Durham High School - Messenger Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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Phoebe looked at her. I think I ' m going to swim lops now. I hove to practice some more, she called, still squirting water like a whale in the deep end of the pool. Sunlight flashed on Allison ' s spectacles from one of the high windows sunken in the wall. Phoebe started swimming towards the shallow end. Allison left and closed the door behind. Phoebe stopped swimming and climbed out of the pool. In the dressing room her teeth chattered. She stuck the lump of towel in her teeth and looked in the mirror over her dressing bench. Phoebe was a tall girl for fourteen with narrow shoulders and long dark brown hair. She parted it in the middle and let it touch her shoulders when she tilted her head back to see if it were growing any longer. Her green eyes deepened in sunlight as she combed her hair in the dressing room. She sat down and dried herself and squeezed a lump of her hair in the towel to help it dry faster. The empty locker room trailed a film of water with islands of dry cement jutting out. The window at the far end of the locker room with the metal guard railing around it emitted a breeze which pulled and pushed at the white window curtain like a bellows sucking at the air it releases. The sunlight streaked through the green quartz-like windowpanes. It gleamed on the coil of radiators lining the side of the bench. Through the foliage of a magnolia outside with its petaled blossoms reaching up to the window, a yellow light winked on and off. The warm smell of chlorine sank heavier into the room with the breeze. It burned again in her eyes as she remembered it in the bottom of the pool. The marble bench in front of the campus library was vacant. Phoebe sat down and parked her red striped swimming bag between her feet and watched the yellow light blinking at the crosswalk outside of the library entrance. The campus bus trudged around the quadrangle and stopped at the cross¬ walk. The black exhaust leaked out from its tailpipe and trailed behind, clouding the afternoon mood with its film. Fumes and gases distorted the stone building beyond like a sheet of faulty glass. The bus gunned its motor, lurched off, edged around the last corner more slowly, easing the front of the bus around and then pulling the end after it like an inchworm. Phoebe became aware of the sensation that she was being watched. What are you doing way over here? called a voice behind her. Phoebe turned. The girl wore her hair in bangs across her forehead and a clean white part was running down the center of her black hair, cut short like an inverted bowl. Her shorts were wrinkled. 1 thought you were going home for lunch, Allison, said Phoebe, reaching down for the draw¬ string on her swimming bag, tugging hard at it. I was. Allison sat down on the bench. Aren ' t you hungry yet? she asked. I thought I ' d wait a while first, replied Phoebe, not looking directly at Allison, but over her shoulder in the direction of the blinker light. Shade feels good, huh, she offered. Allison stared at her. I know why you ' re waiting, she said. You ' re waiting for her, aren ' t you? You ' re waiting for Miss Brooks. Phoebe tightened the string on her swimming bag and dropped it down between her feet. So what. It ' s not your bench, you know. 1 can sit here all I like. Is that why you come home late everyday from swimming practice? Is it? quizzed Allison. Phoebe sat up straighter on the bench. She tilted her head so that her long brown hair touched on the back of her neck. She looked away. I ' m only trying to help, Phoebe. 1 knew you were coming to see her. You didn ' t have to say. It ' s your 15

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ONE LITTLE GIRL She clawed as if trying to fly underwater, moving her slender arms faster, racing death to tread up¬ wards towards the light. The tiled bottom of the swimming pool ran in wavy black lines, distorting more as she felt the pressure of water rush up through her arms. The fuzzy blackness in her mind obscured her vision. Pain in her lungs cut knife-like, sharp and twisting. But she drew her arms to her sides, pinning them there as if with weighted metal chains, to slow her ascent. It was then she began to count objects in her mind, compensating for the emptiness in her lungs. Moving noises like the squiggly lines on the bot¬ tom of the pool broke her reverie. The chlorine burned in her eyes. Groping, her han d touched the ledge. She pulled herself to the side of the pool by her handhold and felt her ear break the meniscus of the water. The feeling that her head was stuffed with cotton wads popped in her ears. The voices came