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“It’s for you. ” He handed it to me. It was heavy and awkward, and my muscles flexed when I took it from him. “It’s your wet suit. ”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I hunkered down in my seat, slamming the door to the old Range Rover harder than necessary.
Eating lunch had been impossible.
Fitness class unending.
Today’s slew of Lilac barbs particularly excruciating.
All day, two images replayed on an obsessive loop in my mind: the canvas-wrapped body of the girl who’d died in the pool, and the thick black wet suit that hung in my locker like a skinned marine mammal. Did the wet suit mean I was going to have to go underwater? Hold my breath till bloody foam came out of my mouth? Was I to face something that would claw me enough to bring bits of gore floating to the water’s surface?
“Why can’t we do like normal people and swim in the pool?” I asked Ronan for the umpteenth time. “I like the shallow end. Our lessons have been going great. ” Amazing how the threat of a nighttime swim in the frigid North Sea could make a pool seem infinitely less detestable.
I stared out the car window. Though the March sun set later than when we’d arrived in January, come late afternoon it always faded and the sky dimmed to a dull gray. “It’ll be dark soon. Isn’t it dangerous? Shouldn’t we do this during broad daylight?”
“It won’t be pitch-dark for hours yet. ” Ignoring my tone, Ronan buckled his seat belt with that calm detachment he’d perfected and put the car in drive. “And even if it were dark, it’s a good exercise. You won’t face ideal conditions in the real world. Best not get used to them now. ”
“Doesn’t this send me from, like, zero to sixty? What happened to the noodle and my little blue kickboard?”
Abruptly, he pulled the car to the side of the gravel road. “The fighting will begin soon, Annelise. And then these girls will be your competitors in more than just the classroom. Do you truly want them to see you thrashing about in the shallow end?”
Fighting. Girls had died already, and yet Ronan was telling me the challenges hadn’t even begun yet? I tried to work some moisture back into my dry mouth. “Um, I’d rather they see my wet suit and think I’m a badass. . . . ”
“That’s the way. ” He popped back into gear, turning onto a road I hadn’t seen before. We bounced over a rocky trail rough and rutted enough to knock me back against the headrest.
Despite the madly jouncing SUV, Ronan elaborated in his typically cool Ronan fashion. “It’s impossible to re-create natural conditions in a pool. Variables like temperature, wind velocity, currents, riptides . . . Visibility issues like murk, flora, black water—”
“Okay, stop. ” I put up my hand. “You’re freaking me out. Let’s just start by mastering my float; then we can work our way up to murk. Which, by the way, I don’t believe is a word. ”
I think he actually smiled. Too bad I was too panicked to savor it. It seemed we really were driving to a cove, with me really wearing a wet suit. There was no stopping any of it.
He hit a huge pothole, and I grabbed the looped leather handhold on the door. “How come I have to do this as a special study? Am I the only person who can’t swim?”
“No, you aren’t the only one who can’t swim. ”
I waited for him to elaborate. Which, of course, he did not. “Well, why don’t these other mysterious nonswimmers have to wear wet suits and go to Crispy Cove, too?”
“It’s Crispin’s Cove, and the other Tracers tutor as they see fit. ”
The wet suit was riding up my backside in the most unpleasant way, but there was no chance I’d be working out any wedgies in front of Ronan. I did have some pride.
Putting it on had been a humiliating and demoralizing chore. It was heavy, it was daunting, and it had the most maddening up-the-back zipper, which had taken me ten minutes to master. At first I’d fantasized about asking Ronan—perhaps in my best sultry-starlet purr—if he’d zip me, but reality had found me hopping and grunting with one arm behind my back instead.
I plucked at the thighs, using the bounce of the tires to scooch back in my seat in an effort to free myself from my impromptu neoprene G-string. No luck, and it made me churlish. “Well, why doesn’t Lilac have to swim in subzero water?”
“Your wet suit will keep you warm. And Lilac has her own special study. ”
I sat upright, my mood brightening at once. “What’s Lilac’s weakness?”
Ronan turned onto a road even bumpier than the last. “Everyone is assigned a special study. None of them is your business. ”
This was. If I was ever going to best von Slutling, I had to find her Achilles’ heel. I remembered the elementary German workbook I’d spied on her desk. “It’s some language thing, isn’t it?”
Ronan stared ahead, refusing to answer.
“Hmph. ” There went that conversation.
