Deep End(3)

Sam, though, spares me. “Did you say that there are six groups of dives?”

“Yes.” I’m surprised at the topic shift, and let my guard down.

It’s a misstep of catastrophic proportions.

“And this injury of yours, Scarlett . . . does it have anything to do with the fact that you only listed five?”





CHAPTER 2


YOU FUCKED UP,” MARYAM SAYS DURING THE FIRST WEEK OF classes, and all I can think past the despair droning in my ears is that I deserve better from my roommate. I’ve helped her clean bloodstains off countless wrestling singlets—am I really not to be afforded compassion? Or at least disapproval of the more tacit variety?

“I am one whole fourth German,” I counter. “My mom was born there. I should be good at this.”

“Your mother died when you were two, Vandy. Your step-mommy, who raised you, is from Bumfuck, Mississippi.”

Harsh. But fair. “My genetic makeup—”

“Is irrelevant and does not predispose you to a passing grade in German,” she says with the contempt of someone who grew up bilingual. I can’t presently recall what part of the brain controls the ability to learn languages, but hers spins beautifully and turbine-like. An excellent source of renewable energy ready to power a small European country.

Meanwhile: “I’m not good at this stuff,” I whine. Why should I be, though? “It’s ridiculous that med schools have foreign language requirements. ”

“It’s not. What if you decide to do Doctors Without Borders, and your ability to save a life depends on knowing whether ‘the scalpel’ is male or female?”

I scratch my neck. “Die skalpellen?”

“Bam, patient’s dead.” Maryam shakes her head. “You fucked up, my dude.”

With a little help from my academic adviser. Take the premed courses first, he said. You’ll need the knowledge to pass the Medical College Admission Test, he added. It’s the right move, he concluded.

And I listened. Because all I ever wanted was to be on top of shit. Because I’m a student athlete, and my schedule is a crossover between a Jenga tower and a shibari tutorial. Spontaneity? Only if prearranged. I made a fifteen-year plan the day I graduated from high school, and always intended to stick to it: upwards of one NCAA title, med school, orthopedics, engagement and marriage, compulsory happiness.

Of course, I screwed up that plan by stuffing chem and bio sequences into my freshman and sophomore years—without considering that science classes were never my weakness. Enter junior year, and my GPA quakes in its boots. Psychology is distressingly vague. The German dative haunts my goriest nightmares. English composition wants me to construct cogent arguments on elusive, slippery topics—poetry, the ethics of pest control, maximum mandates for government officials, do people exist when we cannot see them?

It’s easier for me when balls fall neatly into their intended buckets. Black and white, right and wrong, carbon based and inorganic. This year is shades of grays and marbles scattered all over the floor, a German Language 1 oil puddle spilled underneath.

I used to be a straight A student athlete. Used to be in control. Used to live in pursuit of excellence. At this point, I’m just trying to avoid explosive failures. Wouldn’t it be lovely if I could manage not to constantly let down the people around me?

“Switch to another language,” Maryam suggests, like I haven’t already explored every escape route.

“Can’t. It’s like shingled roofing—they all overlap with something.” Such as morning drills. Afternoon practice. Any of the other million activities for which Stanford recruited me. And this is supposed to be the year I fulfill my athletic potential. If I still have it, anyway. If it was ever there.

It sure felt like it, back at Bumfuck High School (Missouri, but I’ve given up on correcting Maryam). Half a dozen DI coaches aggressively elbowed each other to lure me to their schools, because I was a former junior Olympian, national team member, junior world medalist. Top recruit. Every club coach I’d had since age six had blown smoke up my butt: You’re excellent at this, Vandy. You’ll do great things, Vandy. Promising young diver, Vandy. I frolicked in that smoke like a blissed-out prairie vole—until college, when I finally stood corrected.

In fact, I barely even stood.

My brain must have decided to do me a solid, because I have no memories of the thirty seconds that changed my life. Lucky me, the whole thing is on tape for anyone to watch, because it happened at the NCAA diving finals. It even comes pre-commentated.

“And that was Scarlett Vandermeer of Stanford University, Junior Olympic bronze. Definitely the big breakout of the season, and on the verge of a new platform record. Before this dive, that is.”

“Yeah, she was attempting an inward dive with two and a half somersaults in pike position that she managed flawlessly this morning at the prelims. In fact, it got her eights and nines. But this time something went poorly from takeoff.”

It’s always those you trust the most .

“Yeah. That was definitely a failed dive—that’s going to be a zero from the judges in terms of scoring. But she also entered the water at the wrong angle, so here’s hoping that she isn’t hurt.”

To which my body said, Fuck hoping.

It’s funny, in a remarkably unfunny way. I clearly remember the anger—at the water, at myself, at my own body—but I have no recollection of the pain. In the video, the girl limping out of the pool is a doppelgänger who stole my body. The long braid roping down her red swimsuit belongs to an impostor. The dimples as she strains her lips into a smile? Uncanny. And why does the little gap between her front teeth look exactly like mine? The camera follows her woozy gait mercilessly, gawking even as Coach Sima and his assistants run to help.