Fireworks

During swimming nowadays, Robin alternates between learning how to rescue a drowning person and walking with me. I’m flying when I get to spend an entire period getting to know him better, but on the days he swims to maintain his passing grade, I’m usually the only person not swimming. It’s our second unit and going on our first grading period report card, so everyone is desperate to keep up the A. Me, on the other hand, I honestly don’t care either way. Passing or not passing, I have my shining classes and devoted worshipers and Rachel and Robin. My abs are quite toned from my occasional breakout of workouts in the hundreds, along with the non-swimming options.

Until one day, Coach orders me to stay after class and help bring in the water polo ball from a day of free swim.

“Sara,” she begins, reaching out a long stick to prod the ball floating in the middle of the pool. Neither one of us wants to dive in and get it. “You need to get in the pool before this unit is over.”

When I don’t answer, she plunges on. “Your grade used to be a solid A, and now, because of not swimming, it’s dropped to a C.”

“I know,” I mumble, lifting the dripping ball from the surface of the water and kicking it gently into the fence.

“I need you to swim at least once this week or next week,” Coach says sternly. “It will bring your grade up to maybe an eighty percent.” She exhales loudly when I’m unresponsive. “You might not care about your grade, Sara, but I do. I want you to pass.”

“I’m getting good grades in my other classes,” I say. “I just don’t want to swim. I’ll participate in everything else after swimming is over.”

“Why? Why don’t you want to swim? We’re learning how to rescue victims, and that could come in handy later.” Coach leads me back into the locker room where everyone is gathering their bags. “It’s actually a life lesson you can use in the real world.”

“This is the real world,” I say quietly, turning abruptly and leaving her, knowing she has a foggy look on her face as she tries to delve into the depth of my words that ring a profound truth.

For some reason, sixth period comes around the next day and I’m out on the deck, shivering in a black one-piece covered up by a baggy white Billabong t-shirt and black-and-lime guys’ Volcom board shorts I bought from Laguna Beach.

There is no way I am revealing my 88.1 pounds of fat to the class.

I sidle in with the other girls on a bench and they conspicuously scan me over.

“I love your shorts!” comments a blond girl who, in my opinion, is only blacking out the beauty of her sapphire-blue eyes with thick layers of eyeliner. “Where’d you get them?”

“One of my friends said Rachel wore her anchor bikini yesterday,” whispers a slim brunette into the blonde’s ear, “and all the guys voted her to be the demo for diving because they wanted to check out her butt.”

I picture Rachel in the Ralph Lauren navy-and-white anchor bikini I got her for her thirteenth birthday. She looks amazing in it, and somehow her red and white secrets never show.

“I got her that swimsuit for her birthday,” I say to the girls. “She looked great in it, didn’t she?”

They nod eagerly in mutual agreement and I brag, “I got these from LA.”

The gates to the boys’ locker room clangs open and I immediately look up, searching for Robin. When I find him filing in last, I’m disappointed that he’s not swimming today.

“You’re swimming!” he says with eyebrows raised.

Jon isn’t swimming, what a coincidence. “Yeah, well….” I say, my voice trailing off because I have no idea what compelled me to strip down into a swimsuit.

Coach nods her approval at me and sends us all into the pool.

On the outside, my chin is up and I’m strolling confidently to the rounded edge of the pool. Inside, my heart is pounding against my partially visible rib cage and I’m in angst about my belly. It’s so food-ridden, you can see it through my shirt. Girls don’t even disguise their glances at me as they dance past.

“Sara!” beckons a willowy French girl who’s depositing her towel on the slabs of wood nailed vertically to the gate like the rigid suits of armor in Harry Potter. She patters over to me on bare feet and gazes yearningly at my stomach.

“You’re so skinny!” she wails dramatically, stomping her foot.

My spirits feel like they’ve been lifted by angels with harps and halos, the whole nine yards. I beam at her. “Thanks!” Suddenly the presence of the banana I had for breakfast is absent from behind my navel.

She gives me a somber smile and slides into the pool.

