A Girl's Life Online (15 page)

In the morning I felt even more distraught than I had the night before. To make matters worse, my mom had bought bagels and cereal the night before for a team breakfast in our room. While it was still dark outside, the entire team filed in to eat. It was so early that no one was completely awake. But the silence, a kind of silence I hate, was caused by something more than sleepiness. Some people refer to it as an “elephant in the room.” I guess that is the best phrase to describe it. Everyone knew what had happened, and no one said a word about it.

My mom tried to start a conversation. She said, “Aren't these bagels fresh?” or something like that. They were horrible bagels—stale and tasteless. No one answered my mother, and the tension in the room grew.

I really didn't have any appetite, but because I was going to have to swim for so many hours, my mom forced me to eat. I took a bite out of my bagel—to make it look like I was eating—and then put it down.

When the head coach walked in, she announced that she had had a long night. Then she said that we would have a team meeting that afternoon. The “incident” was going to be discussed, and everyone would get a chance to talk about its effect on the team.

It was hard to believe she said this. Nothing had happened to the team. It had happened to me. But somehow it involved my mother, my coaches, hotel security, the police, and now even my swim team. I was the one who was directly involved, but no one seemed to notice this or care much at all about how I was feeling.

After a silent ride to the pool, we all went inside, changed, and hopped in the water. Slowly, we began to swim in single file. The coaches went off somewhere, trusting us to warm up on our own. The comments began.

“Katie, I heard you slept with a fifty-year-old last night.”

“Nothing happened, nothing at all,” I snapped.

We were supposed to be concentrating on our swimming. Instead, my teammates wanted to know who Mark was, how long I had known him, how he had wound up in Texas, and what exactly had happened in his room, anyway?

While Ashley deflected their questions, I pulled myself out of the water and sat on the side waiting for my coaches to come back. Out of habit, I studied my feet. I loved the look of my pruned feet. It was proof of my long, hard work at the pool. I traced the ridges on my soles with my hands. For a moment I felt soothed, as I thought about the pool back home and what I had been doing before coming to this place. Then I felt sick to my stomach.

I don't throw up a lot, but I knew what was coming. I could feel the churning, so I ran to the bathroom and it just happened. It wasn't a lot. But the muscles in my stomach cramped hard, and it hurt.

At the sink I pulled off my swim cap and rubbed my forehead gently, hoping to erase the red marks left from the cap and goggles. I looked up into the mirror to inspect the red depressions that circled my eyes. I never realized before what my emotions could do to my body. I began to brush my hair, attacking the knots. I thought, The only way this could get worse is if everyone finds out what actually happened in that room. I was the only one who really knew. And that fact gave me a little control over what was happening to me now. And standing before the mirror, I promised myself that I would never tell.

My mother walked into the bathroom and saw me sitting down. She brought me a muffin and water and forced me to eat. I shoved the muffin down my throat and took small sips of the water. She congratulated me on my swim and said that I was looking really good in the water that day. She said the week would be over soon, and that each event should come and go quickly.

She saw that I was distressed, but she couldn't know how angry I was feeling. I was in the middle of the most traumatic event in my life, and everyone—my mother included—had adopted a have-a-muffin, life-goes-on attitude. I missed school. I missed my home. I missed the me who existed before I went into Mark's room. And as much as I tried, I couldn't understand how this had happened to me.

My mother gave me a hug and told me it would be over soon.

I thought to myself, How can it be over soon? We still have five more days here, five more days to sit and think about what I experienced and what to do about it. She looked at me one more time, deep into my eyes, and asked if everything was fine.

I looked up at her, about to cry. I couldn't admit to what had happened. I couldn't tell her that her daughter, the girl who always made her so proud, had made so many awful mistakes that led to what had happened last night. I had to lie.

I wiped the tears from my eyes and told my mother everything was fine. I had to be strong for her, because she was already upset enough from last night. She blew me a kiss as she walked out, saying she would see me later.

At the end of the day's competition I went to the locker room and began packing my bag. Ashley walked in. “Good swim,” she told me as she pulled off her swim cap. I realized that I was no longer looking at her through the same eyes. Ashley may have been the same girl she always was, but I was changed.

She walked by me into the shower. I looked up at her from the bench and said something about seeing her at dinner. She looked confused, and I worried that she, like everyone else, was disappointed in me. I found it ironic that I was looking up at her. I always thought that of the two of us, I was the stronger one. I hadn't realized how weak I could be.

