“It’s going to be cold,” laughed Riley. “I’m warning you, when I took the swim test, I almost froze. They had to defrost me.” “Thank you for sharing that wonderful piece of moral support with me,” I snapped. Riley had been coming to Camp Walton’s Grizzly Lodge for seven years now, since she was five. It was my first year. All the first-year campers had to take the swim test, to be able to swim outside the four-feet line and to go waterskiing and wakeboarding. I definitely had to take that swim test. I had no worries about the test until I met Riley (actually, only twenty minutes ago). I was on the swim team at my school, so the four laps would be a piece of cake. (So I’m in the slowest lane; I can still swim, can’t I?) And treading water for thirty seconds would be no problem, since I was a goalie for my school’s water polo team. (It was my first year, making me the worst goalie, so I had to have more training, but everyone at Walton’s doesn’t know that, do they?) We walked down to the edge of the lake, along with Riley’s little sister, Quinn. Riley was silent because she knew she’d scared me about the whole swim test thing. Pools were heated. Lakes weren’t. Finally, as we neared the opening to the sandy beach near the lake’s edge, I said, “Riley, it can’t be that bad. I mean, they wouldn’t make us swim in forty-degree water. Your memory must be malfunctioning.” “Then take it from me,” said Quinn, talking for Riley “I only took it four years ago. The lake is cold. You’ll die as soon as . . .” “I’m warning you, when I took the swim test, I almost froze” “Quinn, we are here for moral support,” interrupted Riley, shushing her sister. “Do not frighten her to death.” “No, that’s what you’re here for,” grumbled Quinn irritably, but Riley didn’t answer as we entered through the small gate between the overgrown bushes. Everything looked normal; the sand was fine-grained, yellow, and easily got between your flip-flop and your foot. The lifeguard, Brian, and another bored-looking boy of about fifteen were manning the swim area. Brian was sitting cross-legged on the diving board. And beyond him, the water looked anything but deadly. It was deep azure and sparkling as the sun’s rays danced on it. Everything looked fine to me. Upon seeing us, Brian jumped up and exclaimed, “Finally, people are here! What are your names?” I said, “Samantha, or Sam.” Riley answered, “We are here to hold Sam’s towel and attempt to save her when she dies of hypothermia.” “Moral support?” muttered Quinn. Brian smiled. “Don’t listen to them. Just swim four laps, there, back, there, back,” he indicated with his clipboard, “and then tread water for thirty seconds.” “Good luck!” said Riley. “We’ll cheer you on if you start to develop swimming difficulties.” “I told you, I was on swim team, and a water polo goalie,” I said, stepping out of my shorts and T-shirt to reveal a blue bathing suit with hibiscuses all over it. “How hard can this be?” If only I knew. My first step into the water wasn’t that bad. My toes kind of curled back, like when you step into the shower and the water isn’t quite warm yet. Then my next step brought me underwater to my knees. My calves tensed. That was kind of cold. A shiver ran up my spine. Then I stepped further, up to my waist. My legs were cold. Oh, they were cold. The next step brought me considerable shock and pain. I was all the way up to my collar. It was as if a giant eel wrapped around me and shocked cold waves all through my body. I was frozen. My breath came out short and ragged. I could feel my blood temperature dropping rapidly. I turned around and mouthed soundlessly to Riley and Quinn. What I meant to say is, “How did you survive this? I’m going to freeze! Pull me out now, before it’s too late!” but I guess my voice box wasn’t connected to my lips. “I can’t help you now,” said Riley, as if she understood me perfectly. “Just get it over with is the best advice I can give you. Go on.” I nodded, turned around, kicked my feet out from the muck I was standing in, and was off. I have swum in swim meets before. You dive off a diving board and keep your head underwater. You move your arms and legs as fast as you can to get to the other side. That was not how I swam in the lake. I kept my head above water, swinging my arms in front of me as if to grab the water and pull myself along. I tried kicking like in freestyle, but it ended up being a cross between a scissor kick and a breaststroke kick, a sort of jab at the water that I repeated again and again to get myself to the other side. When I reached the other side, I was shivering uncontrollably. I was afraid to go back across, but it seemed I had no other alternative. Halfway across the second lap, my chest started to seize. I felt like the giant eel was back again, squeezing my ribs together and allowing no air to come out. I had to stop dead. I gasped for air. Panic was filling me, taking the place of all my energy. It weighed in my stomach like a cold lump of steel, dragging down not only my physical body but my sanity and chances to get to the other side. Fear was coining in now, filling my mind with horrible possibilities, and taking over that part of my brain that makes decisions. Fear was the blackness growing at the edges of my brain, eating me away. My body
