Phantom Limbs Read Free

pictures of herself with some padded Neanderthal. That they weren’t just friends was agonizingly clear. I, on the other hand, had been a lone wolf this whole time, unless you count the companionship of an eighteen-year-old dictator of frankly indeterminate sexual orientation.
    “. . . and between practices we can grab lunch at that pizza buffet a few blocks from the pool — they have a salad bar . . .”
    We were almost at the high school. The sun rose over the horizon, streaking orange and yellow through the remaining purple. It was a new day, in all sorts of ways. And as much as I was loath to bring up Meg to Dara, I knew that Dara, with all her grand plans for me this summer, would need to know sometime.
    “So guess what?” I said, shifting into second as Dara slowed to turn into the parking lot. “Meg’s coming back to Willow Grove.” It felt weird to say it, like I was making it up. “For three weeks. Apparently.”
    “You know what that means?” Dara asked, tires squealing as she rounded the edge of the lot and sped into a parking space, stopping so suddenly that the seat belt nearly sliced me in half. She thrust the gear into first and yanked up the parking brake.
    “It means,” she continued, grabbing her stuff from the backseat, “you need to knock off more than two seconds in the next three months. Do you realize how much work that’s going to take? Your turns still suck, and your starts aren’t great, either. Sometimes your breakout is sort of fucked up.”
    She wasn’t even listening to me.
    She got out of the car, slammed the door, and strode toward the school, her muscular little ass doing its famous
swish-swish
. I grabbed my bags and ran after her.
    “Did you hear what I said?” I asked. “Meg’s coming back. So I might be kind of busy while she’s here.” I hoped that wasn’t just wishful thinking.
    “Meg who?” She yanked open the door to the athletic entrance.
    Man, she really knew how to piss me off. Dara knew perfectly well Meg who. She’d heard plenty about Meg, although it hadn’t taken long before she lost patience and told me that love was for chumps and to get over it already.
    “
Meg
Meg,” I answered.
    “You mean the girl who landed you in therapy?” she said without looking back. “The girl you write all the froofy poetry for?”
    I followed her down the hallway toward the pool, gritting my teeth. Calling my poetry “froofy” was one of Dara’s cheap go-to’s for emasculating me. And I was in therapy before Meg even left.
    “Yes,” I said, catching up with her. “And it’s kind of a big deal. If you were my friend, you’d be happy for me.”
    She whirled around and faced me. “You know what? Fuck you. I’ve been here for you every fucking day since that girl left you in the dust. So don’t give me that
if you were my friend
shit — don’t talk to me about who your friends are.
I’m
your fucking friend. Which is more than you can say about her.”
    She started walking again. When she reached the locker room, she turned back to me. “God, Mueller.” She shook her head at me like I was pathetic, tragic. “She never even looked back.”

IN THE POOL, WE WORKED ON SPRINTS. TO my eternal amazement, there were people who voluntarily showed up to practice before school in the off-season. Most of them did it because they wanted to stay in shape, but they had actual lives and couldn’t make the evening practice.
    There were six girls and eight other guys at the pool, despite the ridiculous hour, including — always — my medley relay team, because we were determined to set a school record, if a strong enough backstroker emerged to replace D’Amico, who was graduating. And of course there was Coach Brian, who oversaw the entire swim club, head-coached us senior swimmers, and who, I was pretty sure, never slept.
    If Dara hadn’t been there, I could have spent the whole time thinking about Meg as I put in my yards, lost in the blue blur and muffled echo