Chlorine by Jade Song

Author:Jade Song
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Some nights, after we had smoked, skinny-dipped, and had sex, Ess would invite me to a party at their house. These parties were never the type of raging parties I saw in the movies but were understated basement affairs with other stoners and tattooed people who called themselves artists—they were a new social circle for me. Ess’s friends passed blunts and strummed melodic nonsense on their guitars. I was fascinated by these stoners, and they were fascinated by me, a swimmer. An athlete. Though I didn’t belong with them, they made me feel comfortable, and though I still coughed when the blunt came to me, they never skipped my turn. I appreciated them and laughed with ease far greater than I had ever laughed with my teammates.

Ess’s friends asked me why I did what I did, why I kept swimming. I said I wasn’t sure. It was true. I forgot all my reasons for existing. It didn’t matter. We were high and I wasn’t hurting.

My performance at practice had started to suffer, and Jim was angry at me. I had never disregarded his rules so blatantly before. Though I always made sure to brush my teeth and shower so I wouldn’t smell like weed when I got to practice, I could tell he suspected I was no longer his pure, innocent swimmer. When I swam at practice, it was like I wasn’t even in the pool, my mind elsewhere, like I was out-of-body, a similar sensation to when Ally dared me to go in the storage shed with Luke. My muscles were working, but I had no say over their performance.

I still had to share a lane with Luke that summer, which made me recoil before every dive in. But even when I was half-high and corrupted with leftover lifeguarding sun—even if Jim thought I was slacking off—I was as fast as the boys.

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