Deep End

YOU FUCKED UP,” MARYAM SAYS DURING THE FIRST WEEK OF classes, and all I can think past the despair droning in my ears is that I deserve better from my roommate. I’ve helped her clean bloodstains off countless wrestling singlets—am I really not to be afforded compassion? Or at least disapproval of the more tacit variety?

“I am one whole fourth German,” I counter. “My mom was born there. I should be good at this.”

“Your mother died when you were two, Vandy. Your step-mommy, who raised you, is from Bumfuck, Mississippi.”

Harsh. But fair. “My genetic makeup—”

“Is irrelevant and does not predispose you to a passing grade in German,” she says with the contempt of someone who grew up bilingual. I can’t presently recall what part of the brain controls the ability to learn languages, but hers spins beautifully and turbine-like. An excellent source of renewable energy ready to power a small European country.

Meanwhile: “I’m not good at this stuff,” I whine. Why should I be, though? “It’s ridiculous that med schools have foreign language requirements.”

“It’s not. What if you decide to do Doctors Without Borders, and your ability to save a life depends on knowing whether ‘the scalpel’ is male or female?”

I scratch my neck. “Die skalpellen?”

“Bam, patient’s dead.” Maryam shakes her head. “You fucked up, my dude.”

With a little help from my academic adviser. Take the premed courses first, he said. You’ll need the knowledge to pass the Medical College Admission Test, he added. It’s the right move, he concluded.

And I listened. Because all I ever wanted was to be on top of shit. Because I’m a student athlete, and my schedule is a crossover between a Jenga tower and a shibari tutorial. Spontaneity? Only if prearranged. I made a fifteen-year plan the day I graduated from high school, and always intended to stick to it: upwards of one NCAA title, med school, orthopedics, engagement and marriage, compulsory happiness.

Of course, I screwed up that plan by stuffing chem and bio sequences into my freshman and sophomore years—without considering that science classes were never my weakness. Enter junior year, and my GPA quakes in its boots. Psychology is distressingly vague. The German dative haunts my goriest nightmares. English composition wants me to construct cogent arguments on elusive, slippery topics—poetry, the ethics of pest control, maximum mandates for government officials, do people exist when we cannot see them?

It’s easier for me when balls fall neatly into their intended buckets. Black and white, right and wrong, carbon based and inorganic. This year is shades of grays and marbles scattered all over the floor, a German Language 1 oil puddle spilled underneath.

I used to be a straight A student athlete. Used to be in control. Used to live in pursuit of excellence. At this point, I’m just trying to avoid explosive failures. Wouldn’t it be lovely if I could manage not to constantly let down the people around me?

“Switch to another language,” Maryam suggests, like I haven’t already explored every escape route.

“Can’t. It’s like shingled roofing—they all overlap with something.” Such as morning drills. Afternoon practice. Any of the other million activities for which Stanford recruited me. And this is supposed to be the year I fulfill my athletic potential. If I still have it, anyway. If it was ever there.

It sure felt like it, back at Bumfuck High School (Missouri, but I’ve given up on correcting Maryam). Half a dozen DI coaches aggressively elbowed each other to lure me to their schools, because I was a former junior Olympian, national team member, junior world medalist. Top recruit. Every club coach I’d had since age six had blown smoke up my butt: You’re excellent at this, Vandy. You’ll do great things, Vandy. Promising young diver, Vandy. I frolicked in that smoke like a blissed-out prairie vole—until college, when I finally stood corrected.

In fact, I barely even stood.

My brain must have decided to do me a solid, because I have no memories of the thirty seconds that changed my life. Lucky me, the whole thing is on tape for anyone to watch, because it happened at the NCAA diving finals. It even comes pre-commentated.

“And that was Scarlett Vandermeer of Stanford University, Junior Olympic bronze. Definitely the big breakout of the season, and on the verge of a new platform record. Before this dive, that is.”

“Yeah, she was attempting an inward dive with two and a half somersaults in pike position that she managed flawlessly this morning at the prelims. In fact, it got her eights and nines. But this time something went poorly from takeoff.”

It’s always those you trust the most.

“Yeah. That was definitely a failed dive—that’s going to be a zero from the judges in terms of scoring. But she also entered the water at the wrong angle, so here’s hoping that she isn’t hurt.”

To which my body said, Fuck hoping.

It’s funny, in a remarkably unfunny way. I clearly remember the anger—at the water, at myself, at my own body—but I have no recollection of the pain. In the video, the girl limping out of the pool is a doppelgänger who stole my body. The long braid roping down her red swimsuit belongs to an impostor. The dimples as she strains her lips into a smile? Uncanny. And why does the little gap between her front teeth look exactly like mine? The camera follows her woozy gait mercilessly, gawking even as Coach Sima and his assistants run to help.

“Vandy—are you okay?”

