Swimmers in Winter by Faye Guether

Author:Faye Guether
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: queer love;short fiction;short stories;relationships;couples;friendship;love;LGBTQ;contemporary fiction;contemporary relationship;nontraditional;women's fiction;womens fiction;diptych
Publisher: Invisible Publishing
Published: 2020-03-20T23:41:31+00:00

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Thirteen-year-old Jackie landed with a thud on the pavement in the laneway, a block from school. She lay on her side, her cheek slapped by the cement, her body rattled with points of pain where it hit the ground. The school bag carrying her eighth-grade math textbook, wallet, and a small notebook of slow, half-done equations had fallen off her shoulder. She pulled it close, held in both arms like a lumpy shield.

This had all happened before.

If I stay still like this, will they leave me alone?

Above her, a group of other thirteen-year-olds circled, mostly girls, laughing. Beyond the mustiness of the ground, the air was full of their scent: vanilla perfume, cigarettes, and cinnamon-flavoured chewing gum.

You fell, or they tripped you as you tried to get away. Again.

All Jackie could concentrate on was the hurt.

She reached to her face. It was the place they could most easily find her shame, no mask ever thick enough or large enough to hide her.

My glasses are gone.

Down on the pavement, she was eye level with their black boots and bright sneakers. It was hard to see any distance without her glasses, but she could feel their lean storm gathering. The laneway, a shortcut to the back of the recess yard, was quiet otherwise.

Wherever she went, they followed. The thing they hated most seemed locked within her.

I can’t say what it is.

She believed they might even be willing to break her open, to reveal what they couldn’t stand to see. She knew what they would dare, beyond the burn of their words.

I’m afraid they’re going to hurt me worse.

“Jackie?”

Her name said with such heat. She flinched.

Jackie moved her hands over the blurry ground in front of her. How could she find her glasses when she couldn’t see anything properly?

There was laughter as she scrambled to try and sit up. She felt a kick from behind that landed on her left side, just below her heart. The force sent her back to the ground. A sound left her lips before she could stop it, something between the heaving of prayer and a sob of anticipation.

“Jackie?” the voice said again.

Someone else mimicked it, and giddy laughter rang in response.

Suddenly, a figure hurtled into view, almost tripping over her. It leaned into its velocity, on the edge of falling, legs bent, arms out as if hanging from the air, and let out a shriek—a weird, garbled cry of jubilation or pain, the kind of sound only a girl can make.

The crowd paused.

To them, what they were doing was just a game. It was supposed to be funny. Forcing Jackie to realize there was something wrong with her was just a way for them to deal with ordinary boredom, to slap away the constant biting embarrassments of their day, to figure out what they meant to each other.

But the interruption, the deranged sound, seemed to suddenly bring the moment into focus: its messiness, the ugly feelings.

They didn’t think they could laugh at this part.

The stranger lurched toward them, howling, her fists everywhere.

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