Deep End

CHAPTER 1

THE THING I DREAD THE MOST ABOUT JUNIOR YEAR BEGINS on a Wednesday morning, a couple of weeks before the start of the autumn quarter. It’s penciled into my Google Calendar for the ten to eleven slot, a single word that weighs more than the sum of its letters.

Therapy.

“This is somewhat unconventional,” Sam tells me on our first meeting, no judgment or curiosity in her tone. She appears to have mastered neutrality in all facets of life—her beige pantsuit, the medium grip of a handshake, an ageless, graceful look that could be anywhere between forty and seventy. Is it too early in our acquaintance for me to want to be her? “I was under the impression that Stanford Athletics had its own team of licensed sports psychologists.”

“They do,” I say, letting my eyes skim over the walls of her office. Diplomas outnumber personal photos, four to zero. Sam and I may already be the same person. “They’re great. I did work with them for the past few months, but . . .” I shrug, hoping to broadcast that it’s on me if it didn’t work out. “I had some issues a few years ago—unrelated to diving. At the time, cognitive behavioral therapy worked well for me. My coach and I talked it over, and since it’s your specialty, I decided to try Counseling Services.” I smile like I have full trust in this plan. If only.

“I see. And in the past, when you did cognitive behavioral therapy, what issues did you—”

“Nothing sports related. It was . . . family stuff. My relationship with my dad. But that’s all solved now.” I realize that I spoke a whit too quickly, and expect Sam to challenge what’s obviously a half-baked, still-frozen-in-the-middle truth, but she just stares, assessing and hawkish.

Lots of attention, all on me, all at once. I squirm in the chair, feeling the ache that always clings to my muscles. Her presence is not particularly calming, but I’m here to be fixed, not soothed.

“I see,” she says eventually. Bless CBT and its lack of bullshit. There is this thing you do that’s bad for you. I’ll teach you to not do it, your insurance will give me money, and we’ll each go our merry way. BYO trauma. Tissues are on me. “And just to be clear, Scarlett, you want to be here?”

I nod emphatically. I may not look forward to the agony that comes with exposing the squishy bits of my soul, but I’m not some cliché detective refusing to see a shrink in an eighties crime show. Therapy is a privilege. I’m lucky to have it. Above all, I need it.

“I must admit, I don’t know much about diving. It seems like a very complex discipline.”

“It is.” Lots of competitive sports require a delicate balance of physical and psychological strength, but diving . . . diving has trained long and hard to become the mind-fuckiest of them all.

“Would you be willing to explain?”

“Of course.” I clear my throat, glancing down at my joggers and compression shirt. Black and cardinal red. Stanford Swimming & Diving: Fear the Tree. Whoever designs our gear clearly wants for our identity to be reduced to our athletic performance. Never forget: you are what you score. “We jump off things. Plunge into pools. Do some acrobatics in between.”

I mean to make her laugh, but Sam’s not prone to amusement. “I’m assuming there’s more?”

“Lots of regulations.” But I don’t want to bore her, or be a difficult client. “I’m an NCAA Division I athlete. I compete in two events. One is from the springboard, that bouncy fiberglass board that . . .” I mimic its up-and-down motion with the flat of my hand. “That’s three meters high. About ten feet.” As tall as an ostrich, the voice of my first coach reminds me.

“What’s the other event?”

“The platform. That’s ten meters high.” Thirty-three feet. Two giraffes.

“No bounce?”

“Static.”

She hums. “Does the scoring work like gymnastics?”

“Pretty much. A panel of judges looks for mistakes and subtracts points accordingly.”

“And how many dives do you perform per competition?”

“That depends. And it’s not . . . it’s not really about how many.” I bite the inside of my cheek. She lets me take my time, but stays engaged. “It’s the group.”

“The group?”

“The . . . type of dive, if you will.”

“And how many groups are there?”

“Six in total.” I fidget with the tip of my ponytail. “Forward. Backward. Reverse. Twist. Armstand.”

“I see. And in your email, you mentioned that you’ve been recovering from an injury?”

Therapy is a privilege. I don’t like it, though. “Correct.”

“When was that?”

“About fifteen months ago. At the end of freshman year.” I clench my fists under my thighs, wait for her to demand the gory details, ready to recite my list.