Sports
Revenge Is Bittersweet
It was a perfect shot. I was standing across the driveway from the basketball hoop—just beyond where the three-point line would have been—and Matt, who was rebounding, gave me a nice crisp bounce pass. I bent my knees and sent the ball arching beautifully towards the basket. Everything about the shot was perfect—the timing, the follow-through, and the soft swish of the ball falling through the net. And for once even Matt didn’t have any wisecracks to make. He just caught the ball and turned around to make a lay-up, which was about the highest compliment I could get from my older brother because I knew he would have tried the shot if he thought he had a chance at making it. Just then Carla’s dad pulled his silver Saab into the driveway Matt tossed me the ball. “You’ll do great,” he said. I hopped into the back seat of the car. Carla stopped listening to her MP3 player and said, “Nice shot.” “Thanks.” I grinned. Carla knew how to give a compliment, how to make a casual remark into the most beautiful music. That was part of the reason I had talked her into trying out for basketball. She was my best friend, and I wanted her at the tryouts even if she didn’t make the team. Carla and I were different. I was good at basketball and lacrosse; she was better at field hockey and soccer. I was tall, she was short. My skin was light, hers was tan. My hair was straight, hers was curly. I bent my knees and sent the ball arching beautifully towards the basket I was the quick one, specializing in steals and fast breaks. But Carla was the ideal team player in every sport. She had a natural instinct for passing and she made any group run smoothly. Our main difference, though, was our personalities. I had friends but I wasn’t very outgoing. Carla knew everything about everyone in our grade and she seemed to be friends with all of them. Except . . . “Lindsay Oxman will be there,” Carla said. “I hope we don’t get put in her group.” “Yeah. And I hope we’re in the same group.” Both of us were nervous —especially me, because I was really passionate about basketball. Carla enjoyed it, but it was just something to do for fun, not a big dream of hers. She didn’t shoot baskets in the cold November rain even when the ball slipped into the mud. Sometimes I envied her easygoing nature, her ability to take things so lightly. As it turned out, Lindsay was in our group. Lindsay had hated Carla since preschool. They had been in the same class every year since they were three, and by the time Carla and I met in the first year of middle school, she and Lindsay were well-established enemies. Lindsay seemed to have everything her way She was pretty, athletic, and popular. Logically, she should have been best friends with Carla, who also seemed to have everything her way But while Carla was always herself, Lindsay got her way by stepping over people, by lying, by pushing and shoving her way to the top of the social pyramid. She was the same way in basketball: a show-off and a ball hog. First we warmed up with shooting. I enjoyed shooting— dribbling, turning, releasing, then darting to catch the ball as it fell through the net. Next we did lay-ups. We were in two lines; one person made a lay-up and the other rebounded. When Lindsay passed me the ball, it bounced off my foot. Maybe I was just nervous and distracted, or maybe she did it on purpose, but I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks as I chased after the ball. I couldn’t even concentrate enough to make the lay-up. After lay-ups, we did one-on-one. I was good at that— that was how I practiced in the driveway with Matt. Dribble to the right, crossover, dribble left-handed, protect the ball with your body, turn, switch hands, go in for a lay-up. On offense everything was simple. And then on defense, quick little steps, hands out, watching the stomach in case they try to fake with the head, forcing them to their weak side, waiting for them to hesitate, and then reaching out to steal the ball. It was going fine until Lindsay was my defender. I was dribbling around her when she stuck out her foot and tripped me. My knee slammed into the floor and scraped across it. The ball bounced off the wall and rolled to a stop. “Are you all right?” she asked sweetly, reaching to help me up. We both knew that she was putting on an act for the coaches. “Loser,” she mouthed at me. At least I think that’s what she was trying to say I was too busy glaring at her and trying to pretend that I was perfectly fine to pay attention to the shape her mouth was making. I went to the back of the line. My knee was throbbing painfully Carla caught my eye and shrugged. We finished this part of the tryouts, and the coaches divided us into teams. Most of the tryouts would be small games, three-on-three, so they could see how we played. Lindsay and I were on the same team. We were playing Carla’s team first. Lindsay brought the ball up, but wouldn’t pass to me even though I was open. She tried to make a three-point shot but it didn’t even reach the basket. I jumped, caught the ball, and passed it to the third member of our team, who made a basket. But Lindsay just wouldn’t give me the ball. I spent the whole time running to shake off my defender, yelling that I was open, but not getting the ball. The few times I did get the ball I shot. I only missed once. “What a jerk,” Carla muttered
