Deep End

PENELOPE: Funny story.

PENELOPE: I woke up this morning with a huge headache. Couldn’t figure out why. Then I remembered what happened last night and started praying for my bones to turn into lava.

PENELOPE: I have no words for how dumb I was. I think I only had two drinks—I have no clue how I got that drunk. And it’s not an excuse. I’m so sorry, Vandy.

As she should be.

SCARLETT: I think Coach’s home brew might be stronger than regular beer. The twins were pretty wasted, too, and I ended up driving Victoria’s car back home.

PENELOPE: Bet the NCAA would LOVE to hear that.

SCARLETT: Moving forward, though, please don’t blurt out facts about my sex life.

PENELOPE: God, I promise I won’t! I swear I’m not usually that shitty. And honestly, I’m your captain. What I did was totally sexual harassment, and you have every right to report me.

SCARLETT: It’s okay. You’re forgiven, this once. Plus, this whole thing will give us both an edge in future Never have I ever games.

PENELOPE: LMAO two truths and a lie, too.

PENELOPE: “I pee in the pool.” “I hate tomatoes.” “I once got so wasted that I tried to get my ex and my teammate to fuck each other.”

SCARLETT: Very worried atm since I’ve seen you eat tomatoes with my own two eyes.

PENELOPE: They pump so much chlorine in there!

SCARLETT: I’m officially making myself unknow this about you. Never mention it again.

SCARLETT: Is Lukas mad?

PENELOPE: I called him this morning to grovel, but he just shrugged it off. It’s impossible to make Lukas mad. He’s literally the most unfazed human in the universe.

A few days ago I’d have guessed the opposite—that he’d be the silent treatment type, surly and prone to anger. But that was just a hunch, based on my general assumption that men can be scary and unpredictable.

Not all men, I’m sure. Maybe not even most men. But with my past, I cannot help distrusting them until they give me reason not to. Lukas Blomqvist, though, seems fairly unobjectionable.

I have no real insight into his personality, but following Coach’s cookout he becomes something of an intrusive thought for me, and I find myself taking time out of pondering the German sentence structure, to . . . gather information about him. Mostly, through my own recollections.

Try as I might, I can’t remember meeting him during my recruitment trip. There are snippets of him here and there, though, like confetti stuck to my hair after a New Year’s Eve ball drop. I didn’t mean to take them home, but still get to examine them, and I’m glad for that.

Freshman year, Halloween, when some kids broke into the diving well to egg and toilet paper the pool. Lukas, who was already captain, volunteered the men’s team to clean it up. When they started bitching, a twitch of his eyebrow was all they needed to fall quiet.

Or that time some guy mistook the pool cover for pavement and fell inside, backpack and clothes and all. An image resurfaces: Lukas’s inked arm, fishing him out. The same arm that last year separated those two seniors who got in a fight, shoved them apart, pinned them to the wall for stern talking-tos.

And then, the bits Pen threw out in passing. Something about how he’d been offered sponsorship deals, but declined to “peddle shampoo and high-fructose corn syrup.” Anniversary posts on her Instagram, photos of the two of them through the years, Lukas’s serious bulk, Pen’s wide smile. The careless way she mentioned never having been to Sweden to visit him—Too busy, you know?

That’s the extent of my memories, but it doesn’t matter. Because now that Pen has tried to squish us into this odd triangle, now that I’m aware of him, I notice him everywhere. Padding over the deck. With the PTs in the recovery room. Lifting truly ludicrous weights. At those annoying Saturday meetings that happen behind the diving tower—though he’s quiet there. The swimmers take turns celebrating each other and announcing their weekly achievements, but Lukas Blomqvist, five-time Olympic gold medalist (two are relays, which makes him slightly less humbling), never has anything to share.

Maybe he’s in a rut. Maybe he hates public speaking. Maybe it’s a Swedish thing.

I’ve never cared much about mapping the aquatics social network, but he seems to get along with his teammates. “Sweedy,” they call him—not sweetie, as I originally thought. The realization hits me while doing pull-ups, and I dangle in the strength room for a few seconds, exhaling breathless chuckles until Bree asks if I’m having a mental breakdown.

I catch him pushing the other Swedish guy on the team into the pool, and snort when the only thing that pops out of the water is a middle finger.

I see him walk around campus with two other seniors who are also Olympians—Hasan, a nice English guy who asked me out freshman year, and Kyle, one of the hopes and dreams of US swimming, who looks like twenty stereotypical frat bros chucked in a blender and spread over a slice of Wonder Bread.

