The striver asked me if I knew how many points were needed for a varsity letter. She was wearing a gray swimming sweatshirt. It swam on her.
I tensed for the crack and the starting gun went.
The 400 Free Relay was the last event of the meet. I had almost forgotten I had a race to swim. The C team was Erika and Donna and the striver and me. The striver tried to lead us in a cheer.
The gun popped. The striver dove. With her careful scoopings, she kept fairly apace. Donna, next, swam strong and sharp and pulled us a fraction ahead of Madison’s C team. I climbed up on the block. I hadn’t thought, all meet, about swimming. No one had mentioned how much the block slanted forward. No one had told me how to curl my toes or when to put up my arms for the dive. Donna touched the wall. I put up my arms and went. My body hit cold water. For a second I flailed, or my mind did. Then my arm went, then my other one, my legs did what they did and I got on the rails. I kept even and clean. I stroked and kicked and turned my head in rhythm. I came up on the wall and I touched, and turned, and I stayed on it, a good machine back down the lane. I counted backward from ten. I touched the wall, done.
Someone was yelling my name. More than one person. Donna was saying, Holy shit, she’s stopping, and Coach was saying, Julie, keep going! I’d only done two lengths. I had somehow forgotten that I was supposed to do four. I arced around and pushed off with no momentum. I’d known 100 was there, back, there, back, but I’d forgotten, or I’d thought I’d done it all, or I hadn’t been thinking, which was supposed to be the point. I chopped. I spat. My brain went everywhere, nowhere good. My suit chafed and rode up. It wasn’t made for someone who was built like me. I slapped and churned. Finally finally finally the wall. Erika dove in. The A and B teams were finished, and the Madison C team, almost. Erika would be the last one in the pool because of me. My arms were spent. They used the last they had to hoist me up and out of the pool. I didn’t say a word to Donna or the striver. I stood against the wall with my hands in fists. The striver said, It’s okay, you forgot. If she offered me a tip, I would lose it. I was this close to losing it. The meet was over. Erika got out of the pool.
I said, I’m sorry.
Erika hopped on one foot, shaking water from her ear. She said, It’s completely okay. Don’t worry about it.
I said, I’m really sorry. I really fucked up. I wanted her to slice me with an accusation.
Coach came over. He said, Hey Julie, what happened in there, forgot we were doing a 100?
Erika said, It’s my fault, we were talking about doing 50s right before she got in.
I said, I’m really sorry. Now I was completely crying. There was no way Coach couldn’t tell.
He patted my shoulder. He said, You know what, Julie? It happens. It happens once so it won’t happen again, right?
Erika said, Absolutely.
COACH STEPPED ONTO the bus and the team went wild. He put his hands up for silence. He said, Let me tell you what. We just beat the number one-ranked team in our division. And we beat them with some kick-ass races. Greg cupped his hands and said Alexis’s name in a low, loud growl, and the back of the bus cheered and the cheer carried up in waves. I felt the waves pass over and around me. Melanie said, Party at Alexis’s, and the cheers swelled again.
Erika said, Yeah, should we go? They were talking about it in the stands.
I said, I don’t think I was invited.
Erika said, The whole team is invited. Let’s go?
I let Erika convince me to come over to her house for dinner, where we ate mushy veggie burgers and Erika did most of the talking, describing how mean and ripped the Madison team was, and how she’d beat her best time on backstroke. She hadn’t mentioned that she’d been timing herself. Erika’s mom asked how it went for me. Erika said, Julie did great.
Erika’s mom looked younger than my mom, not in her face or skin but in how she moved and talked to us. I said, She’s just saying that.
Erika said, It was an honest mistake.
I said, I ruined the race. The veggie burgers were a lukewarm paste. I took another bite. I said, I’m thinking about quitting.
Erika’s mom said, I don’t think an honest mistake feels any better than a dishonest one. She put her hand on top of my hand and squeezed it. She said, I’m really sorry, Julie.
I didn’t know what she was sorry about. I could have stayed in that kitchen for the rest of the night.
I lay on Erika’s bed and looked away while she changed. I looked back each time she had something new to show me — two tight T-shirts that were the same except for their color, and a purplish button-down with the top buttons open. Erika said, Too slutty?
I said, Not if you don’t mind Grapestuff staring at your chest.
Erika said, Really? Gross. She said, The question is how to get PT to look at my chest.
I said, Right.
Erika said, Stop looking at the ceiling and tell me if you think I should do two buttons or three.
I turned on my side to face Erika. I lay on my side while she said, Okay, here’s two, and gave a little curtsy sort of flap of her hands at her sides. My eyes had nowhere appropriate to go. She said, Okay, here’s three, and revealed the tops of her boobs — tits was the word I felt I should use — and the line of cleavage. I dipped my eyes there. It was what she was asking me to do — to put aside my, in her words, gloom and doom, and look at her as if I were PT. I looked full-on at Erika with her shirt half-unbuttoned, her tits hanging out, her bra almost showing, and a hum or a pulse hit my crotch area — my crotch or PT’s. I sat up. I said, Start with two.
Erika said, You’re right. PT seems like he’d prefer a little mystery. She said, You’re not really quitting, right?
Erika said that if I wasn’t going to borrow a shirt from her I could at least not hide in my hoodie, so I took off my hoodie and wore my second layer, my teal heathered henley, one of my favorites which, big laugh, I had put on that day for good luck. Erika said at least I could try wearing my hair down. I undid my low ponytail and put my rubber band around my wrist. Sometimes I forgot how long my hair was. My hair undone made my face too soft. It looked as if I were trying to look like something. I pulled my hair back.
GRAPESTUFF OPENED ALEXIS’S front door. He said, Ladies!
Erika said, What are you, the official door opener?
He said, Alexis’s parents are at the coast. Keg’s in the kitchen, ladies.
Alexis’s house was full of swimmers holding big red cups of beer. The Beastie Boys blasted loud from the stereo. People raised their cups and yelled the words. It was a winners’ party. I said to Erika, I think I might go.
She said, Stay an hour with me. Please? She said, There he is. PT was sitting on the arm of a couch talking to a butterflier. They both had beer. Erika said, Let’s get some.
Greg was standing at the keg. He said, Step right up. He filled my cup and said, Julie, right? It’s nice to meet you. It was a stupid thing to say, we weren’t meeting now, and we had basically met before. And to say, now, that it was nice to meet me meant he was thinking about my ruined race and lying through his teeth.
I stood silently next to Erika while she talked to Lane Four swimmers and newspaper kids, a few groups over from where PT sat. My beer tasted like pee, or Swiss cheese. I took another sip. I didn’t feel anything. I wanted the drinking to make me even less there. Every once in a while someone would cup his or her hands and say JACK-SON. And then cheering, even from the non-swimmers. Everyone wanted to be celebrating something, still, though the races were done and the points awarded. Winning dragged and dragged on. I said, It’s probably been an hour. I can go by myself. Erika asked me how I would get home. I said I could call my parents, but the idea of calling them felt terrible, the idea of being in the front seat with my dad, with the radio playing and nobody talking, of getting home and being alone in my room.