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  For Diarmuid

  the end

  You’d think it would feel weird being nearly naked in front of so many people, but it doesn’t.

  I ping my swimsuit straps for luck, once right, twice left, walk out poolside, and take a deep breath, inhaling the familiar tang of chlorine and feet. It sounds gross, but that smell is so exciting. I’m where I belong.

  I’m one of the fastest swimmers in my county. That’s why I’m here—trying out for a High Performance Training Camp that will set me on my way to Team Great Britain. I’ve wanted this for as long as I can remember. So … you know, no pressure, not a big deal, whev.

  I think I’m sweating inside my ears.

  I pad along the side of the pool, watching the heat before mine. Older swimmers power up and down; they look so strong—they’re not so much swimming as punching their way through water.

  We’re all in a vast glass room. I want to use the word palace. It’s a palace made of glass, filled with four Olympic-sized swimming pools! It’s basically my dream home. The sounds of splashing and shouting bounce off the concrete walls. Ninety percent of the people in this room are having the most important day of their lives.

  I look around for my best friend, Hannah, and spot her by the changing room. I give her a quick smile. I think she feels a bit queasy, because she does an elaborate mime of puking into the pool. An official eyes her disapprovingly.

  I know how she feels. I tuck a stray hair into my swimming cap with a shaking hand.

  Hannah rotates her shoulders backward and then forward. She swims butterfly, which gives you really big shoulders, but she’s not self-conscious about it; she just wears men’s T-shirts. People love Hannah. She’s fun. She has huge blond curly hair and big blue eyes and she never stops talking, organizing, and planning. She’s been my best friend since we were six, and now, looking at how nervous she is, I find myself feeling protective even though I’m in the same position.

  Well, not exactly the same; her parents are really pushy. She ignores it or it would drive her crazy. Mine think swimming is less important than either schoolwork or being a well-rounded human being—we agree to disagree.

  Hannah’s standing next to me now. She smiles and pulls at the front of my swimming cap. I fold my arms and pretend to ignore her. She pulls the elastic six inches away from my forehand and I brace for her to snap it, but instead she nudges her face next to mine and starts trying to pull my swimming cap over her head as well as mine. Ridiculous human being. This is why I bring spare caps.

  I can’t keep a straight face. I start giggling and help her pull the thick elastic further over her head. It hurts—her nose is digging hard into my cheekbone, but I’m determined to get it. Beep! Hannah’s eyes widen at the sound of the whistle. This is her race!

  She hurriedly pulls her head away, making her swimming cap ping off and nearly land in the pool. I can see a couple of officials looking very unimpressed at us. Sor-ree. Just trying to lighten a very heavy mood here. I dive to retrieve Hannah’s cap while she fights her frizzy mop of hair into a bun.

  We hug quickly and she hurries to the nearest pool, where the butterfly swimmers are waiting by the diving blocks. Some impressive shoulders in that group.

  Now I’m alone and back to feeling sick and scared about my own race. I tuck my ears into my swimming cap, and everything becomes a smooth roaring noise.

  An official comes to check my name against a list she has on her clipboard. I can’t help but notice that she has a very fluffy top lip. She catches me staring at it and I quickly look down.

  “Louise?” she asks.

  “Brown,” I say, to her shoe, and she ticks my name off.

  She must be one of only ten people in the place who aren’t feeling hysterical. If the fire alarm went off, I think we’d all run in circles, screaming and slapping our faces.

  My race is called and I join a line of girls who look just like me. Tall girls with no hips, no boobs, and frizzy hair are the norm here. I’m going to fit in so well in the Training Camp! Finally, someone to borrow clothes from.

  I look around for Debs, who coaches me and Hannah. She’s standing by the pool where I’ll be doing my race, arms folded, staring intently at me. She gives me a nod. She’s not the most affectionate person. That nod means “Go on, Lou, I know you can do it! Supportive things, etc.!”

  Up on the blocks I scuff my feet and stare dead ahead. You swim no one’s race but your own.

  The official nods and I bend into my dive, wrapping my fingertips over the edge of the block and swaying gently to loosen my hips. There’s a pause that feels never-ending, and I focus on the spot in the water where I want my dive to take me.

  The starting pistol bangs. There’s an explosion of power from my legs, and I dive hard. I can hear the block rattle as I push away from it with all my strength. A cold, hard slap against my thighs, and I spring into butterfly stroke. Hannah’s faster at this, but I’m pretty good too. I whip my arms up and over my head, my fingers then cutting into the water in front of my face. As my arms pull down, my hips tilt and my legs kick together like a mermaid tail. This is the closest I ever get to elegant.

  Backstroke now, my second fastest stroke, and I hold my head steady as I stare up at the ceiling. I practiced this last night when everyone else had finished training. I count signposts on the ceiling so I don’t ram my head into the side of the pool and slow myself down. Debs says this is the mind-set of a consummate pro.

  I had to Google consummate. It’s either a compliment or a French soup.

  I feel so happy when I swim, strong and graceful and like everything is right with the world. This is my Thing.