Sam, though, spares me. “Did you say that there are six groups of dives?”

“Yes.” I’m surprised at the topic shift, and let my guard down.

It’s a misstep of catastrophic proportions.

“And this injury of yours, Scarlett . . . does it have anything to do with the fact that you only listed five?”

CHAPTER 2

YOU FUCKED UP,” MARYAM SAYS DURING THE FIRST WEEK OF classes, and all I can think past the despair droning in my ears is that I deserve better from my roommate. I’ve helped her clean bloodstains off countless wrestling singlets—am I really not to be afforded compassion? Or at least disapproval of the more tacit variety?

“I am one whole fourth German,” I counter. “My mom was born there. I should be good at this.”

“Your mother died when you were two, Vandy. Your step-mommy, who raised you, is from Bumfuck, Mississippi.”

Harsh. But fair. “My genetic makeup—”

“Is irrelevant and does not predispose you to a passing grade in German,” she says with the contempt of someone who grew up bilingual. I can’t presently recall what part of the brain controls the ability to learn languages, but hers spins beautifully and turbine-like. An excellent source of renewable energy ready to power a small European country.

Meanwhile: “I’m not good at this stuff,” I whine. Why should I be, though? “It’s ridiculous that med schools have foreign language requirements.”

“It’s not. What if you decide to do Doctors Without Borders, and your ability to save a life depends on knowing whether ‘the scalpel’ is male or female?”

I scratch my neck. “Die skalpellen?”

“Bam, patient’s dead.” Maryam shakes her head. “You fucked up, my dude.”

With a little help from my academic adviser. Take the premed courses first, he said. You’ll need the knowledge to pass the Medical College Admission Test, he added. It’s the right move, he concluded.

And I listened. Because all I ever wanted was to be on top of shit. Because I’m a student athlete, and my schedule is a crossover between a Jenga tower and a shibari tutorial. Spontaneity? Only if prearranged. I made a fifteen-year plan the day I graduated from high school, and always intended to stick to it: upwards of one NCAA title, med school, orthopedics, engagement and marriage, compulsory happiness.

Of course, I screwed up that plan by stuffing chem and bio sequences into my freshman and sophomore years—without considering that science classes were never my weakness. Enter junior year, and my GPA quakes in its boots. Psychology is distressingly vague. The German dative haunts my goriest nightmares. English composition wants me to construct cogent arguments on elusive, slippery topics—poetry, the ethics of pest control, maximum mandates for government officials, do people exist when we cannot see them?

It’s easier for me when balls fall neatly into their intended buckets. Black and white, right and wrong, carbon based and inorganic. This year is shades of grays and marbles scattered all over the floor, a German Language 1 oil puddle spilled underneath.

I used to be a straight A student athlete. Used to be in control. Used to live in pursuit of excellence. At this point, I’m just trying to avoid explosive failures. Wouldn’t it be lovely if I could manage not to constantly let down the people around me?

“Switch to another language,” Maryam suggests, like I haven’t already explored every escape route.

“Can’t. It’s like shingled roofing—they all overlap with something.” Such as morning drills. Afternoon practice. Any of the other million activities for which Stanford recruited me. And this is supposed to be the year I fulfill my athletic potential. If I still have it, anyway. If it was ever there.

It sure felt like it, back at Bumfuck High School (Missouri, but I’ve given up on correcting Maryam). Half a dozen DI coaches aggressively elbowed each other to lure me to their schools, because I was a former junior Olympian, national team member, junior world medalist. Top recruit. Every club coach I’d had since age six had blown smoke up my butt: You’re excellent at this, Vandy. You’ll do great things, Vandy. Promising young diver, Vandy. I frolicked in that smoke like a blissed-out prairie vole—until college, when I finally stood corrected.

In fact, I barely even stood.

My brain must have decided to do me a solid, because I have no memories of the thirty seconds that changed my life. Lucky me, the whole thing is on tape for anyone to watch, because it happened at the NCAA diving finals. It even comes pre-commentated.

“And that was Scarlett Vandermeer of Stanford University, Junior Olympic bronze. Definitely the big breakout of the season, and on the verge of a new platform record. Before this dive, that is.”

