A Cold and Quiet Place Read online

  She trails up to the dorm room, a shadow swallowed by cool, fragrant night. Staci calls her name from the students’ common room where she and Haddigan sit on the couch, their legs pressed together as they read. Or talk. Or whatever they’re doing. Although Lily would love to stop and catch up with all the Nationals gossip, she still has to drag herself up at 5 am.

  Swimmers have strong legs and lungs from hours of exercise and dry land workouts, but Lily finds herself gasping for breath as she reaches the top floor. Although Mom and the doctors at the hospital say she’s better, Lily still gets shivery at odd moments. Her forehead aches when she’s in class; she staggers with dizziness when she’s about to dive into the pool. Her recent fever still makes her lungs ache.

  When Lily unlocks the door, Yasmin’s just climbing into bed. Her pajamas have little dolphins all over them, a present from her brother who’s a Miami fan. She flops back on the pillow and doubles it under her neck. Everyone in the dorm is well aware of how much Prescot pillows suck.

  “Hi,” Lily says. She knows it’s late and, worse, she still has a few hours of homework.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to start studying now!” Yasmin screeches.

  “I’m so sorry.” Lily throws down her backpack and looks around the room. Yasmin has shoved all of Lily’s clothes to her side of the dorm so it looks worse than ever. “As soon as I catch up with schoolwork, I’ll clean up my crap. I promise.”

  “You keep saying that and it never happens.” Her pillow muffles Yasmin’s words.

  “I know, but I didn’t plan on getting sick.” Lily finds a garbage bag and piles the clothes into it before she slams the slippery black mass into their tiny closet to deal with it later. “Besides, some of us didn’t get to go skiing in the Andes, you know.”

  “What does that have to do with your mess?’ Yasmin yawns and rolls over. After a few minutes her breathing evens out.

  Lily angles the desk lamp so the light won’t fall on Yasmin’s face. There’s nothing she can do about her laptop except dim it as much as possible. Several pages into the story, Lily’s phone pings. Ignoring Yasmin’s sleepy grumble, Lily turns it to vibrate and reads the text: Can’t concentrate. It’s from Tyler.

  Me either, she writes back. A second later she adds a smiley emoticon.

  You’re so dumb. What are you doing?

  Homework, she answers.

  Haha. I’m graduating soon, so I’m done with that mess.

  Yeah, well I’m a lowly freshman so I have to keep working.

  Okay. Lily is about to return to her story when he adds, Bye kid.

  Good night. Lily turns back to the Lit story, one cheek smooshed up under her fist as she props herself up. It’s been a long time since texts have filled her with such brilliant balloons of happiness. As she takes notes for class discussion and researches the writer’s bio, Tyler continues to text with updates, how he’s brushing his teeth, climbing into bed, lying on his left side. What side do you sleep on?

  I don’t know, she answers. It’s like having him in the room with her.

  Gonna steal my roommate’s pillow. He’s out cold.

  Lily finishes, gets ready for bed, and turns out the light. Throughout the night she wakes several times to a soft ping and another text. Derek snores – threw his own pillow at his head.

  And - Thinking about you, Lily.

  ◆◆◆

  It’s cold, and it’s early, and Lily’s stomach already aches. Please don’t hurl, she begs herself as she swims up to look at Robert’s practice sheet on the board. The last set consists of four 100’s descend, six 50’s descend 1 to 4, hold 5-6, then twelve 25’s easy/fast. As practice sheets go, it’s not too bad.

  Lily launches off the wall and loses herself after a few laps. Sometimes her body seems to become part of the water, like being a fish or a mermaid. She once described it to Erica, who just laughed and shook her head. “You already are one. Look at you, with your long hair and perfect swimmer’s body. No wonder you’ve had more boyfriends than I’ve had haircuts.”

  “Yeah, not hardly,” Lily argued, but she has to admit attention from guys has never been a problem.

  At parties, at school, brothers of friends and guys she works with… She’s seen enough double takes and interested stares to know guys like her. Whatever. It’s never meant anything, or at least not until last night.

  By the time she finishes the 50’s, Robert has arrived by the edge of the water. “Here’s our champion!” he announces as she climbs out to get a drink.

