Being Emily Read Free Page A

at his face. Blake got around, we all knew that, but he wasn’t one of those guys who bragged about it. At least not more than usual. I knew he’d had sex with at least two girls already this year, so he couldn’t be asking how I liked sex with Claire, could he?
    “What?” I asked.
    “Being with the same girl that long,” he said. “You’ve been together like half a year?”
    “Just over,” I said. We’d passed the seven-month mark two weeks ago, but I didn’t want it to seem like I paid too much attention to that. He seemed to be waiting for me to say more. I had to split my mind into two halves—one half held all possible real answers to his question and the other half pretended to be him and scanned the answers to find the acceptable ones.
    / error scan : boy test
    for each answer string (item in list)
    if item sounds like girl—discard
    else— echo item
    1. test “I feel at home with her”
    2. discard— sentimental
    3. test “I don’t have to do as much work”
    4. echo
    5. test “I like the emotional intimacy”
    6. discard— major boy fail
    7. test “she’s a sure thing”
    8. echo
    “It’s easy,” I said. “I mean, I know what she likes so I don’t have to work at it. And she’s a sure thing.” Guilt lurched through my gut. My relationship with Claire was so much more than that. With her I felt more myself than I did with anyone. Sometimes when we were flopped out on her bed together reading a poem and talking about it, I forgot that I had to play a boy and got to be a person for a while.
    I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t risk losing that.
    “You don’t get bored?” Blake asked. “Or look at the prettier girls?”
    “Pretty girls are a lot of work,” I said.
    “Ha!”
    They called the 500 and I got up, leaving my towel next to him. My head spun with thoughts of talking to Claire.
    When I started on the team, Blake was swimming the 500 and he told me the trick to it: have two songs cued up in your head. The first song has a good steady pace and the second song is a little faster.
    I didn’t have a waterproof MP3 player, but I listened to my songs whenever I did strength training. When I hit the water, I started Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” in my mind.
    The upbeat R&B rhythm of the song gave me a moderately fast pace.
    The problem was I really wanted tell Claire. How bad could it be? No, that was a terrible question to ask because it could be awful if I misjudged and she told everyone and stopped speaking to me. What if I was replaceable to her? I couldn’t tell her.
    By the start of lap five I was trailing badly. Obsessing while swimming was a terrible strategy. I switched to my second song early. “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne .
    Well that is what I wanted—to be Claire’s girlfriend.
    Hitting the second to last lap, my lungs burned and a dull fire ran along my arms and legs. In the water, feeling my whole body didn’t bother me. The soft pressure reassured me of my reality. The water didn’t judge. I pushed hard into the pain.
    Fifteen seconds behind first place. Not bad. The coach slapped me on the back as I climbed out of the pool.
    “Good swim, Hesse , you really picked it up. That’s your best meet time.”
    “Thanks.”
    I stumbled back over to Blake where I sat against the bleachers and tried to catch my breath. My time wasn’t good enough to go to sectionals. Even the guy in first wasn’t going to do well against the stronger teams from the Cities. But the time was good for me and all the effort had cleared my mind.
    I had to tell Claire.
     
    ***
     
    “Go chill at my place, I’ll be there in less than an hour,” Claire told me when the meet was over. I was glad she didn’t drive with me because I didn’t know how I’d manage small talk when I had something so important to say.
    Unbeknownst to any of our parents, Claire had given me a duplicate key for her house so I could go wait for her when her extracurricular activities went longer than my