“Yeah, she was attempting an inward dive with two and a half somersaults in pike position that she managed flawlessly this morning at the prelims. In fact, it got her eights and nines. But this time something went poorly from takeoff.”

It’s always those you trust the most.

“Yeah. That was definitely a failed dive—that’s going to be a zero from the judges in terms of scoring. But she also entered the water at the wrong angle, so here’s hoping that she isn’t hurt.”

To which my body said, Fuck hoping.

It’s funny, in a remarkably unfunny way. I clearly remember the anger—at the water, at myself, at my own body—but I have no recollection of the pain. In the video, the girl limping out of the pool is a doppelgänger who stole my body. The long braid roping down her red swimsuit belongs to an impostor. The dimples as she strains her lips into a smile? Uncanny. And why does the little gap between her front teeth look exactly like mine? The camera follows her woozy gait mercilessly, gawking even as Coach Sima and his assistants run to help.

“Vandy—are you okay?”

The answer is unintelligible, but Coach loves to recount the story of how the girl said, Yeah, but I’m going to need an Advil before my next dive.

Turns out, she was right. She would need an Advil before her next dive. And surgeries. And rehab. Her final tally?

Concussion.

Ruptured eardrum.

Twisted neck.

Labral tear of the left shoulder.

Pulmonary contusion.

Sprained wrist.

Sprained ankle.

A heavy, viscous weight lodges in my chest cavity whenever I watch the video and imagine what she must have gone through—till I remember that the girl is me.

There isn’t a single guy I’ve matched with on dating apps who hasn’t asked me, Diving is pretty much the same thing as swimming, right? But much like boxing, ice hockey, and lacrosse, diving is a contact sport. Every time we enter the water, the impact beats through our skeletons, muscles, internal organs.

Eat your heart out, NFL.

“You need to prepare for the very real possibility that you won’t be able to dive again,” Barb told me before my surgery. So difficult to dismiss what your stepmom says as pessimistic drivel when said stepmom is a brilliant orthopedic surgeon. “We just want your shoulder to regain full mobility.”

“I know,” I said, and cried like a baby, first in her arms, then alone in my bed.

But Barb was overcautious—and I was lucky. Recovery turned out to be within the realm of possibility. I red shirted during my sophomore year. Rested. Took the meds. Stuck to the anti-inflammatory diet. Focused on the PT and the stretches and the rehab, as zealously as a nun saying her nighttime prayers. I visualized my dives, cradled my aches, showed up for practice anyway, watching the rest of the team train, the smell of the chlorine clinging to my nose, the shimmery blue of the pool just feet away, yet impossibly far.

Then, two months ago, I was cleared for training. And it has been . . .

Well. There’s a reason I’m seeing a therapist.

“I think I have an idea to fix your foreign language problem.”

I glance suspiciously at Maryam—and yet lean forward, all ears and eyes and hope.

“You’re going to tell me to take an acid bath, aren’t you?”

“Hear me out: Latin 201.”

I push to my feet. “I have to go.”

“Think how helpful it’ll be when Doctors Without Borders sends you to ancient Rome!”

I slam the door behind me and leave for practice forty minutes early, just to avoid garroting my roommate.

We were paired up during freshman year, and despite Maryam’s unflinching meanness and my inability to timely replace empty toilet paper rolls, we have somehow become unwilling to live apart. Last year we (voluntarily?) moved together to a place off campus, and we just (voluntarily?) renewed our lease, condemning ourselves to twenty-four more months of each other. The truth is, being together is simple and requires little emotional labor from either of us. And when you’re like me (a goal-oriented, control-focused, overachieving perfectionist), finding someone like Maryam is a gift.

Not a good gift, but I’ll take it.

The Avery Aquatic Center is the best facility I’ve ever trained at. It’s fully outdoors, with four pools and a diving tower, and it’s where all Stanford aquatic teams practice. Today, the women’s locker room is blissfully silent. It’s a rare Goldilocks zone—swimmers are already off to practice; divers aren’t yet getting ready. Water polo players have recently been exiled to another building, and many a thankful tear was shed.

I put on my swimsuit. Slide a tee and shorts over it. Set my alarm and sit on the uncomfortable wooden bench, contemplating my life choices. Exactly ten minutes later my phone vibrates, and I stand, having achieved no clarity or inner peace. I’m walking to Laundry Services for a fresh towel, when I hear a familiar voice.

