Surfacing Read Online Free PDF Page A

something she wished she hadn’t. It might have been a couple of years ago, or maybe it was just last year. Maybe about eating too much, or not eating, or about her unnatural fear of stairwells — maybe Rebecca had forgotten the whole thing by now. As she dove into the water and Julie half heartedly smacked her with the purple noodle, Maggie remembered what it was. Rebecca hadn’t gotten her period yet, and her parents were taking her to an endocrinologist. Big deal.
    The coach worked them hard that afternoon, particularly hard, and Maggie particularly harder. He had a lot of expectations for her. He wanted the team to qualify for the state championship.
    “Head down.” He paced alongside her lane shouting out adjustments and calling out her split times. Maggie could hear his muffled voice as her head turned back and forth in the water, like a radio station tuning in and tuning out. Maggie swam, allowing the ache in her shoulders, and hips, and ankles, and back, and lungs to fill her with strength. It was, as Cecily Keitel had said, something she could control. Underneath the water, she found air.
    Condos that faced the pool, of course, were the most expensive, and those kids acted like they were better than everyone else. Leah had a friend who lived in one of those, though “friend” was a loose term. It seemed to Maggie that her older sister didn’t really like Meghan Liggett, or Meghan Liggett didn’t much like Leah. It was just a feeling she got from watching them together, at the pool and on the school bus. But Leah had never said that. She called Meghan her friend, and she would bark at her sister if Maggie tried to point out anything to the contrary.
    Lately, the past few days, if Maggie thought about it, her sister seemed more annoyed at her. As if the difference between being nine and being five had gotten deeper. The space between them changing as unpredictably as Leah’s moods themselves. Sometimes she wanted Maggie to play with her; sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she liked her little sister; other times she shouted at her and told her to leave her alone. So a little sister needs to learn how to work the system, even if she doesn’t quite understand it herself.
    “I have an idea.”
    It
was
Maggie.
    “Let’s go see if Meghan’s home. I bet her house isn’t so hot as this.”
    “Mom told us to stay here.” But Leah was considering it; Maggie could tell. She liked that, and it made Maggie feel important. Maybe this would be one of those times Leah wanted to play with Maggie.
    “I won’t tell,” Maggie said.
    “You always tell on me. And I always get in trouble.”
    That wasn’t true, but Maggie could see how it looked that way. If there was a fight, or even raised voices, if her parents heard but didn’t see something get knocked over, if the fridge was left open or there were crumbs on the counter, they always blamed Leah first. They acted as if they were concerned only with ending the fight, quieting the voices, or preventing further damage, but, when in doubt, their parents usually took Maggie’s side, because it was easier.
    “I promise I won’t. We could even go for a swim and cool off.”
    Maggie waited in the shower after swim practice until she heard everyone leave. It took a while. Julie was, of course, the hardest to get rid of.
    “I’m fine,” Maggie called out from behind the industrial white plastic. “I want to condition my hair. I might even take a sauna.”
    Because of the fact that no one
ever
went in the sauna, other than the time in middle school that they had a swim meet in Montreal, Canada, Julie wasn’t buying it. Those girls in Canada took off all their clothes while getting dressed. They rubbed down their glistening wet legs and arms with their towels while standing completely naked beside their lockers. They even talked to one another while dousing themselves with body lotion and powder. One of the Canadian swimmers, the one who had won in backstroke,