Page 10 of Deep End

“Because”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“Dr. Madden is an assho—ananus, and Dr. Davis is so spectacularly incompetent, I’m never sure whether he’s rooting for the patient or the disease. Mrs. Reyes has been in pain for a long time. She deserves to be treated by someone who’s not mediocre and will take her seriously. Would you agree?”

I was fourteen at the time, but it made perfect sense. Not only was I proud of how incredibly badass Barb was, but I wanted nothing more than to be a non-mediocre physician who’d take people seriously.

And now, here I am. Daydreaming of liver failure to escape the MCAT.

“By the way,” Barb tells me, “I met Coach Kumar the other day.”

I flinch. He’s my high school coach. “How is he?”

“Good. He sends his love. Asked me about you.”

“And you lied and told him that I’m a twelve-time NCAA champion and Olympic hopeful?”

“I considered that, but then I remembered that there are public records of this stuff. Like, online. A Google search away.”

I sigh. “Is he mortified? Am I bestowing dishonor upon my old club?”

“What? No. You’re not a white-collar defense attorney on the Sacklers’ payroll, Scarlett. You had a bad injury. Everyone’s rooting for you.”

I cannot wait to disappoint them once again. “How’s the love of my life?”

“Currently occupied with her prescheduled junk licking.”

“Important business.”

“Hang on, I think she wants to talk to you.”

Pipsqueak, the husky-pug mix who was once up on Facebook Marketplace because of “a bad temperament” (falsehoods, slander) and “an unbreakable scooting habit” (yet to be broken), howls her love for me and tries to lick my face over Barb’s phone. I baby-talk at her for fifteen minutes, then leave for practice.

It’s preseason, which means conditioning. Skill refinement. Takeoffs, entries, body positions, rotations, corrections—hours in the gym, the diving well, the weight room, and then more hours at home, in class, in bed, the nagging worry that all this training won’t beenoughpoking at the back of my skull.

I’m a good athlete. I’ve TiVoed my dives enough times to know that. My body is strong and healthy at last. My mind . . .

My mind hates me, sometimes. Especially when I’m on a platform, ten meters above the rest of my life.

Because ten meters ishigh, but people don’t realize how high until it takes them over fifty steps to climb a tower. They reach the top, look down, and suddenly get that queasy feeling in their stomach. It’s a three-story building. A whole McMansion, stretching between you and the water. Lots of things can happen in ten meters—including a body accelerating to thirty miles per hour, and the water becoming as difficult to crack as the universe’s hardest eggshell.

On the platform, punishments are swift and merciless. Room forerror, nonexistent. A bad dive is not just ungainly and humiliating—a bad dive is the end of an athlete’s career. A bad dive is the last dive.

“The pool closes at eight, but take your time, Vandy,” Coach Sima yells up at me.

I smile, palms flush against the coarse edge, and slowly lift my legs in a headstand. My shoulders, core, thighs, they all ache in that good, clenched way that meanscontrol. I linger there, a perfect straight line, just to prove to myself that I’m capable of it. I have what it takes. It’s a relief, seeing the world resized. Liberating how insignificant everyone else looks from here, small and irrelevant.

“No hurry at all! I’m not bored out of my mind here!”

I huff and let the rest of the dive flow out of me: pike. Half twist. A somersault. Another. I enter the water with just a handful of bubbles. When I resurface, Coach is crouching poolside. “Vandy.”

I lift myself on the edge, clutching my shoulder. Doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t bleed. Still intact. “Yeah?”

“That is NCAA material there.”

I squeeze water out of my braid.

“Problem is—that’s not the dive I asked you to do.”

I look around. Where did I throw my shammy?

“Vandy. Look at me.”

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