Breath Like Water Read online

  I’m used to getting dressed down by Dave. It happens all the time. But the insult hits me so hard that I take a step back, reeling like he’s smacked me.

  “I had a good swim,” I protest.

  “You had an average swim,” Dave sneers. “Which was worthless because it didn’t count. Most of the time, you can’t even manage that. You’d better figure out if you really want this, Susannah, because it doesn’t seem like it. And even if you do, I’m starting to wonder if you have what it takes. I really don’t think I can help you.”

  Dave points at me with his clipboard. “You,” he says, “are becoming a waste of my time.”

  Then he turns and walks away. I feel flattened, but I can’t just stand here—I have to get out, now.

  I head for the locker rooms with my gaze locked on the tile, determined not to look at anyone, afraid they might be looking back, that they might see how upset I am. How ashamed. There’s a sign in Dave’s office that says Feel your feelings all you want, just don’t feel them in front of anybody else. It’s an unofficial GAC rule: on the pool deck, only triumph is welcome. You deal with failure alone.

  Of course, that applies only to swimmers. Dave can feel and do and say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants, and we’re supposed to take it. Rage at the injustice of it tears at my throat as I hurry to get someplace I can be alone. I’m barely watching where I’m going and I almost slam into someone outside the girls’ locker room.

  Large hands wrap themselves around my shoulders to prevent impact. I glance up reflexively to see who they belong to, then wish I hadn’t.

  The guy is a stranger, mostly. I don’t know his name, but all the swimmers my age in this region tend to look familiar after so many years in the endless wash, rinse, repeat cycle of elite competition. And he is a swimmer; if the racing suit didn’t tip me off, his body would have. He’s tall and lean, long-limbed and broad-shouldered, sleekly muscled in the way of those who are born for the water.

  Okay, so he’s hot; a lot of swimmers are. I’m not oblivious, but I don’t spend seven hours a day, six days a week in the pool for the eye candy. I don’t need another distraction. There’s enough getting in the way of my swimming as it is.

  Right now, this particular swimmer is getting in the way of my escape.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, avoiding his eyes. I step back, and he releases me. “If I could just—”

  I gesture toward the entrance to the locker room.

  “Sure,” he says, stepping aside to let me pass.

  His voice is so rich and deep it surprises me. Curiosity momentarily supersedes embarrassment and I take a good look at him.

  Despite the voice and the body, which make him seem older than he can be if he’s competing in this invitational, there’s something endearingly boyish about his face. His cheekbones are so high they have summits, but there’s a soft roundness to his jaw, and his blue eyes are wide and expressive. His hair is a gorgeous red-gold color that flares under the natatorium’s bright fluorescents.

  He’s more than hot—he’s handsome. Which, for some dumb reason, makes the fact that he’s caught me at such a low moment so much worse.

  “Hey, are you o—”

  I brush past him and dart into the locker room before he can finish his sentence. In an empty bathroom stall, I sit and cover my face with my hands. The air is heavy with the scent of chlorine and the smell of towels left to molder on a bathroom floor. It makes me gag, but I force myself to take long, ragged breaths through my nose. Tears threaten, but they don’t fall. I refuse to cry about this.

  When I went through puberty and started slowing down, I decided the only way I was going to get back on top was by becoming a machine: ruthlessly efficient, tireless, relentless.

  Machines don’t cry. They just tick on, ever forward. So that’s what I’m going to do.

  CHAPTER TWO

  330 days until US Olympic Team Trials

  MY PARENTS HAVE never seen Dave go off on me before, and they’re furious. They’re all fired up to call and give him hell as soon as we get home from the invitational.

  “He can’t talk to you like that!” Dad fumes, crashing around our kitchen in search of the GAC phone book. Our eight-year-old mutt, Lulu, follows at his heels, confused by all the excitement. She barks and whines until Dad snaps, “¡Cállate!”

  I grab Lulu and bury my face in the long, caramel-colored fur of her neck. Not much has the power to cheer me up when I’m feeling bad, but my animals always do.

