Sara Jaffe - Dryland

I said, I’m quitting the team.

She said, Relays are stupid. Relays are too much pressure on everybody. She stepped back over and put her hand on my shoulder. She said, You need to find your own race that you can really work on, that you can really make your own, you know?

She talked as if she had a plan for me. I was waiting for her to kiss me again.

She said, What about the 500 Free? That’s a really good event. People give all the attention to the sprinters, but distance can be kind of, I don’t know, magical. She said, Can you do distance?

I said, I don’t know.

Alexis said, Your brother’s time on the 500 Free was incredible. I saw the plaque. I think it might be really awesome. I could count laps for you.

She had me cupped, convinced. With her hand on my shoulder, she could have said anything.

Alexis took a step back. She pulled her fingers through her hair and straightened her sweater. She said, All right. She said, I’m going to go out first, if that’s okay? Just wait a few minutes. She kissed me quickly, half on my mouth, and left.

When I got downstairs, the mood had shifted, or I had. I was less outside of the frenzy and more, not of it, but as if I were the air or the dust in the air, around and amid what was happening. Erika was standing in a group with PT and a few gothish girls, on the edge of the room, and she pulled me over. They smelled like cloves. Erika said, Julie! She said, We were talking about music. Erika was drinking her beer, or drinking another one. Erika knew less about music than I did. She mostly knew her mom’s old records, Joni Mitchell, who she loved to say she couldn’t listen to without crying.

One of the girls said, We were basically obsessing about My Bloody Valentine. If you know them.

I said, Oh I know them. In my dust-state, I felt generous. I wanted to give Erika anything I could.

The girl said, You know them?

I said, Loveless. I love that album.

They talked and I hazed and half-listened, saying things for Erika when she didn’t have anything to say. PT seemed quiet and nice enough, hanging out behind his glasses and wool cap, the person in the group least trying to do anything. I got glimpses of Alexis in different parts of the room. With Greg by the stereo, with Melanie by the sliding-glass door, with a beer in her hand, getting louder. A hand light-touched the inside of my elbow and by the time I turned to look Alexis was dancing with Greg by the sliding-glass door, the lights of the river and the city beyond them.

A little before midnight, Erika and I were standing outside, waiting for Erika’s mom to pick us up. Alexis had called from across the room, Julie, are you leaving? and she had raised her hand to wave goodbye, along with Melanie and Greg. She was drunk and ensconced with her friends, it was fine, and it wasn’t as if I was thinking about whether what had happened would happen again, or as if that was all I was thinking about. Erika said, I think I’m a little drunk. Are you?

I said, A little, not feeling drunk, but generous.

Erika said, I can’t believe how cute PT is.

I said, He seems really nice.

She said, We went outside and smoked cloves.

I said, That’s great.

Erika put her head back and opened her arms wide, a cartoon of a drunk person high on life. She said, The air feels so good. She said, Do you think he seemed like he liked me?

I HADN’T PLANNEDon kissing Alexis. To think that I might have, without realizing, planned for or expected it made me cave with embarrassment. To think that I might have made Alexis think I wanted to kiss her by the color of the shirt I’d worn or the spot by the window where I’d chosen to stand. That I might have made her think that I wanted her to kiss me.

I knew I wouldn’t tell Erika, or anyone. Not because Alexis was a girl, or because I was — Alexis had a boyfriend, and had had other boyfriends before. I hadn’t, so what, I would. I wouldn’t tell anyone because no one who wasn’t me could know what it had felt like to be standing in Alexis’s room and have her step close, then closer. No one could understand that what it had been about was something so specific, the light blue of her sweater, the heat of her breast in my hand.

I lay on my bed, hands off myself, feeling, more than feeling.

COACH SAID, JULIE-JULIE!Thanks for coming down. He was sitting at his desk, eating a sandwich and looking at the newspaper. A brass instrument in the practice room next door struggled up a scale. Coach said, This sandwich! Between us, the bread’s a little dry.

Coach’s clippings were up on the wall. His Beavers medal hung from his desk lamp. Coach may have wanted to check in that I was okay after what had happened at the meet. I was okay. I hadn’t been thinking about it. Like Alexis said, no one cared about relays. Coach’s desk was empty except for the paper and his clipboard and a half-empty frame of hanging folders. It wasn’t clear why he needed an office, or how being a swim coach was a full-time job. I sat down.

Coach said, I thought you and I could use a check-in. Is there anything you’d like to talk to me about?

The thick green paint on the walls looked like the kind that had lead in it. The air in the office was probably unsafe to breathe. I said, I don’t think so.

Coach said, It seemed like you were a little p.o.’ed about that swimming pamphlet.

I said, I wasn’t. I said, It doesn’t matter.

Coach leaned forward and put his chin on his tented fists. He said, Because if you’ve got some beef with me, we can talk it out. He gave a little shrug. He said, But what I hate is to see you taking it out on the team.

I didn’t know what he was talking about.

Coach said, I mean, I get it. No one’s that excited about swimming the third leg in a relay.

Maybe Coach took my silence as agreement, or as a blank space he could keep flinging words at.

He said, But when you’ve got your team counting on you, you can’t just stop in the middle of a race. That’s moving into some moral territory, Julie. He took a bite of his sandwich.

From the hallway a cymbal crashed, or fell.

I said, I’m quitting.

Coach put his sandwich down. He said, Really? He said, Damn.

I said, I don’t think swimming’s for me. I picked up my backpack and put it on my lap. I waited for the feeling of a chain unclipping from a longer chain.

Coach said, Shoot, Julie. That’s not what I was trying to say.

I said, I was going to come down here and tell you anyway. I unzipped and zipped the pocket on my backpack. I waited for the feeling of a free spooling out. Coach wasn’t saying anything. I said, It doesn’t matter.

Coach said, It matters to me. He tossed his sandwich wrapper and crumbs scattered on the desk. He said, Listen. You’re not interested in that pamphlet? Toss it.

I said, I already did.

Coach said, Why don’t you tell me your side of what happened in the relay?

I should have had my backpack on my back and been out the door. I should have been looking forward to three o’clock that afternoon when I’d stand by the school doors watching the bus pull away, seeing if I could see Alexis through the windows, wondering if she’d miss me.

I took a deep breath in. I said, What would you think about me swimming the 500 Free?

Coach said, Excuse me?

I said, I might not quit. I said, Maybe I just need a race to make my own.

Coach nodded. He said, I hear you. Relays are key, but I get that. You want a little ownership.

I said, I know, sprinters get all the attention. But I think distance can be kind of magical.

Coach said, That’s a nice way of putting it, Julie. I hear you. He pulled his ear. He said, I’m just not quite sure I’ve seen you loving distance.