  “So sweet! Haddigan told me all about it.” Staci grabs her from one side, and Haddigan from the other so Lily’s encased in a girlfriend sandwich.

  “Celebration breakfast?” Haddigan says. “My treat.”

  “Aw, you guys are so nice. Can’t think about food right now though.”

  “Still feeling out of it?” Staci asks. “Haddigan told me you were sick.”

  “Oh my God. It’s like I had the plague. You have no idea – fever, not to mention my stomach…” Lily’s voice trails off. Tyler stands by the pool. Water drips off his wide shoulders. His arms are crossed. As soon as their eyes meet, he turns on one heel and grabs his bag. Still drenched, he punches the door and leaves the pool.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Staci shakes her head.

  “He medaled too,” Lily says. “Maybe he feels we should have congratulated him.”

  “If he donated his medal to Prescot, I would have.” Robert’s deep voice rumbles out of his chest.

  Although the coach is intent on his clipboard, Lily sees the way his bottom lip pushes out, how his jaw pops. He doesn’t like Tyler, she realizes.

  “All right. No breakfast sandwiches until you finish those 25’s and dry land.” Robert makes shooing motions at the three girls.

  Lily caps her water bottle with her palm. “I’ve got school work to catch up on,” she says. “Gotta leave early.”

  “Don’t even start with your nonsense,” Robert warns her. “I understand you just swam at Nationals, but your future competitors are eyeing to take you down next year. Do not give them the chance.”

  Lily tells mutters she’ll be on time for afternoon practice and will catch up then. Staci and Haddigan don’t answer. They just watch as she picks up her bag and runs after Tyler. Do they know what she’s doing? No matter – Lily will do it anyway, even if it’s a bad career move.

  In the hallway, Lily pulls on sweatpants and drags a t-shirt over her head. Like Tyler, she’s still soaked. Trying not to think about what the chlorine will do to her hair and skin, she runs up the hall and is just in time to catch him as he leaves the gym. “Hey,” she says breathlessly.

  “Guess you’re celebrating.” The stark comment is accompanied by a quick twitch of his neck. There’s a dent between those thick eyebrows, and she wants to smooth it out with her fingers. “Guess your friends want to take you out, since you’re so wonderful and talented and filled with school spirit.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Lily begs. “I told them you medaled too, but the coach said you didn’t donate…”

  Tyler stops. She gasps and nearly walks into him. “It’s mine,” he says. “The medal is mine.”

  “Okay.” Lily’s heart beats so hard it hurts her ribs. “Just … calm down. I’m just trying to explain why Robert didn’t mention you.” They’re on the path that leads to Keene Road. She can feel the new twigs of the laurel bushes along the path press into her back.

  “Well, don’t.” Tyler stops, closes his eyes, and shakes his head. “Those girls are all fake, trying to pretend they know you. I know you.”

  “Yeah, you do.” Lily breathes out and cups the damp flesh of his neck with her hand. He pulls her in for a hug, sudden and fierce.

  “I wanna keep you all to myself,” Tyler murmurs in her ear. “All the time.”

  “The world’s not like that.” Sure of herself again, Lily smiles up at him. “And you know I only want to celebrate with you. Cronuts?”

>   “Hell, yeah.”

  His good mood seems to be restored. Lily will have to talk to him later about her friends, since she’s not the kind of girl who ditches her buddies just because she’s got a boyfriend. Even though I just did, she thinks.

  Oh well. She’ll make it up to Staci later. The list of catch-up items has just expanded, but Lily refuses to think about it. Tyler’s arm is warm around her shoulders. The water was cold and perfect this morning. She has a medal in the 100, and she’s caught up with her schoolwork.

  “…Notice?” Tyler asks.

  “I’m sorry, notice what?”

  His hand slides down and taps her phone where it rests in the back pocket of her sweats, just over her butt. “No more mean texts.”

  Lily shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re – what?”

  His laugh rings out, and he cuddles her under his shoulder. “You won’t get any more nasty junk from your frenemy. The chick from Jersey. See? I blocked that anon on your phone last night while we were at dinner. Well, you call it anon, but we both know it’s your former best friend. Point is - you won’t hear from her anymore.”

