26 McKenna
McKenna
For my last night in the house, I’ll be curled up in a sleeping bag on the hardwood floor, probably getting weepy about saying
goodbye to the place that’s been my home for so long. Everything I’m taking with me is stuffed in my car, and the closing
is scheduled for tomorrow morning. After that, the new buyers will take possession, and I will spend four and a half weeks
couch surfing between Lark’s and Rae’s summer housing until it’s time to move back to my own dorm.
Outside, the rain has been pouring for the last hour, with intermittent bouts of thunder and lightning. The noise feels like
exclamation points on my gloomy mood. I keep wandering between the different rooms, especially my bedroom, then Glory’s. Even
empty, the nooks and crannies of these spaces bring back so many memories.
Standing at the kitchen counter, I take a few last bites from the container of chicken and rice I picked up from Chipotle.
I had to walk through a deluge to get it, but I’d finished cleaning out the fridge earlier in the day, and I was starving enough to put up with getting soaked out there.
I scarfed down a few bites as soon as I got home and then took a long shower to warm up.
Now dressed in dry sleep shorts and a comfy sweatshirt, I polish off the remaining food and toss the empty containers back
in the takeout bag, which I’m using as the lone trash bag in the house.
My phone dings and I grab for it, hoping it’s Glory. She’s been harder to reach these last few weeks. And when we do talk,
she often zones out or falls asleep. I can feel her slipping through my fingers, disappearing deeper into an abyss with each
passing day. And maybe this is the cruelest way there is to lose someone, watching the old Glory fade away in tiny increments,
piece by piece, one memory at a time. It feels like fragments of myself are disappearing right along with her.
I look down at my phone. Of course the text is not from her.
Coach Cat: I talked to housing, and it looks like I can get you into the dorms a week early. Meantime, don’t get too blue tonight. Look at this as the start of a new leg of your journey. You know what they say: When one door
closes . . .
Things have been strained between Coach and me ever since the day he dressed me down for “assaulting a member” at Hollyhock.
But yesterday he overheard Rae and me talking about the family that’s buying Glory’s house. He asked a bunch of questions,
and after listening to my answers, he softened a little. I feel buoyed by his message, remembering that Glory isn’t the only
person who looks out for me.
I’m okay, but appreciate the pep talk, Dad. I add a little smiley face.
After I hit Send, I feel, for the first time in recent memory, regret that I don’t have a dad, that I’ve been left to handle so much on my own. Not necessarily because I missed out on that specific relationship, but because a dad would have been one more person who was mine.
I consider texting Glory to say good night, but she probably won’t respond, and then I’ll only feel sadder. Instead, I head
to my bedroom, flipping off the light and burrowing into the thin sleeping bag on the floor. I already left the other set
of keys with Bobby the broker to give to the new owners. Tomorrow I’ll lock the front door of this house one last time. Then
I’ll go to the lawyer’s office to sign whatever they need and officially transfer title to the house. I made a list of important
details I want to give the new people, like how the ice maker sometimes makes a funny noise but they can usually just ignore
it, or that they’d better remember to replace the batteries in the doorbell every six months or they’ll never know when they
have visitors. I want to hug them and tell them I hope they’ll love the house as much as we did. Maybe we’ll exchange numbers
and they’ll tell me I can come visit anytime.
Maybe it will all be okay.
Except the next day, things don’t unfold how I expect.
When I arrive at the office of Aitana Fernandez, the lawyer my broker recommended, the buyers aren’t there. Apparently they
signed everything the day before and only sent their lawyer, a crotchety older man named Archie, in their place. So I don’t
get to meet the wonderful young family who’ll be taking possession after all.
How I wish that was the worst of it.
After I settle in at the shiny conference table, the frizzy-haired lawyer pushes a huge stack of papers toward me. It takes a while for me to sign on all the dotted lines, document after document, but finally, Aitana hands me a check. I look at the amount and blink to make sure I’m seeing properly.
“What is this?” I ask.
“It’s your proceeds. From the sale.”
“This is only a quarter of the purchase price.”
“Right. Because of the reverse mortgage,” Bobby the broker says as he leans over to pat my arm.
“Reverse mortgage? What is that?” I ask.
“I told you,” Bobby says, defensiveness in his voice. He glances at the attorney and then back to me. “Your grandmother had
a reverse mortgage on the house. I told you.”
So much new information had been thrown at me while we were preparing for the sale. Maybe he did mention it, but what the
hell do I know about real estate and mortgages?
“I didn’t know that meant I wasn’t getting all of it.” I look over at Aitana helplessly.
She and Bobby then explain to me what it means to have a reverse mortgage—the important detail being that Glory had taken
out a loan at some point using the house as collateral. So it’s the bank, not me, who’s getting all the money I’d been waiting
for, the money I’d been so foolishly sure would save us.
I’m on my third set of freestyle laps, and I can barely focus after the disastrous events of my morning.
I’m pretty sure I’m crying, but thankfully, having my face under the water makes it hard to tell.
I keep running calculations in my head as I push my body through the water, turning my head to the side for brief gasps of air and trying to figure out how to stretch the much-smaller-than-expected check.
When I turn for the next breath, I clock movement in my peripheral vision and see Coach Cat at the side of the pool, waving his arms and trying to catch someone’s attention, maybe mine.
