Page 59 of Breathing Under Water

“Glory, please, it’s me, your granddaughter.”

“I have to...” She turns back toward the table as if she’s checking for something, and then looks back at me. “I can’t findit. Not here.” She moves around to the other side of the table, tilting the little napkin dispenser and the plastic salt and pepper shakers, looking under each one.

She looks toward the room’s exit, mumbling something I can’t make out. And then I catch sight of Mauricia, one of the nurses, hurrying toward us.

“Hold up there, Gloria,” Mauricia says in a loud, overly upbeat voice. “I was hoping I could walk along with you to your room. Do you mind waiting on me for just one moment while I have a word with my friend?”

Glory looks back at Mauricia, her gaze still steely. But after a second, she gives a curt nod.

The nurse tips her head to the side, indicating I should walk a few steps with her.

“I’m so sorry, McKenna,” she says. “She’s been like this all morning. We took her on an early morning walk before breakfast and the agitation died down, but she hasn’t come back to herself yet.”

“But she will, right? Come back to herself, I mean.” I ask every time I see her like this, and I always get some version of the same answer.

Mauricia glances at Glory, who’s gone back to rearranging things on the table, still looking for whatever list she imagines is missing. “Most likely. But once the fits start coming like this, no one can say which lucid moment is the last. I’m so sorry, sweetie. Why don’t you let me get her settled back in her room, and you go hang outside a bit? Maybe in another twenty minutes she could be ready for a visitor.”

I wander out to the garden, where wide walkways are surrounded by the kinds of flowers I generally hate. They’rethe same types everyone brought when my mom was dying: orange-red daylilies, yellow zinnias, some pink coneflowers. None of the less common ones that Glory loved adding to her garden, like chocolate cosmos, or our favorite, the blue morning glories.

I’m the only one outside, so I settle on a bench, hoping I won’t have to be alone with my thoughts for too long.

Leaning my head back to let the sun warm my face, I start running calculations in my head again, the same ones I’ve been going over since I left the bank. Except now I have to recalibrate, accounting for the fact that without my spot on the team, I no longer qualify for any scholarship money.

Back when Glory and I first started exploring different colleges, I’d been so shocked by how much it could cost, even as an in-state student. By then, my heart was already set on becoming a nurse, and I was so grateful that my swimming had done just what my mom always promised it would. Thanks to all those years of practice, I’d been granted a golden ticket, with access to a life I’d never have been able to afford otherwise. I’d been so close to the finish line.

Until I went and ruined it all.

I’m filled with so much shame that it’s hard to breathe. What my mother would think if she could see me now. Imagining her reaction, I feel a million splinters shooting through my veins. After all the things we sacrificed so I could follow my dreams and get a nursing degree, I’ve landed at a place where it may have all been for nothing.

With the proceeds from the house, I should have enough to pay the ongoing expenses for Glory’s care and either my tuition or my housing, but not both. I wish I could just move in withLark or Rae, but their rooms are so tiny already. I’m lucky as it is that they’ve agreed to house me for the few weeks until school starts. I can hardly ask for two more years of hospitality. Maybe if I rotated between all my different teammates, I wouldn’t be too much of an imposition on any particular person, but the idea feels ridiculous. Even though all my earthly belongings are currently stuffed inside the trunk of Glory’s car, I do need a place to live.

As I scroll through apartment rentals on my phone, I’m floored by how expensive they are. Page after page, everything is so far outside my budget that it’s laughable.

When I glance at the time, I realize I’ve been waiting more than half an hour for Mauricia. I should probably go back in, check to make sure Glory’s okay, but my phone rings, Lark’s name lighting up the screen. Even though I knew she’d call at the first opportunity after witnessing the scene at the pool earlier, I’m still so relieved to be hearing from her.

“Hey,” I say into the phone, holding back a sob. Maybe she can talk to Coach. Maybe if the whole team rallies behind me, he’ll reconsider.

“McKenna, how could you?” Her voice is harsh, accusatory, not at all the soft embrace I’d been waiting for.

“How could I...?” It takes me a second to catch on. “You’re taking Coach’s side?” I balk.

“You realize that your actions put the entire swim team at risk. This affects all of us, you know. We’re all connected.”

“But I didn’t do it!” I argue. “How could you even think that I would?”

“Darian saw you.”

“Darian? What are you talking about? He saw me what?”

“You were at the dumpster, soaking wet, like you’d been out in the rain for a good long while. Looking a wreck. He saw you.”

It takes me a second to piece together what she’s saying, and then I get it. “No, Lark! I was picking up food at Chipotle.”

“Which just so happens to be not so far from the club,” she says as if she’s solved the case.

“Yeah, and neither is my house! I wanted Chipotle for dinner, so I used their dumpster for some of the last crap I had to toss before the move. What was Darian even doing in town? And why are you talking to him?”

“That’s not really the point right now.” Her voice is all sharp edges. “He knows what he saw.”