I sit gingerly on the edge and lower myself in. At first, it’s warm to my thighs, and then without warning it’s the Himalayan yeti attacking my midsection. My t-shirt fades to see-through and sticks to every crack and depression in my chest. Within seconds, my shy bottom ribs and hot-air-balloon stomach are raised slightly from the cloth.

I bite my lip and swear. If I delay going all the way under any longer, someone is going to notice. Taking a deep breath, I release my death grip on the ledge and plunge under.

I am in darkness – I am twisting and turning and lost and breathless – no, holding my breath – cold all around me, hugging me until I breathe out the air from my lungs – there, now that is a more comfortable grip for you –?

My head breaks the calm surface, and my limbs automatically tread water as I wipe the liquid from my face and expand my lungs with oxygen. Already, Coach is shouting for everyone to line up at the edge of the pool and do one lap, freestyle. I jellyfish my way over and take off with the rest of the ones. The more I swim, the more I will be warm. The more I swim, the more my numbers will go down. The more I swim, the less anyone is going to see. The more I swim, the more I will forget.

It works. My troubles are, for the fifty minutes, burned away by the bubbles and cuts in the water as my arms slice it into two regenerating pieces.

Kickkickkickkickkickkick!

I am the first one done in every lap. I struggle out into the breeze, jump back in fast, power head-up freestyle to my victim, side-stroke tow her back to the edge, secure her, and haul her up. I stay crouched over as I wait for Coach to evaluate me, bringing my knees as close to my chest as I can get. Robin saunters by with Jon and grins at me when I finish my laps.

When I’m staring pointlessly at the shed, awaiting Coach’s praise, Robin is standing up from his pushups and subconsciously smiles at me.

He falters.

It is a miniscule shift in expression. His eyes blink rapidly twice in a row and I would have missed it if I myself had blinked even once. The corners of his lips tense and I am not even sure how I’m able to see that. Then I finally see that his gaze is brushing my back.

I suck in a breath. My spine. How could I be so careless? I feel like my skin is waxed glass and he can filter the absence of food, the numbers stacked in my vertebrae, ricocheting in their permanent place in my brain. I feel like Robin is picking me apart cautiously, dissecting my bones and muscles and fat.

Luckily Coach interrupts my one-sided telepathic exchange. “Macarthy!” she yells, and Robin is awakened violently. “Get moving!”

She compliments me on my rescuing and I slip back into the water as fast as an anaconda. Robin smiles a small smile at me but a nagging feeling in my gut tells me he’s distracted.

I believe it.

After rescuing four more people, my body is tired and my lungs are shallow, breathing in and letting it back out almost immediately.

“Good job today, people,” announces Coach. “Have a good day, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I shimmy out of the pool and clutch my stomach, walking ramrod-straight up and extending an arm for my towel. Before I can wrap it around myself, a hand takes my forearm.

It’s Robin.

“Hey,” he greets me. All around us, girls act like they’re ignorant but the cracks in their false I-don’t-care shields leaks their interest.

“I’m all wet,” I state. Indeed, I’m dripping streams that are rushing as fast as they can into the nearest drain. The wind caresses my body softly, and I shiver.

A shadow passes over Robin’s face, and he’s worried. “Are you cold?” Before I can protest, he takes me into his arms.

I’m soaking the front of his shirt and he doesn’t seem to be paying a second thought to it, so I snake my arms around his waist. He’s pressing me against his entire body and my breath catches at how close we are, the closest we’ve ever been.

A rush of memory and thought floods my brain all at once, out of nowhere. I close my eyes tightly and try to block them out. Not now. But highlights and lowlights of his song, my breakdown, his condolence, my worthlessness, they are suffocating me. I am shivering and cold and also alone, even though there is a warm body wrapped tight around me.

I feel it when he removes his right arm from my back. I feel it when he serpentines it up my shirt and presses his palm flat against my ribs.

I tear away.

Robin has a flat expression on his face, his arm still connecting us. I look down at the hand inside my shirt, absorbing the texture of my bones and taut stomach. When I return to his face, his eyes are dark. I can’t tell what he’s feeling anymore.

I grasp his hand, kiss his knuckles, and head off to the now-cold showers. I don’t even feel the ice on my skin, I am so lost in the warmth on my stomach.