again: Phoebe! Phoebe! Now quit that. Don ' t ever do it again. What are you trying to do, anyway? Phoebe leaned back, caught her hair in the water, did not answer. Two knees like pink gourds were pressed against the pool floor and crouched behind them, on hands and knees, peering through spec¬ tacles, was Allison. I can hardly breathe myself when you stay down so awfully long. It ' s almost like you didn ' t want me to breathe either. Now quit staying down on the bottom of the pool, said Allison. Her spectacles were misted. Short black hair hugged her face like an inverted bowl. Her dark eyes squinted as she peered upward to the overhead light fixtures to read the wail clock. Come on out, anyway. It ' s time to go. Everybody else has already gone home. And besides, you ' re not procticing now. You haven ' t done any laps in the last half hour. You ' re just goofing off. It ' s time to go home for lunch, Phoebe. Allison sat down on the floor and took off her spectacles and polished them c;!ean on her blouse. Phoebe closed her eyes, holding on io the ledge with one hand, and caught her hair in ihe water again and let her ears pop. She sensed Carolyn Vaughan the reflection of lights playing over the water in her mind ' s eye. I don ' t want to come out yet, she called. Phoebe pushed off with her feet from the pool, swimming on her back out to the deep end. Allison adjusted her glasses. You have to, she said. It ' s time to go. Phoebe pushed her face back in the water, sucking up water through her teeth and rolling on her back. She squirted it out like a whale. I waited all morning for you to finish team practice. Phoebe squirted again. 1 waited all morning. Aren ' t you ready to go yet? You ' re not practicing. Come on, pleaded Allison, unbending from her position at the side of the pool. She smoothed her hand over her shorts, straightening out the creases. Come on out, she said. 14

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green eyes. I can read in them what you never will tell me, Allison lowered her face so that Phoebe could not see. Phoebe frowned. I don ' t want your old help, said Phoebe, still frowning. Well, maybe so, but that isn ' t what the girls at school say. They think you ' re a terrible snob. You just think you are. You like to pretend that. But really, you ignore us all. At school you wanted to be with Miss Brooks more than us. It gets to them . . . they talk about it to me all the time. Allison ' s eyes seemed darker to Phoebe than be¬ fore. Is that all? Phoebe stirred in her position on the bench beside Allison. She could feel her hair sticking to her blouse in a wet place on her back. They ... Allison looked at Phoebe with the intent stare that made Phoebe feel as she used to at night when she was undressing for bed. She P } thought that people were staring at her body. Oh nothing, finished Allison. It was nothing, really. Well what? I don ' t care what they said. You can tell me. Phoebe stared at her hands. Allison lifted her eyes. They say you ' re in love with Miss Brooks and they wanted to know what it was like having you for a best friend, And you told them that I loved everything that moved, interrupted Phoebe. Allison took off her glasses and polished them clean. I didn ' t. I said you didn ' t confide in me any¬ more and that you never bothered with anybody onymore. Phoebe looked away. Well, you don ' t, said Allison, watching her. Phoebe moved, reached down and picked up a blade of grass and split it with her thumbnail while Allison said nothing and did not watch. I waited for you. I went to the library to return those books and saw you over here, Allison started again. Phoebe bent the blade of grass double. Allison whispered: I saw Miss Brooks in the library. She asked about you. Phoebe looked up, interested. She did? What did she say? Oh, I don ' t know. Allison leaned back on the bench and Phoebe watched her out of Ihe tail of her eye, waited. She said she wanted to see you about something. That was all. Allison shrugged her shoulders. Does she study in there? she asked, pointing behind her¬ self to the library. She spends all her time in there, answered Phoebe. Phoebe, too looked towards the library and the magnolia trees shading the entrance to it. Phoebe regarded Allison meditatively, as if seeing her for the first time. She might not teach another year. Allison ' s part was crooked. The breeze wisped her short black hair around her face. You never had her, did you? asked Phoebe quietly. No, I never did. She might not teach another year. Phoebe raised her hand and pretended to sketch the outline of a faraway building. I said that though, didn ' t I? Phoebe stared at her hands. She frowned as if remembering something unpleasant. 16