Chapter Seven
Seven
I arrive at the rickety old boathouse just as the first splashes of orange sunrise soak the horizon.
Although someone has given the place a new coat of paint recently, it’s otherwise just as I remember: all cupolas and gables and ancient wood siding, dotted by white-trimmed and thinning windows.
It’s a far cry from the sleek lines and shiny aluminum infrastructure of the training center.
Maybe I should feel at home here, like cozy or nostalgic.
Instead, I have that Chutes and Ladders feeling again, like I’ve been sent back to the starting line.
The bay doors are still firmly padlocked, but I’m glad to be the first one here.
It means I have at least a few minutes to do a dryland warm-up with visualizations before the team arrives.
As a freshman in high school, I started stretching daily on a grassy knoll, under the sprawling branches of a copper beech-tree, that overlooks the expanse of water spilling into the San Francisco Bay.
My quiet moments alone by that tree, listening to the gentle lapping of waves against the shore and the call of a seagull overhead, became a meditation for me.
A peaceful place away from the whirlwind of my mom’s life. A place that belonged just to me.
The tree is still here, and I find a flat section of sandy earth where I can finish my pre-workout drink while I run through my warm-up routine.
As I sink into a hamstring stretch, I picture my oar dipping into the surface of the water, a spray of water kicking off the blade.
Then, a micro-pause at the base of my stroke, and—
Discordant music assaults my ears.
I whirl to find a gaggle of high school rowers descending the rickety wooden stairs from the upper levels of the boathouse.
They’re yelling and dancing to a cacophony of music—a pelting mixture of pop and rap—blasting from portable speakers clipped to their backpacks.
At the bottom of the stairs, one kid holds his phone up to snatch a video as two others perform some kind of fake boxing match.
“This is what’s wrong with teenagers,” I mutter under my breath, like I could go back in time and land the perfect comeback to Carla. “Maybe they’re not offensive, but they definitely aren’t serious.”
I scan youthful faces and lanky bodies, searching for an adult.
Adrian doesn’t seem to have arrived yet, so I root through my bag until I find my earbuds.
Then I jam them into my ears, crank the volume, and focus on my lunges.
If I turn my back to the group, all I can see is the trunk of the beech-tree and a stretch of placid water.
It’s not quite peaceful, but it’s almost like being alone.
That is, until I’m bent in a calf stretch and someone slams into my back.
I topple. My hip lands on the grass with a whack of pain.
Still too surprised to be angry, I untangle my limbs and search for the source of my sudden engagement with the ground. Above me, a kid with a constellation of acne is still midway through a backward dance move, phone held high in selfie mode.
“You ran into me?” I splutter.
Only then does the breakdancer look down.
“Sorry,” he mutters. As though to prove the point, he tosses up a hand in an utterly unconvincing apologetic wave. Without another word, he resumes his dancing.
Involuntarily, my teeth gnash. I bet that vein in my temple is pulsing. The one Sofi calls my “anxiety-indicator light.”
I press myself to my feet and dust off my unisuit, searching again for my new—very temporary—coach, who, as far as I can tell, hasn’t lifted a finger to impose order on this dance party at dawn.
Over a mass of heads and shoulders and oars, I finally spot a tall person with messy brown hair and a clipboard clasped behind his back.
I beeline toward him, ducking out of the way of a quad precariously lofted on scrawny shoulders and a set of oars wielded like accidental spears.
I land behind the coach’s wide shoulders, which are shaking with a chuckle. For reasons I can’t quite place, his posture is vaguely familiar.
“Hello, Adrian?” Do I sound shrill? I probably sound shrill. I’m annoyed enough that I don’t care.
The man turns.
And my gaze hiccups on a pair of familiar green eyes, crinkled in a laugh. The sound cuts off as my stomach plummets through my toes.
What the hell. This isn’t happening. This is a dream.
My coach—my actual coach—is a man I once arm wrestled for a lemon bar? Danced with while I was drunk? Tried and, very importantly, failed to kiss?
Did I say dream? I meant nightmare. This is a nightmare.
“Kath, hey,” Adrian says with too much ease. “I told you to wait a few days before coming down here.”
“You—” I blink as I scrutinize his expression. He doesn’t look sufficiently surprised. “You already know who I am?”
