This Might Hurt(11)

He grinned. “You’ve come so far these past couple weeks.”

Considering I’d thrown up in the locker room before my first three classes, I supposed he was right. I stood in the chest-high water, wishing I were as carefree as the younger kids. On the one hand, I wanted to move up class levels as soon as possible to get away from the six-year-olds. On the other, I could see the students in the more advanced levels at the deep end of the pool. They were ducking underwater and staying there for way too long. And they were doing it on purpose. I shuddered.

“One last drill,” my teacher called out. “We’re going to practice floating on our backs.”

I sighed with relief. I could handle floating on my back. It was floating on my front that made me want to jump out of my skin.

After the class finished the final drill, we all sat around the edge of the pool so the teacher could give us pointers. The other kids dangled their legs in the water, but I kept mine crossed. Logically I understood there couldn’t be any finned monsters at the bottom of a public pool, but that didn’t stop my brain from insisting that something was slithering toward my legs, waiting to sting my arms, pull me under, wrap me in its tentacles, hold me until I stopped fighting.

I shook the thoughts from my head. It was easier to spend as little time in the water as possible.

I pulled off my swim cap and squeezed water from my hair, white-blond no matter the season, like Sir’s. A pale, chubby kid sat next to me. He was the only other nine-year-old in level one. As far as I could tell, the main reason Alan talked to me was because I too knew how to tie my shoes.

When class finished, Alan said, “I can’t wait ’til we get to level two and start using kickboards. I hope I get the red one my first time. Or the blue one. The blue one’s cool too. I think we’ll both get moved up soon, don’t you? What was your favorite part of class?”

I squinted at Alan like he was crazy. “Right now.”

“Now?” he asked, confused. Most of our classmates were dashing across the slippery tiled floor to greet their parents. They slowed when our teacher scolded them to Walk, please. Mother never came inside the community center to pick me up. She claimed she used those spare minutes in her car to pray, but I suspected she was avoiding the other moms. She was sure they whispered behind her back, spreading rumors she spent all day in bed.

“My favorite part is when it’s over.”

His eyebrows rose. He considered what I’d said, kicking his legs in the water, splashing me a little. I scooted over a few feet.

“Why do you take lessons if you hate them so much?”

“Because my dad makes me.” I couldn’t wait to get the smell of chlorine off me.

“Why don’t you tell your dad no?”

Perhaps Alan actually was crazy. “He’s not that kind of dad.”

“What kind of dad is he?” Alan stared at me, scratching his baby nose.

Na?ve: showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment.

I debated how best to answer. “One who makes you do stuff you don’t want to because he thinks it’s good for you.”

“What if it’s not good for you, though?”

I shrugged. “He’s the dad.”

Alan shrugged too. “Sounds like you need an escape trick.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean like Houdini.”

“What’s a Houdini?”

“Are you serious?” Alan’s eyes widened. “You don’t know who Houdini is?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, sorry. He was this famous magician from a long time ago. My dad bought a book about him. Sometimes he reads parts to us.”

Aunt Carol took Jack and me to a magic show once, back when Sir let her babysit. The magician called me onstage to be his assistant, which was still the single most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. He pulled a quarter out of my ear and said I could keep it. Then he turned a fake dove into a real one and let it fly away. I always wondered where that dove went, if the magician had trained it to return to him somehow. After the show, Aunt Carol bought popcorn and threw kernels in the air for us to catch in our mouths. No one noted who’d caught more kernels or gave long lectures about self-control. It was one of my favorite days ever.

Alan took my silence as encouragement to keep talking. “Houdini started out with card tricks, but what made him famous is all these crazy escapes he did. He could get out of any pair of handcuffs in the world.”

I stared at Alan. “You’re lying.”

“Am not. He let people put shackles on him and then nail him up inside a crate and then someone would throw the crate into the sea and he’d escape from it.”

I felt sick imagining it. I couldn’t even handle being thrown into the sea with my arms and legs unrestrained. Who was this impossibly brave man? He couldn’t be real.

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“I’ll bring the book next time. You can read it for yourself. You’ll see.”

I nodded, trying to act indifferent, already plotting how I would hide the book from Sir. What Alan claimed couldn’t be true. There was no way this book would tell me how to dodge my father or his challenges. You couldn’t find answers to something like that in any book.