“Six on the dot, then. Have fun.”
“Thank you.” Swim practice was many things—grueling, challenging, taxing—but hadn’t been fun for years.
_________
After some confusion at Jellie Pool’s front desk, Erin found the changing room and shifted gears from school to swimming. Or tried to shift gears. She was fried, and in desperate need of a nap.
Slowly, she followed signs to the pool and cringed when she stepped onto the pool deck. Erin hated short pools: flip turns broke her stroke twice as often, which seemed to prolong practices and races.
She checked in with the coach, who insisted she call him Percy and assigned her a warm-up lane with Summer and two other girls.
These girls were her new teammates, sure, but swimming was a very individual sport. Unlike softball or soccer, where everyone had to function together, in swimming she just did her best. On her own. And the fastest girl won, no matter what the rest of her team did. Except in relays, of course.
Erin liked being the fastest girl in the pool.
Damned Quigleys.
The girls in Erin’s lane warmed up slowly, and Erin kept their pace. Working in the water was slice of normalcy.
Percy called a brief meeting, and Erin clung to the side of the pool with her new teammates. Her teammates had covered their tattoos during school, but the pool was a whole different story. Most swimmers had a little something—a clown fish, a graphic skull, a tiny rainbow—and many older swimmers had several. It was a literal sea of tattoos.
Erin couldn’t fathom putting any image on her body forever. When the redhead next to her turned eighty, she’d be mortified at the name of the boy band scrawled between her shoulder blades.
Percy introduced Erin to the team. “She’s from the States, and a fine swimmer.”
After greetings all around, Percy recapped the season for Erin: most secondary schools had already qualified for New Zealand’s national swim meet, but no one from Ilam was in yet.
“Erin?” Percy said Erin like an American.
She yanked off her goggles. “Yeah?”
“I thought we might sort out races and medleys for the rest of the season. Can you race a hundred-meter fly?”
“Sure.” She climbed out of the pool as Percy directed Summer and another girl—Lily—onto the blocks.
Erin loved studying the water for that half second just before the gun. Or the clap, in this case.
Her ass was dragging; she waited on the block for a second before diving in. Trying to push the idea of sleep out of her head, Erin went through the motions in her lane.
Gracious, Percy had given Erin the center lane. The first 25 meters were easy; Summer and Lily were nowhere in her peripheral vision. Coming off the wall, she saw them both nearly a body length behind. And she was exhausted.
At the second turn, Erin flipped to find herself a full body length ahead. Adrenaline outpaced her jet lag and she continued to push; it felt amazing to be winning again. She was in her element, creaming the two behind her. Erin finished so hard that she was still panting two minutes after she hit the wall.
Percy bounced on the balls of his feet. “One-oh-four-oh-one! Eleven seconds off Summer’s 100 fly.”
Summer shook Erin’s hand over the lane divider. “Relay’s yours.”
Erin’s stomach twisted. Her performance had wrecked a relay team, which may not have been together three years like her own, but it had been together yesterday.
Next month, one of the Quigley sisters would compete on her Wheaton relay team. With her girls.
Erin was the Quigley now. Had she ruined these kiwi girls’ lives? She definitely had wrecked something for somebody. Now she felt like a jerk.
She still had to survive on the team through the end of the season, though. When the Quigleys had usurped her position on the relay, she’d viewed them as pariahs. She didn’t want her new teammates to see her that way.
“I am so sorry,” she said to Summer.
Summer shrugged.
Percy posted the day’s drills. Erin put her head in the water and worked. She kept pace with her lane during drills, but her anxiety persisted.
Percy focused on form for an hour. After warm down, he dismissed everyone. No lifting. No out-of-water conditioning.
No wonder they weren’t winning.
They weren’t winning, but Erin would. And, unlike cello, racing was something she truly loved.
As Erin climbed out of the pool, Percy repeated her time. “So you can race relay. Could you do the fifty-meter? The two hundred?”
“Two-hundred fly?” That was a long race.
Percy was giddy. “We have three fly races at championships. I’d love you to race them all. You can race whatever you want! We just have to submit your times by the middle of August. Imagine: we’ll send you alone, and maybe take the relay team, too. No matter how we do at next week’s meet, we’ll have four swimmers competing. Welcome, Erin.”
Erin was stunned that he had no directives, only excitement. “Thanks, Coach.”
“Percy, please. See you on the morrow.”
After ninety minutes of intense practice, Erin and her Wheaton teammates dripped on the pool deck while Coach Waterson gave (mostly) constructive criticism.
“Finally, I want you in top form for summer leagues: weights four times this week, no excuses. I don’t care what else is going on. I don’t care what happened at whose party—”
The guys in the back snickered.
“Be here on time and ready to work. We have a serious shot at some amazing races this year. Don’t blow it. Showers.”
Erin’s teammates whispered about Claudia, Ruth, and Hillary Quigley. One of the freshmen asked for their autographs as the rest of the team disbursed into the locker rooms.
Jamie hammered on Erin’s shoulder. “Surprised you went so deep today, Cerise.”
She was attempting to parse that when Claudia Quigley said, “Hey, Erin?”
Silent, Erin crossed her arms.
Claudia bit her lip. “I just wanted to ask how you’re feeling after Saturday. I tried to help, really, I did. You doing okay?”
Lalitha looped her arm through