Adrian’s eyes flick to his athletes, still parading around to their cacophonic beats. “Carla mentioned the World Cup and the finishes, the disqualification from residency.”
I can’t tell whether or not I should feel relieved or even more embarrassed. My mind retreads the emails we sent each other, even as my stomach clenches, decision made without me. More embarrassed. Definitely even more embarrassed.
“When, exactly, did you find out?” I ask. “Did you know when we…”
Adrian shakes his head. “No. Not until Carla messaged me a couple of days ago. And I was really hoping we could—”
“Who’re you?” A gangly kid with gapped teeth pops up behind Adrian, regarding me with unconcealed curiosity.
I stare back mutely, still dizzy from the dawning reality that I got drunk and rejected by the man who is supposed to be coaching me for the next two months.
How can I look at Adrian without remembering the way I lost control that night?
How can I listen to his coaching cues without thinking about the way his hands felt on my waist?
“Do you need me to repeat the question?” the kid prompts. “You kind of look confused or, I don’t know, maybe like English isn’t your first language?”
When my mouth continues to work soundlessly, Adrian shoots me a sympathetic look.
“This”—he waves a hand like he’s introducing a famous singer—“is Kath Parker, a national team athlete who just raced in the World Cups. And lucky for us, she’ll be training with the performance team for the next two months.”
More heads spring up. A few of them must have lowered the volume on their music, because the ambient ruckus dampens, and the group seems to be growing exponentially.
“Oh, shit.”
“Really, World Cups?”
“How’d you do?”
Saving me from answering that last, rather loaded, question, Adrian interjects again. “She raced in the B final in Varese. In singles. That means you’re looking at one of the twelve fastest women on the planet.”
This elicits another chorus of reactions.
I’m trying to figure out how to dispute Adrian’s claim, to tell them that really World Championships is a more definitive measure of international rankings, when another kid tilts his head and says with a wide grin, “Really? What are you doing training here with us, then?”
Someone laughs and my stomach trips.
Another shout: “Hey, have you been to the Olympics?”
I blink into a sea of silent faces and watchful eyes. These kids look so innocent and yet they’re finding my weak spots like archers aiming for bull’s-eyes.
“No,” I force myself to say. “One day I hope to go.”
Two kids whistle. Someone flashes a thumbs-up.
My eyes snag on a kid near the back of the group with knobby knees and pale white skin that looks as if it’s been repeatedly burned into a permanent pink.
Through a pair of wire glasses that take up most of his slight face, he’s staring at me so intently it’s almost unsettling.
“Any of you hoping to make it to the Olympics one day?” Adrian asks the group, and I’m thankful that he’s pulled their attention away from me.
The question mostly elicits a chorus of nahs and shakes of the head.
“Too much work!” someone yells.
“I like video games too much,” another supplies.
Some of the kids laugh, but the serious one holds himself completely still, except that, behind his glasses, his eyes widen.
“Isn’t that kind of an unrealistic goal?” His voice is so low that, if I hadn’t noticed him already, I would have missed it.
A kid wielding a phone like a searchlight leaps in front of his coach. He has umber skin and a mess of black hair that’s been shaped into a surprisingly stylish quiff for a teenage boy. “Coach is going to say that no goal is unrealistic. All of us can do anything we set our minds to.”
Adrian playfully punches his shoulder. “Thanks, Rohan. Actually, I was going to say that nearly all of you can do anything you set your minds to. Some of you are beyond hope.”
“Ah!” the phone wielder—Rohan—yells. “Why did you have to say that when I wasn’t recording? Everyone loves a snarky coach.”
“He has to say that, though, right?” The serious kid is still looking at me, like nothing else has been said for the last few moments. “But it is unrealistic.”
The question reminds me of the time I tacked up my first poster of an Olympian.
I’d kept it rolled up under my bed for weeks, like my dreams were some sordid secret and if I declared them publicly, they’d never come true.
One day, Mom saw the poster peeking out from under my duvet.
When I admitted the truth, she took my hands in hers, looked me in the eyes, and told me about the fire.
That was back when she danced professionally, and she said among dancers, there were some people who had it and some who didn’t.
“When I look at you,” she told me, “I don’t see a few flames. I see a whole bonfire.”
Mom might not have been great at signing permission slips or remembering to make cookies for bake sales, but she gave me something better: the confidence to tack up that poster and dream bigger dreams.