Swim the Fly (4 page)

Coop laughs. “Dude, we’re gonna have to work on your comebacks or you’re never going to survive in this world.”

“What about binoculars?” I say. “We could spy on Mandy Reagan’s house.”

“I don’t know.” Coop screws up his face.

“She’s the hottest girl in school.”

“True. But her dad’s a gun freak. I heard he’s a crack shot, too. Still, it might be worth it. Almost.”

Sean wipes his hands on his napkin. “Mandy takes tae kwon do at the community center.”

“That’s great, Sean,” Coop says. “What other interesting facts do you know about her?”

“I’m saying we could hide in the girls’ locker room, douche.”

“That’s your brilliant idea?” Coop laughs. “And
I’m
the douche?”

I check my cell. It’s three thirty. I need to get to the pool before dinner.

“I have to go.” I stand and pick up my tray.

“Whoa. We’re not done here yet,” Coop says. “Sean’s still working on his number two. And we have to finish formulating our plan.”

I shrug. “I still have to go.”

“What’s more important than this?” Coop gestures toward the table.

“I’m gonna go practice my butterfly, okay? You happy?”

I walk over to the trash and empty my tray. Coop and Sean hoot with laughter just like I knew they would.

“Why bother, dude?” Coop says.

“Yeah, it’s not like it’s going to help.” Sean grins.

I sigh. “I know it’s a long shot, but I’m hoping that if
I practice hard enough over the next few weeks, maybe I won’t make a total ass of myself by the time championships roll around.”

“Okay, well . . .” Coop bites his lower lip to stop himself from cracking up. “You give us a call when you’ve rejoined us here on planet Earth.”

This causes Sean to choke on his shake mid-sip.

I don’t bother responding. I just turn and go.

I CATCH THE THICK SMELL
of meat loaf as soon as I enter the house. It’s only four o’clock. We never eat before six. Something’s up.

I head into the kitchen, where Grandpa’s in his usual position, hunched over the table, playing solitaire.

“Hi, Grandpa,” I say.

“Don’t talk to me. I’m on a roll.” He counts out three cards and flips them over. “Goddamn it. You jinxed me.”

“Ignore him. He’s just grouchy,” Mom says. She’s in her peach-patterned apron, at the stove, adding milk to a pot of boiled potatoes. “Mrs. Hoogenboom decided she didn’t feel like going for coffee today after all. Go figure.”

“Sorry, Grandpa.”

Grandpa Arlo waves this off. “Please. You think I’m discouraged? Nothing worth getting is easy.” He shuffles the cards and starts dealing them out again.

“I’m glad you’re home,” Mom says, adding a few shakes of salt to the pot. “I forgot to tell you. I’ve got a
NutraWorld meeting tonight. They’re introducing a new product. An organic laxative. Everyone’s very excited.”

“You don’t want to get too excited where laxatives are concerned,” Grandpa says, moving a red jack onto a black queen. “Trust me.”

Mom ignores this. “We’re having an early dinner.”

“I just had a burrito at the mall,” I say.

“That’s fine.” Mom grabs the masher and starts in on the potatoes. “You’ll sit with us and you can have leftovers later.”

“But I was gonna go to the pool.”

Mom stops mid-mash and looks at me. “We eat dinner as a family. You know how I feel about that.”

The thing about having a father who leaves your mother for a younger woman is that it’s not only a cliché; it’s also a pain in the ass. It makes you feel so bad for your mom that you can’t argue any of her rules anymore. Especially the ones from after the divorce. Like this “we eat as a family” rule. What are you supposed to say to that?

Still, I have to get to the pool before it closes. I need to get in some practice before anyone on the swim team sees that I can’t actually do the butterfly. Especially Kelly. I figure if I can work on my fly every afternoon for the next month or so, I’ll eventually be able to do it well enough to try it at swim practice. And, hopefully, championships.

“When will it be ready?” I say, glancing at the rooster clock on the wall.

“Fifteen minutes.”

I do the math. Eat at four fifteen. An hour for dinner and cleanup. Five fifteen. Ten minutes to the pool. Pool closes at six. That’ll give me thirty-five minutes to practice if I get right to it.

“Would you tell your brother and Melissa dinner’s almost ready?” Mom asks. “They’re up in his room.”

“Goddamn two of diamonds,” Grandpa says, smacking his pile of discards.

I leave the kitchen and cross through the dining room. Climb the stairs and turn left down the hall. Pete’s bedroom door is shut, so I lean in and listen to make sure I’m not interrupting anything. There are whispers coming from inside, and then Melissa laughs and there’s the creak of the bed. I lean in a little closer and listen a little harder. Melissa laughs again and I’m imagining all kinds of things going on in there.

I hold my breath and get down on the floor, careful not to make any noise. I move my ear close to the open space between the door and the carpet. I feel a cool breeze on my cheek. They must have the window open. There’s more movement in the bedroom, the squeak of the mattress, more whispers. I shift a little to try and hear better.

And that’s when the lock snicks and the door opens and my heart leaps into my mouth. I scramble to my feet.

“Whatcha doing there, Matt?” Melissa asks. She steps out of the room and closes the door behind her.

“Oh. I thought I felt a, uh, wet spot on the carpet,” I say. “I was checking to see if maybe Scratchy had gone
there. Again. Sometimes she does. We haven’t gotten her completely litter-trained yet.”

Melissa is a tiny Italian mouse-girl with short straight black hair, a pinched pierced nose, and a whisper of a mustache and sideburns.

“A wet spot, huh?” Melissa asks. “From the cat?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But I was wrong. I must have imagined it.”

