Everyone walked toward the pile of tubes, and my pulse began to race. The tubes were about eight feet from the corner of the pool. It was going to be one of those moments, when I had to ask someone for help.
I hated that.
Stuck, I clung there to the side, watching everyone else get a tube and then wander toward the pool edge. Nobody seemed aware of me, which would usually suit me just fine. Allison and Daniel were the last two on the pool deck, and I fixed my eyes on her, hoping she’d look my way.
It worked. She stopped on her way back toward the pool and smiled at me. She pointed at the tube in her hands, and then at me. I nodded gratefully, and she tossed it. But just as I caught it, I saw Daniel’s gaze land on me. And then his brow furrowed, and he looked around, his glance landing on my wheelchair across the way.
Daniel scratched his ear, frowning. He knelt down by the side of the pool. “You know, this gets a little rough sometimes. It’s hard to stay in the tube.”
My face began to heat. “It’s fine,” I told him. “I’m a strong swimmer.”
But then, because there is always enough time each day for a moment of pure mortification, I had trouble getting into the tube. It was larger than the ones that aqua trainer Heather had found to practice with. So it took three tries to hoist myself up and over the edge. The rules — which Daniel began reading aloud — required that each player’s “derriere” be seated in the middle of the tube before taking possession of the ball. Furthermore, it was legal to tip any player holding the ball out of his or her tube, forcing that player to give up the ball.
“So now let’s mix it up,” Daniel called. “We’ll scrimmage, seven minutes a period.” He dug into a sack of pinny vests, tossing them to four players.
I didn’t have a pinny, so that put me on Daniel’s team. Allison was on the other. I recognized most of my teammates from the dining hall, but I didn’t know all their names. Daniel blew his whistle, and play began.
The other team got the ball and began passing. I figured out how to propel myself around with my hands as flippers. I noticed that only a couple of people managed to use their feet as well. You had to be pretty tall — with long legs dangling over the tube — to kick effectively. For once, having useless legs was not going to be much of a disadvantage. We were all flopping about like flounders, trying to maneuver. And more than one person began to laugh at the effort.
Inner tube water polo was not a game that took itself too seriously.
A lanky guy named Mike intercepted the ball, passing it to Daniel. I spun quickly, positioning myself in front of the net. “Open!” I called, lifting my arms. But Daniel passed it to another of our teammates, this one further from the goal. She shot and missed.
And then, that scenario repeated itself a dozen more times.
By the time Daniel blew the whistle, I was hopping mad. I knew the problem wasn’t that my teammates thought I’d drop the ball. There was plenty of that happening anyway. The trouble was that my Beaumont teammates — all of whom had seen me crutching and wheeling around the dining hall — thought I was fragile. They were afraid to put me in the position of being tube tackled. It was ridiculous. And I was so frustrated I wanted to spit.
“Hey, Daniel!” a voice called from the other end of the pool, where another team was having their own practice. “Wanna rumble?”
Daniel looked over his crew. “If rumble is a crass American word for scrimmage, I’d say we’re up for it.”
“Sure!” Allison said. “Let’s show Turner House who’s boss.”
The Turner captain, a skinny guy in a little Speedo, brought his people down to our end. “We’ve only got six tonight. Shall we play six on six, or do you want to send us a guy? Or a gal?”
“I’ll go!” I raised my hand.
The Turner guy nodded. “Great. Who’s keeping time?”
I paddled over to the Turner side, toward the faces of people I didn’t recognize. When the whistle blew, I put myself right into the center of the action. It only took a minute until one of my new Turner teammates saw me open and lobbed me the ball. I caught it — thank God — and passed. A couple of minutes later I caught a pass even closer to the goal.
Our Beaumont Goalie was a big, bearded guy called “bear.” He’d obviously been chosen for his girth rather than his skills. I faked to the left, and he totally went for it. While I had the ball, nobody on the Beaumont team made a move to dump me. I could have held onto that thing all day long. But I didn’t. With speed and authority, I nailed the ball into the right hand corner of the net.
