Surfacing Read Online Free

only drive her further away, and Julie kept quiet.
    They both pushed through and out the revolving doors onto the pool deck. Everything was gray — the wet concrete pavement, the massive inflatable cover that extended up twenty-five feet or so, the dim lights — but mostly the water, murky, fifty meters long, ten lanes across, bobbing with lane markers, waiting.
    Coach Mac began shouting commands as soon as all the girls were present. The fastest swimmers — he pointed — were assigned lanes 1 and 2, and so on down the line. Six girls per lane. The warm-up was scribbled on the whiteboard in purple marker. One by one the girls had to stop talking to one another and line up. The chatter echoing across the pool diminished in increments. The assistant coach blew the whistle five seconds apart, followed by the sound of someone plunging into the water, until it was quiet but for the rhythmic splashes, the flutter-kicking, and the steady roar of the warm air being blown into the dome, holding it all up.
    As soon as she was underwater, Maggie heard the quiet, though every sound was amplified in her ears and in her brain, the speed rushing past, the impact of her own hand, the sucking in of air and water, mixed, the faraway sound of her feet breaking the surface. She was aware of the glide and of the pull, the power of her body working, arms and legs and head, mouth open, elbow bent. Pull and glide. Pull and glide. Sound, like shame, travels four times faster under the water.
    Maggie’s mother heard the sirens before she pulled up, and out her car window she saw all the people gathered around the pool. Her first thought was thank goodness the sound wasn’t coming from her block, from her condo, overlooking the highway, where her two daughters were inside waiting for her.
    Whatever is happening, it’s none of my business
.
I need to get back to the house, to the girls. Unload these groceries and start some lunch
.
    Mrs. Paris turned her head away from the fencing, the pool, and started to turn the car around the next corner, heading home. And then something made her look again toward the noise, toward the chaos, the clamor of people, the energy of panic that seeped right in through her closed windows and blast of air-conditioning. She hated herself for looking, for being silently satisfied that the tragedy was someone else’s and not her own.
    The crowd was gathering around a little body that lay on the grass, the body of a girl in a green-and-yellow bathing suit. Mrs. Paris saw the ambulance and the EMS people working at a frantic, desperate pace. She drew in one last breath of relief, knowing that her two little girls, Maggie and Leah, were back in the house safe. If she could rewind time and live again in the moment before her heart allowed her mind to recognize the long, wet brown hair, the long skinny legs, she would, of course — she did — again and again and again.
    Third period, Algebra I, was the only class Julie and Maggie had together. As she did in every class, Maggie took the seat closest to the back of the room. Julie had tried to sit next to her, but about a week into September, Mrs. Michelangelo caught on and moved them apart.
    “Something happened, Mags. You don’t even have to tell me. I know something’s wrong.”
    Mrs. Michelangelo had left the room. No one really wondered why; it was more like the effect of a sudden wind on dried leaves. All at once, everyone started moving, and a few kids left altogether. Now Julie was sitting on top of Maggie’s desk. Maggie stayed in her seat. They created a small universe of two.
    “Nothing,” Maggie said.
    “It’s a boy, isn’t it?”
    “No.”
    “I know it is. And I bet I know who,” Julie went on. “It’s that shithead Matthew James and you’re major crushing on him.”
    “He’s not that bad.”
    “Seriously?”
    But Maggie didn’t have time to respond. Mrs. Michelangelo still hadn’t returned. Mr. Goss, the vice principal, entered