The Hazing Incident #2
By round five, the freshmen wobbled, and Abby stood drenched. When Palamino staggered after her correct answer, nearly vomiting at the presentation of another shot, Abby drank it for her. She did the same for Brookheimer, who gratefully passed hers off with a hiccup.
“All right, Abby, I get the feeling this has never happened to you before, but you’re oh for four on the day. Let’s see if we can bump up that average as you show us how well you know your teammates,” Mick said. “What is Kate Hutchins’s hometown?”
To everyone’s surprise, especially Kate’s, Abby answered without hesitating. “Deer Park, Washington.”
“Correct!”
But the hose came anyway. Courtney blasted Abby for a fifth time, and when it finally stopped, the team stood so still that only the river and obnoxious music cooed.
“Fuck you!” Abby moved for Courtney, but Mick blocked her.
“Daddy can’t save you now, can he, Cruz?” Courtney scoffed. “We know Mommy certainly can’t.”
Abby lunged over Mick, swiping Courtney’s hair, before Kate and T.K.
dragged her away. Abby seethed, her chest galloping under Kate’s hand.
She braced for fists or tears, but neither compared to Abby’s desolate, glistening gaze.
It punctured a hole in Kate, deflated the integrity of her chest, sending the walls and roof caving in.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Seaborn?” Mick yelled.
“She needs to relax! It’s a little water from a hose. Back before the university got involved, the freshmen really did have to swim to the island.”
“I’d rather do that than this bullshit!” Abby shouted.
“Then do it!”
The dock fell quiet.
Abby nodded. “Okay, fuck it. We’re going to have to pump the freshmen’s stomachs and I’m going to get hypothermia anyway.”
“Oh my God, you’re dramatic. You won’t do it.” Courtney turned to the team. “She won’t.”
“Watch me.” Abby snatched the liquor bottle from Jill and chugged.
Kate’s pulse charged in her throat. People had jumped into the river this time of year before, but never after sunset, never after drinking, and never for a full swim to the island. “No, this has gone too far. The game is done.”
“Nah, the game is just getting started.” Abby hissed and smacked the empty bottle into Jill’s stomach.
“That water is way too fucking cold, dude,” Mick said. “Seaborn, call a truce.”
“I’m not calling a fucking truce,” Courtney said. “Let her drown.”
“Court, stop it!” Kate shouted.
“Shut up, Hutch! I know you warned her about the swim.” Lauren glared.
The team erupted in drunk hysteria, pointing fingers, inching into each other’s faces, the seniors screaming at the juniors, the juniors screaming at the seniors.
The inebriated sophomores chanted for Abby to swim.
In the chaos, before anyone could stop her, Abby ripped off her soaked T-shirt, chucked it at Courtney’s face, and dove into the river.
The water met her skin like a thousand knife tips.
She kicked and reached through the initial shock, met the air, and gasped, before bobbing back under.
The river’s claws dragged her down like a monster of the deep.
She flailed, grunted bubbles, and choked when she came up again.
On the dock, her teammates screamed for her to return, but she floated on her back instead.
Water sloshed in her ears. Her eyes met the lavender sky.
“Mom.”
Abby didn’t know if it came off the wind or from her frigid lips.
Perhaps flirting with mortality conjured the lost word.
Pictures flashed along with it. Her mother in the kitchen with the teal tile backsplash, hips swaying as she cooked, singing along to Springsteen in the summer.
Laughter and encouragement, clapping from the bleachers and the beach.
“Swim, Abby,” she’d say during those long summers. “Swim.”
Abby swore the message arrived on the gusts plowing through the canyon, courtesy of an unmistakable ghost. There was no other explanation. So, she swam. Not back to the team, but forward.
The current fought her on the choppy swim.
Her legs cramped and her toes stiffened.
A contradictory pain that permeated the icy numbness it created.
But if Abby was anything, it was stubborn.
Durable. And while each stroke through the water hurt, at least now she controlled her own pain.
For months she’d tried to with booze and poor decisions, but unlike those vices, the swim inspired her to fight for a life she didn’t know she still cared about.
When she finally hauled herself up the shore, she struggled to breathe.
Of course, she still mustered enough energy to flip two middle fingers at her teammates on the dock.
Then she flopped down, huffed, and stared at the vacant island’s treetops.
She considered what it meant to evade drowning for one more day.
If it would mean anything at all tomorrow.
“Did you swim out here?”
Abby popped up to catch the wind’s message, certain it was another whisper from her mother. Instead, she discovered two men in a small fishing boat.
