Lark (4 page)

Chapter 14
Eve

His name was Trevor; he was the son of my father’s partner, although I didn’t know him before he was my swim coach. When Mr. Landis announced that he was going to be his assistant coach, Alyssa and the other kids who knew him broke out in cheers. His trophies gleamed behind a glass cabinet on the Dolphin Wall of Champions. At sixteen, he set a county record for the 100-meter butterfly. Two years later he won a swimming scholarship to the University of Virginia. His family owned a big piece of land next to the pool with a two-hundred-year-old house that looked like something out of
Gone with the Wind
. It was set back from the road, framed by old trees with tall twisting branches. My dad said the McCalls used to own all the land in our neighborhood.

“I’m just happy to help out the team I grew up on,” Trevor said at the ice cream social opening the season. During practice he stomped around with his stopwatch and clipboard, watching our strokes and taking notes. When we were in the water, he was all business. When practice was over, he was more like a camp counselor, teaching us water-fight techniques, like how to disable your opponent with a thin, hard splash to the eyes.

“You’re lucky,” said Lark. “I wish he coached the diving team. I can’t stand Mary-Kate.”

“She’s way too serious,” I agreed. “She already has worry lines in her forehead.”

Mary-Kate ran her team like a school of monks. While Trevor yelled at us until he was hoarse, she had the divers sit in a circle and practice visualization techniques. She walked slowly around the perimeter, saying, “Imagine yourself in perfect pike position. How does it feel in your arms? In your legs? In your shoulders? How does it feel to release the position at the end of one and a half flips?”

The fireflies were out when Lark and I walked home. They hovered above tall grasses and under dogwood trees, pulsing with light. We cupped our hands around them, careful not to touch their abdomens so they wouldn’t die.

Trevor noticed Lark right away. When swim practice was over, he hung around watching the divers, but it was obvious he had his eye on her. When she wasn’t up, he chatted with the swimmers crowded around him. He shushed them when it was Lark’s turn.

Trevor was there the day she nailed her hardest dive. She paused at the very end of the board, her heels over the water, back to the pool, staring past the fence and the woods. Seconds later, she swooped her arms up and threw herself forward into a one and a half flip. Her body fell into the water like a knife.

Trevor whooped. “Now there’s a future Division One athlete,” he called out.

Mary-Kate scowled at him. She didn’t believe in feedback until the end of practice. But Trevor didn’t care. He clapped and cheered for Lark when she bobbed out of the water.

“He’s so much nicer than Mary-Kate,” she complained in a whisper. She was out of the water between dives, stuffing strands of hair under her cap.

“Trevor’s the best,” I agreed, although I didn’t mean it. I was beginning to notice how he stirred up the energy in a group, keeping us laughing and guessing about what he would say next. Alyssa was one of his favorites because she laughed at his jokes or came back fast with one of her own. I was too shy, too slow with words to do either. Plus, I was only an average member of the team. I couldn’t win his respect as an athlete. I wasn’t talented like Alyssa. He lowered his voice when he talked to her and was always correcting her on her arms. With me, he was pleasant and vague. My times were good enough to get some cheery encouragement, but not much else.

I didn’t really care. I loved swimming. I liked the underwater sounds and the shattered light in the blue water. It was the summer between sixth grade and seventh, and my breasts had grown overnight. I stopped taking dance class because I couldn’t stand how they bounced. Swimming was the only sport where they didn’t get in my way. Still, I didn’t always notice when they fell out the side of my suit. “Put your girls in,” Lark whispered as she passed by. She turned back to smile as she skipped off to the diving boards. She was a year older than me, but still straight up and down, muscled and fast, like a boy.

At home in my house or in my backyard, I walked around practicing my stroke, pulling the air with my arms, imagining it was water. I could feel myself getting stronger by thinking about my stroke. There was something to Mary-Kate’s meditation techniques. In some ways she was a better coach than Trevor.

But then, something confusing happened, something like being erased. I got better, only Trevor didn’t say anything. I saw him look at me from the corner of his eye. I felt his eyes on me when I turned away, and I was sure he was about to say something like “Good job, Mackenzie.” But he never did. He moved me to the starter position on the 100-meter relay, but he didn’t tell me why, and then he started yelling at me more in practice, like I was one of the lazy kids who didn’t put in enough effort.

