The Swimming Hole

By Candace Webb

Would she be Medusa or a sty today? Guess-the-insult was part of Sharon’s before-school routine. Her daily challenge. Sharon put on her blue socks with cartoon snakes and pondered her options. So far, her favorite was shit machine.

At lunch, Sharon sat by herself in the cafeteria, which was cavernous, with floor-to-ceiling windows. She preferred the far-right corner, where she was protected by two walls, and always shielded her face with a book. For reading, of course, but it also ensured she’d never see people pointing at her, and any lobbed objects would ricochet off the cover instead of smacking her in the nose or mouth.

The second Friday in June, a clacking of feet on the linoleum floor tiles became louder and then stopped in front of her. Light pink toenails in white, strappy sandals. Sharon stilled and uncrossed her ankles. Anchored her feet to the floor. She looked up, raising the book with her head so that it covered her face from the nose down. It was Jenny. Everyone knew Jenny because she was tall and blonde, a walking lighthouse. After checking that her hands were free of weapons, Sharon lowered the book.

Jenny looked down at her. “You swim?” She said this with no expression on her face. Only her jaw moved as she pummeled her gum. Thwack, thwack.

“Yeah?” Sharon’s voice was a squeak. Since moving here, half of whatever she said came out as a question.

“We’re going tomorrow. If you want to come. We can pick you up.” Jenny cracked the gum, blew a monstrous pink bubble, and then opened her mouth wide to swallow it. She produced a one-second smile. It was like an elastic: her lips stretched thin and immediately retracted.

“Sure?” Why did she say that? She didn’t want to go.

“We’ll pick you up after lunch. My sister’s driving. She has a white car.”

Later, Sharon realized she’d forgotten to ask where they were going and hadn’t gotten Jenny’s number.

Sharon’s mom beamed when she told her. “Oh good. You’re making friends.”

“No, I’m going swimming.” Normally, she’d just send a text and cancel, but she had no way of reaching Jenny now.

Her mom sighed, “Sharon, it’s good to be social. It’s healthy.”

Sharon imitated her mom’s sigh, “Mom,” and stomped up the stairs. She closed her bedroom door. Hard enough to be satisfying but not hard enough to incite a lecture about not slamming doors.

This is what her mom refused to understand: she didn’t want friends here. She wanted her old friends from Toronto. They had moved to Scotsville last November. Her mom called it her happy place because she used to come here all the time when she was in grad school to see bands at the White Horse Inn or eat at the restaurant in the old train station. But it wasn’t Sharon’s happy place. The kids at the new school were demons. The first week, a kid had written “Bitch” on her locker with a Sharpie, and every new week had brought a new incident. Just yesterday, a boy had bumped into her accidentally-on-purpose, scattering her books like buckshot.

Her mom said the kids’ behavior was typical for a small town; outsiders were suspect, and they would latch onto anything that made Sharon different. Like being from anywhere else.

Before they left Toronto, Sharon whined about the upcoming move—a lot. But only to her friends. It was useless to whine to her mom. Her mom liked to make unilateral decisions. If Sharon, or anyone else, protested, she’d hammer at them until their resistance was driven down. Near the end of her last school year in the city, Sharon had been at the dining room table doing math homework when her mom sidled up to her, eyeing her like a problem to solve.

“Sharon, when do you have to choose your classes for next year?”

The math problem appeared nonsensical. Sharon blinked. “Next week, I think?”

When she told her mom she’d already chosen her classes, her mom frowned and moved behind her. “Show me.”

Sharon pulled up her classes. Her stomach was tangled rope.

“French, French literature, Canadian literature, art, art history, biology. At least there’s one science class in there. What about math, accounting, economics? You can’t just take arts classes.”

She slid a chair over, sat down beside Sharon, and dragged the laptop toward her. She added math, chemistry, and accounting and removed French literature, art, and art history. Sharon winced. She curled her fingers and dug her nails into her palms.

Her voice came out as a whisper. “But I’m not interested in business and math.”

“Well, it’s practical. You need to be able to get a real job. Not like me. You can’t make any money from the arts. Look at me. I can barely support you, and I haven’t sold a piece of art since before you were born. Please. Do something practical. We don’t have family money…” This was a well-worn rant, and once her mom got going, it would be a while before she wound down. Sharon drifted off in plain sight. She thought about the party on Friday, even had time to pick out an entire outfit including shoes and earrings before her mom was interrupted by the chime of an incoming text.

They packed up their one-bedroom apartment on the Danforth on a rainy, October Sunday.

Her mom rhapsodized about Scotsville. “It’s so pretty. And there’s an amazing arts community. We won’t have to spend all our money on rent anymore. It’ll be great. You’ll see.”

