I COULDN’T KEEP myself asleep. I woke up at 3:30 AM, 4:00, 5:15. At 6:00 AM I realized what it was: I was starving. I had never been hungrier. I went downstairs quietly. I could make eggs and toast but at some point my parents would wake up and talk to me. They’d want to ask me how the party went. I left a note on the counter.
Nobody was out and the sky was dark blue, purpling at the edges. I’d never really seen a sunrise. As I waited for the bus I looked east. The whole sky lightened around me. The bus was fuller than I’d expected and completely silent. Of course people had jobs on Sundays. They probably didn’t want to go to them, or talk about them. My spot was sideways-facing, and I sat forward on my seat to avoid touching, or crowding out, the people next to me. It was peaceful on the bus. It was nice how people called Thank you to the driver when they got off. Downtown looked quiet and clean, a movie set of a city. I was so awake.
Mar-Shell’s was the only 24-hour diner downtown. Still left downtown, my dad would say. I had good memories of coming for weekend breakfast and choosing songs from the jukeboxes that sat on each table. Sometimes, if it was after practice, my brother would be with us. The joke was that my mom would always choose Total Eclipse of the Heart after flipping through the songs and acting as if she might choose something different. I sat at the counter and ordered a two-egg breakfast and a cup of tea. I was definitely the youngest person in the diner. Nobody seemed to notice, or care. There was no need for me to come up with a story, other than that I’d woken up early and been ravenous and wanted to eat eggs at a diner. I had some money, why wait? There were other people at the counter eating alone, and groups in the booths. Some of them might have been out all night. I could tell from their clothes, and they seemed wound up, on the far side of tired. In a booth by the windows was a guy with his head on another guy’s shoulder. They had their fingers intertwined between their plates on the table. The waitress didn’t say anything or act weird when she refilled their coffee. I knew that in New York and San Francisco and maybe here they had bathhouses with rooms for sex in them. Maybe all the rooms became sex rooms at some point. Not that I knew anything about it, but that didn’t seem like what those guys had been doing all night. I mashed up my eggs with my potatoes and ate everything on my plate. I sopped up the yolk with my butter-soaked toast.
I needed to pick up my film from Camera World, which had been ready in an hour but had been sitting there for weeks. The store wasn’t open yet. It was funny how when a store was open it seemed as if it had always been open and would be until closing time. But who thought about the mornings? I felt warm with tea and greasy potatoes, and it might have been a figment but I felt that something had happened between me and Alexis at the party. The only way I could understand it was that she felt it, too. Half a block down, Rich was rolling up his grate. I took a weekly newspaper from the box and leaned against a building. They were making plans for a new central library but hadn’t factored in enough room for all the books. Now they had to figure out whether to change the plans or get rid of some of the books. I thought of Ben saying Arizona was super dull. I’d meant to ask him what his schedule was so I could avoid going into Rich’s when he was working. It seemed unlikely that he’d be working so early on a Sunday.
I pushed the door open and the bells jingled. Rich came out of the back room, saw it was me, and told me to holler if I needed anything. He said, I can trust you, sweetheart, right? I felt a little bad that I never bought anything. I picked up Swimming Monthly. My brother had covered the walls of his room with pages ripped out of these magazines. There was something about that that seemed more honest than putting up pictures of bands or movie stars. It was better than mirrors, the image of the thing he wanted to be. What did it feel like, the day he opened a magazine and saw a glossy picture of himself?
I put the magazine back and went up to the register. The red-and-white boxes of cloves had their own section in the stacks of cigarettes behind the counter. I picked up a pack of Trident and waited for Rich to come out of the back room.
THE WISPY BOY disappeared from Lane Five. It was as if the current had taken him. I kicked. I stroked. I tried to keep my elbow lifted. I tested and sorted the reeds of myself, and I could feel something happening. My body knew what it was doing. I stuffed a pull-buoy between my thighs and my arms were golden. Water moved for me. I went arm to pit to hip to toe and I let my mind catch on moments: Alexis calling me over. Alexis pulling at my cuff. My memory rubbed the moments raw.
In the middle of the 200 Back I bumped into the striver and she told me I’d swim straighter if I followed the lines on the ceiling. I said, I know that.
At the end of the length I rested my elbows on the wall’s metal lip. Donna swam up and stared at me. She said, What’s up with you?
I said, What do you mean?
She said, Not to be rude, but why do you stop after every lap?
I said, I’m just resting. I said, It’s not every lap. I get leg cramps. You can ask Coach.
Donna said, No offense, but if you don’t want to be here, you shouldn’t be.
She looked as if she might punch me. Not at that moment, but later, when she wasn’t in her bathing suit, and when there weren’t swimmers around to witness it.
I said, It’s fine.
She said, Not really.
I said, It’s fine.
MY DAD WAS finishing up a work project and couldn’t come get me after practice. I lingered for a minute at the trophy case. Nobody came up behind me. At the bus stop an old woman said the 47 had just passed. The time it would take for the next one to come would be longer than it would take me to walk home. The rain was steady and light, strong enough to notice but not to care about. At the corner ahead a silver Taurus pulled up at the curb. U2 was playing loud. Greg leaned out the passenger window and asked if I wanted a lift. I told him I was almost home. Alexis, from the driver’s seat, asked if I was sure. She said, It’s raining.
I said, It’s okay, I like walking. It was cold and dark and wet and late.
On my front lawn was a wheelbarrow with a tarp over it. I looked under the tarp: wood chips. Some space had been cleared in front of the house, and I couldn’t remember what had been there before. Next to the wheelbarrow were a few small bushes swaddled in burlap. The cleared space made the house look naked.
At dinner I said, What’s going on with the front of the house? My dad said Ben had had the day off so he’d decided to get started. He’d brought in some plants that would do well through the winter.
Our old plants had done fine through the winter. Ben was becoming some kind of lurker, hanging around when I wasn’t there. I didn’t want him around when I wasn’t, digging holes in the yard with my dad standing by. I could see them, Ben leaning on a shovel, my dad in his raincoat. It wasn’t crazy to think Ben might have asked where I was, or what time I got home from practice. I said, What did you guys talk about?
My dad said he’d been busy working, that he hadn’t really had the time to chat. I said, Then how did he know where the plants should go? My dad said he’d trusted Ben to figure it out. I didn’t know what reason my dad had to trust him. I got up to get a new bottle of salad dressing from the refrigerator. On the door was a magnet for USA Swimming that had been there forever, so old it couldn’t hold anything up. Had my brother stuck it there or had my parents put it up in hopes he’d notice?