Chapter Seventeen Between The Waves
Briar
Se lf-satisfaction had run through my blood strong today. I had a different pep in my step as of today. Walking around campus knowing Alistair was busy cleaning his car of roach shit.
Lyra was convinced this was just provoking them. Making it worse on ourselves. Maybe we were, maybe the prank was a mistake, but at the very least they knew now, we were not going to lie down for them to spit on us.
The maze had been the straw that broke the camel's back.
Fed up with being easy prey, tired of letting them win, even if I lost the war, I won a battle. I served Alistair a spoonful of his own medicine and I hoped it tasted like rotten milk.
I crept down the entryway to the school's recreational hall, the glass door with a simple lock the only thing keeping me from the pool. The glow of the lights beneath the water reflected off the walls as I approached.
With smooth fingers I pulled two bobby pins out of my hair, taking the first one and pulling it apart with my teeth making a ninety-degree angle with it. Squatting to the ground to work with the other, I stick it inside turning to the left to create tension inside the standard padlock.
I slip the first pin over top of the other, playing with the pins inside.
It’s simple math really, a standard lock has five pins and each pin needs to be pressed up in order for the lock to open.
However, there are seized pins, at least three that are harder to release, so I start with those.
Wiggling the bobby pin up and down, until I feel the right amount of resistance.
When I feel it, I press up hard hearing the gratifying click.
“One down, two to go.” I whisper, continuing the same process until all the pins are pulled and the lock gives, falling open on one side.
I smile smugly as I pull the padlock off the door setting it to the side before sliding inside the pool room.
I take in the dark sky twinkling above me, English ivy climbs up the sides of the glass panels encroaching on the top of the roof where more see- through plates make up the top of the house.
During the day, light was shown inside every direction, it was inviting and warm.
But at night, there was an edge. Looking out at the forest, wondering if anything is lingering between the trees staring back at you.
If you starred too long out there, you’d find exactly what you were searching for.
Your mind entertains the darkness if you’re not careful.
I clipped my phone into a small speaker, loud enough for me to hear but quiet enough not to alarm anyone of my presence. I’d decided against clicking on the indoor lights, the ones illuminating the pool seemed to be enough.
The bright, warm lights gave the pool a sea-foam green tint making it more inviting.
Stripping my clothes excitedly, leaving me in my black two piece. I’d been waiting all day to slip into the cool water. Swimming made me feel weightless. Nothing really mattered except the way my body moved. My brain could shut off for a little bit and I could just float.
I needed that.
No more Hollow Boys. No revenge plotting. No school or math problems.
Just to float for a bit.
My bare feet danced across the cold floors around the outside of the pool.
Slightly damp and sticking to my feet, I inhale the chlorine that lingers in the wet air.
The verbena and wild roses planted around the pool almost overwhelm it, but not entirely.
I loved that smell. The chlorine that is.
Huffing it like paint before meets as I readied myself on the diving board, prepared to launch into the water.
Music hung in the air, soft distorted melodies, with subversive lyrics and full of angst. The kind of songs that fueled broken hearts and brought castaways home.
Restless, I dive headfirst into the nine-foot-deep end of the Olympic sized pool. The rush of water cocoons around me, settling on the outside of my ears and making everything above the surface trivial.
The pressure of the water hugs me, showing me comfort I lacked from being here. My family may have been poor, my father may have stolen for a job, but I grew up loved.
I grew up in a home where hugs were given freely and often.
Where the grill was always on in the summer, the smell of charcoal wafting around the warm air.
Where in the winters we’d find the largest hill in our trailer park and sled down it with plastic lids to storage containers.
Where my mom read my bedtime stories and tucked me in.
I was used to being invisible to everyone outside of my home.
To feeling cold and unwanted at school, judged at the grocery store, but I knew I would walk into a two-bedroom trailer that felt like home and supported me.
I had basically nothing to call my own, except family and now it felt like I didn’t even have that.
I’d never felt more isolated.