  The individual medley is a strange race—most people are slowest on the breaststroke, fastest on the crawl. I’m the other way around, so I always pull ahead on laps five and six, hopefully opening up enough of a lead that some freakish monkey-armed girl with a devastating crawl time can’t catch me on seven and eight.

  And here’s seven and eight, harder in a pool where everyone’s so powerful. The water is churned up and throwing me about. So much for feeling graceful—this is like fighting water. But I can’t sense anyone on the left or right of me, so I must’ve pulled ahead. Excellent, it’s all going according to plan.

  Now it’s about hanging on to this lead. I carve my right hand back past my face to make a groove in the water just long enough to turn my face and grab a huge, ragged breath. In this choppy water it’s difficult, so each time I’m just praying I find air. I can’t afford to choke.

  Final lap and I’m completely in my rhythm. I know the end is approaching, but I have to keep swimming my hardest so no one catches me. I don’t care if I smash my head into the edge of the pool—anything to maintain this speed to the end. My wrist hits something hard with a crack that I feel down to my hip, and I’ve done it.

  I’ve done it! I won.

  I fling my head out of the water, rip off my swimming cap and goggles, sq
ueeze the water from my eyes, and look behind me. That’s my first thought—how far behind are they?

  But there’s no one there.

  They’re all next to me. Everyone. There is no one behind me, no one still swimming.

  The girl on my left looks bored; the one on the right is casually cleaning her goggles with spit. Oh my … one of them is already out of the pool?! I did that once, against a crap team in Swindon that was so slow I got out before the last girl finished. Debs yelled at me for that. Unsportspersonlike, she said.

  Debs! Where is she, where’s my coach? Maybe I swam extra lengths by mistake? That must be it. Hilarious, of course that’s what happened. Dumb but understandable on a high-pressure day. This is not a Big Deal. Should I talk to someone, an official? Where is everyone going? Coach! Debs! Hello? No one is looking me in the eye. Did I die in that pool? Am I a ghost?

  I might as well have. I came in last. For the first time since I started competing at ten years old, I was the slowest swimmer. I’m weak and cold. My legs are heavy as the adrenaline drops out of me. I don’t know what to do … where to go.…

  I have to find Hannah, and I look around frantically for her. There she is! She’s throwing back her hair, laughing and shaking hands with an official who’s handing her a slip of paper. She must have won her race. She catches my eye and her smile fades.

  My best friend and I want to kill her.

  chapter 1

  My pillow smells. I should’ve changed the pillowcase weeks ago, but I haven’t, and now it smells like my head. Which I did not realize was so smelly.

  I can hear my family moving around downstairs, slamming drawers and clattering bowls. I’m not used to these morning noises because I’d usually be up at five a.m., grab my swim kit, and be training by six. Forty lengths of breaststroke, forty backstroke, forty crawl, ten butterfly, then a quick shower, sleepwalk through school, and be back in the pool by four p.m. YOLO!

  But I haven’t swum since the time trials three weeks ago, and now I’m stuck with a surprising number of useless hours. Who knew days were so long? I sometimes used to wonder what I was missing as I pounded out the lengths in the pool. Now I know. No-thing.

  Except I’d never met our mailman before. He has a lot of nose hair. That’s it.

  My name’s Lou and I am a fifteen-year-old ex-swimmer. I have an older sister, Laverne. Yup, Lou and Lav. We have a brother called Toilet.

  That’s a lie. It’s just me, Lav, Mom, and Dad, in a small semidetached house in the most boring town in the world.

  So this summer I stopped swimming and I met our postman. And I finally got all that crying done that I’ve been meaning to do for ages, so that’s good, isn’t it? Plus I really explored the concept of Lying in Bed All Day Feeling Nothing but Despair. A summer lived right to the edges.

  It’s the first day of school. I’d mark the occasion by wearing a dress, but I don’t own one. In our most private moments Hannah and I have accepted that the only way we’ll find a dress to fit our shoulders is if we go to that cross-dressing shop in town. They’ve got nice stuff in the window; we’ll cut the labels out.

  It’s also my first day without Hannah, as she’s already left for the High Performance Training Camp in Dorset. She’ll be there all term. Mom says that now that we’re separated for a bit, I’ll come out of Hannah’s shadow. But she doesn’t understand—I liked it there! I was very happy hanging out in it.

  Going back to school would be fine if Hannah hadn’t got through the time trials either. We could face it together, maybe hint that the competition was a big conspiracy. That we were too fast and we’d have threatened international relations at the next Olympics when we smashed everyone out of the water with our awesome times.

  “Yeah, well, Russia,” we’d have said, with careful looks around us. “They do not like silver, if you know what I’m saying.” Then we’d have tugged our fedoras down and skulked off to double physics.

  Wonder if the other side of my pillow is less smelly? I flip it. No.

  But now Hannah has gone to the High Performance Training Camp without me and I won’t see her all term. We’re so far away from each other! She’s in Dorset and I’m in Essex. She’s heading to the Olympics; the most exciting place I’m heading is the bathroom.

  Miraculously, it’s free—pretty impressive in a house of four people, three of whom take showers you could time with a calendar.

