaking. “Better that you saw her at her best—”

“—than the way she really was?” Emily finished his sentence.

“That boy—” he started, his voice growing firmer, angrier.

“Nick’s not the villain here. No one is. You know what the truth is? There was a terrible accident. And now Sara’s dead. But I’m not. And I’m tired of you using some imaginary version of Sara as an excuse to ruin my life. So I’m not going to Junior Nationals. I’m going to homecoming. And if that means you can’t be my coach anymore, that’s okay. Maybe that’s even for the best.”

Emily’s dad turned to her mom.

“Are you hearing this? She obviously won’t listen to me. Maybe you can reason with her.”

“Paul,” she said. “She
is
being reasonable.”

“Great. So now you’re taking her side.”

“Our deal has always been that you can push the girls as hard as you want—because this is their dream, too. But it sounds like this isn’t Emily’s dream anymore. We always promised each other we’d never be
those
parents, living out our dreams through our daughters.”

“She’s fifteen!” Emily’s dad shouted. “She doesn’t know what she wants!”

“Yes, I do,” said Emily. “I want this to be over. I just want a normal life with boys and friends, and staying out past ten at night, and if that means giving up swimming—”

“I won’t lose another daughter!” he shouted, his voice beginning to shake again. “I won’t. Don’t you get it? She lied to us, Em. She stayed out with that boy, and look what happened. I can’t lose you the same way.”

For the first time since Sara’s funeral, Emily could see tears in his eyes.

“Dad, we all miss Sara,” said Emily, fighting to keep her own voice steady. “But what happened to her was an accident. And I’m sorry if you can’t accept it, but that’s how it happened. It was no one’s fault. But it’s not an excuse to ruin my life, too. I’m out, Dad. I’m done with it. The training, the diet, the swimming. All of it.”

“Fine,” he said, turning away. “You’ve made your choice,
Em. Just don’t expect to come crawling back to me, asking me to be your coach, when you realize what you’ve thrown away.”

He left the room, and Emily and her mother sat quietly at the table as they heard him stomping up the stairs.

“Mom,” said Emily, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

But before she could say another word, her mother had come over and was hugging her close, just as she had when Emily was younger.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” her mom said. “You know how your father can be. He’s like you, entirely stubborn. But give him a day or two, and he’ll see the light.” She stroked Emily’s hair and kissed the top of her head. “Now tell me, who’s this boy who’s taking you to the dance?”

The next morning, as Emily spied on him from behind a nearby classroom, Ben Kale walked slowly down the hall. The usual bounce had gone out of his step, and his perpetual smile had been replaced with a blank stare. As he got to his locker, he found Spencer waiting for him.

“Dude,” said Spencer. “Dude! You’ll never guess who I’m taking to homecoming.”

Homecoming.
The very word made Ben cringe.

“Who?”

“Lindsay, man! Apparently she’s been mad crushing on me all year! She’s into my bod, naturally. I just wish I’d known sooner, you know? Then I wouldn’t have wasted so much time on Dominique.”

“Yeah,” said Ben distractedly. “Sure.”

“I know, I know! I mean, I think maybe Lindsay started liking me so much
because
I was just going after Dom and ignoring her, right? Girls are totally like that. I can’t believe it. I totally gamed her without even meaning to!”

Spencer raised his hand for a high five, but Ben ignored it, opening his locker. When he did, a bouquet of roses fell out and landed at his feet. Ben knelt down to pick them up.

“Is there a note?” asked Spencer. “Who are they from?”

“Who do you think?” asked Emily, stepping out from the doorway of the classroom.

“You broke into my locker?” asked Ben, smiling.

“Compared to swimming a fifty-meter backstroke in under twenty-nine seconds, breaking into your locker was easy.”

“Spence, give us a minute,” said Ben.

“Sure thing,” Spencer said with a wink.

As Spencer took off down the hall, he shot them a double thumbs-up.

“Thanks for the roses,” said Ben. “They’re pretty—and unexpected.”

