I look up see him watching me, watching her, the girl in front. I pause mid stroke and nearly grin up at him; the girl in front is so slow. I’ve swum with her for two years now, in the same lane even, but I don’t even know her name. I might have learned it once, then just tossed it aside, more rubbish, more crap I don’t need to waste my time on. But I don’t grin at him, I just duck back under, now a little behind because I stopped, but she’s so slow that I catch up easily.
You're just standing there, on the edge watching. Watching me. I stick to breaststroke, not wanting to display my not-so-amazing backstroke abilities when you’re watching. I have the best breaststroke on the team, but my backstroke sucks. I look up again, you‘re still watching me. What are you thinking about? Are you daydreaming? Lost in an ever-present void of emptiness? I don’t want to look at you, not your eyes, because of what you did to me; I can’t look into your eyes again. Your chocolate-brown eyes will make me melt; make me find a hopeless reason to forgive you. So I stare at your toe.
I’m waiting, waiting for the slow girl. I’ve named her Susan because she seems like one, I’m waiting for her to reach to wall, and then for the other girls in my lane, only one of which I’ve bothered to find out their name. You’re trying to catch my gaze, but I’m not ready. Not ready for that, not ready for you. Not ready to learn Susan’s name.
I push hard off the wall, my arms together, my toes pointed, skimming to bottom of the pool, just thinking. I stroke to the surface to perform my perfect butterfly, my arms going high and out, then splashing down, then coming back up again. I reach the other side, on my back; I cringe with every stroke, wincing every time my arms splash back into the water, knowing that you’re watching me. It’s a relief when my coach yells at us to get out of the water, we’ve gone over and there’s a diving class directing after.
“Team, Break!” I get out; my things gathered in my arms, I have to walk past you because you haven’t moved. Only your eyes, you’re watching me. I turn up the stairs and see you walking out the door.
“Good,” I think in my head, “I’ve escaped you.” I change slowly, in case you’re hanging out in the lobby, so I’m the last one in the locker room. I walk out the door... and right into your trap. You’re sitting on that glossy wooden bench just outside, watching every time the blue door opened. But you didn’t have to; you knew I’d be last. You set it up for me to be last.
“Georgia,” you say, but quite frankly, I’m not interested. I try to duck past you, but you grab my arm. “I-” You start to talk but I cut you off.
“Don’t even try it Alex, don’t even bother.” There is a pained look on your face, like you don’t want to make trouble, you want to make things right. I see that your eyes are red and puffy. I convince myself that it must be the chlorine. “That’s why he stopped swimming; he’s allergic to the chlorine,” I think. You don’t miss me, you can’t miss me. I see you every day, at school you’re my shadow, trying to make me talk. You’ve succeeded in another thing; I’ve talked to you now. I pull my hood over my head and try to get by again, but you refuse to let me pass.
I glare, “What the hell do you want with me, Alex? What could you possibly want now?” I’ve talked now, and all that emotion towards him gets let out in one big breath, one big sentence. “You stalk me at school, stop swimming, but then stalk me here too! You finally get up the courage to talk to me, not that I want to be talking to you now, and what you say, try to say, is ‘I’m sorry?!’ ‘Sorry’ doesn’t cut it; ‘sorry’ doesn’t take back what you did! ‘Sorry’ is a lame excuse that only someone like you would use!”
I stop, daring him to argue. A door down the hall slams, footsteps echo. He seems to falter under my gaze, but when he speaks, he does it calmly. “And what exactly is your definition of ‘someone like me?’” He’s got me.
“An idiot.” But even before I said those words, even in my head, i knew they were stupid words. You flinch now, and I try not to think that the redness in your eyes is from anything other than chlorine. I push the images of you swimming on a different team out of my head, trying not to let my mind settle on the fact that swimming is your favorite thing, that you wouldn’t give it up for anything... well, maybe one thing. Because i know that you would give up everything for me. Every stupid thing I’ve done, every comment, the fact that I’ve ignored you for a month now... that fact that I’m right about you, what you did to me... You’d forgive me for anything. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to forgive you.
I push past you one more time, and this time you don’t bother stopping me, you let me run out into the hall, you let me run down the stairs, you let me run to the lobby where my dad is waiting all decked out in that leather jacket that I love so much. You let me escape that building, that chlorine smelling, sweat smelling, baby crying, too big YMCA building and onto the street. And I know; when I hop into the car and tell my dad to step on it, that you’ve already forgiven me for bolting out on you; you’ve already made up your mind. “Well,” I think in my head. “I’ve made up my mind too, don’t worry.”
