Surviving High School (5 page)

He crouched down and brought his face a few inches from hers.

“You just bought yourself another hour in the pool—”

“But—”

“You want to go for two?”

Emily shook her head.

“No, sir.”
Looks like being the coach’s daughter won’t get me any special treatment
, she thought.
Kind of the opposite.

“That’s better,” he said. He turned and walked a few lanes over, deliberately ignoring her to check in on a few of the weaker swimmers. As Emily turned and positioned herself against the side of the pool to push off for a round of backstroke, Dominique’s head surfaced in the next lane.

“Making trouble already, eh, Swimbot?”

Emily’s heart was still beating hard from her sprint a
minute earlier. She ignored Dominique and concentrated on her form: feet pressed against the wall shoulder-width apart, her legs tensed, ready to push off.

“Backstroke’s not your race,” said Dominique. “You might just want to, you know, forget about it. Concentrate on some strokes where you actually stand a chance of winning.”

Dominique arranged her body against the side of the pool as Emily had, and the girls turned their heads to look at each other. Emily was still breathing hard, and Dominique smiled, recognizing her weakness.

“I’m trying to remember—have you
ever
beaten me at backstroke?”

“You haven’t seen me swim it in competition since May,” said Emily, her knuckles going white around the lip of the pool. The block, which would have been far easier to grip, stood at the far end of the lane.

“Then I guess you wouldn’t mind a little race?” said Dominique. “There and back?”

“Not at all.”

Stupid
, thought Emily, still trying to catch her breath.
She can tell I overextended myself. She’s trying to make me look bad.
Indeed, most of the other swimmers were watching Emily and Dominique talk. Some were treading water and whispering to one another.

“Three,” said Dominique, tensing her legs. “Two. One.”

The girls pushed off in unison, streaking for a few meters beneath the water before rising side by side and beginning their strokes. They glided on the pool’s surface like weightless
insects, matching each other move for move. As they cut down the lanes, Emily looked at the overhead flags, readying herself for the turn at the far wall.

And then she heard them chanting; the other girls on the team were cheering, “Dominique! Dominique!”

How could they
all
be cheering against me?
Emily wondered.

Because you’re a machine
, a voice inside her responded.
Just like your sister.
She suddenly thought of the story of John Henry, hammering his way through the mountain, racing against the locomotive.

Everyone wants to see the human win
, she realized.
No one cheers for the machine.

The revelation hit her at the same moment the back wall collided with her skull. Pain radiated from her bruised head, coming down through her body in waves. Even worse than the physical anguish, though, was the shame. Emily couldn’t believe it: She’d gotten distracted and lost track of the flags, something she hadn’t done since elementary school.

There was no point in finishing. Emily surfaced and looked down the lane as her rival completed the race. A few seconds later, Dominique touched the far wall to a loud cheer from their teammates, and several swam over to her to offer their congratulations.

Emily stood alone at her end of the pool, her stomach knotted with humiliation.

It’s just practice
, she tried to remind herself.
You’ll have all year to beat her.
But it was little consolation. The room
echoed with light applause as Dominique, surrounded by her admirers, threw a fist in the air. The other girls would remember this moment: Swimbot breaking down, losing a race to a mere human.

At dinner that night, Emily’s mother tried desperately to make conversation as Emily and her father glowered at each other from opposite sides of the table.

“So, how was work?” she asked Emily’s dad.

“Fine,” he responded. “Except that
one
of the swimmers had a discipline problem and then tried to show off by having a little race—which she
lost
, by the way.”

“Well, what about you, Emily?” her mom asked hopefully.

“Fantastic. Except the stupid
coach
made me practice for an extra hour for basically no reason.”

Emily’s mom nervously knotted her napkin in her hands. She avoided eye contact with her husband and Emily and looked across the table at the empty spot where Sara used to sit.

“Well,” she said, trying to maintain her smile, “it sounds like everyone could use a little cheering up, and I have just the thing. A pint of a certain pair of people’s favorite ice cream that may or may not contain delicious dark chocolate fish—”

Emily’s mouth immediately started watering. She hadn’t been allowed to have ice cream since her birthday in August, and the only chocolate she’d tasted since then came in the
form of chalky protein shakes that reminded her more of liquid cardboard than cocoa beans.

