Surviving High School (4 page)

Emily bit down a little too hard on an almond, and a burst of pain filled her jaw as her teeth knocked against each other. The thought of Dominique putting her tongue in Ben’s mouth made her want to either cry or gag. Possibly both.

“I wish,” said Dominique. “I was
totally
ready to jump him when we got to the bedroom. But then Spencer was waiting there!”

Emily’s shoulders relaxed a little.
Thank you, Spencer.

“Spencer?” Lindsay asked. “As in ‘Go Lizards’ Spencer?”

“I don’t get why Ben is friends with that guy.
Such
a tool.”

“Yeah. He’s definitely a fixer-upper and a half. His body’s not so bad, though. If you like, you know, bodybuilder-type guys—”

“Which I don’t,” said Dominique. “Ben and I had to sit talking to him for, like, half an hour while he told me about his dad’s landscaping business.
And
he spilled his drink on my cell. I’m totally unfriending him on Facebook.”

“What about Ben?” asked Lindsay. “Did anything happen at all?”

“He’d probably have been all over me if Spencer hadn’t gotten in the way—I mean, I
did
catch him checking me out while we were sitting there, before he ended up leaving me alone with Spencer for the rest of the night. I think it’s one of those things where he wants to be a good guy and let Spencer have a chance with me first. So all I have to do now is make sure Ben knows I’m interested in
him
and not his friend—then he’ll be all mine.”

“But wait,” said Lindsay, “Ben never came back to the party.”

“He said he was tired and that he was going to his room to sleep.”

“So he totally just crawled into bed at eleven at night in the middle of a party that
he
was throwing? Isn’t that, I don’t know, a little psycho or something? I mean, yes, he’s überhot and smart, and his party
was
pretty awesome, but—”

Emily peeked over her shoulder to get a look at Dominique’s
face, trying to see if she was truly hurt over Ben ditching her at the party or if she just saw him as another boy-toy plaything. It was right then that Emily spotted
him
.

Nick Brown walked into the cafeteria, a bulky camera in hand, and began to take photos of random people eating. He was taller than she remembered. Maybe he’d grown over the summer. Worst of all was that he looked almost cute: The gash on his face had healed, leaving only the slightest hint of a scar. Yet another injustice: The boy responsible for her sister’s death was left with barely a mark himself.

“… I guess Ben’s got ‘issues’ or something.…”

Despite his new height, Nick probably weighed the same now as he had then. He’d become painfully skinny, almost skeletal. His black T-shirt hung loose against his arms and chest, and his skinny hipster jeans looked like they were made for some too-thin fashion model. His arms strained against his massive camera, a huge Nikon with a telephoto lens and a thick strap that ran around his neck.

“… would still totally let him take me to homecoming…”

Nick approached a group of students, who looked up at him, confused.

“Yearbook candids,” he said, and the tableful of people all swarmed to be in front of the camera, some smiling, others making stupid faces or
V
s with their fingers.
Click.
The flash went off, and Nick walked over to another group.

Emily turned away so that he wouldn’t see her face as he got closer. She sat frozen in place. It was too late now. He’d see her if she stood. How could she have been so stupid, sitting
here in the middle of the cafeteria just so she could listen in on some dumb story about a party?

Would Sara have sat here at lunch like this, listening to gossip? Of course not. Sara was the Machine. She would have been in the weight room working on her leg strength or hunched over her homework, getting an early start so she’d have more time to sleep later. And now Sara couldn’t do any of those things. Because of him.

“Yearbook,” said Nick as he arrived at Dominique and Lindsay’s table. Emily didn’t dare look over at them, but she could imagine them leaning up against each other, smiling evilly. The camera clicked, and the flash caught the corner of Emily’s eye. She heard footsteps. Someone was approaching her from behind.

“Yearbook,” he said. Emily didn’t turn. She felt him standing behind her. There would be no escape now. The hairs on her arms rose, and her heart began to beat double time. The light from the windows pulsed in and out with each rapid breath she took. She sat paralyzed.

“Yearbook,” he repeated.

She turned her head ever so slightly so that she could look at him out of the corner of her eye. When he saw her profile, the blood seemed to drain out of Nick’s face.

