Swimming Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the weak spots. It lasers in, heating up my face, following the line of my wide shoulders, stopping to laugh at my flat, caved-in chest, swooping down my pole legs to gasp at the giganticness of my feet. I pull my backpack up over my shoulders, closing my navy blue sweater over my secrets with one cold hand.
    Sorry, Sister , we say in unison minus one.
    Late. Again . She’s deciding what to do to us.
    Bron’s standing next to me. This is her fault, but I keep mum, avoid trouble. Nestor avoids trouble also, pointedly ignoring Bron and keeping her eyes on me because I’m now the tallest and they must have received instructions to steer clear of the evil one. Dot and Roxy are examining their shoes. We’re standing in front of the school during morning assembly. Nestor stopped it to make a point. I hope Bron ignores her so intensely my heart moves into my mouth. O Gloria in Excelsis Deo .
    I’m so sick and tired of this petty … crap , Bron says.
    Her words snap across the gym like electricity. Nestor pulls both eyes slowly over to the direction the voice came from. So far I’ve been successful at not really looking at her, but now my head is being lured by a magnet of greater force. I suck my breath in.
    Leonard told us Bron’s just about cured, that the cause of a languishing fatigue that culminated in a bump on her neck the size of a fist has been located and that now it shall be eradicated. She doesn’t look just about cured, and the only thing that’s been eradicated is all her good moods. Her face is dark yellow, eyes billowing smoke, lips pressed together so hard her mouth looks gone. She’s recently been threatening to tell the nuns to put their money where their mouth is . I study the wet laces of my shoes, cursing Leonard in my head. This was his doing; he insisted she finish her last year of high school even though I’d warned him: You better not. She likes hair too much. You better wait until it grows back in again. When she hates things, you know what happens . He’d said: Hogwash , and at that her fate was sealed and here we are.
    Nestor weighs the situation, finally nodding our dismissal with her terrible chin. We join our homeroom classes in the bleachers and everyone starts to sing again. This land is your land, this land is my land, from California, to the New York island . I mouth the words, don’t feel like making sound. Lilly Cocoplat is sitting behind me directing a false contralto toward my ear: This land is your land, this land is my land, from Vagina to the Pussy Islands, from the clear brown poop balls to the spermy waters, this land was made for you to peeeeee . I laugh a fake laugh, don’t feel fine. Sister Augusta pulls me aside, says: Don’t think I’m not looking .
    Nuns never exercise, don’t care about swimming or swimmers, don’t believe in bodily exertion, don’t think that sports are important, with the possible exception of softball. And just because they don’t sin doesn’t mean they aren’t attracted to harmful things. I’m sure not all the donated cakes are presented at the cakewalk, that they prepare more caramel apples than they serve, that the cotton candy machine works overtime late into the night. At fairs, they meander, eating triple-scooped ice cream with small plastic spoons, their eyes hidden behind large glasses with butterfly frames that darken automatically in the sun.
    After school I eat cake, and, although she loves cake as much as I do, Bron does not. She is also not preparing an article for Holy Name’s student paper, Spotlights , not standing in front of the mirror brushing her hair so that it falls from her head like a shiny blond curtain, not singing songs up the laundry chute because she thinks it makes her voice sound famous. She’s not stuffed into the jam-packed cars with her best friends, who whiz by honking as I walk home alone. She holes up in our bedroom, lights off, door closed, not to be disturbed. I don’t even hear any music. When