of the house would be a blessing. It would mean Bob and Linda care enough. Just enough to reject her. They don’t, though. Paige is merely a teen going through a phase. In her parents’ minds she’ll be a punk rocker next and pierce her nipples. Then she’ll go to college and become a hippie kid. Maybe hang out naked with dreadlocked black guys. This is all a phase. After school she’ll straighten out completely. She’ll follow Linda’s footsteps and get a career in advertising. Marry young. Marry wealthy. Have kids. Raise dogs. It makes Paige sick and I can’t count the number of times when we’re just hanging out that she’ll stop mid-sentence and look like she’s either going to scream or punch a hole in a wall. When that happens I just hug her or punch her shoulder.
Grabbing a handful of cheese popcorn, I say, “I’m really quitting, Paige. Really. There’s going to be a new me. You’re totally going to be surprised.”
“I believe you.”
“I’m serious. Really, it’s a new day for me.”
“I believe you, Ade.”
I ask, “Just like that?”
Paige mutes the TV, says, “You’ve never wanted to quit before. I’ve begged you for years. Since we first met. You never once said you would. Never once made a false promise. Ade, you love trashing yourself, but if you love this girl more, well, I believe you. But… how much of this is because you don’t want her with Jimi?”
I hold up my thumb and index finger about an inch apart.
Paige shakes her head.
“Fact is,” I say, “if the guy died, I don’t think I’d go to the funeral.”
THREE
Because Mantlo doesn’t have a pool, we swim at Celebrity Sports Center.
It’s the perfect place to make a change. To get away. Celebrity has a massive pool, three water slides, twelve bowling lanes, an arcade and even bumper cars. They say it was originally built as a training center for employees on their way to Disneyland. Once you’re inside, it’s like being in another world. Something vaguely Caribbean without the poor people and the trashed-out beaches. Around the pool and water slides are fake rocks that bristle with fake plants. It’s hot and steamy and the water is suspiciously bright blue.
We’ve been here for like two hours. Everyone swimming lesuirely before things technically get started. I’ve just been doing my thing. Swimming fast and then slowing down and blowing bubbles, kicking too high, kicking too loud. I’m like a kid in here.
And then Coach Ellis blows his whistle and ushers us to the food court.
“We’re gonna reflect,” he says.
Technically it’s meditation. We find a spot between two fake rock ledges and lay our towels down on the Astroturf. Then we stretch. After stretching we lie down, close our eyes, focus on our breathing and imagine we’re not lying on ketchup-stained Astroturf. At first I imagine the Great Barrier Reef from pictures I’ve seen. Bright blue-green water, shot from above, and in it undulate these ribbons of coral and color. I imagine flying over the reef, dipping down every now and then to skim my feet along the warm water. Meditating this way, my mind feels clear for the first time in God knows how long. Here on the Astroturf I’m not anxious or itching to knock myself out at the bottom of the pool or against a telephone pole on the way home. It’s glorious.
I swim in the fourth lane.
It’s clear immediately this is the lane reserved for those of us who need a little extra time. Those of us who need the encouragement. That’s why Beverly Morrison is in lane four with me and the other slowpokes. She’s the carrot. Has this killer body and wears the skimpiest swimsuits imaginable. And usually it works, but I don’t feel like swimming fast to be right behind her. I don’t notice her at all. I swim leisurely and finish after everyone else, languidly splashing down the lane and I can feel Coach’s eyes burning into my back.
Fact is: I don’t care.
I’m obsessing over Vauxhall the way I obsessed over the Buzz. At first, it’s just me reliving the past few weeks. I pore over every word, every glance. It’s like a film I watch in my head. Only better because I cut out all the bad parts, the parts that make me want to curl up in a corner. In my movie, I see Vauxhall smiling and laughing and being ridiculously brilliant. Underwater, mid-stroke, I laugh with sheer pleasure.
Maybe that last knockout shook something loose?
I’m about fifty meters into a two-hundred-meter crawl when I take a deep breath and kick down to the bottom of the pool to touch the bottom. I run my fingers along the black line painted there. It’s slick, seamless. I replay the vision of Vauxhall singing in the lunchroom just the same as I saw it. Her and Jimi walking in and then speeding things up and seeing her on the table singing, cutting to when she’s eye-to-eye with me and the world is revolving around us. I move through it quickly.
When I open my eyes I’m about fifteen inches from the wall and about to eat tile.
I pull back. Blink hard.
I worry my teammates are watching me. That they’re swimming in place, faces puffed out under the water, watching me lose my mind at the bottom of the Celebrity swimming pool in the shadow of a fake rock cliff. In my head I sigh and swim to the surface. Everyone else is at the other end of the pool listening to Coach. He’s yelling. He’s pointing at me as I swim back.
“What’s going on?” Coach has his hands on hips, leaning over with his whistle dangling a few inches from my face.
I shrug, water running into my eyes. “Just not feeling it today.”
“Not feeling it? It’s the first day, Patience.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I dunno. I’m going to try hard, though. Just maybe not-”
Coach’s interrupts. “You sick?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you get out and take the rest of the night off. While I don’t think you’ll be a star or maybe even third tier, we need bodies on the team. So you’re good.” He smiles, but it’s not meant to be a nice smile, this is Coach mocking me. Before turning away he says, “I’m just impressed you bothered to come at all.”
I towel off and sit on one of the many lounge chairs lining the edge of the pool and watch the others swim. I watch them but don’t really see them. I’m zoned out thinking about the line at the bottom of the pool. Seeing Vauxhall’s smile everywhere I look.
In the locker room Garrett Shepard whips me with his towel and makes a crack.
All I hear of it is, “… with this retard.”
Garrett, he’s the type of guy who will be arrested doing something completely inappropriate with a drunk girl. The type of guy to go to college and make as many women as possible very unhappy, very embarrassed. This guy, he is the epitome of everything I hate about jocks.
I finish getting dressed and walk over to him. “You have a problem?”
Garrett laughs. “Yeah. I do.”
“And what’s that?”
“I hear your girl’s always in heat. She’s just craving it all the time and yet she’s hanging around with you. With a fucking retard.”
Sighing, I say, “I don’t feel like fighting you tonight, Garrett.”
“Oh, really? You don’t?” His face almost cracks with overexaggeration. “You don’t like me talking trash about your new girlfriend?”
“Not my girlfriend yet.”
Garrett scans the room, his teeth out and gleaming. “Yet? You hear that? Yet. Oh, right! I forgot she’s riding the joke of that theater homo.”
“Leave it alone, Garrett.”
Garrett steps closer. “From what I hear, all the fights you’ve been in you’ve lost.”
“Most.”
“This going to be another one?”
“No.”
