The Well's End Read Free

dad out so. The thing is, he’s just standing there, shaking Mrs. Applebaum’s hand. I stop and put my back to the wall, listen for a moment. Mrs. Applebaum, the dean’s secretary—most students love her—is asking about his piece. If he got everything he needed. If he had ever been to Fenton before, or Westbrook. Mr. Sutton says, Yes, absolutely,
then asks about last week’s snowfall.
    I shake my head, entirely confused by the encounter, and push my way out the glass doors of the building and into the quad. The weather is sharp, the wind biting; the sidewalk is sure to be covered in ice. It’s dark, and I think I can see my dad’s car pulling out of the main gates, heading for the Cave.
    I breathe the cold air and move quickly along the path from lamp to lamp, trying to stay in their light. I don’t do well in the dark. But this time, with my dad acting all weird, it’s worse than usual. I’m sucked back in, like I’m in the well, feeling the darkness around me, all through the campus and blanketing half the world. Just like my first memory. I think of my friends hanging out in the dorm, entirely unaware of this discomfort in my skin. I think of my dad in his car, the air only just now turning warm, his hands clutched tight around the steering wheel as he drives onward, through town and down the snowy roads, catching up to whoever else works at Fenton Electronics as they go one by one through the air lock and deep into the mountain.

2
    THE WATER IS COLD, BUT YOU DON’T FEEL IT FOR MORE than an instant. It’s supposed to be cold. Anything warmer than seventy-five degrees, and you’re in a sauna, muscles floppy and useless. I’m under for almost the entire first length of the pool, then it’s all breathing and eyes, rotating my breaths to see the competition in the adjacent lanes. Look left, look right. My body knows what to do, my breath comes in even bursts, my muscles begin to slowly burn, and I watch the girls fall behind, unable to leech off my wake. Even with my drag suit, designed to slow me down and work me harder, by the time I come out of my turn at the end of the pool, they’re a full body-length back. By the time I touch the finish, I’m all alone.
    No one congratulates me, not even Coach Hart, who sees me as his gift horse and picks on me more than the others because, heck, they aren’t going to make it to nationals. He’s turned swimming into a solo sport, despite the fact that I also anchor the relay. During meets, he runs up and down the edge of the pool shouting “WOOP WOOP,” telling me where he is, giving me signals like
kick harder, double tempo, you’re falling behind.
To push me, he had me swimming with the boys, which immediately pissed off the girls. Thirty of us spending six hours a day together on different sides of the pool, and no girl who would talk to me. And while I didn’t realize that this would happen, I didn’t really care at first. The boys were fun, crazy and cute together. I guess I never thought about how they’d react to being beaten by a girl. For about a month, I went side by side with the best in the state, winning a couple races too, watching the boys watch me, feeling sexy for the first time in my Lycra Aquablade suit. I thought they were my friends, and maybe they were. Maybe the boys didn’t mean any harm, but I’m alone now, back to beating the crap out of the girls. All because of the time when I was tapering at practice the day before a big race, doing laps just to stay loose, and I saw one of the talented boys, Eric, swimming underneath me, crosswise, faceup, and I smiled at first because I wanted to, because I was into Eric. He’s taller than me, looks good with his swim cap on or off. His blue eyes are so bright you can see them through his goggles. But then I heard laughing above my head, and Eric rolled over and his Speedo was down and he was mooning me,