  7

  “Dad calls the guinea pigs turd machines.” Vincent, Lily’s little brother, sprawls across the carpet in her room. Ham ignores him while Lettuce chews the cord of Lily’s sweatpants.

  “He’s not wrong. Get her butt on the towel, Vin.” Lily pokes the ancient beach towel over to Ham with her toe, and Vincent shoves the guinea pig onto it. “So what’s been going on?”

  It’s Friday, the second-to-last full day of the long weekend before she has to drive back to Massachusetts with her mom. Normally Lily would spend most of her time at Erica’s house, but she doesn’t even know if Erica realizes she’s home for the long weekend. She could unblock the anon contact, but it seems disrespectful to Tyler after all his support throughout the entire texting debacle.

  “The usual,” Vincent yawns. “Practice, more practice, and oh yeah, lotsa practice after that.”

  Lily gives up on Ham and prods Vincent with her bare foot. She’s missed her baby brother, although there’s a chance they’ll end up in a brawl by the end of the night. He is twelve, after all, which in Lily’s opinion is the Age of Annoyance. “Still splashing all the spectators with your butterfly?”

  He slumps and tells her to shut up. Lily snorts, flops onto her back, and scoops up Lettuce. The pig purrs on her chest, tilts up its chin for tickles. “How’s it feel to be a Nationals finalist?” Vincent asks.

  “You know. Surreal, like it happened to someone else. I got sick right after the meet, so I can’t even remember much.”

  He grunts, rolls over into the crook of her arm so his face is hidden. “So you’re dating that guy Mom told me about?”

  “Tyler?” Lily knows there’s a smile in her voice. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Why?” Vincent asks the carpet. “What’s so great about him?”

  There. Lily knew he would start to be annoying. She plops Lettuce beside Ham on the towel and sits up. “Why do you ask?”

  “Mom doesn’t like him.”

  “No, Mom doesn’t like Tyler’s dad. And I can’t blame her. He’s a weirdo.”

  Vincent humphs, pulls Ham into his chest, and stands up. “Guess we’ve got practice this evening.”

  “I guess we do, Captain Obvious.” Lily shrugs and goes for a Kleenex to clean up a few stray guinea pig turds on the carpet. “Gonna get ready now?”

  “Yup.” Vincent heads to the door. She’s intent on tying the cord of her sweatpants. When he speaks, the crack in his voice surprises her. “Don’t you think people are kinda like their parents, though?”

  He doesn’t even give her a chance to argue, just disappears before Lily can say a word.

  So annoying.

  ◆◆◆

  Practice is long, cold, and wet. Lily swims with her former teammates, too busy to talk about anything but the evening’s practice. Erica isn’t there, of course, since she’s in the gold group at the Y, where she started her career. Still, it’s disappointing.

  When she finally finishes, Lily showers, gets changed, and hugs a few of the girls in the locker room. She puts on Chapstick and scowls into the mirror. The overhead lights at the Y make everyone look washed out.

  Maria, her former coach in New Jersey, waves them out of the locker room. “Practice is done, girls!” the woman shouts. “You can go anywhere you like, but you can’t stay here!”

  Lily heads out to the parking lot to sit on the cement steps and wait for her mom. The bright flash of headlights, parents who wait to pick up the athletes, makes her shield her eyes with one hand. When an unfamiliar car pulls up she considers running back inside until her mom arrives.

  The rough concrete snags her sweats as she gets up to head back into the Y. A loud beep from the car makes Lily’s heart race as she freezes on the step. A creep, she thinks. I really don’t need this.

  “Lily?”

  Erica.

  Lily forces herself to breathe slowly. She doesn’t scream or launch right into a bitchfest. “Hi,” she says as she turns around, fascinated by how calm her voice is.

  “What the hell?” Erica demands out the window. “You blocked me? I’ve been trying to text you all month, and I finally figured out I’d been blocked. Why? What did I ever…”

  “Are you kidding me?” Lily throws down her bag and strides over to the car. Erica sits in the passenger seat, a bottle of hand sanitizer in one fist. “You’re the one who blocked me! You texted me shit for weeks – called me a bitch – said all kinds of mean stuff – how can you even ask me that?”

