Everyone Swims Away Eventually

As I was pulling myself out of the summer training pool one last time, my teammate grabbed my foot. She gently yanked me back down into the water.

“Where do you think you’re going? Practice isn’t over yet!” She smiled sadly.

“I should probably be headed out soon, my flight leaves in a couple hours.”

“And you’re not fully packed yet?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Of course not, Hayley. Still have some last-minute things to add. Do you think most girls bring their prom dresses with them to college?”

We laughed. While the other lanes kept swimming, we paused in silence, listening to the sound of the strokes against the water and the distant giggling of children in the kiddie pool. We wanted to hold this moment, her and I, but we also wished that it had never come to this. Towards the end, when you’re saying goodbye, it feels like you’ve never known anything else. Everything up to that was a series of lasts, and I didn’t remember how to live in the moment anymore. There was no present, just hauntings of the past and the looming fear of the future. I looked over to the sidelines, where our coach pretended to be watching the other swimmers. Usually, she would be all too quick to jump on us and tell us to get back to practice. I hated it in those moments, but now, I wished for that normalcy once more, something to bring me back and pretend like this was what I was going to do forever.

“I really should get going.”

The spell was broken.

“Tell me again why you can’t stay and go to Pacific. We could come back as assistant coaches, run the Learn to Swim program, teach the pre-competitive swimmers.”

“Out East is where the action's at. You know how good Indiana’s swim program is.”

“They’ve churned out a lot of Olympians.”

“Sure have. And, you know, this town is my hometown.”

Hometown. It sure carried a lot of weight between us. I wouldn’t have used it the same way back when I moved in halfway through 5th grade and started my last year of Elementary school with kids I’d never met before. But Hayley had been there, and Hayley had convinced me to go persuade my mom to bring me to a morning practice, test it out. Before the sun rose, I was in the pool, swimming away with the other kids. I wasn’t that fast, or that technically skilled, but when my coach saw me beaming when I got out of the pool, she told me to come back again the next day. And I did. For seven years I swam on that team, me and Hayley always in the same lane, always racing each other and telling jokes. But outside of the pool, things were different. When I didn’t have Hayley, I didn’t have anyone. Nobody else really took to me like she did – I didn’t match up with small town values. I wanted change in the world, I thought I could fix all the little things that bothered me, but all I faced was opposition. From my classmates, from my teachers, from adults. So, when the time came to apply to university, I knew that this would be my chance to get out and make big changes. I couldn’t stay here forever. That’s why I did something I would never tell Hayley: I didn’t apply to Pacific. When she got her acceptance letter, and I supposedly got mine, I told her that the scholarships weren’t as good as I had hoped. That Indiana University had offered me a full ride as a student athlete, and since Pacific didn’t even compete at that level… I made excuses. Excuses when I should have been honest.

“Right, your hometown. Meaning… you better come swimming with us at Christmas. You can show us all the drills that the fancy Olympic coaches are teaching you guys out there.”

“I sure will. And I’ll tell you all the stories about the people I meet and my roommate and my new teammates and the Midwest boys.”

I gave her a big splash, and we giggled.

“Girls, stop horsing around out there. And Cadence, stop distracting Hayley. We have a competition next week that we're going to crush. If we practice.” I blushed red. Even though this was a weekly, if not daily, occurrence, it was still embarrassing to be called out. My coach was an amazing woman, and even though I wouldn’t tell her until I had grown out of my teenage years, she was someone who I looked up to, and whose words of wisdom kept me going through college.

“Well,” I turned back to Hayley gingerly, “my mom’s going to be mad if I take any longer.”

I pulled myself out of the pool once more, this time, with no inhibition. I sat on the side with my feet in the water and pulled off my swim cap and goggles. My hair fell around my shoulders in damp clumps. The children in the kiddie pool screamed.

“Are you gonna get out and hug me goodbye?”

“No. I’ll stay in the pool and drown, so I don’t have to watch you leave.”

“Will I find you there when I come back at Christmas?”

“Yep. The chlorine will preserve me pretty well, I’m guessing. But” she said in a fakely dramatic tone. “I won’t have any soul left in my long dead body. You’ll take it with you when you go. You’ll take it with you, and bury it in the Midwest fields, under cornrows and big blue skies. I’ll live amongst the cattle and the people, floating like a ghost, waiting for you to come find me, the treasure you left behind.” Sighing, she flung her head and arms back, before sinking down into the water. When she resurfaced a few moments later, both of us smiling, I dragged her onto the decks.

“Come on, I gotta get going. I can feel my mom sending me telepathic messages about being late.”

“I guess this is goodbye.”

“Nope, this is a see you later.”

“...God, that was cheesy. I hope we never say something that unfunny again.” I giggled.

“Me too. Now give me a hug.”

Dripping wet, we gave each other one last hug as real teammates. We both knew things would never be the same again. We had always been told that high school friendships just don’t last. You go off to college, you change, you come home and see your old friends and realize they’re not the same as they used to be either. People can’t stay frozen in time, and you can’t talk to people in your memories. And then one day, you’re looking back wistfully on your life, and you think about everyone who’s made you who you are today. Sometimes you wish there were things you could have said to them that you didn’t, or you wonder where they’re at in life. It hurts, but that’s what it means to grow up.