In Deep (3 page)

“I'll still help you, if you want,” he finally says.

“What would really help would be if I could just challenge Woodham to a race. See who's so superior then.”

Mainly I say this to take the attention away from Charlie's offer. Though it's nice he wants to help, I can't really picture the two of us, heads together in the library, doing something so boyfriend-girlfriendy. Sitting together at lunch is public enough; I didn't want to do it all, until I realized having someone to complain to, someone in the know about swim difficulties and lingo, helped take the edge off until it was time to be in the pool. For now I shrug without giving him an answer and chew big mouthfuls of my salad.

“A smackdown between you and Woodham would be pretty funny,” he says finally. “In fact, I'd pay to see it.”

And damn him—in spite of how pissed I am—that does make me laugh.

OTHER THAN LUNCH WITH CHARLIE
, the highlight of my school day is fifth and sixth periods—two classes back to back with Kate. It's hard to describe who Kate is in my life. She's not much of a friend, because we don't see each other outside of these classes at all, and though I have her number, I don't use it. But we walk between Enviro and Conflicts together every day, and we always sit together: her in front, me in back. I have no idea who her actual friends are, if she has many. She alludes to doing things sometimes, but she might mean doing things with her animals. Because Kate is
very
into her animals. She's on a special science track because she's going to some high-ranking veterinarian school when she graduates. It's why she's in Enviro at all. Normally she'd be in Super High-Tech Biochem III. But I think she's already taken it.

Kate is strange, but in an interesting way. She's sort of like a hipster nerd girl dreamboat in some ways, but in other ways she's just odd. Kate bites her nails—like, disgustingly bites them—and buries herself in old man cardigan sweaters that are way too big for her, even though she seems to have a decent bod, from what I can tell. Every single day she also wears these scrungy black ballet flats, and when she kicks them off under the desk in front of me, the unmistakable stink of feet wafts back. She has long, dark-brown hair with a thick fringe of bangs that hang just past her eyebrows, and she has a habit of looking up at you from under them in a way that makes you feel really small. But Kate also has plastered the inside of her locker with pictures of horses. And sheep. Really—sheep! The covers of all her notebooks are slathered with animal stickers too, and sometimes when she's done with a test or whatever, she'll put her head down and I can hear her whispering to them.

But she always pairs up with me when we have to do labs or partner projects, and she doesn't mind if she ends up doing most of the work. She writes little reminders to me during Woodham's lectures—
That thing about Kennedy is important! Make sure to reread section 5.6 at least!
—and she loves answering my swim coach's logic puzzles, which I bring her from practice. I don't know—I like her. She doesn't care what people think, and she's one of the only people I know who doesn't carry that around like some kind of medal. She's just into her own thing, period,
which makes being around her sort of comforting.

Today she cares about something, though. When I walk into Enviro, she's scowling up at me from under those bangs. I can't help but feel a little better, knowing she's having a crap day too. But Chu gets class started right on time, and it isn't until our quick stroll between fifth and sixth that I get to ask her anything.

“You get your progress reports too?”

Her face is expressionless as she walks. “Sure. Why?”

“You just looked like you were maybe, I don't know—grouchy or something.”

“I am grouchy. But it's not about grades. Why? Are yours bad?”

“You know mine are bad.”

She blinks at me and chews on the edge of her thumbnail, spitting out little flecks of it in a way that seems she thinks I can't see.

“So why are you in a bad mood then? Me, I got plenty of excuses and”—Woodham's door is open, so we waltz in and slide into our desks—“I'm about to have another one in here.”

Kate just shrugs. More scowling. More nail-biting. She shakes her head but doesn't say anything.

“Tell me or don't. I'm not going to try to guess.”