  “I think you need a bath, Lu,” I whisper in her ear. She kind of stinks. I’ll wash her tomorrow, even though it’s Nina’s turn.

  Lulu licks my hand and turns to look at me, and I swear to God she smiles. I love dogs.

  Dad mutters something to himself in Spanish, then shouts, “You’re just a kid! I could kill him!”

  And he’s my levelheaded parent. Mom looks like she’s about to punch someone.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I insist. It hurt, and it was embarrassing, but if I crumble after every setback I’ll never make it through the season, let alone to the Olympics.

  “It’s a big deal to us,” Mom snaps, so sharply that I wince. Her expression softens and she puts a gentle hand on my wrist. “We’re trying to protect you, mija.”

  “I don’t need protection,” I say. Lulu whines and rests her head on my knee. “Dave’s right. I keep screwing up. It’s like I’m not good anymore.”

  It costs me a lot to admit that to them. My parents have always been supportive of my swimming, but wary of it, too. They think it demands way more than someone my age should be expected to give.

  They’d never say it, but I know there’s a part of them, deep down, that wishes I’d quit.

  “You’re still good, Susannah,” Dad assures me, but I can tell he’s only half listening. He’s too busy digging around in the bottom of a junk drawer.

  “You’re one of the best swimmers on that team,” Mom says.

  “Not anymore,” I say.

  “Who’s better than you?”

  “Sarah. Casey. Lauren. Jessa.”

  “You’re at their same level,” Mom argues. “And you don’t compete in the same events.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re going to Nationals and I’m not.”

  “There’s still time to qualify,” Mom reminds me. “And you could’ve gone to Juniors if you wanted. We would’ve found a way to swing it.”

  “What’s the point? I can’t make the team.” I stroke Lulu’s head. “It wasn’t worth the expense.”

  Because I’ve competed in an individual Olympic event at World Championships, even though it was two years ago, I’m not eligible for the US Junior Nationals team. One of the many ways in which that stupid gold medal has ruined my life.

  Not that I want to be on the Junior Nationals team. It’s Nationals or nothing. But I don’t have the times right now to qualify for the meet, let alone be one of the top six in an event to make the roster.

  Dad yanks the battered GAC handbook out of a cabinet and waves it triumphantly.

  “I’m calling Dave right now,” he says. “Where’s my phone?”

  “Charger in the living room, I think,” says Mom. Traitor.

  “Dad, please don’t,” I beg. “It’s over now; it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  What I don’t tell them, because it’ll only make them angrier, is that if Dad goes off on Dave, Dave will take it out on me. If I’m lucky, I’ll just get Punishment—extra laps at the beginning and end of every practice until he figures I’ve learned my lesson.

  But he’ll probably find a better way to penalize me, something more psychological and insidious. He’s been known to freeze out swimmers he’s not happy with, neglect them in practice and ignore them in competition. Just one look from him has the power to make me wither inside. My life goal is to make i
t to the Olympics; my daily goal is to stay on Dave’s good side.

  “What kind of parent would I be if I let a grown man yell at my daughter in front of hundreds of people and said nothing?” Dad asks.

  “A swim parent,” my older sister says, appearing in the doorway with a dog-eared copy of The Glass Menagerie in her hand. Nina wasn’t at the pool today because she had play practice, and anyway, she doesn’t come to my meets anymore.

  “Most of the kids on that team, their parents would be the ones yelling,” Nina says. “If you rush to Susannah’s defense, she’ll look weak.”

  Mom and Dad stare at Nina, appalled, but they know she’s not wrong. We’ve all seen the way certain people—my friend Jessa, for example—get treated by their winning-obsessed parents. As if they have more riding on their son or daughter’s performance in the pool than their kid does. That kind of unreasonable preoccupation has never made sense to Mom and Dad.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Dad says. “Susannah’s not weak, she’s sixteen. He can’t beat her up because she made a mistake. She’s not his employee. We pay him to train her, and that team’s not cheap.”