“My mom helped me pick them out.”

“How nice of her.”

“So, I heard this rumor that your terrible ex-girlfriend may have dumped you, and that now you don’t have a homecoming date.”

Ben shrugged. “You know how rumors are. Truth is, she’s not as bad as everyone says. In fact, I might still kind of like her.”

“So if she were, hypothetically, to ask you to the dance—”

“Hypothetically?”

In answer, she leaned forward and kissed him, pressing him up against his locker. She hadn’t planned to. But it was something she had to do. Clearly Ben hadn’t prepared, either. His lips were tight at first, and his face was scratchy with two-day-old stubble. After a second, though, his lips relaxed and turned soft against hers, and she could feel him there, entirely present, his whole essence concentrated in his mouth against hers.

“Emily,” he said, “I—I thought you wanted to wait for, you know, the right moment.”

She smiled. “I did.”

“So then—we’re going to the dance?”

She leaned in once again and kissed him softly. “You’ve got yourself a date.”

Emily and Ben weren’t the only couple to get together just in time for homecoming. In the locker room after school that day, Samantha stopped by the bench where Emily was changing and told her she was going to the dance with Nick Brown.

“Just as friends,” she added. “He told me that the two of you got a chance to talk about a few things the other day. That’s good. I figure it’s senior year. Time to let go of some old grudges. Of course, you’re just a freshman. I guess you’re three years ahead of the game.”

“That’s sweet,” said Emily. “I’m happy for you guys.”

“Cool. Anyway, I’d better get changed. Hey, aren’t you usually already in your swimsuit by now? What gives?”

“I’m not on such a tight schedule anymore. It’s time for me to start changing with the rest of you.”

“Cool,” said Samantha, opening her locker. “Well, I’ll see you out in the pool.”

For the first time in weeks, Emily’s arms and legs didn’t ache as she swam. She’d gotten to bed early the night before, after talking things out with her mom, and instead of tossing and turning as she worried about her messed-up life, she’d gone to sleep the moment her head touched the pillow. She’d woken up this morning feeling lucid and rested for the first time since she’d started her late-night dates with Ben.

As she swam up and down the length of the pool, she realized that for the first time in a long time, she was actually enjoying it.

When she got home that night, Emily walked into her room to find her computer on her desk, just as if it had never left. Sitting next to it was a brand-new phone.

“I, uh, may have taken my frustrations out on your old one,” said her dad. “Sorry about that.”

“You’re apologizing for giving me a new phone?”

He rubbed the small bald spot at the back of his head and looked at his shoes.

“Look, Em. Your mother and I have been talking, and I guess you could say—I guess you could say I overreacted.
Don’t get me wrong, it kills me seeing you give up on our dream like this. Really kills me. But it has to be
our
dream. It’s like your mom said. I can’t relive my swimming days through you.”

“So, we’re okay?”

He walked toward her and gave her an awkward one-arm hug. It was a start.

“I should probably hit the hay,” he said. “But you—you go to sleep when you want. Not after midnight or anything, but it doesn’t have to be ten thirty anymore. We can be—flexible.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Oh, I, uh, almost forgot,” he said. He brought his left arm around from behind his back to reveal that it was draped with shimmering blue fabric: her dress.

A surge of happiness filled Emily’s chest, and a smile broke out on her face.

“I thought you would have torn it to shreds,” she said.

“I wanted to. Your mother practically pried it out of my hands.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “I have to confess, I’m still hoping you’ll be wearing a swimsuit instead of this on the day in question.”

Emily shook her head and didn’t say a word.

“No permanent damage done, I hope.”

He handed her the dress, and she examined it closely, looking for ripped fabric, but no, the dress was fine. Not even so much as a loose thread.

“’Night, kiddo,” he said, and left, closing the door behind him.

Later that night, a few minutes after eleven o’clock, Emily booted up her computer and found Kimi online. They still hadn’t spoken since their argument outside the cafeteria.