Here it was the first day after, and already I felt like I just couldn't take it. I wanted to shout to the whole locker room. I wanted to tell the truth. What had happened was wrong. Covering it up was wrong, too. I wanted to confess what Mark had done. But at the same time I felt compelled to conceal the truth. I was embarrassed. Getting through each hour was hard. How, I wondered, was I going to make it through the rest of my life?

I asked myself this over and over and always came back to the same answers. Telling would make everything more real, and more awful. It could get Mark arrested and pull me into a big investigation. I pictured court proceedings. Me testifying. Mark going to jail. I just wanted it to go away. I wanted to wake up and discover it was all a terrible nightmare.

I got up and walked out of the locker room, down a hallway and then outside. The swim center was set in the middle of a grassy field, far from any houses or other buildings. Ashley joined me and we sat on the curb, waiting for our mothers to pick us up. She tried to tell me everything was going to be okay and I said, “No, it's not going to be okay at all.” I kept trying to measure the amount of pain I would face if I told the truth, comparing it with the burden to do what was right.

When the car came, Ashley grasped my hands and lifted me off the sidewalk. She wrapped her arms around me and told me everything was going to be okay. How was it going to be okay? I had to choose between hurting someone I thought I cared about and doing what was right.

Back at the hotel, everyone assembled in one of the rooms for the promised team meeting. I found a place on the corner of one of the beds. My mother sat behind me, in one of the two chairs that were available. Most of the swimmers sat on the floor. Some of the parents stood in the corridor between the bathroom and the room. It was hot and claustrophobic.

The first one to speak was one of the younger coaches. Just out of graduate school at the University of Connecticut, she had red hair and fair skin to match. She wore glasses that always slid down her nose too much, which forced her to peer out at you over the rims in a way that made her seem condescending.

“As many of you already know, there was an incident involving Katie Tarbox last night.”

As she said this the room seemed to get smaller. It definitely felt hotter, stuffier.

“Obviously we're at a national meet and what Katie has done, if people find out about it, will affect our team's reputation across the country,” she continued. Everyone looked at me.

“Some swimmers on other teams already know that a New Canaan girl was missing last night.” She told us we all had to assume that this couldn't be kept secret, but obviously she wanted us to try.

“This was completely unacceptable behavior,” she said, looking directly at me. “And if Katie's mother wasn't here, she would have been flown home immediately.” She paused for a long moment and stared at me again. “I think it would be appropriate for you to apologize to everyone here. We're all affected by what you have done.”

There was silence. I looked to my mother and she didn't say anything. She didn't even move. A flash-fever of rage surged through me. I didn't want to apologize. I wanted to slap both of them, the coach and my mother.

What was I supposed to apologize for? Maybe I had put the reputation of our team on the line, whatever that meant, but I couldn't understand what they needed to hear from me. None of them knew what I was going through. And apologizing to them would just put the blame on me even more. Everyone was saying it was all my fault and no one else's. What about the man who was now on his way home to California? Why wasn't it his fault, too?

I rose slowly and just said, “I'm sorry.”

No one said anything. In the silence, I cleared my throat and struggled to say something more. “I know I have made a huge mistake. I'm sorry that we had to have this team meeting. I'm sorry if this hurts the team or makes it hard for any of you to swim.”

I stopped speaking. Still no one said a word. Then one of the mothers in the room began to cry.

“Maybe some of us, us adults, have some responsibility here, too,” she said. “We didn't watch the girls enough. Maybe we gave them too much freedom.” Everyone in the room began to grumble.

My mother didn't want to hear this, and she spoke up loudly. “No, it is Katie's fault and not the fault of the chaperones here,” she insisted. “We have to place trust in the swimmers if we are going to compete at national meets. Katie should have known better, and it is not the parents' fault.”

I felt bad that I had caused all this commotion, but I didn't understand why it was so serious to everyone else, when the incident had involved me. They weren't in that room with Mark. They didn't have his hands all over them. They weren't interrogated by the police or confronted with the possibility that the truth would send a man they loved to prison.

When it was over, my mom and I walked back to her room. She said, “Katie, we have a serious problem. I just don't know what we are going to do with you. You have been lying to us for so many months, and now you have involved the swim team and the police. I'm afraid we are going to have to seek outside help because I just can't help you anymore.”

Was I really some sort of pathological liar? Was not telling them everything about my life really lying? Didn't I have the right to some privacy?