Heat by Michael Cadnum Read Free Book Online Page B

I could see that the coach needed to keep her mind occupied, too.
    I wasn’t scheduled to dive. I had put on a show of disappointment, looking around at things with a hard, frustrated glare, but as I sat there watching the dried-up scenery go by, I was relieved.
    I didn’t know how I would feel, watching my friends compete. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to look without my ears ringing, the pain coming back.
    Miss P had been legendary as a coach who made her athletes run fifteen laps if someone giggled during roll call. But by the time I got to the academy Miss P had lost weight, dwindling from the hardy, tanned brunette who took the top members of the academy swim team to three bronzes in the Goodwill Games a few years ago.
    She was still a good coach—a better coach now, in a way, because a touch of frailty made her athletes patient with her if she forgot her whistle or had to sit down during touch-and-go, the relay laps we swim by the hour. She had stayed with me while we watched the videotaped accident backward and forward, until I could see what happened with my eyes closed, my head kissing the edge of the platform.
    Sacramento is a sprawling, flat town, with trees blue in the distance, mirage shivering the streets. One step out of the bus and I wanted to climb right back in. Denise made an exaggerated stagger, like someone who’s been shot, but it was no joke. The weather report had said it would hit one hundred and five Fahrenheit, and it felt way hotter than that all the way across the asphalt parking lot.
    Parking attendants with EVENT STAFF on their backs in yellow letters squinted around at things, talking into handheld radios, probably to make sure their colleagues had not succumbed to heat stroke. The academy men trailed off with a male assistant, Mr. Browning, the guy who shot the videos, and the women angled into our own facility, but you could see when we split up how few we were.
    Our team had a corner of the locker room, a roomy place used by professional teams hardly anyone in Oakland knows anything about, a football league with teams in cities like Salt Lake City and Barcelona, and soccer teams who play in front of nine loyal fans. But marginal pro teams still have plush facilities, and we enjoyed the feel of carpeting under our toes, and lockers big enough to accommodate half a wardrobe.
    Swimmers tried on their goggles, took them off, untangled the straps, tugged them on again. Denise climbed into her black swimsuit and put on the red-and-white warm-up togs Miss P insists on, telling us we have to wear our colors whenever we represent the academy.
    I wore exactly what Denise was wearing, and what they all wore. I kept my eyes up, looking people in the eye, zipped all the way to my chin even in the Martian-surface heat we had to single-file our way through. I didn’t want to look in the direction of the platform. I wondered if it was a mistake to be there at all.
    I forced myself to watch the swimmers in their preliminary heats, my ears ringing. I sat on the bench while Denise did her dive, screwing up every time, especially on her entry. A front dive is a plain dive, but if your entry is good—the rip you make entering the water—the judges love it. If it looks like nothing has happened, it goes well. One minute the diver is erect on the tower, and the next she’s gone, hardly a ripple.
    In Denise’s case there was a ripple. On all three dives. A splash, water all over the place. And each time you could see what a mistake it was. You could see it in Denise’s eyes each time she came out of the pool. Miss P looked at me and shook her head in apology to me, to the team. But I stood up and clapped my hands, and each time I told Denise how well she had done.

CHAPTER NINE
    Swimming arenas are a wash of noise, reverberating whistles, shouted encouragement. Some divers wear earplugs to escape the surreal murmur of the crowd. Even a huge place fills with the smell of the