Surviving High School

with Kimi, embarrassingherself in front of Ben, and Mr. McBride’s supplemental textbook—escaped her body and dissolved into the water.
    The only thing she couldn’t quite shake was her fear of seeing Nick Brown. Even now, she half expected to pop out of the water and find him staring down at her from the side of the pool. The last time she’d seen him had been at the hospital, when he’d tried to get in to see Sara’s body. Black stitches had lined the bridge of his nose, and both of his eyes had been bruised purple in the crash. When she imagined running into him in the hallways here, she still saw him like that—cut, bruised, and shaken, barely alive.
    But when Emily pulled up her goggles and rested her arms over the side of the pool, it wasn’t Nick Brown she saw but rather her father, sitting on one of the blocks, his legs dangling above the water. His paunch stuck out over his too-tight pants, and his dark beard couldn’t cover up his fast-growing double chin. Looking at him, you’d barely recognize the guy who’d shocked the world by winning the Olympic gold medal for the butterfly in ’84. Even a few years ago he’d still been trim, swimming in the mornings—but not anymore. Emily wondered how long he’d been watching her.
    “Why are you in your race gear?” he asked. “We bought you that resistance suit for a reason. You’ve got to build muscle or you’re never going to lower your split times.”
    “It’s my first day here. I just want to relax.”
    “And you think Dominique is relaxing in that big indoor pool her parents built her? Or Chelsea Wong? Or Kate—”
    “Fine. Fine, Dad. I’ll change.”
    “Coach,” he said. “You’ll call me Coach while we’re at school. Just like the other girls.” She nodded. At least she didn’t have any actual classes with him. Although the school had hired him for his proficiency as a coach, district policy dictated that he had to teach at least two classes. He had ended up teaching two juniors-only courses in Family Health, which included such topics as nutrition, stress management, and—most disturbing—sex ed.
    He looked down at Emily resting, and she reflexively pulled off the pool’s edge and started treading water. “One other thing—I almost forgot. A reporter from Swimmer’s Monthly is coming by in a couple of weeks to do a story on you and Dominique. It’s a chance to get your name out there, and it’s good practice for later. Unfortunately, part of being an athlete of your caliber means dealing with the press.”
    Emily frowned. The swimming she could handle. Reporters were a different matter. Not that she had a choice. She tried to make eye contact with her dad, but he looked away from her, up at a list of names and times on the wall of the gym:
MARION KNOWLES, 50M FREESTYLE, 25.45
STACEY JACKSON, 100M FREESTYLE, 58.22
    And there, in the bottom right-hand corner:
SARA KESSLER, 50M BACKSTROKE, 28.30
    In fact, Sara’s name appeared in several places across the board, but it was the 50-meter-backstroke time that trulymattered—not just a school record, but a national one for high schoolers. The mark had stood for almost a year now. Most impressive, Sara had set it as only a sophomore.
    “You’re on the right track,” Emily’s father said as he got to his feet and hopped off the block. “Stick with your training program, and you could own every record on that board.” He looked again at the wall of names, and Emily could tell which one he was concentrating on. “Now get to the locker room and put on your resistance gear. We’ve only got two hours before this place shuts down.”
    A couple of hours to go—and then a four-mile run to get home. Not that Emily minded. Better a thirty-minute jog than getting in the car. Better than the panicked feeling of strapping on her seat belt and feeling her stomach lurch as her dad started the engine.
    For almost a month after Sara’s accident, Emily had refused to even sit in a car. She’d ridden her bike to school, refused trips to movie theaters that were too far away to walk to, and insisted her family cancel their annual road trip to SeaWorld.
    Eventually, she’d relented and started letting her father drive her around when it was absolutely necessary, reassuring herself that he’d never been in an accident and consistently went five miles per hour under the speed limit, much to the displeasure of other drivers.
    Still, she wished the whole world could just be a pool,