Swimming Read Online Free Page A

I say, the half-chewed Neapolitan caramel in my mouth clinging to my teeth.
    That’s not hungry. When you’re hungry, you’ll feel it, and when you feel it, I’ll feel it .
    In the locker room Lilly Cocoplat and I like to keep close track of Dolphin developments. Lilly uses her shampoo as a microphone. We’re surprised if someone cries; it’s just for fun. Lilly Cocoplat is older than her years and has always made me older than mine. When fellow Dolphins aren’t laughing, they’re hating us.
    Listen up, Dolphins. Poor Kelly continues to house one bald vagina between surprisingly hairy legs . Lilly’s talking into a bottle of Herbal Essences shampoo.
    I jump up. I agree with you there, Lill; it’s quite a shocker and I’d have to say: Kelly Hill’s naked vagina looks like an itty-bitty foot .
    A baby’s foot .
    And then we laugh so hard it’s impossible to stop.
    Coach Stan separates us as much as possible. If I’m in lane five, she’s in lane one. If she’s doing sit-ups, I’m treading water with weights on my ankles, but I still have laughing fits that almost get me killed. I say: I can’t help it. She just cracks me up when Coach Stan pulls me choking out of the water with one strong arm. But we have too many things pulling us together for anything to pull us apart. We put the same Adam Ant song on our Walkmans at the same time, pushing play at the count of three, then we sing and dance.
Don’t drink don’t smoke what do you do
Must be something la la
    When I close my eyes, I’m saturated in a deep, peaceful, perfectly entitled, one hundred percent natural love of life and all life’s things. I’m pulling myself through water at the end of a long swim, reaching for the endorphin torpor as the fatigue washes over me. Lilly Cocoplat makes me laugh so hard I choke on my own spit. It hurts to write with a pencil, to sit down on a chair, to pee, to take off my sweater, to run up the stairs, to answer the phone, to open a book, to get in a car, to get out of a car, to take off my shoes, to lie down on my bed. The ache is proof of an efficient swim; the more I ache, the faster I become. But when the sun cuts through the atrium and the steam rises up from the pool, the water takes on a bright, edgy haze and I lose myself. I watch my shadow crawl across the tiles below and don’t feel the pain of doing as many as fifty sets although all the other Dolphins bitterly complain. All I feel is the sweet shuddering relief with each breath I draw and the relentless silence of my mind. I don’t mention these bouts of timeless love of the infinite universe to anyone, not even Lilly.
    Lilly started swimming when she was diagnosed with asthma, but I don’t have anything specifically wrong with me yet. I just like swimming and all the things that happen around it. A cute collegiate swimmer comes out on deck to talk to one of the assistant coaches, some kids are making out in the parking lot and don’t care who knows, a Dolphin brings a Playgirl hidden in her backpack and we take turns looking at sad guys with happy sausages looking out the windows of their unzipped jeans. And when there’s a sleepover at a Dolphin’s house, no one sleeps, but we wake up at six and swim for two hours anyway because the harder it is, the more we suffer, and the more we suffer, the closer we become.
    Coach Stan stands next to the edge of the pool with a whistle in his teeth and a grim look in his eyes. I love training in the Olympic pool, watching the big shots work out, listening to their coaches scream MOVE YOUR ASS; THIS AIN ‘ T YESTERDAY . We look at each other and laugh— He just said ASS — then we swim for an hour, an hour and a half, and dry off eating the healthy fig s’mores that Lilly Cocoplat’s mother made. In the summer I’m a free agent, in the water so long my hair emerges from my head like strings of nylon.
    At the annual banquet last year Coach Stan took Leonard aside and said: I’d like to see what would