I watch Lukas swim. At first, out of curiosity. Later, because I cannot stop, in utter disbelief that he and I are made of the same stuff—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen—and yet his body can do that.

He’s probably a good guy—or person, leader, swimmer, whatever’s the NCAA buzzwordy pick of the day. Sometimes we’ll pass each other and exchange a nod. A sardonic smile. A shared moment of remember when your ex wanted us to fuck? understanding. For the most part, though, he seems too focused on training to pay attention to me.

And so am I. Twenty hours of practice a week plus classes, homework, MCAT prep, and this thing I’ve been told people should really do if their plans include staying alive for longer than a couple of months. “Sleeping,” Coach calls it. I hear great things. Would love to try it someday.

“We didn’t even choose good sports,” Maryam reminds me during dinner. We’re staring lifelessly into our plates of spaghetti, fully aware that we have at least three hours of schoolwork ahead of us. “Wrestling? Diving? Poorly funded and spectated. No chance at fame and glory. My fucking eyeballs hurt, and what for?”

“At least you have the WWE option.”

“Maybe. I’d need a pro wrestler name, though.”

“What about the Rock?”

“Isn’t it taken?”

“Nope. All yours.”

But the grind pays off. The plyometrics. The strenuous arm, ab, leg workouts. The visualization exercises. I’m in good shape, especially considering how little I dove last year. I’m really—

“Are you jerking me around, Vandy?” Coach Sima asks me on Friday night, a week after his cookout. He appears out of the blue while I’m toweling off, giving me a cardiac event. “What was that last dive?”

“My back two and a half—”

“And what did I ask you to do?”

I take a step back. I’m not scared of Coach Sima—he’s gruff, rough-edged, but kind. I am, however, terrified of what he’s about to say. “I’m sorry.” I glance away for a beat. When I look back, his eyes have softened.

“How’s it going with that psychologist?”

“We’ve . . .” I fist my towel. “We’re getting there. I promise.”

He scans my face, on the hunt for lies. “Okay. Okay.” He nods, not fully convinced. “Make sure you keep on keepin’ on, okay? Anything I can do, alright?”

I slacken in relief when he turns to Pen and Victoria’s synchro dives. Their hurdles are different heights. Their twists are poorly timed. And they’re both doing whatever the opposite of nailing is to that pike.

“Just to be clear, you two are attempting the same dive, right?” Coach yells.

I spare myself the roast comedy, change into dry clothes, grab a protein bar from the snack shed, and go stretch.

My PT gave me a list of exercises that should keep my injured shoulder from crapping on me again. Three times a week, over one hour. When she told me that skipping them would equal certain reinjury, I wished for a swift death, but they’ve grown on me. They are gentle, slow, an excuse to be kind to my body. To not push it past its physical boundaries and instead follow its lead. It’s after sunset by the time I’m done. Avery is deserted, and when I swipe my ID, the locker room door won’t open, no matter how many times I try.

And it’s many times.

My house keys, my laptop, my wallet, are all in there. Maryam’s out of town for a wrestling meet. I feel bad about calling Pen, but team captains have physical, old-fashioned keys.

“Hey,” I say when she picks up. There’s noise in the background. Hopefully she’s still on campus.

“Hey! Everything okay?”

“Kind of.” I think I can hear music. “The locker room door is doing that thing again, and I can’t find any staff.”

“Oh, shit. Hang on—I’ll . . . give me a second.”

What comes next is muffled, like her phone mic is pressed against the fabric of her shirt. I pick up a brief exchange between Pen and a deep, male voice, but only make out two words: someone and else.

“Vandy? Hey, could you . . . could you call Luk? Or any of the other captains? We all have keys.”

But isn’t Lukas with you? I almost ask. Before I can, everything clicks into place.

“Oh.” I pause for too long. “Sure, I will,” I say, with no intention of doing so. First of all, I don’t have his number. Secondly—fuck that. My nonconsensual involvement in this relationship is maxed out. I’m not calling Lukas because Pen is—

“Actually, I’ll text him your number and tell him myself, okay?”

Shit. “I don’t want to bother him.”

“He’s the captain. Part of the job description. Just sit tight, he’ll be there ASAP.”

Thirty seconds later, I’m considering drowning myself in the pool, when my phone pings with a text from an unsaved number.