Page 135 of Finding Us

I get out of the car, slamming the door shut. My body is wound tight and I need to release the tension. Punch something. Kick something. I just need to get this out of me.

The gym is mostly empty except for a few guys over at the weight machines. I show my ID to the guy at the counter.

He doesn’t even look at it. “Go ahead.”

This college is supposed to have great security. After that little encounter, I’m not feeling like it’s that secure.

I run on the treadmill to warm up my muscles. I can’t stand the treadmill. I always feel like a hamster on a wheel, watching that belt move under my feet and running but not going anywhere. I don’t like the feeling of not going anywhere. I like to constantly move forward. And now I feel like I’m moving backward, at least when it comes to my college swim career.

Maybe I should just forget the whole thing. Swimming consumed my life in high school. It doesn’t need to consume my life in college. I’m married now. I have better things to do with my time. Besides, I knew the swimming would end once college ended. It’s not like I’m training for the Olympics here. It’s just a sport. A hobby.

Yeah, right. I can tell myself that all I want, but it’s not true. Swimming isn’t just a hobby. It’s everything to me. It’s part of me. My mom was a swimmer, both in high school and in college. She’s the one who got me started in it. She had me in the water when I was just a baby and I’ve been swimming ever since.

My mom never pushed me to be on a team. She just wanted me to be able to swim. She said swimming is a survival skill and that everyone should know how to swim. She went to school with a kid who died in third grade because he fell in a lake and didn’t know how to swim. She told me that story when I was really young and it still makes me sad. Who doesn’t know how to swim? How could you be in third grade and not know how? As I got older I realized that not everyone grows up with access to a pool or swim instruction, so it makes sense but it sucks that people are dying because they don’t have this basic skill.

But swimming was more than a basic skill to me. I liked doing it. It was fun and I felt at home in the water, probably because I spent so much time in the pool with my mom. I was five when I started racing other kids in the pool at the local Y. After my first race, I was hooked. I loved the competition and I begged my mom to teach me how to be a better swimmer. She taught me some stuff, but it’s hard to teach your own kid how to do something, especially when she needed to get tough with me and point out my mistakes. So she hired a swim coach for me and that’s when I got really good.

After my mom died, the pool became my sanctuary. I’d go to the pool at my school and swim for hours. My dad noticed how much time I spent there and that’s why, when he built the new house, he put an indoor pool in there. I thought I was the only one who used it but sometimes I caught my dad in there in the middle of the night, just kind of floating. I think it’s because the water reminded him of my mom. I didn’t realize that back then, but I do now.

“Hey, could you spot me?”

I look over and see a dark-haired guy wearing navy shorts and a gray Camsburg t-shirt standing next to the treadmill. He’s sweaty and his stench is filling the area around me. I really don’t want to spot him but I notice the gym is empty now and I get the feeling the guy will keep bothering me until I do.

“I’ll wait until you’re done,” he says, noticing my hesitation.

“That’s okay. I’m done.” I shut the treadmill off and follow him to the free weights.

“Are you new here?” he asks. “You don’t look familiar.”

“Yeah, I transferred in. I’m a sophomore.”

He extends his hand. “Welcome. I’m Kyle. I’m a junior.”

“Garret.” I shake his hand.

“You play any sports?”

I almost say yes but then realize my mistake. “No. I played sports in high school but I don’t anymore. How about you?”

“Football. I’ve got practice later. I come in here and do weights in the mornings.”

“How’s the team?”

He laughs. “We suck. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try.”

“What position do you play?”

“Quarterback.” He wipes his hand over his forehead, dropping sweat on the floor.

“Star of the team, huh?”

He shakes his head. “Hardly. I told you we suck, right?”

“I was quarterback in high school. Our team totally sucked, too.” I smile. “But you still get the benefits of being quarterback, right?”

He smiles back. “Yeah, you do.”

It’s true. No matter how bad the team, the quarterback gets perks, like popularity and an endless supply of girls. And if your team is good, you get a lot more than that.

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