Deep End(33)

I pout. “Is it because I cannot grade your macroeconomics homework?”

“It’s micro and—” She slaps me on the arm. “Oh my god.”

I sigh dramatically and tap my chin. “Maybe I should give Mrs. Sima a heads-up.”

“About what?”

“Your insatiable hunger for older pedagogues, of course.”

She shouts a new peal of laughter, and by the time we make it to the party, the song has played twice, and we both have tears rolling from our eyes.





CHAPTER 20


SOME STUDENT ATHLETES ARE ABLE TO HAVE HIGH GPAS, sport their little hearts out, and maintain fulfilling and exciting social calendars that yield solid lifelong friendships.

I am not one of them.

In high school, my catchphrase was “Sorry, I’m busy”—to the point that a bunch of people in Josh’s friend group gasped when I showed up for prom with him. I still remember the icy slither in my stomach when I overheard them from the bathroom stall, something giggled like Did she not have to throw herself from a cliff tonight?

I didn’t take it personally. Josh was outgoing and kind and had lots of buddies I never bothered to get to know. They probably thought I was just another athlete with a god complex, and maybe they weren’t wrong. At the time, I felt invincible, like all I had to do was put in the work, and I’d reap the rewards. I felt in control, tungsten coated, and the people making fun of my dedication to diving or studying or overachieving were never going to scratch my shell.

But that armor is long gone, stripped off by time, injury, and the painful realization that deserving and obtaining are two vastly different things. When I trail after Pen inside the Shapiros’ hallway, and Kyle’s eyes widen in shock, I feel a little tender .

“ScarVan?” he booms over the generic pop music. “Showing up for a party?” He sounds like a children’s librarian seeing Judy Blume show up unannounced: happy, but nonetheless baffled.

“Is that a thing people call me?” I murmur in Pen’s ear.

“People? No. Kyle? I was PenRo for half of sophomore year. Don’t let him see that you don’t like it, or it’ll stick forever and he’ll use it at your eulogy—at which, yes, he’ll manage to book a speaking engagement. He’s that good.”

I take that advice to heart and produce my most unbothered smile. “Hey, Kyle.”

“Look at you.” His eyes travel down my sweater and shorts. “Haven’t seen you in civilian clothes in years.”

“She was observing the period of mourning that is customary for her religion,” Pen says solemnly.

Kyle lifts a hand to his nape, taken aback. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Who did you, um, lose, if I may—”

“No, you may not,” Pen scolds.

He winces, steals an unopened can of Budweiser from a passing freshman, and presses it into my hand. “Here. Feel better, ScarVan.”

“Don’t laugh,” Pen mutters in my ear, pinching my hip. “Kyle, where’s Luk?”

“He and Hasan are talking about soccer—sorry, football—somewhere in the living room. It’s so European in there, I had to get out before my dick turned into a bidet.”

“See you later, KyJess.” Pen takes my hand and drags me deeper into the house. There must be thirty or forty people here, and while I’d probably be able to name only a fifth, most faces are familiar. “All the swimmers came,” she tells me with a smile, like it’s a good thing. And it is, I guess. They’re tight-knit. Hang out every preseason weekend. It’s nice, just . . .

“There’s Luk,” she adds, pulling me through the throng of too-hot bodies. He’s on the couch with Rachel and a few others, fingers closed around a dark glass bottle, wholly focused on what Hasan is saying. He laughs and shakes his head, gesturing as he explains something. The memory of his hand on me is so visceral, my heart explodes in my stomach.

“Restroom,” I tell Pen. “Be right back.”

I’m just not in the mood for this. And by this, I mean the way Lukas looks at me, like he can see the little crumpled-up piece of paper tucked in a corner of my head, the one where I wrote down my secrets. Like he could easily flatten it and read every last word.

He’s unnerving. And other things I’d rather not deal with.

I wander into the kitchen. Lots of swimmers smile and say hi, but I can tell that they either can’t fully place me, or they’re surprised to see me. I sip on my beer, trying to avoid creating fanfiction of people’s smallest facial expressions until I’m certain that they despise me. If only googling whether someone hates me were a possibility.

When was the last house party I went to? Maybe on my recruitment trip, when an upperclassman shoved a White Claw in my hands and left me terrified—half that someone would snitch to the coaches that I’d drunk it, half that they’d . . . still snitch to them, that I was too lame to drink.

Bree finds me a minute later, and I wish her a happy birthday, clumsily returning her hug. “I’m so happy you came,” she tells me. “Bella’s devastated that Victoria won’t.”

“I’m so happy to be here, too.”

It’s not true, but spending the next twenty minutes chatting with her helps. For the following fifteen it’s a swimmer who shadowed me in a chem class last year during his recruitment trip, but he’s clearly looking to hook up with another guy on the team, and when it becomes obvious that I’m in their way, I whip out another restroom excuse. Upstairs I find a small sunroom, and slump on an IKEA Poäng chair—the exact copy of the one Maryam and I assembled last year, during a macabre comedy of errors that nearly became a fatal, mutual murder. Can’t believe we managed to move past that one.