This is the Water by Yannick Murphy Read Free Book Online

shook his head while reading his science magazine. You thought he was shaking his head with you, telling you he didn’t know either when all of the rules changed, when what we could see in the universe started shrinking, but then he said, “Listen to this,” but you didn’t. You left the room. Some of his words, though, chased you down the stairs. You made out the words “quarks” and “particles” and “gluons.” Your house is like one big ventriloquist. There are open parts everywhere, so that you often don’t really know where a voice is coming from. You’d think a person was talking to you from the bathroom, when they were really in the rec room, or in the girls’ loft. His words chased you downstairs, and seemed to get louder as you entered the kitchen, even though he hadn’t moved from the bed. You had no idea what he was talking about and doubted that if you had read the article yourself you’d understand it any better.
    You remembered to take a vitamin, and then felt guilty remembering, because you hadn’t remembered earlier to give your children their vitamins, and they were the ones who needed them the most. All the growing of the bones, the laying down of the platelets, and your older girl, Sofia, who recently started her period, she would need more iron now, you thought. You thought of the other things she might need, things not for purchase, but intangible things like compliments, and feeling the eyes of others on her, noticing how she looks good in a dress. She might need you and Thomas to tell her how pretty she is, how strands in her hair in the summer sun look gold. You once had these things yourself, these compliments, and maybe it was not so long ago, but now they are gone, and you think maybe that is not so bad, because in a way it’s as if you have given them to your daughter. They are hers now. You wonder what it was that your father once gave to your brother when he was a teenager, or was that the problem, he gave nothing to your brother at all, and your brother walked through his teenage years without this kind of passed-on gift from your father. Your brother did not take on the posture of a man who was proud. His shoulders stayed rounded. His eyes darted in conversation rather than frankly holding someone’s gaze. His voice, even, still broke, rather than taking on a mellow, basslike tone.
    This is the killer, our killer, at the meet watching Kim. He holds a heat sheet that he bought for three dollars from a parent sitting at a desk at the entrance to the bleachers. On the heat sheet he can see that her fastest time for her hundred fly was 1:08.74. He watches Kim behind the blocks. She is not like the other girls. She does not turn around and high-five other swimmers. She does not wave to someone who may be watching her from the stands. She stares straight out while waiting for her race, and she jogs in place and loosens up her arms, not seeming to look at anyone, not even when she hears her name being called by her teammates, who cheer her on before she gets ready for her dive. When she’s on the blocks, she easily bends the top half of her body over and holds on tight to the edge of the block, so tight our killer is surprised that when she dives in the platform of the block doesn’t come off in her hands and end up with her in the water. He watches how she moves, how her slender neck reaches up and out with every upswing of her arms. He wonders if today will be the day she beats her record, because that is what he is waiting for. He is confident she will do it soon. No one else focuses as hard as she does before her race. On her last lap, though, it is obvious this isn’t the day. She seems to tire, either that or the other girls swimming with her get a burst of energy. She ends up touching the wall with a 1:09.75. She has gained time. When she gets out of the water she does not even go up to her coach for a bit of