Free B0160A5OPY (A) by Joanne Macgregor

is drifting further away, that voice, but so am I. The black tugs at me, and I want to go, to leave here and be enveloped by its nothingness.
    But now someone else is crouched down in front of me. I can’t quite make him out. He is blurry and he sways. He holds my shoulder, says something in a loud voice – words I can’t make out.
    I try to tell him the important things: to tell him to check the other car, and also that I’m bleeding from somewhere, and that my mom … 
    But the gnawing darkness opens its maw and swallows me whole.

16
    B.S. and A.S.
    B.S. and A.S. That’s how I divide my life: Before Scar and After Scar.
    I say “scar”, although of course, there were many. But it’s the one that matters.
    There were many things I had planned to do in my life – before I got the scar, I mean. And some of them were going to take me out of my city and into the wide world out there.
    I was going to swim better than I ever had before. I was a pretty good swimmer. Backstroke and breaststroke – those were my thing. I’m tall, and my long arms and legs gave me an advantage over the other girls in the water. I was going to swim for the regional zone team – had just, in fact, qualified at the trials. Next stop would be sectionals, then nationals, and maybe even the Olympics, one day. It was a long-shot, a dream, but not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility. And it’s not a big-enough dream if it’s easy, right?
    Plus, I was dedicated. Monday to Friday, I arrived at the training center’s heated pool at 5a.m. so I could get in a good two-and-half hours of training before school. There were another two hours every afternoon or evening – strength training and speed work – and five hours each on Saturday and Sunday. I was a regular on the competition circuit, pitting myself against the best in my category, collecting medals like stepping stones on the path to becoming number one.
    Before I got the scar, I had also planned to look up my dad and reconnect with him. My parents had divorced when I was just five years old and I could remember only bits of him: the scratch of his beard on my cheek when he hugged me, a distinctive sour-sweet smell, the whirl of color when he lifted me over his head and spun me around, the harsh shouts when he and mom fought and I hid among the dirty laundry and damp towels in the bottom of the large bathroom closet.
    Mom was unusually cagey on the reasons behind their breakup and the reason he wasn’t a feature in my life, but she had agreed I could track him down and make contact once I was sixteen. In these days of Facebook and LinkedIn, how hard could it be to find him? It would be good to get to know him, to begin a relationship from scratch, to hear about his life. I wrote it high up on my to-do list.
    I was also, B.S., going to ask my mother something important. I began asking her that rainy day on the drive to school, but her phone beeped before I could get the words out. And that’s when everything changed.
    Oh, and I was going to meet the cute guy. Definitely.
    He was a swimmer too. He swam in the open section, but he still looked young – maybe seventeen or eighteen. He was tall, at least 6’2”, with caramel-colored hair, a ripped, abtacular body, and gentle eyes – the kind that made your knees melt, your brain go soft and your stomach clench.
    We had made contact in the chat rooms on the Sink-or-Swim! website. On a few occasions, at some trial or swim meet, we’d exchanged glances and smiles. Once he’d handed me my swim meet program when I dropped it, and at the last meet I ever competed in, I almost met him. We had both won our races and after his second event, he pulled himself out of the pool and, still dripping wet, headed over to where I sat on the bleachers. He wrapped a towel loosely around his waist and spoke. To me.
    “Hi.”
    “Hi, yourself.” (I’ve always been one for scintillating conversation.)
    “I’m Luke. I think we’ve met online.