Melissa is wearing what she always wears: pink designer sweatpants and a tight white ribbed T-shirt, which hints at her dark nipples underneath. You’d think that nipples, being so small, would be as easy to ignore as almost anything else, but it’s like they’re eye magnets or something. I can look at her face if I’m really thinking about it but lose concentration for a split second and forget about it. I’m like a cat trying to ignore a piece of string.

“Up here, Matt.” Melissa leans over to catch my eyes.

I blink hard and try to act cool. “Oh, sorry, I was just . . . thinking. I was trying to remember something.”

“And you thought it was written on my chest? Let me give you a little clue here, Mattie,” Melissa says. “Girls don’t mind if you notice their breasts. Noticing can be flattering. Staring is creepy. You don’t want to be creepy.”

“No,” I say, feeling my entire body burn. God, why does she have to wear stuff like that? “I wasn’t . . . I was just . . . Dinner’s going to be ready in fifteen minutes. That’s what I was trying to remember . . . If you could let Pete know.”

Melissa laughs. “Matt, you’re such a geek.” She spins on her heels and pads off down the hall to the bathroom. The word
LUSCIOUS
is stamped in Old English right there on the butt of her sweatpants, jiggling at me.

There’s a familiar swell in my pants. I have to force myself to turn away. When the hell did I lose all control over my body?

I drop my head and trudge toward my room. Melissa’s right. I have to focus. I don’t want to finally get my chance to talk with Kelly and suddenly realize I’m asking her breasts out to a movie. Notice but don’t stare. Remember that.

I enter my room and shut the door behind me. I have to step around piles of clothes and towels and CDs and food wrappers and computer cables and books and my guitar and the guitar amplifier and I don’t know what else.

I started taking guitar last year because girls go for rock stars. Although, if you listen to Mom, they’re the wrong kinds of girls. But I figure, if the wrong kinds of girls are the ones that toss their bras at you when you’re onstage rocking out, then the wrong kinds of girls are right for me. Anyway, I’m not ready to perform in public just yet. I can strangle out “Stairway to Heaven,” but so can everyone else, so it’s not really a big deal. I have to practice more. I have to start taking lessons again. I have to learn more current songs.

Coop and Sean and me are going to start a band someday. Me on guitar, Coop on drums, and Sean on trombone
and, eventually, keyboards. Sean’s really the only one who can play. He’s been taking trombone lessons in school since he was five. But he needs to start learning keyboards because the trombone never sends girls into bra-throwing frenzies.

We already have a name but we don’t tell anyone because it’s probably the coolest band name ever and it took us a long time to come up with it. We’re going to call ourselves Arnold Murphy’s Bologna Dare. Coop was the one who finally thought it up. It’s based on something that happened in grade school when Coop dared this dirty Oscar-the-Grouch kind of kid to eat a piece of baloney off the cafeteria floor. Which he did. Coop changed
baloney
to
bologna
because it sounds better. We won’t ever tell anyone what it really means; they’ll just have to wonder.

I find my Speedo wadded up on the floor, still damp from this morning. I figure if I get ready now, it’ll save time later. I’m out of my clothes and wrestling the soggy bathing suit over my knees when my bedroom door flies open.

“Knock, knock,” Peter says.

I drop to the floor like a felled tree. I scrunch up to try and hide as much of my junk as possible.

“Jesus Christ, Pete!”

“Hey, it’s not my fault,” Peter says. “If you’re going to be using your spanky hanky, you ought to lock your door.”

“I was putting on my swimsuit.” I try to hoist my Speedo higher but it’s impossible in this position. I just end up rocking back and forth.

“Sure, whatever,” Peter says.

“What the hell do you want, anyway?”

“I
wanted
to know what you were doing listening at my bedroom door. But you’ve already answered my question.”

“I wasn’t listening at your door,” I say, rolling over and tugging my bathing suit all the way up, giving Peter a nice view of my butt in the process. “I just came up to tell you we’re eating in fifteen minutes.”

“Just enough time to toss one off.”

I get to my feet and find my team sweatpants draped over my desk chair. I step in leg by leg. “Not for me, but it’s probably fourteen and half more minutes than you’d need.”

Peter marches over to me and whales me in the arm with his fist. “There. Dead arm. How do you like that, smart mouth?”

“Ow! Crap! I don’t like it, nut sack!” I clutch my now useless arm with my other hand.

“Now you know: you mess with the bull, you get the horns.” Peter turns and walks out of my room.

I try to raise my arm, but it might as well weigh a thousand pounds. Sometimes I hate my brother. Like, real, deep down, wish-I-could-beat-the-snot-out-of-him hate. It’ll pass. It always does. He’ll do something out-of-the-blue nice and all will be forgiven. But right now I want to push him down the stairs.

DINNER LASTED A DOG’S YEAR.
I must have looked at the clock, like, every thirty seconds until everyone was done. I took some meat loaf and mashed potatoes even though I wasn’t hungry. I thought it might help pass the time. I’m regretting it now as I ride my mountain bike, vurping onions and garlic and hard-boiled egg. I hop the curb and race toward the pool. I probably should have just bailed on the whole pool idea, but I got it into my mind that I was going to practice and I couldn’t let it go. The good thing about dinner lasting so long is I’ve finally got feeling back in my arm.

I lock my bike to the fence, kick off my sneakers, and flash my pool tag at the lifeguard sitting by the gate. She barely looks up from her magazine. “We close in twenty,” she mumbles.

It’s chilly tonight. There are even fewer people at the pool than usual. Which is good. I chuck my sneakers,
towel, sweats, and T-shirt in a heap on one of the concrete benches.