She turns around and faces forward, scrunching her shoulders away from me. Whatever. She can sulk if she wants. I could really use a good distraction though, and Kate's so rarely in a
bad mood that this feels significant. I'm about to tease her again, to get her to talk, but then the bell rings, and Woodham's up in front of the class, waving thin strips of paper in his giant, hairy-knuckled hand. He babbles something similar to what the rest of my teachers have said today:
Think of this as an opportunity for final improvement,
blah, blah, blah.

He moves down the first aisle, passing out each slip and offering a mumbled comment to everyone as he goes. Kate uses this as her chance to turn back around.

“Connor Bendingham.”

My eyebrows go up. I actually know him. Only because he ran for class treasurer, and rumor was he cried in the guys' bathroom when he lost.

“What about him?”

“He asked me out,” she hisses.

“Isn't that good?”

She glowers.

“Why isn't that good? I mean, he's decent, right?” Though I'm trying to remember exactly what he looks like. I give her a light punch on the arm, lowering my voice because Woodham's now at the top of our row. “Go you, Katie.”

The thumbnail goes back in her mouth. “I don't like Connor Bendingham.”

“Why not? What's wrong with him?” Except for the crybaby part, of course.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

But she can't answer, because Woodham's there at her desk. He hands her the slip and taps her desk twice with his finger in this way that just lets her know he's pleased.

“Miss Polonowski” is all he says, sliding my report to me. He doesn't have to say anything else. I'm barely hanging on to a D+. And if I don't pass the exam, I don't pass the class, no matter what. Which means my summer training will be screwed. I don't look at him. I don't look at Kate. I just clench my teeth, pull a deep breath in through my nose, and let it out long and slow. It's the only way to stop my heart from racing.

KATE DOESN'T SAY ANYTHING ELSE
to me about the Connor Bendingham problem for the rest of the period, and I'm too pissed about this whole day to follow up. Instead I head straight to the pickup loop and wait for Louis: earbuds in, not looking at anyone, blanking my mind and pretending I'm in the pool. It works, sort of. Not as well as I want.

I avoid telling Louis about my grades, though a couple of these reports do have to be signed—thanks, Woodham—and then there'll be a conversation. Mom wants me to go to college because Dad didn't, and she dropped out her senior year at Georgia State because of me. Which is fine. She can have her dreams. It's what moms do. What she doesn't fathom, though, is that even though we both want the same thing—she doesn't
want me to turn out like her, and I sure as shit don't want to either—that still doesn't mean I care in the same way.

Finally I'm at the pool. I ignore everyone milling around, catching up after the weekend. There are times when I can get into the rah-rah-rah togetherness and all that crap of the club, but I did enough of that at the meet on Saturday. I won for them, cheered for them. They can do without me this afternoon. I need to get into the water. I need to get my body going and let the rest take a backseat to working hard, breathing hard, just flat-out going hard.

Fortunately, Van lopes in, and we can get started. Everyone loves Van. They're all like little flowers following the path of his sunshine. Except for when he pulls shit at practice like a 200 fly while wearing athletic sneakers after we've already done probably 4,500 meters all told. Yeah. That one can suck, I won't lie. The relationship you have with your coach is definitely one of those cliché love-hate things. Even I'm not immune to it. Today he's going to go fairly easy on us though—starting with a 400 free. As I push off, the feel of the water pressing against the top of my head is a relief. As long as I let my body do what I've built and trained it to do, there's no way I can disappoint anyone else, and they can't disappoint me, either. My arm reaches up, my lungs fill when I break the surface, and then the rest of everything drops away.

•  •  •

After first drills, Van pulls us out for a minute to give us a pep talk, discuss the meet, and overview the afternoon's goals. This is also when he throws out the crazy logic problem-solving puzzle he's looked up on the Internet before coming to practice, in order to keep our minds sharp too. Whoever solves it first gets to pull from Van's ugly Elvis beach bag, which is full of every kind of king-size candy product known to man.

