Swimming by Nicola Keegan Page A

skirt.
    Bron’s voice was the same one she used in her triumphant argument against Uganda. I’m not going to Southwestern College. I’ll wait until I’m better, then I’ll go to Columbia as planned .
    Leonard was being rational, but his fingers were jangling his keys. Yes. But. It’s. We’re talking about your future here. You have a four point; let’s not jeopardize your fu—
    I’m waiting until I can go where I planned to go, Dad. I’m not changing my plans now . She stared him down.
    Mom adjusted the folds in the curtains. You should be in school. What are you going to do all day long?
    Leonard stood up like a bent man. His eyes, when they glanced over and caught mine, had started their transformation into stone. I ran after him, standing next to the car panting as he rolled down the window. I need to double up my practices, swim all year long, Dad. Stan thinks I can go places .
    He lifted up both his hands as if caught in the middle of a Western, sighed, and said: Swim, then , driving away until he was gone.
    Swimming twice a day turns me into an extremely calm person. When Mom grabs my upper arm with her fangs and squeezes, leaving a series of raised welts, I don’t say anything, just hold my arm and leave for school. When Bron wakes me up in the middle of the night, I listen to her, say: I know what you mean , then go back to sleep. When Father Tim asks me to try and make friends with the swimming tennis players, I say: Okay, Father Tim . I even tell a disappointed Lilly Cocoplat standing at the doorstep in a pair of jeans with a pair of red tights underneath: This isn’t a good day for me to be taking risks .
    The nuns are busy forging character; they pass me in the hall, their eyes straight ahead, their skirts slapping my legs in a heavy swoosh that I’ve seen knock some of the skinnier junior Catholics into their lockers, but I’m strong enough to hold steady. I prepare my face, remove my slouch, knock on the office door, and hand myself over to their metaphysical furnace to be molded. I’m as close to being a mini-nun as I’ll ever be in my life. I work hard on weekly book reports that never get anything higher than a B, sitting in a chair with a pen in my mouth trying to formulate strong enough thought in the kitchen while June peels potatoes and distracts me with catchy humming. I am considered flitty , a deep disappointment from Bron’s intellectual stillness. That’s what the nuns say when I hand myself over to them.
    They say: What’s wrong with you? Stop that infernal flitting .
    I clean out the attic using so much lemon polish the fumes make me woozy. I volunteer for story time with the second graders without changing any words in the book even when no one else is around. When the snows hit hard, I help Leonard put the snow tires on. Roxanne and I make a snowman who wears a hunting cap, looks cute from afar, but has a hidden penis with two chestnut balls. We laugh hard at our masterpiece under a canopy of cold dwarf stars, our breath leaving our lungs in wispy puffs that hang between us before disappearing.
    We stare at the stars for a minute. She turns to me and says: Wanna get stoned?
    I don’t do drugs. Swimmers don’t do drugs .
    She doesn’t seem surprised. So that’s what you are …
    This makes me mad. You got a problem with that?
    She sighs. No … no .
    Pot’s making you … weirder .
    She says: Take a look around, Phil … I’m not that bad .
    I don’t look around; I look at her instead and I’m surprised—she’s not that bad.
    Leonard pulls up to the curb with a lurch, sets his chin, and sighs, opening Mom’s door and pulling her carefully from the front seat as though she were a precious old lady. The theater is dark but empty—not many Glenwoodians want to see The Blue Lagoon , Bron’s film of choice. I sink into the red velvet chair, stretch my legs into the row of seats in front of me. I slump next to Leonard, who falls asleep the minute that blond,