Emily and Paige spent the entire afternoon on Emily's bed in the basement. Paige shed her Vallance sweatshirt and they lay tangled together on top of the blanket, kissing whenever they felt like it (which was quite frequently), running their fingers through each other's hair, and memorizing the other's body as best they could.
They talked about everything—their first memories, their pet peeves, the music they loved, and their guilty pleasures. And they played songs for each other off of their phones and on Emily's laptop.
They were always touching— Emily's legs wrapped around Paige's middle while she looked up a video to show her on Youtube. Paige tracing her fingers along each bone of Emily's spine and then grabbing her ass firmly as Emily lay on top of her while they made out. Emily found a sensitive spot on Paige's back that made her arch and groan each time her fingers brushed over it. And Paige discovered that Emily was the most ticklish on her neck and it made her squirm and laugh when Paige even made a tickling motion anywhere near it.
Paige tucked every moment they spent away into herself like she was storing up for a hurricane or a blizzard. She didn't know when, after this visit, she would get to see Emily again. Emily, for her part, insisted that they take some pictures with her phone as they goofed off, kissing and pulling faces for the camera.
In short, they spent the afternoon beginning to fall in love.
When evening finally rolled around, they begrudgingly pried themselves out of the little land of Emily's bed and went back up the stairs to see what was happening for dinner.
"I think you've dehydrated me," Paige told Emily as the opened the door to the kitchen. "Is it possible to become dehydrated from kissing someone so much?"
"Well, I feel fantastic," Emily told her seriously, "so maybe I sucked you dry."
"You greedy, greedy woman," Paige said, grabbing Emily around the waist and pulling her in for a kiss. She was already missing Emily's physical presence against her from the hours in the basement.
"You need to rehydrate before we hit the pool later," Emily said smiling, happy to be in Paige's arms whenever she got the chance.
"Did you say pool?" Jo asked as she and Charlie walked in to the kitchen.
Emily and Paige had decided over the course of the afternoon that they would pretend that Emily had stolen the keys to the natatorium and they were going to break in to use the pool. It was Paige's idea, because, according to her, Emily needed some more street cred. Emily turned in Paige's arms to face her friends.
"I hope you two don't have plans tonight," she said deviously. "I stole the keys to the pool from my supervisor. We're breaking in. Tonight. At midnight. Dress in black."
"Are you serious?" Jo said looking worried.
"Holy shit!" Charlie declared. "You better be serious! That sounds amazing. We do the best stuff when Paige visits."
"I am completely serious," Emily said, staring them down. "Where's Eden? I need to let her know as well."
"I'll text her," Charlie said, waving Emily off. "She's busy pretending to be stuck in a box right now. It's a hard life being a mime."
About 20 minutes into dinner, Charlie's phone buzzed with an incoming message. It was a video of Eden miming a front crawl and jumping off a diving board.
"Guess that means Operation Aquatic is a go," Emily said happily when Charlie played the video for them all.
"Edie's really improved in the last two weeks," Charlie said about the video. "Last week she sent me a video asking me to make her a sandwich, you know, through mime, and I thought she was asking if I wanted to play strip poker."
"Why would she mime ask you to play strip poker with her?" Jo asked, shaking her head at Charlie's presumption.
"Why wouldn't she, is the real question," Charlie said with a cocky grin. "Anyway, she was really pissed when I showed up with a deck of cards and an extra pair of socks instead of a sandwich."
"Wait, why did you have an extra pair of socks?" Emily asked.
"I'm very self conscious about my ankles," Charlie explained, crossing her arms across her chest protectively.
"Where did you guys even find her?" Paige said, laughing loudly and gesturing toward Charlie.
When 11:30 finally rolled around, the girls and Tuck, who had come over around 8 pm, all met by the front door with their suits and towels. Jo, Tuck, Emily, and Paige had on normal clothes. Eden and Charlie, however, were dressed head to foot in black and Charlie was even clutching a ski mask. Emily burst out laughing when she saw them come down the stairs to join the others.
