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I tear open the envelope. It’s filled with schedules and maps and pamphlets with titles like, Student Life. My hands are shaking as I unfold the letter. Dear Ms. Bradshaw, it reads. Congratulations—
Oh, God. “I’m going to Brown!” I jump up and down and run around the car in glee. Then I stop. It’s only forty-five minutes away. My life will be exactly the same, except I’ll be in college.
But I’ll be at Brown. Which is pretty darn good. It’s kind of a big deal.
“Brown,” Missy squeals. “Dad will be so happy.”
“I know,” I say, floating on the moment. Maybe my luck has changed. Maybe my life is finally going in the right direction.
“So, Dad,” I say later, after he’s hugged me and patted me on the back and said things like, “I always knew you could do it, kid, if you applied yourself,” “since I’m going to Brown…” I hesitate, wanting to position this in the best possible light. “I was wondering if maybe I could spend the summer in New York.”
The question takes him by surprise, but he’s too thrilled about Brown to actually analyze it.
“With George?” he asks.
“Not necessarily with George,” I say quickly. “But there’s this writing program I’ve been trying to get into—”
“Writing?” he says. “But now that you’re going to Brown, you’re going to want to be a scientist.”
“Dad, I’m not sure—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says with a wave, as if shooing the issue away. “The important thing is that you’re going to Brown. You don’t have to figure out your entire life this very minute.”
And then it’s the day swim team starts again.
The break is over. I’ll have to see Lali.
Six weeks have passed and she’s still seeing Sebastian.
I don’t have to go. I don’t, in fact, have to do anything anymore. I’ve been accepted to college. My father has sent in a check. I can skip classes, drop swim team, come to school intoxicated, and there’s nothing anyone can do. I’m in.
So maybe it’s pure perversity that propels me down the hall to the locker rooms.
She’s there. Standing in front of the lockers where we always used to change. As if claiming our once-mutual territory for herself, the way she claimed Sebastian. My blood boils. She’s the bad person here, the one who’s done wrong. She ought to at least have the decency to move to a different part of the locker room.
My head suddenly feels encased in cement.
I drop my gym bag next to hers. She stiffens, sensing my presence the way I can sense hers even when she’s at the other end of the hallway. I swing open the door of my locker. It bangs against hers, nearly slamming her finger.
She pulls her hand back at the last second. She stares at me, surprised, then angry.
I shrug.
We take off our clothes. But now I don’t sink into myself the way I usually do, trying to hide my nakedness. She’s not looking at me anyway, wriggling herself into her suit and stretching the straps over her shoulders with a snap.
In a moment, she’ll be gone. “How’s Sebastian?” I ask.
This time, when she looks at me, I see everything I need to know. She is never going to apologize. She is never going to admit she did anything wrong. She is never going to acknowledge that she hurt me. She will not say she misses me or even feels bad. She is going to continue forward, like nothing happened, like we were friends, but we were never that close.
“Fine.” She walks away, swinging her goggles.
Fine. I put my clothes back on. I don’t need to be around her. Let her have swim team. Let her have Sebastian, too. If she needs him badly enough to destroy a friendship, I feel sorry for her.
On my way out, I hear shouting coming from the gym. I peek through the hatched window in the wooden door. Cheerleading practice is in session.
I walk across the polished floor to the bleachers, take a seat in the fourth row, and lean into my hands, wondering why I’m doing this.
The members of the squad are dressed in leotards or T-shirts with leggings, their hair pulled back into pony-tails. They wear old-fashioned saddle shoes. The tinny thump of “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” echoes from a tape-player in the corner as the line of girls shake their pom-poms, step forward and back, turn right, place a hand on the shoulder of the girl in front of them, and one by one, with varying degrees of gracefulness and skill, slide their legs apart into a split.
