Being Emily Read Free

high schools with their own pools and a larger student base to draw from. Plus our team wasn’t particularly competitive, which was another reason I stayed on it. Our coach always emphasized beating our own personal times over beating another team, though that may have been a tactic to keep us from getting too depressed when we didn’t stand a chance against most of the other teams.
    I didn’t mind being in the boys’ locker room any more than I minded using the boys’ restroom at school. Actually the locker room was better because it didn’t have the same level of disgusting graffiti. I don’t know why guys are so obsessed with their junk that they have to draw it all over the stalls. Plus, I lucked out in not being attracted to guys, so the only part that embarrassed me in the locker room was changing into my swim trunks. I just turned into my locker and did it quickly.
    Our team trunks looked like black biker shorts with the school symbol on the front of the right thigh and our colors up the sides. I pulled them on fast and shoved my clothes into the locker. Then I turned and smacked my shin into the low bench between the rows of lockers.
    “Shit!”
    Blake turned around a few lockers up and shook his head. “Again, Hesse ?”
    I had a reputation for knocking into things or tripping over my own feet just about every practice session. I did it at home too. My shins, knees and feet always had two or three bruises on them.
    “It’s for luck,” I told him. “Part of the ritual.”
    He laughed. Blake was a senior and the team captain. He took an immediate liking to me last year when I said I’d swim the 500 freestyle because it was the event no one else on the team ever wanted to swim. He had wild, curly dark hair that stood out from his head in all directions, naturally tan skin and the best muscles on the team. At least a dozen girls at school had crushes on him, according to Claire.
    I put on my cap and my goggles so that they rested up on my forehead. Then I wrapped the big towel with our school emblem on it around my shoulders like a shawl and followed Blake out to the pool.
    There were a lot of reasons to love swimming and the format of the meets was one. Unlike football or basketball where most of the team is on the field the whole time, we spent most of the time sitting by the pool stretching and bullshitting. There were twenty guys on the team but at most we had four competing at a time. Those of us out of the water only fell silent during the races, which usually took a minute or two. Each guy could swim two to four events. I only swam two: one leg of a relay and then the 500.
    The 500-meter freestyle is the longest solo swim of the meet—more than double any other. It’s ten laps in the pool and covers about a third of a mile. I actually liked it, but the guys never believed me when I said that. Of all the events, it was the one where pure muscle strength was less important than pacing, endurance, breath control and strategy. I really had to manage how fast I swam the first six laps so that I had the right energy available for the last four.
    It was also the most boring event of the meet. Watching guys flash through the water racing against each other for up to two minutes is exciting—watching that same thing for about five minutes really loses its thrill.
    Our relay came early in the meet, and then Blake and I sat on the side of the pool and stretched. The 500 was always one of the last events and that gave me time to recover before I swam again.
    “How’s it going?” he asked and jerked his chin toward where Claire sat in the bleachers.
    She looked like an inkblot on a bright painting. Three colorfully dressed girls from the yearbook committee sat with her in the middle of a larger, spread out grouping of family members, friends and girlfriends of the team. Shrugging, I rubbed my big toe around one of the tiny octagonal tiles that covered the floor.
    “Do you like it?” he asked.
    I looked up