In our meet against Donaldson Run, I set out a huge lead in the relay that secured our win. I won my heat in the 25-meter butterfly. I climbed out of the pool and saw Trevor walking toward me with a huge smile on his face. He grabbed me around the shoulder and ran his knuckles over my head, his standard way of congratulating us.

That’s when it happened.

“Way to go, Mackenzie!” he said, squeezing me tightly with one arm. His hand started out between my ribs and my arm. Then it slipped under my suit and cupped the curve of my breast. At first I didn’t know what was happening. I thought his stopwatch must be digging into me, but it lasted too long. Then it started feeling more like what it was. I stiffened my upper arm against him to push him away, and his hand eased out. Then he was off to congratulate the other swimmers.

We won the meet. Everyone was cheering up the hill to the clubhouse, but I didn’t join in. I dove back into the pool, swimming underwater, skimming the bottom until I burst through the surface gasping for air. The lifeguards were gone. I shouldn’t have been in the water, but I didn’t care. Trevor stood outside the locker rooms, joking with his fans, flicking a wet towel so it cracked like a whip. Laughter ricocheted off the clubhouse walls to the tennis courts. Girls ran in and out of the locker room, daring him to snap the towel. I watched, wondering if I was being overly sensitive. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe for a split second he thought I was his girlfriend. Maybe he didn’t mean it and I was taking it too seriously.

I stopped swimming well. After a shower, I’d stare at myself in the mirror, disgusted with what I saw. I was so round for my age. The tops of my thighs were soft, no muscle tone at all. I would never look sleek or athletic like Lark unless I made staying thin and in shape my entire life. I was way too young to look like this.

The progress I had made evaporated. In the middle of a flip turn, I’d say to myself,
You’ll never be any good. Not really. Why don’t you just quit?

“What’s the matter with you, Eve?” yelled Coach Landis. “Trevor, work on her arms. Her legs are fine. It’s her arms.”

Trevor made me get out of the pool and show him my stroke like he did with the younger kids. I got nervous and couldn’t coordinate when to rotate for a breath. He made me do it again and again like I was a beginner. Then kids popped out of the water to watch. One even jumped out to practice alongside me, and Trevor complimented him for taking the opportunity to review the basics. Undistracted, the divers practiced. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lark set herself up for her inward one and a half. I wanted so badly to disappear.

“Okay, Mackenzie,” he said, giving me a pinch on the outside of my arm. “Get back in the water.” He turned to watch Lark.

I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to get back in the pool. But leaving in front of everyone seemed even worse. I jumped back in, and the water erased me.

Finally practice was over. Kids jumped out of the water and grabbed their towels. Boys took off their caps and shook their hair. The divers gathered around Mary-Kate for final comments and notes. Kids seemed especially giddy. Laughter floated through the club. Some of the boys ran to the diving boards to show off their jackknives.

I lingered in a far corner of the pool, swimming along the bottom. I pulled at the water with all of my strength, kicking my legs until my thighs ached, wondering if this was what I had to do every moment of practice to finally get strong.

“Come on,” said Lark, annoyed I wasn’t out of the water yet.

“Oh, yeah . . . ,” I started to lie. “I forgot to tell you. My mom’s picking me up. She’s gotta take me somewhere.”

“Where?” she asked.

“For a fitting. I’m getting a dress made. I’m in a wedding.”

“Whose?”

“My cousin’s. The one in South Carolina.”

“Oh,” said Lark, then she scampered upstairs to the changing rooms.

I pushed off from the side of the pool, swimming underwater as far as I could without taking a breath. I burst through in the deep end, gasping for air. Up the hill, kids called out good-byes and piled into cars. The trees surrounding the club were full of dark green leaves. The sprinklers came on and showered the lawn between the pool and the parking lot. When I was sure everyone was gone, I got out.