  “Hector,” Mom says in warning. She squeezes my hand. “It’s not about the money.”

  Dad sighs. “Of course it’s not. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “We want to do what’s right for you, Susannah. Can you let us do that, please?”

  “No,” I say. Nina chuckles, and Dad shoots her a you’re not helping look.

  “Overruled,” Mom says.

  Dad disappears into the living room to find his phone. I want to scream, but I know how that would go over. I rest my forehead on the table. Nina gives me a condescending pat on the shoulder. Mom swats her away and rubs my back. Lulu curls up at my feet and rests her chin on my toes.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Mom says. “Dad’s only trying to help. We love you, mija. All we want is for you to be happy.”

  “I would be happy if you and Dad would back off and let me make my own decisions.”

  “You make a lot of your own decisions,” Mom says. “Maybe too many.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you’re our child and we get a say in what goes on in your life,” Mom says. “And don’t you dare speak to me like that—I’m your mother. You were raised better. Both of you.”

  “What did I do?” Nina asks.

  “You inserted yourself in something that wasn’t your business,” Mom tells her. “Now go to your room, please. Susannah and I need to talk.”

  “I’m not in the mood to talk,” I say.

  “It sounds like you’re in the mood to be grounded,” Mom says. “Is that what you want?”

  I roll my eyes. “Ground me, I don’t care. I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Dinner in half an hour,” Mom says firmly as I trudge up the stairs.

  I toss my swim bag on my bedroom floor and kick it into the closet. We get a break between the GAC Invitational and the start of school, so I won’t be needing my equipment for two weeks. Shutting it all away, if only for a little while, feels more satisfying than I expected.

  As I close the closet door, I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror I put away when I started to hate the sight of my reflection. When I won gold in Budapest, I was slim and hydrodynamic. I slipped through the water like a minnow, a flash of quicksilver between the lane lines.

  Then I got older and everything changed. I grew everywhere, shooting up to five-eleven, widening at the hips and shoulders, filling out in the chest—the genes that made my mother’s beautiful curves and gave my dad his height finally expressing themselves.

  You’d think I’d be grateful for the increased wingspan and the size-ten feet and the boobs Nina would kill for, but I didn’t know how to handle my big new body in the water. It won’t move like it did before. It’s slow and cumbersome and useless. I thought once I got used to it, I’d get back to where I was, but it’s been over a year and that hasn’t happened. I’m starting to give up hope that it ever will.

  A high-pitched mew draws my attention to the two gray cats sitting in the window. Frick and Frack are brothers, a pair of Russian blues that we rescued when a family in the neighborhood moved abroad. They’re the gentlest cats we’ve ever owned, so docile you can pet their teeth, and they don’t mind being held, which is good because I could use a cat hug right now.

  I pick up Frick and cuddle him for a second, then carry him to the corner of the room to check on Frida and Horace. Frida is my cockatiel; she’s a rescue, too, in a way. The senior community where my abuela lives now doesn’t allow pets, so we took her when Bela moved. I tried to train Frida to speak, but the only thing she says is “Hola, Bela.” She whistles “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” too; Bela taught her that. Horace is the only animal in the house I raised up from a baby. He’s a box turtle.

  Not counting family, there’s nothing I care about more than swimming, but animals come a close second. If I’m lucky, my career will last into my twenties, but once it’s over I think I’d like to be a vet.

  Instead of heading to the shower, I lie down on my bed, shut my eyes and let the exhaustion I’ve been holding at bay wash over me. Everything that happened today—the false start, Dave’s insults, that boy who tried to comfort me—pushes its way into my head.

  I bury my face in a pillow. Frack joins Frick and me on the bed. The two of them crawl on top of me and paw at my hair like they’re trying to braid it.

  How are you doing? Amber texts. I tell her I’m fine and put my phone on silent.