My adopted teammates cheered, and I began to enjoy myself.
I passed the ball several more times after that, playing it safe. But when another window presented itself, I tried the same thing again. The only one who had learned his lesson was the goalie — he was a bit harder to decoy the second time. But I managed. The rest of the Beaumonters hung back again while I held the ball.
Fools. I scored twice more before they got tired of it.
On my next possession, Alison wised up. While I was lining up my shot, she sailed into my tube, levering me towards the water. I managed to pass the ball over her head before she upended me. I flopped into the pool with a splash. We were both laughing when I came back to the surface.
After that, the gloves were off. The Beaumonters stopped being afraid of me, and so I had to pass more often than I shot. Then, just before the whistle, the Turner captain flipped me the ball when I was right in front of the net. My hope fairy, dressed in a bikini, did a quick little cheer with silver pom poms. And I slipped the ball into the corner before the oaf knew what hit him.
Game over. Advantage Turner.
By the time it was done, I was waterlogged and panting. I heaved myself onto the side of the pool deck, twisting around to sit up. The Turner captain pushed out of the water right next to me. “Hey, thanks for playing on our side. I don’t like our chances half so well for the real game.”
I smiled. “That’s nice of you to say, but I was working an odd kind of advantage there at the beginning.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I noticed that. How come?”
I cocked my head toward the other end of the pool. “Actually, I could use a favor. That wheelchair down there belongs to me. Do you mind kicking it over here?”
He looked across the room and then back at me. Then he laughed. “Okay, I think I understand.”
I nodded. “People mean well. But sometimes they have to be taught a lesson. Sorry if I was a ball hog.”
He stood up, shaking water off his head. “Honestly, it was fun to watch.” He went off to retrieve my chair.
After I’d toweled myself off, and dried my hair against the January wind, I zipped up my fleece and wheeled myself out of the ladies’ locker room. Beside the elevators, captain Daniel leaned against the wall, arms crossed. When he saw me approaching, he straightened up. “Corey,” he said, his accent making my name sound more weighty. “I’m terribly sorry.”
Shrugging, I pressed the elevator button. “It’s okay. That sort of thing happens to me a lot.”
He shook his head. “Really, I feel like an ass.” The way he pronounced “ass,” was very British. It came out ahs. We boarded the elevator together.
“I hope you’ll come back for our game on Friday,” he said. “We need you.”
I gave him a sneaky grin. “What’s it worth to you?” I was actually flirting with him, and I had no idea why. But it was sort of fun.
“Well,” he scratched his chin. “Let me buy you an ice cream on the way home. I have a little addiction to Chunky Monkey which needs feeding.”
Surprising myself, I said yes.
“Philosophy? That sounds complicated.” I ate the last bite of my cone.
“Oh, it isn’t really,” Daniel insisted. “You get to argue your way through every seminar. What will you choose for a major?”
“I haven’t got that figured out yet,” I told him. “That, and a whole lot of other things.”
“Well then,” he said. “Best to focus on the water sports. Inspiration will strike.”
“That’s my strategy.”
“You got past our goalie pretty well there, Corey. Hopefully you can get past Turner’s on Friday.”
“Turner’s goalie has good reflexes, but he sits too far out of the net.”
Daniel had a pleasantly dry laugh. “That’s a high level of analysis for inner tube water polo. You’re a little scary, Corey. Scary for the other team, that is.” His eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled.
“I used to play hockey. Watching the goalie — it’s what I do.”
“Can’t wait until Friday, then.” He pushed back his chair.
As we left the ice cream shop, Daniel held the door. There was a bit of a slope to the floor that I did not anticipate. I propelled myself into the dark, and nearly ran over Hartley, who lurched backward.
“Whoops.” I said, grabbing my wheels.
“Jesus, Callahan,” Hartley yelped. “Are you trying to kill me?”