“. . . not okay,” Penelope is saying.

She stands in the hallway, a few feet away, but doesn’t notice me.

“Not at all,” she continues, a curl of tears in her words. I recognize it from that dual meet in Utah, when she screwed up a forward pike, belly flopped like a flying squirrel, and slid from first to ninth. “Not for us.”

The reply is quieter, deeper. Less distressed. Lukas Blomqvist stands in front of Pen, bare chested and arms crossed, a pair of goggles around his neck and a cap dangling from his fingers. He must have just gotten out of practice, because he’s still dripping. The slight frown between his eyes is hard to interpret—could be a glower, or resting Swede face. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but it doesn’t matter, because Pen cuts him off.

“. . . there’s no reason for that, if . . .”

Another rich, low-pitched response. I retreat. This conversation is not for me. I don’t need a towel that bad.

“It’s for the best.” Pen leans closer. “You know it is.”

Blomqvist inhales deeply, and his glistening shoulders rise, making him look even taller. I notice the tautness in his jaw, the sudden bend of his head, the bunching of muscles in his upper arm.

Menacing. Threatening. Scary. That’s what he is. Next to him, Pen looks small and upset, and my brain clicks into a new mode.

I couldn’t care less whether it’s my business. I stride closer, eyes narrowed on Blomqvist. My fingers tremble, so I fist them at my sides, and even though he is probably four times stronger than Pen and me put together, even though it’s a terrible idea, I ask, “Pen, is everything okay?”

CHAPTER 3

MY VOICE RICOCHETS AGAINST THE TILED FLOORS. PEN AND Lukas look at me, equally taken aback.

I swallow and force myself to ask again, “Do you need anything, Pen?”

“Vandy? I didn’t know you were—” Her mouth curves in a puzzled tilt. Then the distrustful way I’m regarding Lukas must register, because her eyes widen, and her lips part. “Oh my god, I . . . oh, no. No, he wasn’t—we were just . . .” She lets out a breathy laugh, and turns to her boyfriend to share her amusement at the misunderstanding.

But Lukas’s gaze lingers on me. “Everything’s fine, Scarlett,” he says. I’m not exactly inclined to believe him, but he doesn’t sound defensive, or annoyed, or even angry at my obvious assumption that he’s a danger to Pen.

Also, he appears to know my first name. Even though I’ve been Vandy for the entire sports community since I was six. Fascinating.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” I say, unrepentant. Maybe I’m hypersensitive when it comes to situations like this one—okay, I’m a stack of hypersensitivities in a trench coat—but I have my reasons, and I’d rather make a fool of myself and err on the side of caution than . . . whatever the alternative is. “Just making sure that—”

“I know,” Lukas says quietly, that blue gaze still settled on mine. “Thank you for looking out for Pen.”

The soft praise in his tone has my mind shorting for a second. By the time I recover, he’s giving Pen’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze and brushing past me. I follow the play of muscles on his broad back until he turns the corner, the baby hair drying at his nape, the black-inked outlines rippling on his left shoulder and twisting down his arm. It’s a full sleeve, but I can’t quite make it out. Trees, maybe?

“Shit,” Pen says.

I glance back. Find her wiping a hand down her face.

I definitely overstepped. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be nosy—”

“It’s not you, Vandy.” Her green eyes are shiny, a hairbreadth away from overflowing. I was fully willing to be Pen’s meat shield if it came to that, but pulling her back from crying? I doubt I can manage that.

“Do you . . . would you like me to call Victoria?” They’re both seniors, and she’s Pen’s closest friend on the team. Not much of a pool: the twins are very absorbed with each other, and I’ve barely been around. “Or I could ask Lukas to come back?”

“Call me for what?” Victoria appears—aviator sunglasses, inside. Purple smoothie. That dark, curly mullet that should be an aberration, spectacular on her. “I told you, I won’t be complicit in the assassination of any more spiders—what the . . . ?”

It all happens so fast. Pen’s tears bursting free. Victoria’s scandalized gasp. The voices of the water polo team, filling the hallway. Before I can excuse myself from whatever the hell is going on, the three of us are barreling into an equipment room.