The answer is unintelligible, but Coach loves to recount the story of how the girl said, Yeah, but I’m going to need an Advil before my next dive.

Turns out, she was right. She would need an Advil before her next dive. And surgeries. And rehab. Her final tally?

Concussion.

Ruptured eardrum.

Twisted neck.

Labral tear of the left shoulder.

Pulmonary contusion.

Sprained wrist.

Sprained ankle.

A heavy, viscous weight lodges in my chest cavity whenever I watch the video and imagine what she must have gone through—till I remember that the girl is me.

There isn’t a single guy I’ve matched with on dating apps who hasn’t asked me, Diving is pretty much the same thing as swimming, right? But much like boxing, ice hockey, and lacrosse, diving is a contact sport. Every time we enter the water, the impact beats through our skeletons, muscles, internal organs.

Eat your heart out, NFL.

“You need to prepare for the very real possibility that you won’t be able to dive again,” Barb told me before my surgery. So difficult to dismiss what your stepmom says as pessimistic drivel when said stepmom is a brilliant orthopedic surgeon. “We just want your shoulder to regain full mobility.”

“I know,” I said, and cried like a baby, first in her arms, then alone in my bed.

But Barb was overcautious—and I was lucky. Recovery turned out to be within the realm of possibility. I red shirted during my sophomore year. Rested. Took the meds. Stuck to the anti-inflammatory diet. Focused on the PT and the stretches and the rehab, as zealously as a nun saying her nighttime prayers. I visualized my dives, cradled my aches, showed up for practice anyway, watching the rest of the team train, the smell of the chlorine clinging to my nose, the shimmery blue of the pool just feet away, yet impossibly far.

Then, two months ago, I was cleared for training. And it has been . . .

Well. There’s a reason I’m seeing a therapist.

“I think I have an idea to fix your foreign language problem.”

I glance suspiciously at Maryam—and yet lean forward, all ears and eyes and hope.

“You’re going to tell me to take an acid bath, aren’t you?”

“Hear me out: Latin 201.”

I push to my feet. “I have to go.”

“Think how helpful it’ll be when Doctors Without Borders sends you to ancient Rome!”

I slam the door behind me and leave for practice forty minutes early, just to avoid garroting my roommate.

We were paired up during freshman year, and despite Maryam’s unflinching meanness and my inability to timely replace empty toilet paper rolls, we have somehow become unwilling to live apart. Last year we (voluntarily?) moved together to a place off campus, and we just (voluntarily?) renewed our lease, condemning ourselves to twenty-four more months of each other. The truth is, being together is simple and requires little emotional labor from either of us. And when you’re like me (a goal-oriented, control-focused, overachieving perfectionist), finding someone like Maryam is a gift.

Not a good gift, but I’ll take it.

The Avery Aquatic Center is the best facility I’ve ever trained at. It’s fully outdoors, with four pools and a diving tower, and it’s where all Stanford aquatic teams practice. Today, the women’s locker room is blissfully silent. It’s a rare Goldilocks zone—swimmers are already off to practice; divers aren’t yet getting ready. Water polo players have recently been exiled to another building, and many a thankful tear was shed.

I put on my swimsuit. Slide a tee and shorts over it. Set my alarm and sit on the uncomfortable wooden bench, contemplating my life choices. Exactly ten minutes later my phone vibrates, and I stand, having achieved no clarity or inner peace. I’m walking to Laundry Services for a fresh towel, when I hear a familiar voice.

“. . . not okay,” Penelope is saying.

She stands in the hallway, a few feet away, but doesn’t notice me.

“Not at all,” she continues, a curl of tears in her words. I recognize it from that dual meet in Utah, when she screwed up a forward pike, belly flopped like a flying squirrel, and slid from first to ninth. “Not for us.”

The reply is quieter, deeper. Less distressed. Lukas Blomqvist stands in front of Pen, bare chested and arms crossed, a pair of goggles around his neck and a cap dangling from his fingers. He must have just gotten out of practice, because he’s still dripping. The slight frown between his eyes is hard to interpret—could be a glower, or resting Swede face. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but it doesn’t matter, because Pen cuts him off.

“. . . there’s no reason for that, if . . .”

Another rich, low-pitched response. I retreat. This conversation is not for me. I don’t need a towel that bad.

“It’s for the best.” Pen leans closer. “You know it is.”

Blomqvist inhales deeply, and his glistening shoulders rise, making him look even taller. I notice the tautness in his jaw, the sudden bend of his head, the bunching of muscles in his upper arm.

Menacing. Threatening. Scary. That’s what he is. Next to him, Pen looks small and upset, and my brain clicks into a new mode.

I couldn’t care less whether it’s my business. I stride closer, eyes narrowed on Blomqvist. My fingers tremble, so I fist them at my sides, and even though he is probably four times stronger than Pen and me put together, even though it’s a terrible idea, I ask, “Pen, is everything okay?”