Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

Author:Sherri L. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

“Ida! Ida, come up!” Lily’s voice carries through the water like an old gramophone recording. Stretched, thin, and bubbly, it sounds more like she’s the one underwater instead of me.

I give her a thumbs-up, then hold up all ten fingers. Ten seconds more. I’ve been sitting at the bottom of the town swimming pool for twenty seconds. Ten more and I’ll have reached my goal. My lungs ache. I want to open my mouth and exhale. At the mere thought, bubbles escape my nose. I try to stay calm, but I’m already shoving off the rough pool bottom toward the surface. I break through the top with a gasp.

“Ida, thank goodness. You know you scare me when you stay down so long.” Lily rushes toward me with a white towel. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell if you ever get in trouble down there.”

I accept the towel gratefully and dry my face before wrapping the towel around my shoulders. “Oh, believe me, you’ll know, from all the thrashing and churning I’ll do. I don’t think anybody ever drowns peacefully.”

Lily frowns. “Ophelia did, in Hamlet.”

“No, you only hear about it afterward. They always candy-coat that stuff.”

I shiver beneath the little towel. Lily frowns.

“Goodness, you must be cold. It’s getting too chilly to keep doing this before spring, Ida. Maybe we should give it a rest.”

I hate to admit it, but she’s right. “It is only warm in the sun these days.” Even in New Orleans, December was usually cause for a cold snap. And no one wants to believe how cold it can get in the South in the wintertime, even without snow.

“It’ll be warm at the Beach. Let’s go.”

The Beach is actually the strip of sand that runs between the rows of barracks. Thanks to the metal siding of the buildings and the lack of trees, the Beach gets hot enough to suntan in year-round, according to the upperclassmen. I’ve avoided it until now, because, quite frankly, getting a tan is the last thing I should be doing here, and not just because of the workload. The minute I get a shade darker than I am, I’m convinced a group of MPs will descend on me and throw me into the hoosegow.

“I think I’ll just take a shower,” I tell Lily as we reach the barracks. She shrugs.

“I’ll only be out for a little while. I burn like crazy in the sun,” she says. She grabs the chair from the foot of her bed and drags it behind her into the yard. I wait for her to leave before I carefully undo my hair from its swim cap. It’s become a ritual, pulling it straight and tight, braiding the ends so they tuck up neatly beneath the two swimming caps I wear, with a little towel sandwiched underneath the rim. Whatever it takes to keep my hair from getting too wet, too kinky. It’s harder now that I can sit underwater for so long. Sometimes you can see the air bubbles squeeze past your ears and let the water in.

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