72 Days After
Sidney
Our third meet is at home on a Friday night in mid-October.
My first meet wasn’t horrible, and my second was better, but I still wasn’t where I wanted to be.
But as I kneel next to the starting block, splashing water on my suit, the water doesn’t look as intimidating as it did a few weeks ago.
This pool—and everyone standing around it—is starting to feel like home.
I shake out my legs and stretch my arms, swinging them behind me and in front, letting my shoulders relax.
When the whistle sounds, I take my place on the block, the roughness under my feet comforting somehow.
And when the starting buzzer blares, everything around me melts away.
I’ve been in my head a lot since I got to Oakwood.
Thinking about everything my body is doing, making myself crazy.
But as I cut through the water tonight, feel it rush over me as I break the surface on entry, I just shut it all off.
The only thing I think about is the water and the way I feel moving through it.
When my arms burn I think about the lake, and how much harder it was swimming against the light chop.
I think about that tiny bottle of my lake in this pool.
I swim lap after lap, thinking about nothing but the water and how I’m meant to be in it.
When my palms slam against the touch pad, I don’t look at the scoreboard right away.
I look up at my mom and dad, to the spot where I know they’re perched in the bleachers.
They’re both on their feet. Everyone around them is sitting, but my parents are standing, clapping and cheering like absolute lunatics.
Mom is pointing to the far corner, to where our times are lit up in lights.
To where I shaved three seconds off of her event time.
Ellie reaches her hand down to me, helping to hoist me up and throwing her arms around me. I did it.
Mom and Dad take me to dinner to celebrate.
We sit in a booth at a little Italian restaurant in town, plates of spaghetti in front of us.
Swimming makes me ravenously hungry, and I’m practically shoveling noodles into my mouth.
My parents have been making small talk about my school year so far, what Ellie is like, how my classes are.
Even though we talk at least once a week.
Dad picks his napkin up and then sets it back in his lap.
“Sylvie and Greg wanted us to tell you congratulations. We thought about inviting them, but”—Dad glances from me to Mom—“you know.” I saw Sylvie and Greg up in the stands by my parents.
It was slightly weird seeing them all together.
It’s how I once imagined things would be: our parents watching us swim together, all of us going to dinner afterward.
I almost apologize that they’re not here, but all I can think right now is that Dad and Greg are the whole reason this happened. Greg pushing Asher to fix things with me, my dad deciding he didn’t want to do morning swims with me anymore.
“This is your fault,” I say, matter-of-factly. “If you’d sucked it up and just spotted me across the lake…” I wave my fork at him. “Your boredom is what started this whole mess.”
I expect Dad to laugh, but he doesn’t. Instead, his voice is apologetic and soft when he says, “I’m sorry, Chipmunk.”
Guilt immediately wells up in my chest. “I’m just kidding. It’s my fault, not yours.”
“It’s … a little mine.” Dad runs a hand over his head, the same move as when Mom catches him smuggling vacation jerky out of a grocery bag. He lets out a long sigh that almost whistles. “You’re right.”
“About?”
“I wasn’t actually bored spotting you. I love spotting you, I—”
“Wait, what?”
“It’s just … this thing with you and Asher has gone on so long, and we all thought, if we could just put the two of you together, out on the water, that maybe—”
“What?” My voice is angry, harder than I mean it to be. “Maybe we’d just fall in love and swim off into the sunset?”
Dad’s face softens and his voice is slow and controlled.
“We thought you two would finally have it out. That whatever was going on, whatever the issue was between the two of you … that you’d have time to hash it out.
The two of you falling in love was the farthest thing from my mind.
” Dad looks up to the ceiling and runs his hand over his head again.
“Though I can’t say your mother and Sylvie have never considered the possibility. ”
“At least they never tried to push us together,” I mutter. “Not like you and Greg.” I wonder if it was a coordinated effort, Dad opting out of morning swims and Greg prodding Asher to fix things between us.
“I am sorry, Chipmunk.”
I want to stay mad, but it’s nearly impossible when my dad is looking at me like he feels absolutely horrible.
What did he do wrong, really? I don’t regret what happened out on the lake because of him.