In the dressing room, I peeled off my suit and kicked it out of the way, hating it for being so ugly—the stupid rainbow lettering and the leaping dolphin. All I wanted to do was put on some dry clothes and get home as fast as I could. I patted myself dry, twisted the towel around my hair. That’s when Trevor came in.

“Hey,” he said. He leaned against the lockers looking at me as if I wasn’t standing there naked, as if he had run into me at the line at the snack bar.

My stomach sank and my heart started to pound. I grabbed my towel to cover myself. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, god! Sorry!” he laughed, pretending to be startled. He stepped back outside but kept talking to me through the open door. “Hope I wasn’t too harsh on you out there. You know I’m only tough on the people I love. You okay, Eve? Wanna talk?”

His voice slid across the room, cheerful and menacing. I pulled on my clothes and jumped on the bench, reaching across the top of the lockers to the long, narrow louvered window. If I had to get out that way, I’d need a broom or a pole. I didn’t see one. The only way out was the dressing-room door.

Someone called out to Trevor, asking him how his dad was and if his brother had given up poker and found a real job instead of cheating old guys like him out of their money. A set of keys jingled, and I edged out the door. Trevor and an old guy freckled with age spots threw back their heads and laughed at the sky. I could feel Trevor try to catch my eye, but his glance rolled off me and broke into a hundred pieces while I ran home.

Days later I was spending the night with Lark. We were making sugar cookies, decorating them with colored icing and sprinkles, eating them warm, and washing them down with milk.

“So, you really like Trevor?” I asked.

“As a guy?” She looked horrified.

“No, of course not. As a coach.”

“Absolutely,” she said. “I think he’s awesome. He told me I could win a diving scholarship to UVA. He says I’ve got to carry on the Dolphin legacy. Only I don’t like diving that much.”

“Why not?” I asked. “You’re so good at it.”

“It’s too . . . stunted! I mean, you take three steps, jump, flip, and then it’s over. I like to cover more ground.”

We went on rolling dough and cutting it into shapes. My stomach began to knot up and feel cold.

“I think he might like me . . . ,” I said.

“What?” she exclaimed. She held the tube of pink icing in midair. “You’re crazy.”

I wanted to tell her how he touched me, how he came into the changing room when I was there, but it was obvious he had never done anything like that to her. I tried again.

“I feel him looking at me sometimes. . . .”

“It’s your boobs,” she said. “Guys can’t help it. You should get used to it.”

Finally I told my mother, but she asked the wrong questions.

“Did he touch you between your legs?”

“No.”

“Were his clothes on?”

“Yes.”

She leaned back and looked at me for a moment.

“Were there other people there?”

“YES!” I yelled. “I told you! The first time was at the meet. Right after my race. Everyone was there. But no one was looking at us, and even if they were, they couldn’t have seen it. And the second time I was alone in the changing room.”

“Tell me again; what did he do in the changing room?”

“Nothing! He looked at me! I was in there alone, and he walked in on me. He did it on purpose, and he scared me.”

I started crying and my mom asked me if I wanted her to do anything, like tell Coach Landis, or take me to a therapist, and I said no. All I wanted to do was quit the team, and she said I could. So I dropped out.

I didn’t know how to tell Lark that I wouldn’t be going to practice anymore. At first I said I was sick and that the doctor thought I had mono. Then I said that swim team was taking too much time and that what I was really into was art. We were downstairs in her den, the darkest, coolest room in her house. The bookshelves were filled with yellowed paperbacks and old board games. We were looking for something good to watch on TV.

“But art doesn’t take a lot of time,” she said like I was ridiculous.

“It does if you want to be good.” I passed her a magazine, pointing at a model with choppy bangs. Lark wanted a haircut.

“Okay, maybe,” she said while studying the photo. “But it’s not like you have to go to a separate place or do it at only certain times of the day. You can draw before practice, or when you get home. You can draw while you watch TV.”

“Not if you’re serious.”

“But, Eve,” she said, “you’re not the serious type.”

I flinched. It was like being slapped.

“C’mon,” she pleaded. “Don’t quit. Who am I gonna hang out with? Who’s gonna walk with me to practice?”

By this time I was standing up. I threw the magazine to the floor. “Get your parents to drive you. They drive you everywhere else.”