Jenga

I hope and pray to God I’ll do better in my second final of the day: 200 free.

To prepare, I stretch all my muscles and inhale deeply through my nose.

“Maggie!”

I look up from touching my toes to find Hunter and Georgia walking up. He’s still in his Raiders baseball uniform, and Georgia looks comfortable in leggings and a light sweater. It’s hard to believe spring is two weeks away. Normally I’d be terribly excited for warm weather and flowers blooming, but at the moment it feels like the dark of winter will never end.

“I’m so excited you guys are here,” I say. “I lost.”

We give each other side hugs.

“That sucks about your first race,” Hunter says. “But second place is pretty amazing, Mags.”

“Yeah.”

Georgia touches my elbow. “Is something wrong? Levi wouldn’t talk to us.”

“I don’t want to talk about him, okay?” I snap, startling Georgia.

Hunter pats my back, ignoring my outburst. “Can I do anything?”

“Tell me about something. Anything.”

He continues rubbing friendly circles on my back. “You won’t believe what happened at my baseball game today.”

Georgia starts cracking up so hard her face turns red.

“I can’t wait to hear this,” I say.

“Shelby and I haven’t had a whole lot of alone time lately because her dad won’t let me come over after the pizza delivery incident, and my house is always packed.” Hunter has three sisters. “I had a bit of time before the game was going to start, so Shelby and I snuck off to the equipment shed.”

Georgia snorts loudly, and Hunter gives her a look.

“We were fooling around, and I guess we were a little loud and didn’t notice the window was open…until the guys outside the shed started cheering us on.”

“Oh my God,” I say. “So now everybody on your team knows what you sound like when you’re—”

“Doing the nasty?” Georgia says. “Yup.”

Hunter shakes his head. “It’s not nasty. It’s beautiful.”

“Oh my God,” I say again. I’d be mortified. “Is Shelby okay?”

“No one saw us. She thought it was pretty funny, but I think she’s hoping and praying it doesn’t get back to her parents!”

“Maggie,” Coach Josh calls. “You’re up.”

“Gotta go, guys. Thank you so much for coming.”

They give me good luck hugs, and then I’m off. When I hit the deck, I’m not even nervous. I’m still laughing at Hunter’s story. I wipe the tears from my eyes as I head over to the blocks. Levi sees me chuckling, and it makes him grin as he fingers the goggles hanging around his neck. I wipe the smile off my face.

I strip out of my sweats and down to my suit, adjust my bottoms to make sure I don’t have a wedgie, and listen to Coach Josh’s last minute pep talk. He squeezes my shoulders. “Listen, Maggie. You swam your personal best in this event two weeks ago. You only need to do one thing today.”

“Try to improve a little?”

He smiles. “You got it.”

I step up to the blocks at lane four. Roxy’s in lane five. She says something, but I don’t process her words. I take a few practice strokes and shake out my arms. Adjust my cap and make sure my goggles are secure. Keep my eyes focused on the water in front of me.

The buzzer beeps, and I leap.

My dive is perfect. I dolphin kick to the surface and fluidly begin my free stroke. Elbows high, elbows high. I count my strokes, perfectly measuring when to make my turns. On the last length of the pool, I can feel it. I have some energy left. It’s a bit of improvement. I go for it. I put all my strength into my stroke, making this race mine.

On my last stroke, I slam both hands into the side of the pool to finish. I pop up out of the water to face the scoreboard.

My name is at the top!

I won! I won the state championship in 200 free!

I slap my hand on top of the water and scream along with the people cheering for me, doing a little dance in the water. This isn’t usually my strongest race. I never expected this. Never!

“Nice race, Maggie,” Roxy says, giving me a perfunctory hug. “See you in Huntsville next month. Tell Levi I can’t wait to see him again too,” she taunts, and climbs out of the pool.

Never in my life have I been so tempted to dunk someone. Instead I hop out of the water and rush for Coach Josh and my parents. Hunter and Georgia are there with big hugs. Oma, Opa, and Ms. Lucassen are all over me too.

