Freddie turns to me. “Gram’s been giving me a hard time about how long it’s been since I was last in the pool. I told her I’d go with her.” He taps the toe of his sneaker against mine. “It’ll be good. Help you clear your head. And pretty soon it’ll be too cold for the beach.”
I am sort of tempted, but the truth is: “I don’t even have time.”
“Last weekend you watched the entire second season ofGame of Thrones. You have time.”
“Shut up.” I pass him the shaved ice.
“No spoilers!” shouts Adam.
I roll my eyes and discreetly pull out my phone to check messages.
“That show is way too old for the first two seasons to fall under the spoiler-free umbrella,” Freddie tells Adam.
Adam shrugs. “I’ll be sure to remember you said that, Mr. I’ve-Never-Seen-a-Single-Star-Wars-Movie.”
I turn to Freddie as I slide my phone back into my pocket. “Wait. What?”
“My grandparents never really got into it, I guess? I mean, I know Vader is Luke’s dad. That’s pretty much the gist of it, right?”
I’m not a die-hard Star Wars fan, but Dad loves it. I can’t imagine growing up without it. He even has a tattoo of the rebel symbol on his shoulder, and this is a guy who has zero pain tolerance.
Adam glances down at his phone. “My break is over.” He groans dramatically and drops his board to the ground, rolling around the corner to the front of the car wash.
“I’ve still got a few minutes left,” says Freddie.
My favorite part about visiting Freddie at the car wash is watching all the brightly colored soap drain in the alley. Between the smell and the rainbow suds, this might be the nicest alley in all of Eulogy.
“What’s the deal with swimming?” I finally ask. “Why’d you stop?”
He groans and leans back on the sidewalk with his arms stretched out behind him, holding him up. “Every season, scouts show up to our meets, right? Like, college scouts.”
I nod. “To recruit?”
“Yeah. Around the time you’re a junior, you start to get a good idea of who’s looking at you and who’s not.”
“Okay?”
“And well, no one was really looking at me.”
“So you quit?” I ask. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I regret them.
He prickles with irritation. “It’s not that simple. Viv and all my friends were getting calls and offers from all sorts of places.” He shakes his head. “Every time I got in that pool, I knew I was doing the best I could. I trained hard. I even broke it off with Viv for a while to concentrate on improving my times. And every day I felt like such a failure.”
“But even if you don’t get scholarship money or specific offers or whatever, you can still walk on at the beginning of the year and try out, right?”
He shakes his head. “You know how sports announcers are always talking about athletes quitting when they’re at the top of their game?”
I nod. “Vaguely.”
“Well, I get why they say that. Sucking at something you love to do really messes with you. The truth is I decided that I’d apply to all the schools where Viv got scholarship offers and that I’d go wherever she went.”
“Are you serious?” I ask. I like Grace. I think I love her. But I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in Freddie’s position with limitless options and then to leave my fate to be decided by someone else.
When he looks at me, I can see all the heaviness that he’s been carrying over the last few years. His grandfather’s death. His on-again, off-again relationship with Vivienne. Uprooting his entire life so Agnes can live out her years here in Eulogy. Coming up short with swimming.
“Anyway,” he says, “Gram thinks I should keep swimming even if it’s just for the exercise, and she won’t get off my back about it. She’s got this theory that if I’m onlycompeting against myself, I have nothing to lose.”
I puff my cheeks and let the air hiss out slowly. “Well, I guess I can give it a go,” I tell him. “But I’m pretty sure I’m going to be super slow and sucky.”