Daniel came to stand beside me. “If she was trying to kill you, you’d be dead already. This is something I’ve learned about Corey.”
I laughed, and Hartley looked from me to Daniel to me again, his mouth tightening. “Right.”
“I’m sorry, Hartley. Really.”
Just then, Stacia sashayed out of the adjacent door, where the ATM machines were. “Evening, Daniel,” she said. Then she took Hartley’s hand and steered him toward the library.
Without a word to me, of course.
“Cheers,” Daniel called to the two of them, and I followed him back toward the dormitories.
“I’m invisible,” I said under my breath.
“Oh, that one snubs most everybody. You’re not special.”
“Good to know,” I sighed. Though if Hartley were in love with a nice person, I might be able to bear it. But she was a monster, and he didn’t seem to mind. It drove me half insane.
“She snubs women generally,” Daniel added. “With a particular focus on the pretty ones.” I wondered if that was a compliment. “Most men aren’t good enough for her, either. She’s nice to me because I’m European. Her knowledge of British accents is not fine enough for her to hear that I’m from the wrong end of London.”
“You are full of interesting theories, Daniel.”
“It’s what I do,” he replied. We came to a stop outside of Beaumont House. “Promise me I’ll see you on Friday?”
I held up a hand for a high five. “I’ll be there. And thanks for the ice cream.”
“My pleasure.” He smacked my hand.
An hour later I turned in early, feeling truly victorious. It had been my Bravest Day Ever since coming to Harkness. It wasn’t as special as my Weirdest Night Ever, but for the first time, I felt that it was possible to move on.
I closed my eyes. But before I could fall asleep, a tiny fairy voice whispered in my ear. Hartley didn’t like to see that you were hanging out with Daniel.
In my mind’s eye, I took a tiny piece of duct tape and slapped it over her tiny lips. And then I went to sleep.
Chapter Seventeen: It's Not a Sex Toy
— Corey
The text came in about ten minutes after my first Shakespeare lecture got underway. Everything OK, Callahan?
It was rather rude to text during class, but after Hartley sent a second one asking after me, I hid my phone in my lap to answer him.
Fine! Sorry! I owe you a call. Switched classes. See you later?
Directly at noon, just as Dana and I were discussing which dining hall to favor with our business, my phone rang with Hartley’s number. “Callahan!” he bellowed into my ear. “What do you mean you switched classes?”
“Sorry, Hartley.” I went with a little white lie. “When I went to buy the textbook, it was just like you said. Exchange rates and monetary policy. The book should have come with a semester’s supply of espresso drinks. I just couldn’t do it.”
There was a silence on the other end of the line. “So you just ditched?”
“What, you’ve never dropped a class?”
Another pause. “So, are you coming to lunch, at least?”
Then I heard the garbled through-the-phone sound of someone calling him in the distance. Someone with a shrill voice. “Hartley!”
“I think you have company for lunch, no?” I said.
“Well, sure, but…” I’d never heard him at a loss for words before.
“I’ll see you at dinner, maybe,” I said. “Or swing by later. We’ll play some hockey.”
When I hung up, Dana’s eyes danced. “You really cut him loose, didn’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Playing hard to get?” she asked.
I shook my head. “It’s just pure survival,” I told her. “And it’s really not as hard as I thought it would be.”
— Hartley
Houston, we have a problem.
I lay on my bed, staring at the steadily darkening ceiling. Classes were done for the day, and it was still that blissful early part of the term when only the overachievers had begun to do any homework. So I had plenty of time to overanalyze my friend’s behavior.
See, I didn’t think it was all that weird that Corey didn’t call me once over break. Ours was not a phone-based friendship. But when she got back, she didn’t stop by. And then the ditched lunch, and the dropped class? It couldn’t all be coincidence.
Corey was avoiding me.
Why would you complicate our friendship? She’d asked me that question, and I’d given her some smartass answer. But, hell. If I knew she was going to drop me like a puck, I wouldn’t have gone there.