I stare at the quick notes I made while Van read the “family dinner and who sits-next-to-whom” problem aloud to us. Sounds like a freaking nightmare to me, all those people. While I'm thinking this, Grier bends over my shoulder, showing me the picture she's drawn of a craggy grandpa in giant cartoon spectacles telling his picnic tableful of smiling stick family members:
EAT ME.
I elbow her and try not to laugh.

She adds something to the drawing, cracking herself up even more, but then she suddenly stops. I look up, following her gaze to where three guys are strolling in from the locker room, Speedos barely covering their everything. Around us everyone else has stopped working on their logic too. The tallest one on the left looks a little delicate for a swimmer—like he should be an English professor or even a dancer instead. The middle guy is shorter, stockier. But then there's one on the right, so hot your eyes have to leap away: all tanned thighs and shoulders, the kind of back that makes a ski-jump curve down to his butt. His face, too, is handsome, chiseled, and full of itself.

Grier murmurs next to me, “Mama, I want my mouth on that.”

And, well, duh. He is that obviously hot. But the way you can tell he knows it makes it a dumb thing to think.

Van turns and waves the guys over.

“Team, I want to introduce you to some fellows who'll be joining us for the summer—”

Grier lets out a faint squeal. I bang her with my knee to get her to shut up.

“This is Troy, Linus, and Gavin. They're going to be training with us while they're on break from their college teams. I think you'll have a lot to learn from them, but I'm sure you'll show them a thing or two, yourselves.”

“Oh, I'll show him something,” Grier says in a low voice, grinning devilishly.

Oh no, you won't,
I immediately think. Grier really has slacked off on her training since the start of long course, so she's not going to impress anyone there. But more than that, she knows, from her experience with our teammate Dylan, how stupid it is to get involved with anyone in the club. The fallout can last for months. She's just trying to make me laugh now.

I believe this until it's time to get back into the pool, and she swishes past the new guys in this look-at-me-not-looking-at-you way. Then I'm not so sure.

•  •  •

It gets worse when practice is over and she grabs me by the wrist. “Come on.” She's practically pulling me over toward the new guys.

I slide from her grip. “I'm not going to help you make an ass out of yourself.”

“Van wants us to be nice.” The last word comes out exaggeratedly from the side of her mouth. “Besides, don't you at least want to find out where they go?”

And I do. I do want to know. Because I haven't talked to anyone on a real team yet, and I need to find out what it's like. What my chances are.

“Just don't be gross.”

But of course she is, right away: hand on hip, boobs out.

“So, what's up?”

“Well, hey there,” the hot one says.

The pale one sticks out his hand. “Hi, I'm Troy.”

We shake, officially meeting him, then Linus and Gavin, who's got beads of water rolling off his muscles like he's a waxed car.

“You got a last name, Gavin?” Grier wants to know.

“Why? You gonna Google stalk me?”

She flushes.

“Check out your times is all,” I cover, though I'm not sure why. “See what you're made of.”

He looks at me, curious. “Last name's Scott.”

“Two last names?” Grier teases.

“Why? Who're you?”

“I'm Grier.”

“I know a
guy
named Grier.”

I slide my eyes away from him. That was funny.

“So, where do y'all go?” she wants to know next.

Troy and Linus have looks on their faces, the kind dork guys get when they know they've already lost out to the better-looking guy in the room, but still have to play along. UT, UF, they tell us. Gavin says, looking straight at me, “Auburn.”

I try not to show I'm impressed. Auburn's not on my list, but it's mainly because their team is too good. I want to get in somewhere that needs my help, a team bad enough to give me a full ride without making me work too hard once I'm there. Still, what it took to get in there, and what it's like on the inside, would be valuable to know.

“So, what're you doing here, then?” Grier's practically batting her eyes.

Troy explains he has a job at his father's engineering company, installing electrical systems for schools. Linus is just here kicking around for the summer at his parents' place. Gavin tells us there's an internship. None of it sounds very interesting.

“Yeah, but—” Grier's toes are curling. I want to shove her. “Why us?”