“You were amazing!” Mom says.

“You’re nearly as good as I was back in the Netherlands,” Oma says.

“We’ll have to celebrate with a pizza party,” Opa says. Levi’s grandparents are the cutest.

“You are crushing it in this event,” Coach adds. “I think you’re starting to have a better chance in free than in back.”

Levi is standing a few feet away. He bites his lower lip.

Then Jason breaks the tension of the moment. “Wooo, Maggie King!” he yells, slapping my butt with a kickboard and darting off.

“Jerk!” I say.

I turn and shuffle-chase after him in my sneakers, glad for the excuse to avoid Levi.

Because he looks devastated.

Just like me.

• • •

Later that night, while Mom and Dad go check on a wedding reception one of their junior associates planned, I lie on the sofa wiping tears from my eyes. I’m surrounded by a snowstorm of tissues. It reminds me of Levi’s bed the other day when he was sick. Why does everything make me think of him?

I’m proud I won 200 free. Really proud. When I checked my phone, I must’ve had more than a hundred texts and messages from people congratulating me on winning the state championship. I did do very well.

And maybe Coach is right. Maybe I am better in 200 free than in backstroke. Not that I’m giving up back. Maybe my swimming career is just changing.

Everything’s changing.

A tear slides down my cheek. No, I’m not crying about backstroke. I’m crying because the most important relationship of my life is not as strong as I thought it was. Levi hurt me to avoid having a serious conversation. If our friendship broke this easily, the rest of my life must be as fragile as a Jenga tower.

The doorbell rings. I don’t bother getting up to answer it.

A minute later Levi appears in the doorway to the den.

“What are you doing here? And who said you can barge into my house like this?”

He flinches. “When you didn’t answer the door, I got worried.” He pointedly looks at my mess of Kleenex. He sucks in a breath. “What I did today was a total dick move. I know it.”

“Yeah, it was.”

He hesitates. “I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“I’ll always forgive you Levi, but I’m really angry with you right now. I don’t know why you’re here.”

Levi sucks on his lower lip. “I hope I didn’t mess up our friendship.”

What friendship? I’m about to say, when I realize I don’t want to hurt him. I pretty much hate him right now, but I want to be a bigger person than that. No one deserves to be treated like he treated me today.

I sigh. “Levi, I need a break from you for a while, okay?”

His face creases with disappointment. “Okay.”

“You can let yourself out.”

I bury my face in the heels of my hands, listening to the heavy fall of his footsteps. Then I’m alone, just me and the medal I won today. I’m proud of it. I really am.

But somehow it doesn’t feel so special since I’m not celebrating with my best friend.

• • •

Coach gives me Sunday off.

He texted that it’s a reward for winning 200 free—but he probably thinks I need some space from Levi. Which is totally true.

Church is stressful because Georgia keeps asking what happened between us. We write notes back and forth on the little offering envelopes. Her mother, who is sitting in the pew behind us, keeps clicking her tongue because writing notes in church is apparently a total sin.

Did you and Levi fight?

I will tell you, but I don’t want it to affect your friendship with him.

Why would it?

I pull a deep breath and write, I had been planning to talk to him about us but he freaked out and pushed me away. He wanted to hook up with somebody else. Then Roxy flirted with him and I saw.

Georgia takes the envelope from my hand and reads the note, then folds it with crisp, angry movements.

Outside, it’s a beautiful morning. One of those rare seventy-degree March days. It gets a whole lot hotter when Georgia folds her arms across her stomach.

“Levi cheated on you?”

“We weren’t officially together, so, no, he didn’t cheat.”

“But you guys were fooling around, and then he tried to push you away by coming on to Roxy? That rat bastard jerk!”

“George, I told you,” I say quickly. “I don’t want this messing up your friendship with Levi.”

“I don’t want to be friends with a dick like that!”

“Georgia.”

“Maggie.”

“He is not like Kevin,” I say gently. “Levi didn’t treat me like he treated you.”

“But Levi hurt you!”

“I will feel terrible if this messes up our group,” I say quietly.