Tested Dreams
A nine-year-old girl sat on her parents’ bedroom window seat looking out at the stormy, gray sky It’s going to rain, thought the girl. It’s going to mimic how I feel. Slowly the girl lowered her tear-filled brown eyes to her right knee. It felt a little better now, but just a day earlier she had to be carried off her beloved tennis court because her knee had been so inflamed it could not support her weight. Blinking back her tears, the girl looked back out the window. It was now pouring so hard that not even the other townhomes across the street could be seen. The girl smiled briefly. Let it rain, she thought as her mind wandered back to yesterday’s tennis match. It had been a tough match. No doubt about that. She was playing a boy almost twice her age when a searing pain went through her right knee. Thinking she had just stepped wrong, she shrugged it off like any other self-respecting tennis player would. That was a mistake. A mistake she would have to live with for a long time. As the match continued, the pain in her right knee worsened, but she fought through it. In her mind, there was no greater shame than saying the words “I quit.” The girl looked down at her knee and wiped a stray tear off her face. That had been her second mistake. She had not believed in the saying, “Discretion is the better part of valor,” and for that she had paid. Resuming her gaze at the pouring rain outside the window, she remembered the last point in the match. The point when she knew she had to stop. She remembered swallowing hard as she readied herself for the return of service while trying to block out the throbbing pain from her knee. She just had to finish the game. She just had to play one more point. It’s going to rain, thought the girl It’s going to mimic how I feel “No, I didn’t,” whispered the girl, “I didn’t have too. I could have just walked away and retired from the match then and there.” The girl sighed as she repositioned herself on the ledge. “But I couldn’t,” as she paused, a tiny flicker of flame briefly appeared in her brown eyes, “I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give up.” Still maintaining her gaze out the window, she recalled the memories of that one last point. How she had painfully dragged her leg to return the tennis balls. How she eventually had made an error ending the point and the game. But even with all that, the girl thought the toughest thing in the match was to say the words “I retire” to her opponent. She had never quit before, and she hoped she would never have to again. Those two little words were painful to say, almost more painful than her knee, and they had left a bad taste in her mouth. The girl looked away from the window to look at her injured knee. Oh, how could you do this to me! she thought venomously. Who knows when I can play again because of you! The girl swallowed hard, fighting to hold back her tears. She loved tennis and who knew how long this injury, this first injury, would keep her away from her beloved sport. Then, for the first time, it hit her. Injuries are a part of sports. They are what make you or break you. They define your career. They test your love for the game and the will that you have for fulfilling your dreams. And, in some cases, they can even force you to form new loves and new dreams. But this was not truly a bad injury. It was one of those injuries that was to test her. Test her love and devotion to her tennis. And, it was with this new realization that she made another one. If she truly loved tennis, if she truly wanted to play again, she would not be sitting up on this ledge moping, but downstairs icing her knee and preparing for her eventual return to the tennis court. “I will come back,” began the girl strongly. “No matter what’s wrong with my knee, I won’t let it stop me.” The girl then raised her head to once again look out the window. The pouring rain had stopped, and amongst what remained of the ugly, gray clouds, a beautiful rainbow was forming in the sky. The girl smiled at this, for now the sky was mimicking her new feelings; feelings not of despair or of self-pity but of strength and determination to return, no matter what, to her precious sport. “And when I come back,” continued the girl softly, an indescribable glow in her brown eyes, “I’m going to be better than ever.” And with that the girl got up off the ledge and headed downstairs to get ice for her knee, for now instead of moping she would work as hard as she could to really come back better than ever. Dominique Maria Spera,13Altamonte Springs, Florida Leyla Akay,10Sewickley, Pennsylvania