Sharon shoved her teddy bear into a box. “Couldn’t we just move to Hamilton?”

Her mom looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. “Hamilton? It’s so dreary and industrial. You can’t even breathe there. The air is full of soot from all the steel mills. Do you know when I was a kid, we couldn’t open our windows in the summer? You’ll get asthma…”

She let her mother hammer away and closed the flaps of the box. The tape screeched when she ripped it from the dispenser. Sharon didn’t point out that her grandparents lived five blocks from the mill, and that there were plenty of other neighborhoods in Hamilton. She didn’t remind her mom that she was tearing her away from her friends in eleventh grade. That she sucked. Because resistance was futile.

Around noon on Saturday, a white Toyota Corolla pulled up to the house. Sharon waited. No one got out, and then the horn blared.

Her mom called, “Sharon, your friends are here!”

“Not my friends,” she muttered.

More horn. She grabbed her backpack, stuffed with a towel, sunscreen, and water, and opened the door. She bared her teeth in what she hoped was a smile and tried not to trip on her way down the steps.

Sharon had begged her mom to let her drive to the swimming hole. She’d had a nightmare about the other kids driving her miles from town and dropping her off in the woods. Heard them cackling as the tires churned up gravel that pelted her face. But her mom needed the car, so she was stuck driving with Jenny.

Jenny was in the passenger’s seat beside another tall, blonde girl. She introduced her as her sister and said her name, but it evaporated as soon as Sharon heard it. Another girl sat in the back. Her name vaporized too, but Sharon remembered that it started with “T.” But was it Tammy? Or Tracy? When Sharon had one leg in the backseat, the jar jerked backward. She tumbled forward, mashing her face into the black leather back of the front seat; it was spongy and hard and smelled like gasoline and dirty socks. She managed to get her other leg in and close the door before the car lurched forward, hurling her backwards into her seat. The car bounced and creaked over the potholed gravel as Sharon tugged the seatbelt across her chest. Her muscles contracted, and she perched on the seat like a stone gargoyle. She managed to squeak out, “Hi,” before her throat closed as if a balloon had been blown up, trapping any other words in her chest.

Once on the smooth pavement of the highway, Jenny’s sister floored it. They passed the entrance to the quarry and turned onto the next dirt road. The tires squealed, and Sharon slammed into the door. About a half-mile down the road, Jenny’s sister slammed on the brakes and put the car in park. At least it had been a short drive.

The branch of an apple tree, fragrant with blossoms it was beginning to lose, grasped Sharon’s hair as she climbed out of the car. The white flowers were benign, but the rest of the tree was malevolent. She twisted and batted at the branches but only became more entangled.

“Stop moving. You’re just making it worse.” Jenny stopped beside her. She lifted one of the strands from the crooked branch and pried it loose with delicate movements. The strand flopped down and grazed her cheek. Then Jenny plucked a blossom and placed it behind Sharon’s ear. “You’re a tree sprite.” She laughed and followed the other girls down the overgrown, muddy incline to the shore. Sharon was left tethered to the tree by one strand of hair. She was a statue. If she stood there long enough, would the tree engulf her? Then she would be petrified wood instead of just a petrified girl.

When she untangled the last strand of hair from the branch, Sharon surveyed the river. The shoreline was choked by weeds, and there were only a few flat boulders to sit on. The swimming hole was more of a swimming expanse, the water fast and black, coiling around the rocks like snakes. A covered bridge loomed over the river, shedding tongues of red paint. Sharon shivered, even though she was in bright sunlight.

She picked her way down the slick embankment to the rocks, grasping at grass and saplings to keep from sliding. On the largest flat rock, the other girls had laid out lush, fluffy towels decorated with sharks and jellyfish. Sharon’s was unembellished, orange and threadbare because her mom wouldn’t allow her to take the “good towels” swimming. They didn’t own beach towels.

Jenny stripped off her t-shirt and shorts. She had on a blue string bikini, which seemed over the top for swimming in the river, Sharon thought. Jenny’s skin was tanned, probably from a Spring Break trip to Cuba or Florida. Sharon averted her eyes from Jenny’s perfection. The other girls also stripped down, t-shirts lifting their hair, which then drifted back to their shoulders. They wore bikinis too: one red and one black. They plopped down on their towels and squinted up at Sharon.

“Didn’t you bring a bathing suit?” Jenny’s sister asked.

Sharon thought about stomping on her splayed fingers. “Yeah?” she mumbled.

She shimmied out of her cargo shorts, revealing bone-white legs. Her bathing suit was a purple, one-piece Speedo from her swim-team days. Unlike the other girls, she had massive shoulders and small breasts. Not to mention the beginnings of a farmer tan. She left her t-shirt on.

