Deep End(87)

“I get it, I get it.” Barb rolls her eyes, but she reaches out to me. My fingers twine with hers. “What you’re saying is, unless I’m willing to break my Hippocratic oath and shank a handful of young women, I shouldn’t buy nonrefundable tickets to Amsterdam?”

“Pretty much. But it doesn’t matter,” I hasten to add. “It’s not black or white, you know? Winning or losing. As long as I can do my best and be proud of my performance, I don’t care.”

“Whoa. Who are you and what have you done to my stepdaughter?”

I laugh. “There is a little bobblehead living inside my skull. She looks just like my therapist and looooves to remind me that if I don’t redefine my concept of failure, I’ll die of acute ventricular tachycardia before turning twenty-five.”

In fact, plastic Sam is my main companion for the first two days of the qualifiers. I’m in Knoxville alone, because Bree, Bella, and Pen already have their spots. I have acquaintances from the junior varsity circuit, but for the most part I’m on my own, and don’t mind. I qualify for all my events easily, acquaint myself with the diving well, rest.

No pool is like another: The way the water looks from above; sounds and temperature; where the judges sit, hostile, merciless. Every springboard has a fulcrum that needs to be adjusted. Want a stiffer, easier-to-control board? Move it forward. Love to be propelled into the sun by a massive rocket of elastic energy? All the way to the back. It all needs getting used to, and I’m glad for the opportunity.

The night before Winter Nationals start, I get an unexpected invite to dinner. “Vandy, we’re tired of hotel food—want to get Chinese with us? There’s a cheap place three minutes away. ”

It’s Carissa Makris. I know her from my recruiting trip to the University of Florida—the team she ended up joining. We were shuttled around together and got along well enough to stay in touch afterward, but I think she hoped to have a college buddy, because after I told her I’d be going to Stanford, she never contacted me again. At the time she was mostly a springboard diver, but she’s made a lot of progress on the platform. And now, after three years of ignoring my existence, she’s inviting me to dinner. “Oh. Really?”

“Come on. We’ll be back early.” She runs a hand through her dark curls and grins. “It’s gonna get so crowded here tomorrow, we’ll be eating stacked in each other’s laps.”

Chinese is my weakness, so I head over with her and five other girls from Florida, and have lots of fun. We complain about FINA, NCAA, USADA, about our respective institutions and coaches, about swimmers, about the aches in our joints, about the academic work we’ll have to make up for.

“I was there when you got injured,” Carissa tells me later, while the others are getting soft serve and it’s just me, her, and Natalie, her synchro partner. “I teared up. True story.”

“She did,” Natalie confirms.

“It looked so painful, and it could have happened to anyone.”

I fold my napkin into little triangles. “Yeah, it sucked.”

“I’m glad you’re back on.”

“My friend up in Pullman,” Natalie adds, “said you are at the top of your game.”

Compared to last year, when there was no game, for sure. “At this point, not hitting my head against concrete would be a raving success.”

They chuckle. “So, you’re doing synchro?” Carissa asks.

“Yup, with Penelope Ross.”

“Ah, right.” Natalie nods, but I get the discomfiting impression that she already knew that. “Won silver for the three-meter springboard at the NCAA last year, right?”

“And a gold for the platform.”

“Right. Well.” Carissa steeples her hands, elbows braced wide on the table.

All I can think is: There it is. The true reason for this dinner.

“I’m not one to beat around the bush, Vandy. I like you. You’ve never shown anything but good sportsmanship. I remember you at the Olympic trials, four years ago, you know? You didn’t make the team, but I thought, ‘She’s got something. She’s good.’”

“Thank you,” I say, instead of pointing out how slightly patronizing this sounds. We’re the same age. Carissa was at those trials, too, and placed lower than I did.

“I’ll just say it straight to you. Pen Ross? You need to watch your back with that one.”

Whatever I expected, this was not it. “What do you mean?”

“Plainly, she’s a backstabbing bitch. Back in Jersey I dove in the same club as her, and she was universally despised. Ask anyone. She may be the next big thing in diving, and she may have grifted Stanford into believing that she’s not a sociopath, but I know better. And you should, too.”

I try to digest Carissa’s words, trying to reconcile what she just said with my own experience, but my brain instantly rejects it. In the last few months Pen and I have been growing closer, and . . . “I don’t like this.”

“Being stuck with Pen Ross?” Natalie snorts.

“Pen is a friend. Nothing in her behavior has ever suggested what you’re saying.”

“How many years have you known her?”

“About three.”

“I more than double you, then. ”