  I’m still using that special harsh shampoo for swimmers, the stuff that strips the chlorine out of your hair. Money is a bit tight at the moment, so Mom won’t chuck it. I have to use it all up first, and we seem to have found a never-ending bottle. I soap my head and reflect that it really doesn’t help that the smell reminds me of my old life.

  I step out of the shower, fold a towel dress around me (the only kind I fit in, because it’s sleeveless), and scuff my feet along the hallway. The carpet is worn in patches, so I’m careful not to catch my toe on a snagged thread. No one needs to start their day hopping and screaming.

  I open my clothes drawer and drag out some jeans and a T-shirt—I don’t have any “nice” clothes. Since I was eleven I’ve been caught up in some desperate, endless growth spurt. There’s no point buying decent clothes, because they probably won’t fit in a month’s time. I’m five ten and still growing.

  It’s fine; if I ever get a boyfriend, I can carry him when he’s tired.

  I stab a wide-toothed comb gently into my hair because I don’t have time to cut it out if it gets tangled. My hair doesn’t grow down; it goes out, like Hannah’s. We don’t look like the princess in a fairy tale. We look like the enchanted vines that covered her castle for a hundred years.

  It was always comforting to have a best friend who looked as different as I do. And we never minded, because we had swimming. We had a Thing. Now my Thing is gone and so has my friend.

  I can’t delay this much longer. I’m going to have to eat some breakfast and then … gah … school. I swing around the end of the banister and can’t help smiling when I catch sight of my family.

  The kitchen is too small for the four of us—we only fit in there if everyone stays very still. If you actually want to move, then elbows will get bumped and cereal will get tipped down backs. You know your house is cramped when you can start making a sandwich and end up in a food fight.

  Dad is cooking (carefully), Mom’s reading a book, and Laverne is troweling makeup onto her ridiculously beautiful face. They are such a good-looking family; they look like they’re in an ad. They don’t need a Thing. Everyone’s just grateful they get to look at them.

  I’m proud of them, but I wish I didn’t look adopted.

  Mom is half Indonesian, all curves and shiny brown hair and skin, while Dad looks like a doctor on a TV show. Good chin, nice teeth. Admittedly, he has a bit of a belly these days, but he just holds his breath for photos. Laverne is sixteen, with glossy black hair, actual boobs, and a tattoo that Mom and Dad don’t know about.

  Nature made her and then, a year later, took the same ingredients and made me. It’s baffling. Good thing they didn’t have a third child; it would probably have a face like a knee.

  “Morning…” I sigh at the room, and they mumble back sleepy responses. Dad slides a brick of scrambled egg onto my plate as I sit down. Mom subtly slides Lav’s makeup bag away from her.

  “Enough, Laverne.”

  “A little more highlighter and blush and I’m done, I swear.”

  Mom keeps reading as she drops the makeup bag into a drawer next to her. Lav looks mutinous, but she’s still got her mascara wand, so she makes good use of it before Mom reunites it with the bottle.

  The mood in the kitchen is a little, well, moody. Lav’s grounded because she was texting a boy late at night. I never have any boys to text, regardless of the time of day.

  I poke up a forkful of egg and stare at it. Eyes down, I say, “Um. Caaaan I…”

  “No,” Mom says.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to say!”


  Mom imitates my voice with annoying accuracy. “Can I not go to school today or maybe ever, can I just lie and get a job instead and we’ll tell everyone at school that I changed my name, had plastic surgery, and made it onto Team Great Britain after all?”

  Damn. Spot on.

  Laverne finishes applying her thirty-second coat of mascara and leans toward me as if she’s going to impart the secret of immortality.

  Expectations low, I lean toward her.

  “It’s going to be OK at school,” she says.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Because no one cares about your swimming. Only you think it’s a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal.”

  “Shut up, I’m trying to help you. I swear, if anyone even mentions swimming—which they won’t—and you tell them what happened, they’ll say, ‘Huh.’ And they won’t ever think of it again. It’s boring. No one cares. Amelia Bond from eleventh grade? She had her big hairy face mole removed over the summer. That is interesting.”

  I’m unconvinced but not willing to have an argument about it. Lav’s wrong; it’s not true that no one cares. Hannah cares. Hannah understands that swimming is extremely important. But thinking about Hannah feels like poking a blister, so I make myself stop.

  Dad slings the frying pan into the sink. He does all the cooking. Mom’s specialty dish is food poisoning.

  “You girls ready to leave for school in ten?”

  “Shotgun!”

  “Lav! You always sit in the front!”

  “Yes. Because I always call shotgun. Please stop me if this confuses you.”

  “Fine. Infinity shotgun!”

  “You can’t call infinity shotgun—everyone knows that,” says Mom. “Now off you go.”

  “Are you home tonight, Mom?” I ask.

  “Uh, no, I have a…”

  “Daaa-ate,” we all chorus.

  “So go on, what’s his name?” Lav asks.

  Mom hesitates.

  “It’s OK,” says Dad kindly. “If you don’t know it, you don’t have to pretend.”