“Me too, but it’s not our fault. It’s his!”

“Actually, it’s mine. I’m the one who started this whole thing.”

“Don’t you dare defend him! You’re better than that.”

“Georgia,” her mother calls from the parking lot. “We need to go or we’ll be late to meet your grandmother.”

Georgia gives me a hug good-bye.

After church, Mom and Dad have paperwork to do at the office. By midafternoon I’m bored out of my mind—no practice, homework is done, nothing is on TV, sad thoughts won’t stop racing through my mind—so I decide to walk over and see if Chef made any snacks.

When I get to Mom and Dad’s office, Mom has left because of a “napkin emergency at a baby shower.” What in the world is a napkin emergency?

I plop down in Dad’s office, which is covered in pictures of events he designed. A picture from Shelby Goodwin’s thirteenth birthday party hangs on the wall. It was held in a tent on the Goodwins’ lavish horse farm. Half of the party was a black and blue nightclub for the kids, while the adult side was all gold opulence and champagne fountains. Dad pitched it as classy and cool, and the Goodwins have been hiring him to cater their parties ever since. Take that, Diane Musgrave.

Dad looks up from his laptop. “What are you doing here, Tadpole?”

“Came to see if you have any food.”

He shuts the lid on his computer. “Chef’s getting ready for an anniversary party tonight. We can probably scrounge something up.”

He leads me down the hall and out back to the spacious kitchens filled with pans hanging from the ceiling, ovens, and stoves. I call out a hello to Chef, but he is in Cooking Mode and has no patience for anything except letting the bread yeast rise. Four assistant cooks rush around doing his bidding.

Dad takes a plate around the kitchen, dodging cranky cooks, stealing samples for us. He pours us each a glass of iced tea, and we sit down together on the back porch, which overlooks rolling hills to the right and cornfields to the left. What a gorgeous day. The rest of the week will be in the fifties, so it’s nice to have this little reprieve. It’s so sunny I put on my sunglasses.

I dig into the almonds, pita chips, and hummus Dad collected for me.

He pops an olive in his mouth. “Bad news. We lost the pajama party bid.”

“Oh no,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Dad. What happened?”

He shrugs, his shoulders drooping. “You know how we won the contract last year because we proposed that people wear kimonos, and we would serve sushi and Asian-American fusion?”

“Right.”

“This year Diane Musgrave pitched a ‘pajamas around the world party,’ featuring foods from other countries,” he says, making finger quotes.

“She totally one-upped your idea again! Does that woman have one original thought? Aren’t you pissed?”

“Yeah, sort of.” Dad snags another olive and tosses it in his mouth. “I’d proposed an Americana theme this year—hot dogs, cotton candy. Something simple but delicious.” Dad loves the classics. “It turned out the mayor’s office wanted something different. I can’t let what other people do affect me.”

“But how do you get past that?”

My father thinks for a moment. “If you spend all your time thinking about how someone is going to one-up you, you can’t put your best foot forward. You can’t spend all your mental energy focusing on your opponent. You’ll lose every time that way.”

I push the almonds around on the plate.

“Maggie, what’s wrong?” Dad asks. “Your mom said something happened with Levi?”

“We had a fight.”

“About what?”

I shake my head. “He did something mean. I’m not sure he was thinking straight when he did it, and he apologized. I probably overreacted—it’s not all his fault, but I don’t know that I can get past it.”

Dad squeezes my shoulder. “Friends like Levi don’t come around every day. I’m sure he didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It still hurts.” And it’s mostly my fault. He would’ve never been in that situation if not for me. “I need some time.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of distance to help you see things clearly. I was really pissed last night when I heard Musgrave won the pajama party contract, but then I thought, she won’t win next year because she won’t be able to copy my idea from this year.” Dad chuckles evilly. “And I’ll come up with something even better.”

I love my dad.

And he’s right. It’s okay to take time to let the dust settle. It’s okay to regroup.

On Sunday night, I make a decision.

I text Levi: I am driving myself tomorrow.