And as much as I want to, I can’t wish away everything that came after it. I don’t think I want to.
When I get back to my room, Ellie has music blasting out of her laptop, and there are two glasses and a few bottles sitting on her desk.
“Um, where’d you get that?” I pick up the orange bottle and smell it. Who knew something could smell sweet and also burn your nostrils at the same time?
“Corrie bought it for me. We’re meeting up with everyone in an hour to celebrate.” She points to my closet and then hands me a glass. “Get ready.”
Aside from the juniors—like Corrie—and seniors, everyone on the team is underage.
None of the upperclassmen are going to risk getting arrested—and kicked off of the team—for serving minors in their own apartments.
And campus security turns a blind eye to anything in the dorms, but there are way too many of us to fit in anyone’s room.
So instead, we’ve all been drinking and getting dressed, and now we’re converging in the middle of campus for my rite of passage as an Oakwood athlete.
I stare at the silver contraption in front of me, and the giant pit of sand below it; this is where big moments are celebrated.
I’ve heard about this before—I’ve seen the photo of my mom doing it—but even when I threatened to break her record, I never fully believed it would happen, because I am 100 percent unprepared for this.
“It’s tradition,” Ellie says, pushing me toward the pit of sand. “Get on it already.” She smacks my butt and I jump.
It’s not that I’m scared—my head is a little too fuzzy to be scared—I’m just not sure how exactly I’m supposed to mount this …
thing. In front of me hangs a giant silver ball.
It’s several feet across, and it dangles like a pendulum over a giant pit of sand.
As it moves, the pointed tip below it cuts designs.
Miley’s song might have made this a hot spot for students, but the Oakwood sports teams made it a tradition way before Miley made wrecking balls cool.
“There’s a sign,” I say, nodding at the plaques every three feet around the rectangular pit of sand.
“Those don’t apply to us,” someone shouts from behind me. “We’re here to celebrate.” In what starts out softly and slowly grows louder, my name rolls off of my drunken teammates’ lips in a constant cadence. Sid-ney. Sid-ney. Sid-ney.
I stand next to the ball and reach my hands up, but I can barely reach the top, let alone get enough leverage to pull myself up.
Ryan steps forward, lacing his fingers in front of him so I can step up.
With a hand on his shoulders I propel myself up, grabbing onto the cord as Ryan continues to push my foot up.
Once I’m standing, the ball wavers under me.
I wrap one leg around the cord to steady myself, and prepare for what I know is about to happen.
Two more guys join Ryan, and with hands pressed against the silver ball they push forward through the sand.
A little squeak escapes me as they step out of the way and I’m flying through the air.
Music plays out from someone’s phone and cheers erupt.
I don’t care about the signs anymore. This night is so close to perfect—just one person away from perfect, actually—and I could stay up here forever.
I ride the ball standing up, and sitting, and at one point Ellie jumps on with me, before dismounting because it makes her dizzy.
I’m standing on the giant silver ball, one leg raised behind me like a ballerina, when a voice cuts through the air.
“You could get arrested for that, you know.” My foot wobbles a little when I realize whose voice it is.
“Or fall and break something.” I look to where our team is huddled to one side of me.
His hands are shoved in his pockets. “Twist an ankle maybe.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t jump this time,” I say.
Asher climbs over the fence until he’s a foot away from the ball. “Jump.”
I stare at him, at his arms stretched out for me.
“Do you trust me?”
I don’t say anything, just let myself fall off of the giant silver ball, until I’m safely in his arms, my feet barely hitting the sand.
He looks at me like I just fell off of a ten-story building.
“You came.”
“First record-break of the season.” He smiles and looks at me conspiratorially. “Of course I came.”
Maybe it’s the way Ellie’s drink is making my skin prickle and my head slowly detach from my shoulders like a balloon on a string, but instead of pulling away like I know I should, I wrap my arms around Asher.
His body stiffens against me, and he doesn’t move for a second, but then his hands rest on my back, and he’s squeezing me.
Suddenly, this night feels complete. And that’s scary, because the one thing I can’t guarantee in my life right now is Asher Marin.