I should never have gone there.
As I lay there worrying about this, the dusk turned to pitch black. My phone lit the bed with a text message from Stacia.
Dinner?
It was five-thirty, and my stomach growled its approval. But I didn’t text her back because there was something I had to figure out. I got up and put on a jacket. Then I crossed the hall and opened the door. Dana and Corey were sitting hip to hip on the sofa, a laptop in front of them. So far as I could tell, they were watching cat videos on YouTube. “Dinner time, girls,” I said. “Shake a leg, it’s pasta bar night.”
“Shake a leg?” Corey asked. “Did you really just say that to me?”
“I was being ironical, Callahan. Seriously, now. That line gets long. It’s hard on a gimp.”
Dana and Corey shared a glance that I could not interpret. Corey shrugged. Then Dana snapped her laptop shut. “Okay. I’m in.” She tossed Corey her coat and put on her own.
Together, we headed into the crisp January night. Maybe she wasn’t avoiding me after all.
“I heard we’re getting snow,” Corey said.
“That ought to make the morning commute fun,” I complained. It was nice to be out of a cast, but I still wasn’t one hundred percent.
“Oh, it will be worth it,” Corey said. “I love snow.”
“I can’t wait,” Dana agreed.
“What kind of happy pills are the two of you on?” I asked, dragging my cane between steps. The end of the day still made my leg ache. “You should score me some.”
“We’re just high on life,” Corey said, and Dana shot her an amused look.
When we got to Beaumont, Corey and I took the service elevator together, while Dana nabbed us a spot in line. “You know,” Corey said as the ancient lift began to move, “I’ve missed the comforting sound of these gears grinding.”
“Me too.” Since she sounded just like old times, I began to relax.
Until Stacia arrived.
We were seated and tucking into our pasta when my girlfriend plunked down next to me. Without a word to Dana or Corey, she opened with a complaint. “Hartley, you didn’t return my text.”
I went for the innocent look. “Sorry, hottie. What did you need?”
She tossed her hair. “Well, the hockey team has Friday off, and Fairfax
is having a little party. I told him we’d be there.”
Dana and Corey exchanged another loaded glance. And I didn’t blame them. Stacia wasn’t the warmest creature. I wiped my mouth and thought over my answer. I’d rather not argue with her in front of my friends, but Fairfax’s party wasn’t that high on my list. “I don’t know about Friday, Stacia. Maybe not this time.”
Her perfectly-styled eyebrows wrinkled in distress. “But we have to. You can climb the stairs slowly. I’ll wait with you.”
Huh. While I was glad that Stacia had finally decided to remember my injury now that it was almost healed, that wasn’t really the problem. “I appreciate that. But I told Bridger that I’d go with him to the basketball game. Of course you’re welcome to come along. You too, guys,” I lifted my soda glass toward Corey and Dana.
Stacia pouted. “A basketball game? What about Fairfax?”
I didn’t want to go there, but she wasn’t going to let it drop. “What about him? He hasn’t been that good a friend this year, if you want to know the truth. Hell, my digital teammates on RealStix have been nicer.”
“Oh!” Corey slapped the table, and then turned around to get into the bag on the back of her chair. “Hartley, you just reminded me. I’ve had this in my book bag since before break.” She dug out a small package with Happy Birthday paper on it. “Somehow I didn’t get around to giving it to you on your birthday. I’m not sure how that happened.”
She met my eyes then, just in time to see me freeze up. Damn, I wasn’t ready for that. My neck got hot as I took the gift from her hand. “Thanks, Callahan. You shouldn’t have.” I set it down on the table and picked up my drink.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked. “It’s not, like, sex toys or anything.”
Because I’m suave like that, I actually choked on my soda.
“Good grief, are you okay?” Stacia asked, whacking me on the back. She was the only human alive who could manage to sound pissed off that her boyfriend was struggling for breath.
“Went down the wrong pipe?” Corey asked.