The door firmly shuts under Victoria’s back. “What the hell happened?”

She alternates staring at Pen (with worry) and me (with . . . murder?), and I feel a sudden spark of compassion for Lukas. Maybe people shouldn’t go about indiscriminately glaring at others, after all.

“I was having a fight with Luk.” Pen wipes her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Aww, babe. About what?”

“I’ll give you guys some privacy,” I murmur, reaching for the doorknob.

Pen’s fingers close around my hand. “No, stay. I don’t want you to think that Luk could ever . . .” She takes a deep breath. I shift on my feet and think longingly of the locker room, the Epsom salt tub, a creepy porcelain doll factory—anywhere but the here and now. “He could never be violent, or mean. He’s the best person I’ve ever . . . We’ve just been in the process of—”

“Oh, god. Is this about the whole breakup thing?” Victoria asks. Significantly less gently.

Not my business. Not my business. Intensely not my business.

But Pen nods tearily.

“Listen.” Victoria sighs, like they’ve been over this. “Babe. Honey. I get it, you and Lukas have been together since you were, like, twelve—”

“Fifteen.”

“—and popped each other’s cherries and now you’re wondering, what would an uncircumcised dick be like?”

A sniffle. “Actually, in Sweden most people don’t—”

“TMI. The point is—what the fuck are you doing?”

I’ve always found Victoria’s bluntness delicious, but this seems a bit harsh. And Pen might agree, because the weeping fades into a scowl. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am. As someone who’s on your side and has been on the dating scene for the last two years, I’m telling you, you do not want to lose that man. There are lots of assholes out there, and Lukas is a smart, decent, hot guy who puts the toilet seat down and has yet to contract the French disease. That’s much rarer than you think.”

“But I’m not happy. And he’s not getting what he wants from this relationship, either.”

“Pen. Come on. If he told you he’s okay with not doing that stuff—”

“He’s settling. Just like I’m settling. If we stay together, we’ll get married, have a house in the suburbs and two point five bilingual kids I cannot understand, and will always wonder what we missed out on. I won’t know what being young and free feels like, and he’ll be bitter because he had to give up all that kinky shit, like spanking people and tying them up and ordering them what to do.”

I freeze. I should really not be here, but I can’t leave, because my feet weigh a million pounds, and every drop of blood in my body is flowing up to hang out on my cheeks.

“I get it.” Victoria is exasperated. “But you need to decide—”

A hard pounding at the door. We all jolt. “Hey? Is anyone in there?”

Victoria shouts, “Yeah, just a sec!”

“I left my gear bag in there, so if you guys could move your orgy to the showers . . .”

Victoria rolls her eyes but opens the door. We march past Gear Girl—Victoria, with a defiant expression; Pen, wiping residual tears; me, stubbornly refusing to make eye contact. The conversation may have resumed, but the twins are coming our way. “Where were you guys?” Bella asks. I panic, but Victoria makes up something about a missing shammy on the fly, because for her lying doesn’t require two to three business days of careful preparation, and we all go warm up, like a big happy family.

I’m still flushed. Aware of my pulse. Cogs turn in my skull. All I can think of is: Pen has always been so lovely to me.

After my third surgery, when Barb couldn’t take more than a week off without collapsing the field of medicine, Pen popped by to check on me every day. To make sure your evil roommate isn’t making belts out of your skin, she’d say with a wink, but she’s just a naturally caring person. And there was the time she sat down with me after my first dual meet, to remind me that a few splashy entries didn’t make me a bad diver, that sometimes we’re just too much in our heads, that she’d been there, too—that chaotic, overthinking feeling that makes the platform feel like a tightrope and turns your body into an unreliable narrator. That moment when your focus dissolves into panic, and the dive is irreparably fucked before it even begins.

It had meant so much to me, back in the fall of freshman year. Everything was new and raw and too big, but Penelope Ross, world and Pan Am medalist, NCAA champion, held my hand and told me that she felt like I did.

I think about it during Pilates, and dryland training, and while climbing up the infinite steps of the diving tower. I think about it as I stretch every muscle I possess, with special care for my tender, stupid shoulder, the one that all my doctors insist is healed, but in my nightmares shatters like a champagne flute at least twice a week.