Free The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin

what are you planning to fork over for me, pal? because to tell you the truth they can’t pay enough to make up for how hard I have to work and how bad I have to hurt in order to do what I do—I mean, what do you think it is? like, just good genes? or the luck of the draw?—so if you believe you will convince me to endure all those stupid laps for bullshit, white boy, you can just get down on your knees right now and kiss my half-Cuban ass goodbye.
    And while I thought these things and held out in polite youthful gee-whiz stupidity, each one of them began to look sort of funny to me, a little odd, vaguely ridiculous. Until Sager came along and made me the offer that was better than all the others. With his pure pale white skin that had white-blond hair across the knuckles, wispy eyebrows almost invisible over eyes that were so delicately blue, as cold as dry ice, and saw right into what I was thinking and feeling, knew immediately how bad I hated all the swimming and the water, understood that I wanted something I hadn’t even come across yet, and set himself up to keep me from whatever that was. What the pale eyes said under all his praise, his encouragement and nice talk and substantial offer, was that he was not one of these funny guys, he was not in the least bit odd or ridiculous.
    Watch out, the eyes said, I can hurt you.
    Yes, I told them silently, yes. But I can disappoint you, Kemo Sabe.
    From the beginning, then, we were dark and light, tit and tat, underneath the mutual wanting and signed letters of agreement set toe to toe against each other, enemies in some way we didn’t even understand yet, but from the first we recognized it.
    So I am thinking this sitting in the nice calm office with Brenna Allen. I’m starting to be dumb-jock silent and coy with her, too, when I look at her eyes and see nothing ridiculous there either, only a hard dark thing that is bitterly difficult but will not be my enemy. And it blows the lid right off the hole of me so that, in a moment, I stand and say too much.
    “Jesus. I can’t do them any more, you know. I mean—I just—I cannot deal.”
    The sweat’s running off me like a cold shower. Things start to get weird in my vision again and I hear a voice float along gently, from far away.
    “What,” says the voice, “what can’t you do?”
    “Flips.”
    “Well,” it says quickly, coolly, “I guess you’ll have to do open turns then.”
    And with that, she wins my heart.
    *
    I follow her like a big clumsy puppy dog, out of the good tranquilizing light, through other doors, down other halls toward the smell of locker rooms, past a faint hiss of steam. My insides tunnel, compress, but I keep breathing. She walks slowly alongside me. Being very polite, I think, managing not to look at the fucking freak show spectacle I am putting on. But the funny thing is that as we get closer and closer to places of danger the fear begins to ease.
    Open turns? Well, of course. Back to basics!
    There is to say the least a kind of humiliation in that: Babe Delgado, resorting to open turns. Still, it seems suddenly feasible—a sure way of turning around at the wall and swimming back the way you came, and I want to bless her or something for telling me how, for giving me permission.
    Out on the observation deck the sick comes back when I look down. Nice new pool, each lane empty.
    How many lanes, Mildred?
    Eight.
    And how many swimmers?
    Eight.
    That’s right. But how many will win?
    Just one.
    For a moment it is mammoth, threatening. Shut my eyes and the hole is real again, black desperate horizon, skin bleeding on water. But I lean against a wall and don’t faint, open eyes, shake my head so the nausea recedes. It is only a pool down there after all. This is only another building reeking competition and chlorine. And I’ve spent a lot of time in places like this.
    She tells me the stuff about terror and puking. But I think of other things she said before in her office, team rules, her