"Laugh now, Fields," Charlie told her, "but when we're being chased by security guards, we'll disappear so fast you'll think we were ghosts."
"That's right," Eden said, flicking up the hood of her sweatshirt behind Charlie and peering around her shoulder. "We're made of darkness."
Paige was looking at Emily with the most amused look on her face. She didn't have to say anything for Emily to know what she was thinking; Paige's idea to let the girls believe they were breaking into the pool had definitely paid off. Emily felt justified in getting some pay back for the bets they had placed on she and Paige over the weekend.
"Come on, we need to get to the pool before Paige forgets how to swim," Tuck said, ushering them all out the door.
Jo and Tuck fell into the lead with Paige and Emily quietly holding hands behind them and Charlie and Eden bringing up the rear.
"I think you should stick around just so we can prank the girls together," Emily told Paige as they walked. Paige smiled sadly, her face falling. She hoped that Emily wouldn't be able to tell in the dim, yellow glow the moon was casting through some thin clouds above them.
"I am a lot of fun on April Fool's Day," Paige chuckled, trying to be cheerful. "I convinced my 3rd grade teacher that I had injured my hand in a bizarre movie theater accident. I had this bandage on my hand and I'd colored it with a red marker. That was probably my best year."
"You sound like you were a little shit," Emily said, squeezing Paige's hand and laughing.
A melancholy air had settled over Paige despite the story she had just told. Emily hoped that swimming would shake Paige out of it. As they walked, Emily resolved not to bring up her wish for Paige to stay there with them at Vallance again, as it always seemed to make her sad. It's a selfish wish, anyway, Emily told herself.
Ahead of them, Tuck was quietly telling Jo that they weren't actually breaking into the pool and behind them Charlie was telling Eden that she could now list experience as a cat burglar on her résumé.
Autumn was Paige's favorite time of year, probably because she had always associated it with the excitement of her birthday. But it was also her favorite weather.
During her freshman year at Stanford, Paige had managed to enroll in all afternoon classes. She would get up very early for swim practice, which was from 6 to 8 am Monday through Friday and then have the rest of the morning free until her first class at 12:30 pm.
There was something almost magical about that particular time. Paige would often go back to her dorm to relax, watch something on her computer, or just read and sometimes take a nap if she had stayed up too late the night before. Most days she would call Grandma Hazel as well. It was the first time Paige had been apart from her family for so long and she had missed them more than she wanted to admit.
Grandma Hazel seemed to understand how desperately homesick Paige was without her actually having to say it. She never teased Paige or even asked why she was calling so much. Grandma Hazel would relay the best questions from the previous evening's episode of Jeopardy. She would tell Paige about her father's sermons and the going-ons at church. She would tell her what she was planning on making for dinner that night. And she would listen to Paige go on and on about the other girls on the team, who was best at what stroke, and what she was doing to improve her times. The conversations were often the only balm for Paige's aching heart. She was too ashamed to admit to her parents or Tuck just how unhappy she was because all anyone ever talked about was how college had been the best time of their lives. She'd wondered if their was something wrong with her.
Before she'd left for Stanford, it had never even occurred to Paige that she wouldn't like it. And once she had finally admitted to herself that it wasn't just an adjustment period, that going to college clear across the country just wasn't for her, Paige was much too stubborn to do anything about it. She felt stuck, like she had to live with the decision she'd made because it was the right thing to do and she had a full ride to one of the best universities in the country. She'd just slogged through, from one week to the next.
Those few hours of the morning were when Paige had been happiest. There was a tree just outside her dorm that the sunlight gently filtered through, dappling her bed and walls in the fractured light. She would open the window and enjoy the breeze that played across her face as she lay on her bed and chatted with her grandmother. Paige would close her eyes and imagine that the leaves were changing colors, that the air was growing crisp and heady. In those moments, Stanford almost felt like home.
Being here at Vallance with Tuck and Emily and their friends gave Paige a glimpse at what college might have been like for her, at the happiness she could have had. As the group approached the fitness center, all this was streaming through Paige's mind, filling her with such a heaviness that it felt like someone had filled her pockets with rocks.