  Erica frowns as her jaw drops. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.

  “Look.” Lily swipes her phone. She’s saved most of the texts to a Notes app, just so she could confront Erica with the evidence. “See? Look at this – and this. What did I ever do to deserve such nasty shit, Erica? You’re so mean!”

  “Oh, my God.” Slowly, Erica hands the phone back to Lily. “I swear to you I never wrote any of those texts. No, listen,” Erica presses when Lily blows out an angry breath. “You know me, Lily. I don’t do stuff like that.”

  “No, you don’t.” Lily agrees. “But at the time it was really hurtful.” She blinks and stuffs her fists into the pockets of her hoodie. The two girls stare at each other until Lily asks, “Whose car is this?”

  Erica waves her fisted bottle of sanitizer at a fuzzy, dark figure behind the wheel. “Remember Nolan? My cousin?”

  Lily sticks her head in the window. Nolan, the lenses of his glasses obscured by the light streaming out of the Y, reveals thick braces in a tentative smile. “Hi, Lily,” he splutters. “Sorry, I didn’t…” Whatever he’s about to say is lost in a prolonged fit of coughing.

  Erica laughs, a wet gasping sound, and pats Nolan on the back. “I begged him to bring me here to see you. He has to get back before midnight, though. DMV rules and all that.”

  Lily feels as though her blood had been frozen and now is starting to break up, like a river after a hard winter. “I’m happy you came.” Dumb words, a ridiculous attempt to mirror what a relief it is to have Erica back.

  “Me too.” Erica scrapes back her limp hair with both hands and winds a ponytail holder from her wrist around it. “But who do you think sent all those nasty messages?”

  Lily shakes her head. “I have no idea. Maybe a kid from school got your phone? I don’t know.”

  “But you said you got a bunch of texts, all on different dates. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Nolan stops coughing, picks up a bottle of Fiji water from the console, and takes a long swig. “All cleared up?” he manages to say. “You all good?”

  “We’re good?” Lily echoes softly, leaning in Erica’s open window. The boy’s face flushes – Nolan, according to Erica, has always had a thing for Lily. “Can you call me? I’ll unblock you, but…”

  With a flourish, Erica squirts a dollop of hand sanitizer on one palm. “Excha
nge numbers with Nolan since my phone was obviously hacked. I’m going to shut it down tomorrow but we can stay in touch through him.”

  “Oh. Hey. I…I don’t know…” Nolan’s eyes bug out.

  “Good idea.” Lily doesn’t have time to listen to Nolan’s awkward attempts at conversation. “Here – text yourself on my phone, and I’ll set you up as a contact.” He clears his throat as he takes it, but Lily focuses on Erica. “How are you, anyway? God, I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too. You have no idea how much. Can we meet up for lunch tomorrow? Gold group doesn’t have practice, thank the Lord.” Erica finishes her ritual and stows the sanitizer in her purse.

  Lily’s stomach clenches. Tyler’s supposed to Skype her later, but she‘ll have to make it work. “Yeah, awesome. We’ll figure it out.”

  Lily moves back to the steps and waves goodbye. She’ll be able to figure out what happened with those texts now that she’s back in communication with Erica. Finally.

  Someone has been sending hatemail on her friend’s phone and Lily intends to find out who it was.

  ◆◆◆

  After seeing Erica, Lily’s able to sleep through the night for once. Even Tyler’s constant messages and pokes don’t keep her awake.

  When her eyes open, the morning light in her bedroom seems brighter than usual, more hopeful. She watches shadows from the trees wave over the ceiling until she doesn’t want to lie in the crumpled sheets and nested blankets any longer.

  She wriggles into workout clothes and heads downstairs. From the foyer, she can hear her parents in the kitchen. Their muted chatter seems more intense than usual, and she pauses in the hallway.

  “I just don’t like the thought of a freshman dating a senior,” her dad says.

  “I know, but what can we do? Lock her in her room or make her wear a chastity belt?”

  Lily walks into the kitchen, where Mom and Dad sit over coffee. “I’m right here, you know.” She goes to the fridge and pulls out a Gatorade. “Going for a run.”