Page 34 of Deep End

I really do get it.

But maybe it’s just this kinship I feel for him. Maybe Pen hacked my head, and I’m imagining what he could use all that strength for. Maybe I finally reached puberty at the geriatric age of twenty-one.

It should be me.

“Bottom line,” Coach Urso tells Pen, “this guy just shaved nearly a second off his medley best from the summer—fastest progress he’s ever made.”

Pen grins without missing a beat. Squeezes Lukas’s arm.

“What’s that?” Coach Urso asks him, pointing at the back of Lukas’s hand. He’s a portly middle-aged man valiantly holding on to what little hair he has left. Widely beloved, and considered something of a talent-fostering genius. He is also, according to Pen, absolutely unhinged.

Which must be the reason Lukas looks like he’s bracing for impact. He catches the towel a sophomore tosses at him and nods his thanks. “That’s my hand, Coach. Nothing to see here.”

“No—what did you write on it?”

“Can’t recall.”

It’s not the model I drew, right? No. Can’t be. It wasdaysago.

“Well, kid, try to recall,” Coach Urso insists. “This is it.”

“It’s what?” Lukas dries his midriff, puzzled.Kid, I think, bemused, noticing the V muscling down his abdomen.

“The perfect circumstances. To re-create. To win.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“Remember last season’s lucky routine?”

“You mean, putting a Disney princesses Band-Aid on my toe for an entire year?”

“It’s how you won the NCAA and the world championship.”

“Nothing to do with training.”

“Are you sassing me, Blomqvist? You know I can’t tell. Either way, we’re set. We got our lucky routine. Our work here is done.Ad majora, kid.” Coach salutes him and walks away—then turns around to finger-gun him. “The hand. Make sure you take a picture.”

Lukas shakes his head and dries his face with the towel.

“He’s going to make sure you have a whole-ass painting on your hand every meet,” Pen says.

“Yup.”

“What even is it? Looks like boxes and scribbles?”

“Pretty much.”

Oh, shit.

“Well, good luck with that.” On her tippy-toes, hand on his stomach to balance herself, she presses a kiss to his jaw. Lukas, I notice, doesn’t bend down to make it easier. “We gotta go, or Coach Sima’s gonna get angina.”

Lukas nods. His eyes lift to mine. “Bye, Scarlett.”

I’m flushing. Not sure why. “Yeah. Bye. And . . . congrats.”

His smile is faint, and crooked, and almost intimate. Short-lived. But it sticks to me through the afternoon, like adhesive tape under the sole of my shoe, and I don’t want it. There’s no reason for it. I try to concentrate on Pen’s chatter, on warming up, on my core exercises, but I’m distracted. Dryland practice is my least favorite, and somersaults in a foam pit get old surprisingly fast. Focusing on the aerial parts of a skill definitely has benefits—but at whatcost.

“If I’d wanted to jump off of a springboard and land on my feet on top of a crash mat, I’d have become a gymnast,” Victoria mumbles when I’m done with my set of reverse somersaults, nose scrunched up in disgust.

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