UNDERWATER
UNDERWATER THE WORLD IS SOFT. Life is gentle, easy. The smell of chlorine, the burn of sunscreen in my eyes, muffled splashing, and rippled lines of refracted light—that’s what summer is supposed to be.
We were planning on going to the community pool after I got home—I had promised her. Even though it’s not particularly nice or updated in any way, it’s still our favorite place, mine and Callie’s. Last year we went nearly every single day. The three-block trek was torture, especially in the afternoon with the sun at its peak, but as Callie always insisted, it only made her first cannonball into the cool blue water all the more worth it.
There was a day last summer when something changed between us and it felt like we were friends, rather than a big sister babysitting her little sister. On the walk there she was talking nonstop, as usual. And I was humoring her weird, random questions, which would often begin with “If there was a zombie apocalypse . . .” And, like every day, even though I warned her not to, the second we walked through the gates, handing our passes over to the attendant, she’d run ahead of me alongside the pool, causing the lifeguard to blow on his whistle and shout, “No running!” But it only made her run faster, screaming at the top of her lungs as she leaped into the air. Her goal was to make waves, always.
Before I could set our things down and lay our towels out, Callie was splashing me. “Stop it, Callie!” I scolded, though I didn’t care about the splashing so much as the attention she was drawing.
“Dive in,” she said. “Please?”
I ignored her as I set our bag down and tried to maneuver out of my shorts and baggy T-shirt.
“Do it!”
“You do it,” I countered.
“You know I don’t know how. Show me again,” she demanded in that annoyingly adamant eleven-year-old way of hers. “Last time, I promise.” That’s what she said every time.
I looked around; there were hardly any other people there, and no one was watching. I hated when people stared at me any time, but while wearing a bathing suit, I might as well have been naked. “Fine,” I relented. “This is the last time.”
I tiptoed my way over to the deep end, set my toes along the edge of the pool, testing my feet and knees and ankles with a couple of practice bounces. Then, springing off the balls of my feet, I threw my arms over my head and transferred my weight forward, airborne for a split second. My body cut through the cold water, gliding in a smooth, straight line, making me feel so light and sleek and nimble I could almost forget about the rest of my life waiting for me on dry land.
When I came back up to the surface, Callie was holding both of her hands up high out of the water, all five fingers on each hand spread wide. “Ten!” she shouted, then, “Race you to the shallow end.”
Before I could even respond, she was gone. She always pretended to be a mermaid, swimming right along the bottom, waving her body while keeping her legs and feet suctioned together like a tail. She made it all the way across the whole pool like that and was waiting for me on the other side. When I reached her, she said, “Go under, I gotta tell you something.”
I rolled my eyes but did it anyway. Underwater her voice was high pitched and garbled, bubbles flowing out of her mouth, up to the surface. We came back up, and I said, “Birthday card inside out?”
She wailed, “No!” and we went under again.
“Same thing,” I told her. “Birthday card. Inside out.”
“You’re terrible at this!” She splashed me again. “Lifeguard. Checking. You. Out.”
“No he isn’t!” I said, without even bothering to see whether it was true or not. I didn’t want to know either way. How many times had I told her that I didn’t care, wasn’t interested in looks, didn’t want guys being interested in me, and how many times would she try to convince me otherwise, tease me, try to make me feel uncomfortable?
“He so is!” she giggled, her eyes already turning red from the pool chemicals.
“No,” I said. “He’s not.”
I dunked my head underwater then and kicked my feet against the side of the pool, darting away from her, away from her games and her words, away from the way they made me feel. Or not feel. I wasn’t interested in some random lifeguard, or any other guy for that matter, and that was not something I was ready to think about in too much depth. I swam until I lost count of the laps. Until my arms and legs refused to go any farther. Until I could almost forget who I was. Then I turned over onto my back and opened my eyes; I gazed up at the clouds floating in the blue sky just as I was floating on the blue water. My thoughts had finally slowed to a crawl. This was around the time I’d expect Callie to stealth-mermaid her way beneath me, grab my leg, and pull me under—I’d flail and spring back up to the surface with a gallon of water up my nose—but that’s not what happened that day.
She was already out of the pool, lying down on her towel, my too-big sunglasses shielding her eyes. I climbed up the ladder, my body heavy out of the water. My wet footsteps slapped against the concrete as I made my way over to our spot. I spread my towel out and lowered myself down onto my stomach next to Callie, resting my head on top of my folded arms. She lifted my wet hair and flopped it over my shoulder. A cool breeze flowed over my bare back as her finger pressed against my skin, drawing a hook shape, like the beginning of a question mark, on one side, then its mirror image on the other: a heart.
We used to do this all the time when we shared a room. She’d often wind up in my bed, scared, with our mom crying and our dad yelling on the other side of the door. I’d write out silly invisible messages on her back until she fell asleep.
I smiled and whispered, “Sorry I got mad.”
Then she drew a circle followed by three sharp lines: OK. Then two dots and a curved line: smiley face.
She lay back down next to me, and although we didn’t say anything to each other, it felt right. Like we didn’t need to say anything, like maybe she finally got something about me that I wasn’t even quite sure of myself yet. I closed my eyes and let my body soften against the hot, hard cement, that good ache in my lungs, the gentle strain of muscles after swimming as strong and hard and long as I could, the slow fog settling over my thoughts again.