“It’s dangerous! Can we give you a ride back in?”
She didn’t really want to return but couldn’t withstand the cold much longer either. They pulled her into the boat and gave her a towel. The ride back took two minutes, but she pathetically slumped into herself when they arrived.
“Holy shit,” Mick said.
The fishermen lifted her up to the landing. In the team’s frenzied, nonsensical bickering, Kate reached her first. She draped her coat around Abby and held her close as she swayed.
“You’re insane,” Courtney said.
Abby cracked open her frozen lips. “But-but-but I’m off-off gear duty, right? First one, first one there and back-back, b-bitch.”
Jill chuckled. “That’s technically right, Seaborn. You stated the rules loud and clear.”
“Okay, everyone needs to get the fuck out of here before we’re all busted. You take the freshmen back to the dorms. We’ll take care of Cruz,” Mick said. “Go!”
The team scattered in the dark, sprinting for the parking lot, and while out of the clutches of the Columbia River, Abby trembled harder by the second.
“Are you okay?” Kate asked.
Abby leaned into her as water dripped off her nose and hair. “Just fuck-fucking cold.”
“Mick, she’s turning blue.” Kate pressed a hand to Abby’s cheek. “She might have hypothermia.”
“Should we take her to the hospital?” Jill asked as they reached her car.
“No hospital,” Abby and Mick said in unison.
“Hospital means Coach finds out. Coach finds out, we’re dead. I’m talking full fucking kangaroo,” Mick said.
Abby convulsed as she slid into the middle seat, teeth clashing so violently that she worried a dislocated jaw might ail her next. Jill started the car, blasted the heat, and wiped a circle across the foggy windshield.
“She could die from hypothermia,” T.K. said.
“She’s not going to die. Let’s just get her back to our place.”
By the time Jill’s car squealed out of the parking lot, the violent shaking and bone-chilling cold left Abby dizzy.
She shut her eyes, uncomfortable enough that sleep tempted as a better option.
But then a hand squeezed hers, and she jerked back up.
It was Kate rubbing her fingers for warmth, and while the friction barely broke through the cold, Abby hissed thank you.
Kate didn’t acknowledge her, but hedged in closer, her shoulder propping up Abby’s, unbothered by her weight or dampness.
Abby’s heart hadn’t stopped skipping from the adrenaline of the swim, so she didn’t attribute it to Kate, but she couldn’t ignore the way her breath caught.
She hadn’t been this close to someone in months.
The loneliness mercifully lifted, and it took everything in her to not wilt into Kate entirely.
“If something happens to her, we’re going to get kicked off the team, maybe out of school.” T.K. scrolled through her phone. “People go to prison for hazing. I’m not going to prison!”
“Why don’t you figure out how we can help her and then it won’t matter!” Mick peeled off her jacket and handed it to Kate, who wrapped it around Abby. “How is she?”
“Cold,” Kate said, still rubbing her hands.
“Isn’t hypothermia where you’re supposed to take off your clothes and use body heat?” Jill asked.
Kate turned rigid against her and Abby would have chuckled if shaking hadn’t consumed her frail energy.
Mick scoffed. “Quit fantasizing, Shupe.”
“I’m serious!”
“She’s right.” T.K. pointed to her phone.
“Stop. No one is getting naked,” Mick said.
“Thank God,” Abby muttered.
Jill glanced in the rearview mirror. “I have to admit, that was kind of badass, Cruz.”
“It was dangerous,” Kate said.
“Dangerous? We had to stop you from jumping in after her.”
Abby’s eyes widened at Kate, but she didn’t respond.
Mick chuckled. “First picking a fight with the seniors, then jumping into the river. Do you have a death wish?”
Abby frowned but delivered her answer with the same performative confidence that sent her swimming. “Absolutely.”
While everyone resumed their joking, Kate stopped rubbing her fingers. She stared at Abby wistfully, the longest look they’d ever exchanged since they met, and squeezed her hand. In what seemed like a miracle, for the briefest of moments, Abby stopped trembling and squeezed back.
She’d longed for such acknowledgment, though she couldn’t pinpoint why. It started long before softball. Abby first noticed her in the front row of Isla’s class, answering questions in a reserved manner that suggested timidity, but with a cutting weight that demanded one listen.
When Abby spotted the softball patches on her letterman’s jacket, she considered introducing herself but spent weeks eyeing the back of her head instead.
And when she finally worked up the courage to put herself out there, meeting those ice blue eyes and freckles, Abby didn’t even care that Kate dismissed her.
She wanted to keep staring, wanted to keep teasing, wanted to know more.