“You going to swim in a t-shirt?” the girl whose name started with T asked.

“Yeah? I burn.” To prove the point, she grabbed SPF 80 sunblock from her backpack and began slathering it on her legs and arms.

T girl pointed at her own legs. “It definitely helps to have a base tan,” she said. “We went to Puerto Vallarta for Spring Break. Where did you go?”

“Nowhere? We just went into Ottawa a few times.”

“Oh.” T girl looked at the river. “Fun.”

Jenny’s sister and her friend made their way up to the bridge. They stood on a plywood platform, holding hands. They were about to jump when T must have realized she was still holding her phone. She hurled it at the shore in a last-minute attempt to keep it dry. But the phone didn’t make it; it hit a rock with a thwack, and the blue plastic case shattered, pieces scattering like shrapnel.

Jenny’s sister hollered, “Oh shit!”

But T girl just shrugged. She grabbed Jenny’s sister’s arm, and they flung themselves from the bridge, squealing.

Sharon wasn’t surprised when Jenny’s sister and T girl said she should jump off the bridge too. She suspected that this was why she’d been invited in the first place.

“We’ve all done it,” they said, arms crossed, challenge in their eyes.

Jenny smiled like an apology. Sharon didn’t hesitate. She pushed past Jenny and the other girls and charged the bridge. She heard them panting behind her, the drumbeat of their bare feet hollow on the moist earth. Sharon climbed onto the platform and surveyed the river below to read the currents before jumping. The water moved fast, and it would be good to have some idea where it would take her. But she didn’t have time. She was shoved forward and toppled off the plank. Laughter above, black water below. She squeezed her eyes shut, imagining the leering globes of their faces. Her limbs stiffened as she braced herself. Her back hit the water first with a slap. A thousand needles pricked her, and spray flew up like a cage. When Sharon opened her eyes, she saw little. The water was clear, but everything was blurred by the speed of the river. A flash of silver. Distant dark hulks. The river began pushing her body sideways. But then her years of swim training kicked in. She turned downriver, straightening her body like an arrow. She propelled herself as far as she could go beneath the surface. When she popped up for breath, Sharon saw riffles ahead. Before she could swim around them, she was hurled at a clump of rocks and branches. She was mauled and pounded. Skin peeled from her knees and elbows—there would be bruises for sure. The water dragged her back in. She grasped at twigs. They snapped, and the river slammed her into a boulder. The water kept nudging her, trying to usher her back into the current. She threw her arms around the boulder. Clasped her wrists and wrapped her legs around too, crossing her ankles. Her breath was coming in huffs; her heart was a drumroll. Swim meets had not prepared her for this. She pressed her cheek against the rock and drew in a long breath. The water tumbled around her.

Sharon heard yelling. Jenny? A pulse of panic leapt from her stomach to throat. She had to get out of here before they saw her. Who knew what Jenny’s sister and T girl would do next? She was at least twenty feet from the nearest shore. If she could make it to the next rock over, it was shallow the rest of the way, except for a tiny pool at the base of a massive boulder.

She stretched one arm and leg toward the next rock, wishing she were an octopus. The water roared and frothed underneath her. She counted to three and then heaved her body across the divide. She peeked upstream. If they looked, they would see her draped over the rock. Please don’t look, please don’t look, she thought. The other girls were swimming, but Jenny was on her knees, a hand cupped over her eyes, scanning the water. Her blonde ponytail flicked back and forth as she swiveled her head from side to side. Like a prairie dog on the lookout for predators.

Sharon stepped into the shallows and scrambled in the direction of the shore. She made it to the pool and slid in. She looked upstream again. Her heart bounced. Jenny’s sister and T girl were out of the water now. Jenny was standing, but she was facing away from the river. She gestured wildly, and she was yelling. When she poked a finger at her sister’s face, her sister grabbed it and twisted her arm. Jenny lunged and punched at her with her free hand. Sharon felt bad for Jenny then—she had to live with that beast.

Certain that none of them was looking, Sharon pulled herself from the pool and hopped over the remaining rocks. The smell of damp earth welcomed her to shore, and she sprinted into the forest. She ran until she was far away from the shoreline, and leaned against a tree, panting. She peered around the trunk. The others were still arguing, and Jenny’s sister pointed to the middle of the river. A giggle burbled up in Sharon, and she covered her mouth before she gave herself away. She felt the glee of a trick well played. Let them panic all weekend. Let them think I’m dead, she thought.

When the other girls started picking their way down the shore, eyes fixed on the river, Sharon circled back to the rock. She grabbed her backpack but left her orange towel there. A shed skin.

THE END

Author Bio: Candace Webb (she/her) is a recovering scientist who writes and edits. You can find her in Belmont, MA or on Instagram @cweedwrites.

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