Free Surfacing by Nora Raleigh Baskin

my grandma. “I guess I like it.”
    My mom is so mad at me now. I can see it in her face, and I don’t even have to look at her. Now she really thinks I am bad. Now, in this present time (get it?), she knows it
.

    “I have a scar on my chest,” Nathan told her.
    It was two weeks past the PSATs. But for Maggie, in many ways it felt like a new lifetime. Being at Nathan’s house, in his room, was already familiar. How had that happened so quickly?
    Nathan moved to unbutton his shirt but stopped. “All down my chest and under my arm.”
    Should she make him aware, level the playing field, let him in on her secret before it was too late?
    “You do?”
    Nathan nodded. “When I was little, I was standing on a chair at the stove. I wanted to make real oatmeal. So I reached over and stuck a wooden spoon into the pot to see if the water was ready. I tipped it right over. It spilled all over me and soaked my pajamas. That was the worst part — that it kept burning because my pajamas got wet and stuck to my skin.”
    She didn’t look away, but Maggie was quiet.
    Nathan’s parents were downstairs, but maybe with so many children, they weren’t that interested in what any particular one was doing at any particular time, especially if he was a teenage boy and he was home safe and not out driving. In any case, Maggie and Nathan lay on his bed, the blankets rumpled from their kissing and the sheet twisted at the bottom from not having been made for most likely several days. Their clothing stayed on, only their mouths exploring what was inside, what was hidden and so tantalizing that Maggie’s whole body shook. Nathan’s older brother and his friend, footsteps in the hall and a bouncing ball and a quick argument about last night’s game, had interrupted them. They sat up.
    “I was in the hospital for two weeks. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever felt. And ever felt since. Burn scars are different than other scars, you know. They are ugly.”
    Very slowly Maggie reached over, put her hands where Nathan’s were, and began to unbutton the top of his shirt. His collar opened, and she let her fingers drop to the next button. She slipped it outside its hole and made her way down his shirt without saying a word.
    She spread the fabric of his shirt and exposed his skin to the bath of yellow light.
    “It’s not so bad,” she said.
    “I know it is.”
    It wasn’t. The skin was taut and red in streaks, like anger. It was smoother than his other skin, without hair or pores, and twisted in places it shouldn’t twist, but it wasn’t ugly at all.
    “Can I touch it?” Maggie asked. “Does it hurt?”
    “No. It was a long time ago; it’s healed,” Nathan said. “I mean, yes, you can touch it.”
    Maggie let her fingers spread across Nathan’s chest, his ribs, his skin, across the damage that boiling water had done. He wasn’t big, like a football player, nothing like Matthew, but Nathan’s body felt different from hers. Slight but solid, male. The surface of his scar was bumpy, hard and soft at the same time. Maggie let her head nestle in that spot just under Nathan’s shoulder and just inside his arm, where she fit perfectly, and where for the first time that she could remember, she allowed the weight of her body to be supported and the weight of her mind to rest.
    The girls were shivering on the bulkhead, listening to Coach Mac give out the upcoming holiday-break practice schedule: basically, there would be no break for the swim team.
    “OK, ladies. Hit the showers. Eat a big dinner; get your protein. Get your eight hours of
Z’
s, and be here at six a.m. tomorrow. Oh, and if anyone is late — any
one
— the whole team does IM drills. Fifteen hundred meters.”
    There were appropriate groans and the patter of wet rubber pool shoes slapping the floor, heading to the locker room, the swell of weekend conversations. It was Friday. Even with the practice schedule, it was still vacation, and the excitement was