I WOKE UP THIS MORNING and decided to stay home yet again, but only after promising myself I would return after this weekend. My mother went out again last night. She left without even telling me this time. I heard her clamoring up the stairs way past midnight, and she hasn’t come out of her room since.
I hate that she drives drunk, that she doesn’t even care what happens to her, or me for that matter. How have I become so worthless to her that she’s willing to risk her life and possibly leave me an orphan at seventeen? I’m still mulling over those thoughts as I put away the laundry I did earlier today, but then the doorbell rings. When I find Coach Andrews standing on my front porch, my lips part in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
He holds up a file. “I never gave you the waivers, and if you plan on being eligible to swim this year, your mother needs to sign off on them.”
I glance over my shoulder to the top of the stairs quickly before turning back to him. “Umm . . . she’s taking a nap right now. You can leave the papers with me, and I’ll return them on Monday.”
“Are you going to show up on Monday?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” I tell him, holding out my hand for the file.
He doesn’t pass it over, instead, he gives me a doubting look, but before I can assure him that I will be at school, my mother appears, asking, “Who’s this?”
I turn to see her walking down the stairs, tightening her silk robe and running her hands over her hair, as if the slight effort would make her look any less like the drunk she has become. My face swelters in humiliation. The once polished woman is now withered with sunken in cheeks, last night’s makeup smeared across her face, and a diabolical case of bedhead.
“Mrs. Hale,” he greets as if he’s blind to the visual in front of us. “I’m David Andrews, Cam’s English teacher and swim coach.”
“Please, call me Diane.”
“You should go,” I blurt in a rush, and his eyes flick away from me and over to my mother when she bumps drunkenly into my shoulder, reeking of vodka.
“Don’t be so rude, Camellia.”
I see the appalled expression Coach Andrews thinks he’s concealing. It’s the same expression I’m wearing too. Because this cannot be happening. He cannot be seeing this.
“Come on in, David.”
The two of them walk across the foyer and into the living room, and I know he can smell the booze on her. She wears it so sloppily as she pretends to be sober in her bathrobe at four o’clock in the afternoon.
Should I run away now or wait until after he leaves?
“So, what brings you by?” she asks as the two of them take a seat on the couch, while I keep my distance, standing against the wall on the opposite side of the open-spaced room.
He hands her the papers, and as she signs, he goes over the away meets for the year. He’s wasting his breath though. She won’t remember anything he’s telling her, because she runs on alcohol’s burnt fumes.
“So, how’s my daughter doing in school this year?”
“School just started, Mom,” I mutter, annoyed that she’s so damn clueless right now.
She sounds like an idiot.
My words bypass her, and when she turns back to Coach, she asks, “Well, how is her swimming going?”
He looks over to me, and I drop my head, wishing this wall would swallow me and spit me out into another town, another planet, or any place that’s far away from here.
“She’s doing well,” he tells her, covering for me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. “She’s easing in and working at building her strength back up in her shoulder.”
“That’s so good to hear.” Her smile is obnoxious.
“Is that all you needed, Coach?” I ask, anxious for him to get the hell out of here.
He stands, and when she follows his lead, she stumbles into him. He grabs ahold of her before she falls.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I passed on lunch, and I’m a little light-headed.”
He helps steady her on her feet, well aware of the terrible liar she pretends not to be.
“Why don’t you sit down then? I can see myself out.”
“It was really nice meeting you,” she tells him, taking her seat back on the couch.
“Nice meeting you too, Diane.”
He catches my eye and nods for me to follow him. When we’re far enough away from my mom’s ear, he asks, “Are you okay?”
What a stupid question for him to ask. My mother is drunk, talking like a socialite while slurring every other word.
“I’m fine.”
“Cam, this doesn’t seem like a fine situation for you to be in.”
“She had a hard day today, that’s all. Cut her a little slack,” I lie, defending what little reputation she has at this point.
“Does she even know you haven’t been at school this week?”
“Of course she does. We live in the same house.” I wonder if I’m a crappy liar just like she is.
A loud racket from the living room catches our focus, and when he looks over my shoulder, I die a little bit more inside. “Please, just go.”
“Is she—”
“She’s fine. Just . . .” I can’t even look him in the eyes, and he delivers mercy when he opens the front door to leave.
“Cam—”
“I’ll see you on Monday.” Closing the door, I rush back into the living room to find my mother picking up a few of the decorative pieces she knocked over.
She looks up at me from her hands and knees, griping, “Well, are you going to help me or just stand there?”
I shake my head in disbelief with how far she’s drifted away, with how unrecognizable she’s become to me.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Not another one of your childish lectures, Camellia. I’m not in the mood, and they’re juvenile at best.” Half her words come out in garble as she pulls herself off the floor, stumbling in her footing.
“You know he saw right through you.”
“What are you rambling about?”
“You’re a sloppy drunk.”
Her lips tighten as she walks over to me, and when she’s right up in my face, she lashes out, “And you’re an ungrateful daughter.”
I ignore her words. They mean nothing anyway. “Did you even bother looking in the mirror before you came down here to make a fool of yourself in front of my teacher? Or do you just not care that you look like a washed-up drunk?”
Her hand comes fast and hard, stinging my skin in fiery heat. Quickly cupping my cheek, I glare at her through watery eyes, shocked that she actually just slapped me across my face.
