Читать книгу Thrive - Mary Borsellino - Страница 17

A few weeks later, when the weather turns too hot to cope with, Olivia gets the idea to sneak into her school's indoor pool at night and swim through the worst of the evening warmth. It's humid but rarely breaks into rain, staying at a horribly uncomfortable in-between of almost breaking instead. After a couple of weeks of that, Sam is ready to agree to anything that might offer relief — even a plan that makes Olivia's eyes light up in a way he says is "never a comforting sign".

He's never swum before, so she stays down the shallow end with him, where they can stand on the bottom of the pool and have their heads and shoulders above the surface. Being in the cold, clean water after the sticky and smog-filled afternoon outside makes Olivia so happy that she feels like singing.

She wants to stay at the shallow end and be a good friend. She does. But the allure of the depths is too strong, the thought of ducking her head under and pushing off from the wall and gliding all the way to the other end under the power of a few kicks. Olivia doesn't swim much when the class comes to the pool because she feels gangly and self-conscious and clumsy, but now only Sam is here, so she's not afraid.

She does a few laps, then comes back to him in the shallows. 'Do you want to try? I'll help,' she offers. Sam makes a face.

'We've only been in the water five minutes,' he says. 'Expecting me to do laps already is faster than I'd like to go.'

'Pfft.' Olivia makes a noise of dismissal and splashes the water at him with her hands. 'When I was learning how to swim, my father threw me straight in the deep end.'

'Yes, but your father's an asshole.'

The words make Olivia pause, uncertain about whether it's okay for her to smile at them. Nobody's said that to her since Hannah.

Olivia misses Hannah. Having a new friend in Sam doesn't replace her feelings about her old one. There's room in her heart for both.

She once told Hannah that it'd be nice to see the ocean with her someday. She imagines that, sometimes, the two of them off on an adventure. Maybe Sam can be there too, all three of them living wild on an abandoned island with clean beaches.

No place like that exists in the real world, of course, but that doesn't stop her dreaming.

If they're going to run away to the ocean, though, then first Olivia has to teach Sam to swim.

'Come on,' she says. 'Try to copy what I do.'