“—Sara?”

Emily steeled her jaw, grabbed her backpack, and walked away as fast as she could, leaving her food on the table. Hearing her sister’s name in itself was enough to make her want to cry—but hearing it from
him
? She felt his eyes burning
through her back as she walked. All she wanted was to make it to the girls’ room before she started crying.

By the time school ended, Emily was mostly recovered from the drama earlier that day. Still, she was in no mood to endure further stress, and she rushed to the locker room as she usually did, hoping to beat the other girls there and change before they arrived.

Throughout her elementary school swim practices, Emily had seen nothing odd about stripping naked around her teammates. She’d viewed her body as a vehicle built for motion: the twin engines of her arms and legs, the drag-resistant slope of her shoulders.

Then in seventh grade she’d sprouted breasts, and everything had changed. Suddenly, the machine of her body carried two useless lumps, slowing her times and getting in the way of her arms—and she’d become instantly shy about stripping down in front of the other girls.

She’d started changing in bathroom stalls until Dominique caught on and began speculating that she was hiding something:
“I’m not saying anything, but don’t you think Emily kind of looks like a guy?”
Finally, Emily forced herself back into the locker room, and although the rumors of a secret Y chromosome subsided, a new set of insults emerged.

Dominique always seemed to notice Emily’s “deformities” first. She’d glance over at Emily as she was changing and deliver her observations as either backhanded compliments or annoying questions.

“It’s awesome that your hips are so small. That probably decreases your drag through the water.”

“You’re lucky your feet are so huge. They’re almost like flippers or something. Like a duck.”

“Do you think having one breast slightly bigger than the other makes you curve to the right as you swim? How do you adjust for that?”

And thus began Emily’s new swimsuit-changing system. To avoid Dominique and the other girls, she would always arrive at practice first and leave last. Her dad called it dedication to the sport; Emily called it self-preservation.

As soon as she got to the locker room, Emily pulled out her suit and changed. Once the nylon fabric covered her, she felt an immediate sense of relief. There’d be no new insult from Dominique today. As Emily gathered her hair beneath her rubber swim cap, she heard other swimmers approaching, their laughter echoing off the locker room’s tiled walls.

“I heard she was crying at lunch today,” said Dominique as the door creaked open. “Paula totally heard her sobbing in a bathroom stall.”

“Over a boy, you think?” asked Lindsay.

Over Sara
, thought Emily.
Would they still talk like that if they knew what I was really crying about? Probably.

“As if a boy would even touch her,” said Dominique. “Emily—she’s basically not a person. Dating her would be like dating a toaster. She’s a robot. A swimbot. Oh! Swimbot. I think
someone
just got a new nickname!”

The girls appeared from behind a row of lockers and ceased their conversation as they noticed Emily. An awkward silence settled in the room.

“Hello,” said Emily with a half smile, hoping to pretend she’d heard nothing. Dominique, though, had other plans.

“Hel-lo,” mocked Dominique in a robot voice. “I. Am. Swimbot.” She moved her arms in jerky motions, like Emily had seen b-boys do on
America’s Best Dance Crew
. “Hel-lo. Hu-man.”

Lindsay was in hysterics, hiding her smile behind a hand and crying with laughter.

“Take me. To. Your. Leader,” continued Dominique.

“That’s an alien,” corrected Emily. “Not a robot.”

“Alien. Does. Not. Compute.”

More girls had arrived and were peeking around the corner, laughing at Dominique’s impression.

“Just stop it, okay?” said Emily.

“Stop. What?” asked Dominique. “Need. Fuel. Give me. Weird. Almond. Butter. Flax. Seed.”

Just hold it together
, thought Emily.
Don’t let her see how it gets to you.
Keeping her cool would have been hard enough under normal circumstances. But today? After seeing Nick Brown in the cafeteria? After hearing him call her Sara?

“Nobody. Asks me. Out,” Dominique continued. “Why don’t. Human boys. Like me?”

The growing crowd of girls laughed even harder, and Emily felt her face go red.