“I hate you,” I seethe before turning my back on her and running up to my room. I can’t bear to look at her for one more second without returning her violence.
Minutes turn into hours, and after a handful of them pass, I’m no better. The anger sat in me for so long that it spun into sadness. I’ve spent the past thirty minutes reading and rereading the same page, hungry for a distraction, but my emotions won’t grant me escape. I feel like a hostage in my own skin, but I don’t have to be a hostage to this house.
Under the metallic glow of the moon, I drive to where happy memories reside. With my father’s key I’ve never let go of, I walk into the school’s natatorium, change into my suit, and dive into what has now become my solace. Being here, under the water’s edge, away from everyone, deprived of air, sound, gravity, I feel closer to my father than anywhere else.
With my world falling to pieces, I have nothing to hold on to, and I crave comfort. So I take the pressure of the water and let it snuff out the emotions colliding inside me, lulling me into a moment of peace.
I don’t swim fast, and I don’t push myself too much. I simply glide through the water while nursing my shoulder.
When wounds scream their presence, I grant respite and sit on the edge of the pool deck with my legs dangling in the water.
I’m not ready to say goodbye to solace just yet.
There’s no disillusion to the fact that I’m needy for comfort and affection. And even though Kroy is more than willing to offer me just that, it’s not his support I want. Somehow, it seems weak coming from him, as if it lacks relevancy. As if adulthood is the key ingredient that feeds power into what I’m missing that will allow it to actually mean something.
You wouldn’t treat a bullet wound with a Band-Aid. And when wounds run as deeply as mine, you need more than just sound bites of encouragement and hugs from your peers.
I want someone strong enough so that I don’t have to romanticize my demons for fear they won’t know what to do with them.
My dad had a way of giving me all of that, and he did it so easily. He took the weight of the world off my shoulders and carried it upon his. And when he did this, I was granted freedom. Freedom from the expectations to be everything to someone or something to everyone—I could just be.
These reflections carve into the tender tissue of my heart, and the first silent tear falls from my lashes. My crying is eerily silent as I stare down into the pool, into the passion that was my father’s.
Was.
I hate referring to him in the past tense. It’s just another reminder.
A shadow catches my eye, and when I look up, I see Coach Andrews from across the pool deck.
How, in the deafness that surrounds, did I not hear him walk in?
He doesn’t say anything as he holds concern in the way he’s looking at me. Without urgency, he walks my way, kicks his shoes off, and sits next to me before sinking his legs into the water as well. I don’t bother hiding what’s streaked down my face from the only person who’s seen me cry.
“What are you doing here?”
“Needed to get out of my house.” There is no need to beat around the bush. He was there. He saw. “I lied to you.”
“I know.” He gives me a sympathetic smile.
“I called her a drunk.”
“What did she say?”
I hesitate to tell him, to expose another layer of truth which runs deeper than making it known that she drinks too much.
“Whatever you say stays right here between the two of us,” he tells me, and I take his offering. There might be a chance that if I open myself up, then all the things I’m hiding will be set free. Maybe if I rid myself of them, they won’t be able to inflict their abuse so much.
“She hit me.”
His arm wraps around me, tugging me to him, and I go freely, resting my head against his shoulder. His shirt wets beneath my soaked hair, but he doesn’t say a word.
More tears fall quietly while I absorb the heat of his skin into the dampness of mine. I resist the urge to band my arms around him and take even more of what he’s giving—of what I’ve been lacking.
“How bad is it?”
“She wishes it had been me and not him.”
He pulls back in disbelief. “She said that?”
“Maybe it should’ve been,” I say, ignoring his question.
I blink.
Another tear falls.
And when he drags his thumb through my body’s iridescent call for help, our eyes lock, and another match strikes. His touch moves from under my eye to my deep scar. He traces the length of it, starting at my temple, across my cheek, and down to my chin—his eyes never leaving mine.
“It’s disgusting.”
“Nothing about you is disgusting,” he says softly before grimacing and dropping his head to mine.
And before I even realize what I’m doing, my lips brush against his, and he immediately flinches, putting space back between us. I flush with embarrassment as he shakes his head with his eyes clenched shut.
“This is wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, but then, in a shift, all the blood rushes to the core of my chest when he takes my face in both of his hands and kisses me.
Desperate to have his everything consume my nothing, I lose all sight in more ways than one when I close my eyes and kiss him back.
Butterflies with razor-sharp wings flutter inside my stomach, slicing through every good and bad choice I’ve ever made, allowing them to bleed and meld together.
Nothing makes sense.
But it does.
His body is strong and tense against my soft and weak. He’s everything I’m not and all that I need in this moment, filling gaps and mending pieces of a severed soul.
He takes the air from my lungs, yet gasps a time or two when our lips part.
His head drops and his chest tremors against mine as his hands clench tightly to my face.
There’s hesitation in the air.
“What the fuck are we doing?” Forbidden says, knowing neither of us has the answer. “Cam . . .”
“Please . . . don’t say anything.”
I don’t dare open my eyes for fear that this moment will vanish the second I do, because this is wrong. This is so very wrong, but at the same time, it’s the only thing that has felt right since I woke up in the hospital. He’s my teacher, yes, but he’s so much more. And in a world where I’ve lost all connections, he’s the one thing that’s able to tether me. It’s only with him that I don’t feel like completely giving up to drown, because in this very moment, with his skin touching my skin, I’m no longer feeding at the breast of misery.