Emily unlocked the doors and everyone filed into the enormous, dark building, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous lobby they had entered. When the door was relocked behind them, Emily led everyone down the main hallway and off into a narrow staircase that smelled faintly of chlorine. The stairs led down to another hall that held the entrance to the pool.
Emily pointed out the men's locker room further down the hallway for Tuck as she and the girls headed into the women's room.
"The doors into the pool in the locker rooms should be locked, so let's just meet out here and we can go in the main door together," Emily said quietly. Tuck gave a thumbs up to her and tiptoed into the doorway on the other side of the hall.
Charlie and Eden looked absolutely thrilled to be accomplishing what they still believed to be an illicit activity; Jo looked a great deal more relaxed now that she knew it wasn't. Emily looked over at Paige. She looked so solemn, but her movements were sure and confident. Emily wondered how many locker rooms Paige had been in over the years. Paige disappeared into a bathroom stall to change into her suit while the other four girls stripped down in front of one another; it was nothing they hadn't seen before. When everyone was changed (Paige with a towel wrapped around her waist) they went back into the hall. Tuck was pacing around, a darker shape in the already dark hallway, waiting for them.
Emily hadn't turned on any lights yet, partially because it was more fun that way and also, she wasn't familiar with this part of the building, so she didn't know where the switches were. Whoever had designed the fitness center must have thought it funny to put all the light switches nowhere obvious. They all seemed to be the middle of the room or hidden in some master panel that controlled entire wings of the building. Due to this lack of light, Emily fumbled trying to find the right key. She was also shivering slightly in the hallway wearing just her bikini. Finally, she got the door unlocked and walked into the natatorium, the others following her lead.
Although the pool was on the lower level, it was situated on the side of the building and had a row of large windows running along the very top of the outside wall. Moonlight, and also some street lamps, probably, were shining in and playing off the water, giving the humid room a blue, shimmering glow. It reminded Emily of what a kaleidoscope might look like it only one color segmented and churned in the cylinder. It was mesmerizing.
The others had all moved down to the end of the pool that wasn't roped off into lanes and Emily watched as the three girls all seized Tuck, who was screaming in a shrill voice, by his arms and legs and threw him into the water with a loud splash. Then they proceeded to try to push each other in as Tuck grabbed at their legs from the side of the pool. Emily laughed at them for a moment and then turned around until her eyes fell on Paige.
If the train yard was Emily's cathedral, this was Paige's. She had shed the towel and was crouched at the edge of the pool, skimming her fingers across the very top of the water. Her body was even more than Emily could have imagined. More toned, more soft, more angular, more tense, more calm, more alert. She was an enigma. Her body seemed to ripple as the light reflected off the water and across Paige's creamy skin as she stood up and began to stretch. Her flexibility was incredible. Her limbs looked like ribbons flowing away from her torso and Emily once again acknowledged how similar Paige was to her brother; she undoubtedly had the grace of a dancer.
After a few minutes of stretching, Paige climbed up on one of the diving platforms and bent her body into a crouch Emily had seen swimmers take when she watched the Olympics. She was so beautiful like this, completely in her element. Paige had brought her cap and goggles, but she'd left them at the edge of the pool. Emily understood instinctively that Paige didn't want anything to separate her from the water in these first few laps. Emily knew it because, sometimes, she couldn't help but take a Sharpie and write scraps of poetry all over the skin of her arms and legs, hoping that something of the words themselves would seep into her innermost being. It was this desire to be consumed by what one loved and Emily was no stranger to it.
Emily watched, utterly entranced as Paige let her body go, springing forward with the unbridled joy of a dog just let off its leash. She sliced into the water and it streamed around her briefly before it engulfed her completely. Images and words streamed through Emily's mind as she watched Paige swim, attempting to articulate something of this experience that she might be able to write down later. What she settled on was this: if Emily had been drowning, Paige would have been the prayer that left her blue lips. If life were a pilgrimage, Paige would have been the stream that broke forth when the saint's foot brushed the parched earth, that place toward which Emily was traveling.