“Not for her,” said Emily’s father. “She’s already had her eight thousand calories, and that much sugar and fat would be terrible for her system, especially this soon before bedtime.”

Emily’s mother frowned.

“Well, just a few scoops couldn’t possibly hurt—”

“I said no.”

Emily popped a pair of vitamins from the side of her plate and finished the last of her water.

“It’s fine, Mom,” she said. “He’s right. I’m not hungry anyway.”

A few hours later, after Emily had plowed through a mountain of homework, including forty pages of reading for Honors History, she sat on her bedroom floor, stretching her aching muscles. After a week of intense training and equally intense homework, Emily wasn’t sure which hurt worse, her body or her head. She heard a soft knock on the door and opened it to find her mom holding a coffee mug.

“I brought you some ‘tea,’ ” she said with a wink, handing the mug to Emily, who took it in both hands. The ceramic was cold to the touch, and Emily looked down to see not tea but ice cream.

“I figured a few hundred calories couldn’t hurt,” Emily’s mom said. “Besides, conditioning is an art, not a science. Even your father says that.”

Emily looked down at the ice cream, wanting it more than anything. She pressed the top of a scoop with her index finger and brought it to her lips. The entire focus of her being suddenly centered at the tip of her tongue and the sensation of chocolaty sweetness.

She took a deep breath and handed the mug back to her mother.

“Mom—I can’t.”

“But—”

“Sara wouldn’t have eaten a mug of ice cream,” said Emily, and her mother looked away.

“Right,” she said. “Of course.” She hesitated for a moment, watching the melting ice cream, as if hoping Emily would change her mind. After a few seconds had passed and Emily stayed silent, her mother said good night.

She turned down the hall, dipping a spoon into the mug and eating as she went. Emily closed the door behind her. She felt bad for her mom—she was always trying stuff like that. She’d been the one who insisted Sara and Emily go to public school instead of the private swim academy their father had wanted them to attend. In the end, they’d compromised on Twin Branches High, which had a good pool and was located close to Las Playas, where Junior Nationals was held each year.

What Emily’s mom didn’t seem to realize was that deep down Emily and Sara
wanted
to follow their dad’s strict regimen. If anything, their desire to win was even stronger than
his. Or at least that’s what Emily told herself. She had to admit, that ice cream had tasted even better than she remembered.

Later that night, Emily checked her phone and texted Kimi to see if she was up. When no response came, she opened her laptop and decided to check her G-Chat. The cell and the computer, Emily’s two most prized possessions, were hers thanks to her mom.

Although Emily’s dad had initially resisted them as “unnecessary gadgets” that would only serve as temptations to talk to strange boys, Emily’s parents had eventually struck a bargain: As long as Emily kept her GPA above 3.5 and stuck to her training regimen, she was allowed to have the phone and the laptop—as well as a monthly sleepover with Kimi.

As Emily signed on to her IM account, she thought back over the events of the day. After the locker-room encounter with Dominique and Samantha and that stupid race, she’d almost forgotten her earlier run-in with Nick Brown.

She flashed back to the astonished look on his face and the way he’d called her Sara. She winced as if in physical pain every time the incident played in her head.

As she waited for her log-in to complete, Emily tried to think of something pleasant, and Ben immediately came to mind. She remembered Dominique’s story about the party, about the way he’d totally ditched her and headed back to his room to sleep. Other guys were powerless against Dominique’s
supposed charms, but not him. She wondered what he’d thought of as he went to bed that night. For a moment, Emily let herself fantasize that it was her.

She absently checked her in-box (nothing but junk mail) and her Facebook feed (no new invites, posts of interest, hookups, or breakups). According to the site, she had thirty friends. In real life, all she had was Kimi, who she hoped was still online.

The list went on for several more rows. Some of the cells were highlighted in different colors, which seemed to indicate Kimi had developed a scoring system for weighting each quality, but it was way too complicated for Emily to understand.

Emily thought of Ben Kale at one of his parties, bored, looking for someone to talk to.