“Ruby!” Jade said.
“What? It’s true. All work and no play? Sport is supposed to be fun, like Gemma said.”
“Winning is fun,” Erin said.
“Winning doesn’t last,” Ruby said.
“Neither will your sugar high,” Erin said. She clanged around the kitchen, boiled an entire box of pasta per the instructions on the box, and ate alone at the table. Halfway through a movie, Percy arrived with dinner and Erin’s teammates swarmed the table.
After Erin wished everyone good night, she heard someone say, “Someone’s quite the tall poppy.”
She crawled into bed early after one final text to her best friend.
Erin: More than anything, I wish you were here, Li. ♥
THIRTY-NINE
The morning races were eerily quiet. Like meets in Christchurch, there were occasional shouts, but most people cheered as swimmers mounted the blocks or once the race ended.
Only one woman coached from the sidelines. It was like having Claire right there. Lift! and Faster! and You’re trailing! as if her daughter (Erin was guessing daughter) could hear her underwater.
Felicity arrived an hour before the relay race and sat alone with her jacket in her lap. When Erin caught her eye, Felicity smiled and gave a thumb’s up.
Soon enough, Gemma was in the pool, mounted and ready for the gun. Marama, Ruby, and Erin wished her luck, and she was off. Erin couldn’t watch the race. Peripherally, she could see that other girls would make it back before Gemma, but she focused only on Gemma’s cap.
When she returned, Ruby dove in and gained a little on the other teams.
As Erin climbed onto the blocks, Marama slapped her on the shoulder.
Some swimmers focus on form in the water, but that had never worked for Erin during a real race. The second she stood on the blocks, her adrenaline amped up, muscle memory took over, and her mind went blank.
Ruby hit the wall and Erin was in the water without thinking.
Dolphin, dolphin, dolphin, dolphin, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe. Flip.
She pushed it. She wanted it. Breathing every single stroke, she put everything into the race.
Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, done.
Erin popped out of the water to watch the finish. They were going to qualify, no question. It was down to Marama, who killed it.
Everyone hugged one another and dried off.
Between races, Erin found Felicity in the stands. “Well done, Erin! I love watching you swim.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve worked very hard for this. How are you feeling?”
Erin kept her eyes on the qualifying races for backstroke. “Great.”
“But how do you feel about the culmination of years of training?”
“Great.”
“Erin?” Felicity waited for Erin to look at her. “Are you happy? Does this feel as you wanted it to feel?”
Happy wasn’t the right word. “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished.”
Felicity nodded, and Erin focused again on the pool.
That afternoon, her relay team qualified to quarterfinals, but not semis. Alone, Erin qualified to semis in three races, all of which were Saturday morning.
She texted Claire.
Erin: Relay team DNQ. I Qd in 50M, 100M, and 200M fly.
Percy said, “Great job, ladies. While you’re changing, decide what you fancy for tea.”
Decide what you fancy for tea. No coaching. No commentary. No judgment. The no-judgment aspect was a relief. No one was recording her race as a coaching device. Her team’s loss wouldn’t be posted on social media.
It was heavenly.
She threw open the door, colliding with the intermittent knocker. Tiny phone cameras focused on her as she ran, half-naked, from the observatory toward the bathroom. She vomited on the spiral staircase, in the hall, and across the ankles of Lalitha and one of the Quigleys, who were animatedly discussing the team’s swimsuit options.
Her stomach empty, Erin dry-heaved over the toilet. Minutes later, she lay on the cool stone floor, focusing on caulk at the tub’s base to keep the room from spinning. Retching convulsed her body every few minutes for an hour.
Lalitha brought a hair band and forced Erin to finish a glass of water. When Erin refused to move to the guest room, Lalitha brought her a blanket and travel pillow.
Finally, the room slowed enough that she could close her eyes without feeling nauseated.
Erin pretended to sleep when Claudia Quigley peed on the toilet next to her.
Shortly after midnight on her seventeenth birthday, Erin passed out.
FORTY
At the house that night, Erin kept her head in the game. While her teammates crammed onto a sofa for another movie, Erin slipped out for a walk. She hiked up steep switchbacks to the mountain road and headed uphill.
She couldn’t shake memories of meets past. She missed Lalitha and their pre-meet routines. Erin hoped to win one of her races tomorrow and capture her unique factor. But she still felt off-kilter, upside down, and for that there was no end in sight.
Near the end of the road, a chill brushed past her. She should be warming her muscles and tending to her body right now, doing her own private race prep.
She turned back toward the house and accidentally spied the moon, the thing she’d been avoiding for months. She had loved the moon so much that she’d told Ben everything about it. He never could remember which crescent was waning and which was waxing, and Erin’s little mnemonic device, Now you C me, now you don’t, helped him get the shapes right, if not the concept of waning.
And here it was, the waning moon, peeking through thin clouds.
Erin shuddered.
She had no more tears for Ben, only a gaping sense of loss. And now, probably for the rest of her life, that stupid moon—waning or waxing—would remind her of the stupid boy for whom waning was an impossible concept.
Staring into the heavens made her feel part of something much, much larger. She—and trillions of other small somethings—were part of something big. Mars, Earth, luminous balls of hydrogen and helium, the moon, and Erin. Everything single thing sprang from the same stuff.
She drank in the moon. Crescent, half-full, full, new, she loved it all. But the