Yeah, I had Lyra, I had Thomas and I called my mom quite often, but it didn’t feel like enough. Walking around here is a constant chill on my spine, always lugging the chip on my shoulder ready to defend myself.
Minus being chased by psychotic men, I assumed most college freshman felt this way.
Trying desperately to fit in, to find a place to belong in the world all alone. Going away from your family always sounds better in your head, until you’re states away, alone, eating ramen in a hoodie that hasn’t been washed in three days.
But it’s a process. I know this to will pass in one way or another. Either I start to get used to the torment or I let it scare me away.
I stay under until my lungs wanted to burst, until black spots began sprinkling behind my eyelids.
Piercing the water with a gasp for air, I pushed my hair out of my face, slicking it down my back. Chlorine stinging my eyes enough to make me wipe at them.
With a slow pace I make my way to the shallow end, stretching my legs out on the side of the pool, pulling my arms across my chest working the muscles out.
I wanted to get my laps in for the night, I knew it would tire me out and I could possibly get some rest tonight. Which I needed, because I had a test tomorrow and I did not want to fail my first college test.
I picked the lane in the middle, number five, the song changing as I dive back underneath the water starting with the breaststroke for my first hundred meters.
Five-hundred-meter medley was always my heat. I think it silently killed my swim coach that I was the only one on the team who could do all four swim styles. I won meets just to see the pissed off look on her face because just like everyone else, they expected me to fail.
And I guess that’s what all of this comes down to.
It’s why I haven’t tucked tail and ran far away from this homicidal school with kidnapping tendencies.
I didn’t want to give them what they wanted from me.
Failure.
It’s all anyone has ever seen when they look at me. When they get past the invisibility, all they see is trailer park trash destined for the gutters.
I wanted more for myself. I wanted to prove them all wrong. I lived for the moments I did, when I could see the shock on their faces. That’s what I’m going to try to do here.
Build a better future for myself so that when people look at me, they see a woman riddled with success and confidence. They wouldn’t be able to imagine me as anything else.
Those boys weren’t going to take that from me. I wasn’t going to let them see me fail either. Even if they look down at me from their respective thrones, thinking their terror pranks will run me away, ruin me.
They would not be the end of me. They are not taking my future from me.
By the start of my backstroke my arms were burning, I was taking sharper breaths, and staying beneath the surface for less and less time. Fatigue was settling deep into my muscles.
But I pushed through. I demanded more from my body because my mind wasn’t finished yet. I swam because the water had always been a sort of freedom for me. A breakaway from the rules of gravity and the chance to feel absolutely weightless.
There is something about the motion of it, when you break past the burn, it starts to feel natural. The way the water swirls around me, the cool water as I move through a different medium than air.
I became a swimmer by accident.
I was eleven and my mom signed me up for a summer program, I spent the entire three months in the pool. And at the end of the program, there was a race, one that I had won by leaps and bounds.
It was the first positive label I’d ever been given.
The girl who could swim like a fish.
So I never stopped.
I flipped beneath the water one last time, pressing off the side of the pool with my toes and heels as hard as I could propelling myself forward under the water like a swift dagger in the wind.
I reappear at the surface, rotating my arms in constant circles as I force my body to finish this last meter of freestyle. My arms glide in and out of the pool, my legs kicking with power as the last of my stamina begins to dwindle.
My fingers and hand slap the top of the concrete, marking the end of my medley. I stand straight up in the shallow water, my legs wobbly, as I take a deep breath. Holding myself up against the edge, regaining my sense of vision above the water.
With little effort I lay back, letting the water carry me. My breathing regulates as I stare up at the star covered sky through the glass windows. Drifting off into a world all my own.
Envisioning myself as a woman with power. A business owner. A trailblazer. Someone important. Someone who can’t be overlooked. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for work after college, mostly because I didn’t think I’d be able to afford college. Now the possibilities are endless.
I have never-ending choices with a fancy degree from Hollow Heights.