  Fighting with Mom and Dad is the worst. I can’t seem to find a way to make my parents understand how badly my slowdown has broken my heart. For years, the Olympics has been the one thing I’ve wanted, the one thing I’d give anything to have. I’ve worked hard for it. I’ve made sacrifices.

  But so have my family. What Dad said about paying for the team sits under my skin like a splinter. Swimming is an expensive sport, and we’re not poor, but we’re not rich. Dad teaches history at a local college, but when I started getting good, he took a second job waiting tables at his cousin’s restaurant. He said it was to help Miguel, but I’m not stupid. His tips go straight into a checking account reserved for my swimming expenses.

  It’s one thing to suffer for my sport and another thing altogether to watch my family suffer, too. Nina skipped the junior class ski trip last year because it cost too much. Dad’s car is super old, the house could use a new roof and we’ve never taken the trip to Mexico that Mom keeps talking about. I travel around the country to compete, but most of the time my family stays home, because we can’t afford airfare or accommodations for more than one person, and Mom and Dad can’t miss work.

  There are days when giving up seems like the only reasonable solution. But if I do that, I’d be throwing away all the opportunities Mom and Dad have scrimped and saved to give me.

  And worse, if I quit, I don’t know what I’d have left. Who I’d be.

  How do you even begin to mourn the death of a dream?

  * * *

  I don’t come down for dinner. Maybe I’m sulking, but I’m also trying to avoid hearing how Dave reacted when Dad read him the riot act. I know I’m in for it when I return to practice, but I’d rather not confirm that right now.

  I burn five thousand calories a day, though—I can’t skip meals. When the house is quiet, and I’m sure everyone else has gone to bed, I sneak downstairs to raid the refrigerator.

  There’s a plate of chicken with beans and rice covered in cling wrap waiting for me. The sight of it puts a lump in my throat. I know my parents want what’s best for me. If it’s swimming, if it’s the Olympics, that’s great. But if it’s not, if it’s something else, that’s fine by them, too. For better or worse, swimming doesn’t affect how they see me. They would love me the same no matter what.
/>   But swimming is a part of me—the biggest part of me—and the fact that it’s irrelevant to them makes me wonder: Who is it they think they love?

  While I’m heating up my dinner, I notice a light on in the living room. Mom’s a paralegal, and last year she started going to law school in the evenings and on weekends. She spends every night she’s not in class studying, often until very late. More than once I’ve come downstairs before morning practice to find her passed out on the coffee table, dark curly hair fanned out over her books.

  I put the kettle on, then sit down to eat while the water boils. Frick and Frack tumble into the kitchen. They circle my ankles under the table, waiting for something to drop.

  “You have food in your bowls,” I tell them. They’ve learned bad habits from Lulu. The three of them eat their own food only after we’ve all gone to bed, when all hope of scraps is gone.

  When I’m finished, I enter my dinner into my calorie counting app, then slip the dirty plate into the dishwasher and start the cycle. The whoosh of water as it swirls around the machine is soothing.

  Before the kettle can screech, I grab it and pour hot water into two mugs. Mine says I love the smell of chlorine in the morning. It was a team gift from the GAC Boosters a couple of years ago.

  Mom’s sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, hunched over her books. I set a mug down in front of her. She looks up, blinking at me like she just wandered out of a dark tunnel into the sun.

  “Oh, hi,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “Is that for me?”

  “It’s energy tea. Figured you could use it.”

  I sit on the couch. Frick and Frack tussle briefly for the spot in my lap. Frack, who’s slightly larger and way bossier, wins as always.

  “Gracias, mi amor.” Mom grabs her tea and comes to sit next to me. Frick wastes no time curling up into a ball on her thighs.

  “De nada.”

  I wish I knew more Spanish. Mom and Dad are both second-generation Mexican American, and they grew up in a primarily Latino neighborhood where it was the language you used with your family and community. They raised Nina and me in the suburbs, and we speak mostly English at home. I’ve been taking Spanish in school, but no amount of studying can give me the confidence to engage in entire conversations. Nina, contrarian that she is, takes French.