“I haven’t seen you with a whole lot of boyfriends, either,
Dom,” said a voice from behind Emily. “I think I’m starting to see why.”

Emily turned around to see Samantha Hill, the captain of the girls’ varsity team, staring down at Dominique. Although only five foot seven, Samantha had a presence that made her seem six feet tall. It didn’t hurt that she was model-gorgeous without a speck of makeup. She had supposedly thrown last year’s prom king out of a speeding car when he tried to touch her leg on the way home from the dance. She definitely wasn’t above hitting a girl.

The locker room went silent as Samantha leaped to the top of a wooden bench.

“Listen up, ladies. Save your insults for those girls from Wilson or Jackson High. Dominique, you two are teammates. You’re worried Emily might be better in the pool? Work harder. You think you’re so hot that you want to offer Emily some dating advice? Get your own boyfriend first. And don’t flatter yourself. I’ve seen you getting out of the water and without that mountain of concealer, you look like a before model in an acne-cream ad.”

Samantha hopped down from the bench, opened a locker, and took out her suit. The crowd of girls was still staring at her, too shocked to speak. Samantha turned back and, noticing they were still there, barked, “We’re done here. Go. Now.” The girls scattered like flies off a kicked Dumpster.

“Thanks,” Emily said when the other girls had scurried to their lockers. She turned away quickly, trying to avoid staring directly at Samantha as she pulled off her clothes.

“Don’t think I’m your friend,” said Samantha, glancing at her. Then, after a second, she added, “You know, you remind me of your sister. I mean, you look just like her.” There was something odd about the way Samantha said it, though, as if she’d known Sara pretty well. As far as Emily knew, Sara had barely talked to the other kids at school. She’d certainly never brought any friends home, or even mentioned anyone by name.

“Yeah, we used to get that a lot,” said Emily. She paused before asking, “Were you and Sara—friends?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Samantha, pulling on her suit. “We—never mind.” Her eyes moved back and forth, as if she were thinking intently about something. Finally, she closed her locker door and tucked her hair under a swim cap. “What a hassle,” she muttered, shoving loose black strands under the rubber. “You ever just think of shaving it all off?”

“Not really,” said Emily, wondering why Samantha had changed the subject so suddenly. She tried to imagine the beautiful girl in front of her with a shaved head.

“Hair,” said Samantha, pulling her swim cap on tight, “is overrated.”

As an elementary-schooler, Emily had gone on a class trip to Oregon and watched the salmon swimming upstream. The fish beat their tails fast against the current, leaped from the water, and then dove back in, defying the river to push them to the ocean.

“Mrs. Turner,” she remembered saying, “they’re doing the breaststroke.”

Since then, Emily had imagined herself as a salmon when she did the breaststroke, reaching her arms forward and yanking her torso out of the water. The stroke was the sport’s messiest and most violent—requiring the swimmer to assault the water’s surface.

Today, Emily attacked the pool with particular fury, pretending it was Dominique’s stupid robot face. But as she completed a few laps, she realized it was something else that had truly upset her. Emily’s conversation with Samantha replayed in her head:

“Were you and Sara—friends?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Sara had never mentioned any enemies, but she must have had them. Any great swimmer did. Yet something in Samantha’s tone had indicated more than an in-the-pool rivalry. But what else could it have been? As far as she knew, there
was
no Sara outside of the pool. She was the Machine, built to crush records and nothing more.

When Emily reached the far end of the lane, she realized she’d been swimming at full speed, blowing past the girls in the other lanes. As she grabbed the side of the pool, she sucked air, and her arms began to ache.

Great
, she thought.
And I’ve still got two hours of practice to go.

As Emily’s breathing evened out, she looked up to see her father silhouetted against the sharp overhead lights. His impressive gut cast a large shadow over her.

“Kessler!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Kessler?
she thought.
Really?

“Just taking a little break—
Coach
.”

A few of the other girls were treading water, watching this little exchange.

“And who around here said you could do that?” Coach Kessler looked slowly and deliberately over each of his shoulders as if checking for phantom assistants. “You stop when I tell you to stop.”

“But, Dad—”

“Coach.”

“Fine. Whatever.”