I’m only two strokes away from the starting block, so I just finish the lap and look up to where he’s storming over to my lane.
His face is a darker shade of red than I’ve ever seen it, and I can tell something is very, very wrong.
Before I can ask what’s going on, he barks a command at me.
“Out of the pool! Now!”
“What? Why? What happened?” I plant my hands on the pool’s edge and haul myself out of the water.
“I just got another call from Hollyhock,” he says, his tone expectant.
I wait, unsure what he’s going to say next.
“Well?” he demands. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“About what, Coach? I don’t know what you’re talking about. The club’s just randomly calling you to complain about me now?”
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit!” he roars, and I take a step back. I’ve never seen him this angry. “Why did you go back
there? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Some of the other swimmers have stopped their laps to watch us.
“Go back? I didn’t go back. I haven’t. Honestly, I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but you’re being totally scary
right now.” Water is dripping from my hair and suit down my body to the floor, but I barely feel it as Coach continues.
“Good! You should be scared. What kind of stunt . . . I can’t believe this!” His voice keeps getting louder. “Gasoline, McKenna?! Oil paint?
You know full well how much damage those materials can cause!”
“Coach!” Now I’m panicking and yelling too. “Stop it! I have no idea what this is about!”
Suddenly our assistant coach, Marcy, is hurrying over, an expression of alarm on her face. “Warren, what’s going on?” she
asks, looking from Coach to me and back to Coach.
“Our friend McKenna here thought it’d be a good idea to send the people at Hollyhock Country Club a message,” he tells Marcy.
“Show them how she felt about being fired, or how she doesn’t respect their rules, or God knows what else she was trying to
say! You want to tell Marcy what you did, Sonny, or should I?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
A look of grave disappointment crosses Coach’s face before he looks back at Marcy.
“Yeah, she didn’t do anything except pour gallons of paint and gasoline into the club’s seventy-five-foot swimming pool last
night. Late, so no one on-site would notice the oily sheen on the water. It left plenty of time for the fuel to seep into
the filters and then the pump.” He looks back at me. “That’s what you wanted, right? Maximum damage.”
I’m stunned into silence.
“They’ll have to drain the whole pool into a special hazardous waste removal truck, and you can bet your bottom dollar that both the filter and the pump are completely destroyed.
Brand-new pool equipment. The pool walls and floors are stained, and they may need to acid-wash the whole pool.
Thousands and thousands of dollars, Sonny.
That’s what this childish stunt of yours is going to cost the club.
Hazardous waste and material degradation.
Kathleen said so much, I lost track. And for what?
! Did you think it would make them hire you back?
You’d better hope they don’t find proof, Sonny, because you’ll almost certainly get arrested.
Is that what you wanted? To go to prison? ”
“Prison?!” I shout back. “Coach, I had nothing to do with any of that! I didn’t even know about it until right this minute!
Why do you think it was me?”
He stares back at me, examining my face, and I think he’s finally hearing me. His features slacken, as if he’s realized he
jumped too quickly to the wrong conclusion.
“Coach,” I hurry to say. “You know me. You know I’d never do anything like that.”
He shakes his head and lets out a long sigh.
“That’s the problem, Sonny. I do know you. I know how quick you are to anger, how you make irrational, stupid choices when
you’re mad.”
“Yeah, maybe, but nothing like this.” I can hear the pleading in my voice, but my desperation seems to stoke the flames of
his anger.
“It just sounds like bullshit to me, McKenna. There’s no one else who’d have reason to do this. It was so clearly revenge . . .
All because a private club didn’t want to act as a charity? What exactly did you think would come of this? Once they find
proof, I don’t think there’ll be anything I can do to protect you. God knows you don’t deserve it!”
As shocked as I am that someone poured a bunch of toxic waste into the country club pool, I’m more stunned they think I’m the one who did it.
Most of all, I’m floored that Coach believes them, that his first instinct is to think the worst of me.
Until this moment, I really believed he cared about me, just like a surrogate dad.
But a family member is supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt.
I’m so incensed by his lack of belief in me, how quick he is to assume I’ve done these terrible things, that I’m blinded by rage.
I open my mouth and tear into him even worse than he just laid into me.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? Proof? Let them find proof! I didn’t do shit, Coach! Their proof will show I had nothing
to do with any of this! How could you think, after all the time we’ve spent together, that I would do something like that?
But you’re not even questioning it. I thought you knew me. I thought you prided yourself on getting to know all your swimmers
so, so well. Apparently you don’t know shit about me if you think I’d throw gasoline in a pool. I can’t even afford the fucking
gas, you asshole!”
No sooner are the words out of my mouth than I want to take them all back, reach into the air, grab them, and stuff them back
into my mouth, where no one will ever hear them. I know better than to speak to Coach like this. He may have been an ass,
but he’s my coach, and he deserves respect, if not for who he is then at least for his position. I’ve seen other swimmers
lose it on a coach a time or two in the past, and I know full well it always ends the same way.
“Coach,” I start. “Coach, I am so sorry.”
“Pack up your locker, McKenna.”
“No, Coach, no, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean— I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“Damn it, Sonny. You’ve given me no choice. You’re off the team.”