Driving into my driveway is a relief, the one place you can’t find me, the one place you can’t talk to me, or question me, and the one place I’m safe. Because I don’t want to answer your questions, I don’t want to see your face, hear your voice... listen to you.
My dad gets out of the car; “Make sure the light is off when you get out” is all he says to me. All he cares about is that i don’t run down the battery on his stupid 78camaro.
“Mhm,” is all I say, then sigh, close my eyes and lean my forehead up against the dashboard. If you found out, then everybody would find out, the whole world would know, you’d... you’d spill the beans. You’d tell everybody the reason my dad doesn’t call me ‘love bug’ anymore. Tell everybody why my mom sits at her computer day after day after day and the only thing she says to me is “Have you eaten yet?” The reason my sister confines herself to her room and hardly ever talks to me, and when she does, it’s short and abrupt.
They make me angry. If I liked my life, then I’d have one person to thank; my sister, Audrey. But I don’t value my life. She was the one who walked in on me that rainy evening, I was in the bathroom, and I had turned the bathwater on. I know that she was suspicious; I don’t take baths.
I remember that the reason she had come in was because I had been in there for about an hour. She must have wondered what was taking me so long, and knocked on the door. I don’t remember that bit though, I don’t even know if that part was true. Because after knocking so much she must have just come in. And that was when she found me unconscious in the bathtub; she must have seen all the pill bottles and known right away.
She must have taken me out of the water, and done who knows what. I just remember waking up back in my room about a day later, my family not even caring, not bothering to come see their daughter who has just tried to commit suicide... I didn’t know why they did that then. But I do now. I don’t think any of them could take it, and somehow ignoring the fact made it better... for them. Some caring family. I guess that now I just have to accept it; just have to accept my miserable, pitiful, boring, blank, un-noteworthy, stupid life. A life that despite my efforts somehow keeps going. And live with it.
I pull my head from the dashboard; I’ve left a squiggly snake skin pattern on my face from leaning into it for so long. The light in the car has gone out automatically, and my sister comes out wearing shorts and a tank top, going for a run even though it’s eight o’clock and the middle of winter. She sees me in the car and i can see her mouth moving, moving like she wants to say something. If she wants to apologize for saving my life, I’ll let her. If she wants to tell me that mom said something to dad to tell me but dad didn’t want to say it to me so he told her to tell me, then, basically, no.
She opens the car door and does just what I thought she would. “Dad says, er, you’d better get out of the car because he doesn’t want the cops coming and seeing you asleep...out here…” Her voice trails off after that and she finishes lamely. I look at her for a moment, and freeze as I see her lips moving, silently mouthing something I never thought I’d hear, “I don’t want you out here either…”
I get out of the car, slam the door, and face her, “Well if dad says I should; then I should obviously do it!” I storm up to the house, pretending I hadn’t noticed anything, the windows lit up yellow, warm and inviting. But I can’t bring myself to go in.
So I sit. I sit on my swing and think. About you; pushing all thoughts of Audrey from my mind. If you hadn’t been so… so you, then none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have broken my promise and you wouldn’t have done what you did to me. You wouldn’t have betrayed my secret. My butterfly would still be perfect; I wouldn’t be drowning anymore. You wouldn’t have made it so I needed to stop. So I tried to commit suicide. That is what you’ve been trying to ask me about. You’re probably wondering if it’s true. But I’m not going to tell you. Because you’ll probably find out anyway someday and come rushing up to me, begging endlessly for forgiveness. You already suspect, but I don’t want you to find out that it was true. That it is true. That it’s all your fault. I watch, from the swing, as my sisters shadow disappears around a corner, fading into a street lamp.
A slight drizzle of rain, the kind that feels like nothing but will soak you to the bone, has started to fall. I look back the way Audrey went; “I love you…” I whisper, feeling the words on my tongue for the first time in forever.
•

Until recently, I still thought I was worthless.
I watch the sidewalk and see my sister’s approaching figure. I run out of the gate like I did when I was younger and throw myself into her arms, I feel her tense, then her arms relax, and wrap around me to, her face buried in my hair. And I can feel the tears splatting on to my head, and I whisper into the dark, “I miss you,” and she nods, her chin bumping my face.

I smile somewhat in the dark, through the tears. I’m not drowning anymore, I realize. I can forgive, though I can’t forget. I can change things, because I know that thins need to be changed.
“I love you,” she whispers in the dark, as if tasting the words she hasn’t tasted in so long.
My butterfly is perfect again.