FISH OUT OF WATER

2. Songbird

Chapter 2

Songbird

The acoustics in the locker room showers are surprisingly good. That’s why so many people think they can sing. Everybody sounds good in the shower, lathering up with their perfumey soaps, belting out tunes from their favorite pop stars. Pull them out of the shower and put a mic in their hands? The magic of the shower disappears like suds down the drain.

I’m working out the kinks on a new song. My song, an original, again. Always. Easier that way. I don’t like being compared to other singers, but people like their comparisons. “You sound like P!nk.” “You sound like early Gaga, but not as deep.” “You sound like that girl who was on America’s Got Talent a few years ago. The one who plays the ukulele?”

I think I sound like me. My friends Lily and Sierra think I sound like me too.

The choir director at school likes pushing her singers, but she’s also obsessed with Stevie Nicks and Chrissie Hynde and Debbie Harry from Blondie and other performers from a million years ago that my Uncle Tim listens to. Ms. Amberly is careful with my voice, though. A former opera singer herself, she developed nodes on her vocal cords from pushing herself and her voice too hard while she toured. She had surgery, the surgeon cut too much—same thing that happened to Julie Andrews, apparently—and now singing is in her rearview mirror.

It’s really sad, actually. The damage forced her off the international stage and into the classroom and while we’re glad to have her—and her crazy-cool handmade wardrobe full of custom dresses and skirts that look like they belong in a movie from the 1950s—every once in a while, I see her face as she watches us sing. I think I wear that same face sometimes. Regardless, she’s taught me a lot about my body’s role in making music and when not to push, that I sit firmly in mezzo-soprano with a three octave-range.

Bottom line, I can sing.

My dad, former heartthrob rocker Trent Andersen, doesn’t want me to sing. He wants me to swim. His house rules: Swim. Study. Succeed.

You can see maybe why I like to sing.

My swim-team sisters? They’re standing around the outside of my shower stall, clapping and whooping, throwing out requests like I’m on stage at karaoke night.

I turn off the shower, still singing (I’m just at the good part), and flap the curtain open, my towel wrapped around my goosebump-covered body. Goosebumps not from the cold, but from the feeling I get when I make these sounds come out of my throat and face.

I finish the song.

The applause and hollers bounce off the tiled ceiling, walls, and floors. Like I said, good acoustics.

Coach Tosto barrels into the locker room as she always does, a hurricane in Spandex and expensive foam flip-flops. “I think some of you are supposed to be in the pool?” My audience breaks up, tossing sideways glances at Coach’s back, glances of solidarity at me.

“Songbird,” she starts. It’s not a compliment the way she says it. “If you spent as much time focused on your split times as you spend on your nursery rhymes, you’d be more than ready for districts.”

I want to tell her she has a good start of a song there: split times and nursery rhymes. I don’t tell her that.

“I am ready for districts.”

She hoists her clipboard between us and gives it a wiggle. “The clock says differently.”

“It’s five thirty on a Thursday afternoon. It’s been a long week, and my body is tired.”

Coach Tosto mimes a talking mouth with her hand, like she’s animating an invisible puppet. “I’m hearing a lot of excuses. Wahw wahw wahw.”

I pull my towel tighter and reach for my dripping suit hanging from the hook next to me. “I have an Advanced Biology test tomorrow. May I be excused?”

“Your dad is out front. I talked to him about the butterfly mini workshop on Sunday. He wants you here. Those butterfly times are not going to get you into the regional meet.”

“Can we focus on districts first?” I try to move past her but Coach Tosto is built like a fortress. All muscle and close gray curls against her head, a mouth that looks painted on with an old pink crayon.

Her office is decorated with the medals and trophies that qualify her to be an elite swim coach, which is why I’m standing here, dripping and covered in goosebumps that are now truly from the cold, waiting for the lecture to end. My father sought her out and moved us here when I was eight just so I could train with the esteemed Coach Maria Tosto.

“But I don’t want to be a swimmer,” I told him as he pulled into the parking lot of the swim club, the best on the West Coast. “I want to be a singer. Like Mom. Like you.”

He laughed, but it wasn’t because he thought it was funny. Sadness—not humor—sat heavily in his eyes.

I started swimming the next day, before the movers had even finished carrying the boxes into our new house.

I’ve been swimming ever since. I am the living embodiment of the silly blue-tang fish from that Pixar film—“Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming!”—minus the short-term memory loss, of course. Though my dad may argue with that …

Coach Tosto lifts her penciled-on left eyebrow at me. It’s always the left eyebrow. We joke that she should just draw it that way instead of wasting the muscle energy to lift it.

“I’ll see you at Saturday practice at eight.” She spun and left a whiff of chlorine and bargain-brand women’s deodorant in her wake.

I’m dressed and pulling on my second shoe, grumbling in my head about how cold the water is at eight in the morning, how sore I will be after two hours of butterfly practice, how really I just want to hang out with my friends, when the main locker room screeches open. They really need to fix that.

“Ah! You’re still here!” Lily bounds toward me, outfitted in the beige pants and turquoise-blue uniform required by the swim club management, her hair a little messy from pulling off her hairnet. She works in the concession stand three days a week after school and says the hairnet will be the thing that makes her quit. Not the crabby parents or little kids begging for free cookies—the hairnets.

I thought she got the job because she wanted to hang out with me, but then I realized that her adorable boyfriend, Steve, is on the water polo team—and all the local high school teams use our pool for their year-round practices. It makes sense that Lily would want to be there as much as possible to hang out with him.

And most of my other friends who apply for jobs at the swim club? You guessed it: water polo guys.

Truth? Lily and Sierra and I have spent many nights sitting on the cold metal bleachers watching the water polo practices. It’s a ritual: I finish swimming; Lily gets off work but before doing so, she makes us each hot cocoa with extra whipped cream dusted with chocolate powder; Sierra shows up after she finishes her babysitting job; and then we perch on the highest bleacher and cheer whenever Steve’s team does something amazing. We pretend we’re quizzing each other with whatever flashcards we’ve got in our bags that week as cover. It’s the only way my dad will let me stay out for anything after swim practice—if I’m studying.

Let’s just say we know a lot more about water polo than we do about mitosis and meiosis.

“Your dad is out front,” Lily says. “Talking to your swim coach.” She slides my wet towel over and sits.

“Of course. They’re planning new ways to torture me.”

“Which is why I had to run in here before you left. He heard you singing.”

“And …?”

“Nothing. We all heard it. The parents all love it—but they know better than to say anything to your dad.”

“Trent Andersen, former rock star, refuses to let his daughter sing in public.”

Lily twists her lips to the side for a beat. “I’m sorry, Mar. I know this is a thing between you guys, so I just wanted to let you know so he didn’t get in your face about it in the car or whatever.”

“Yeah. Thank you.” I’d tell Lily that I don’t know why my dad is so weird about me singing, but we both know why my dad is weird about me singing. No one on the outside could possibly understand why Trent Andersen wouldn’t want his daughter to follow in his footsteps. Rock-and-roll worked out well for him. He cut some great records. He hit the Billboard charts a few times. He toured the world and fell in love. He made a lot of money for a while. From the outside, everything looks so pretty and perfect.

No one really knows why my dad still wears his wedding band, even though the woman who gave it to him has been gone for half my life now.

“We’re still on for karaoke this weekend? Sierra texted and she’s in. Doesn’t have to babysit,” Lily says. Her smile is like a warm blanket.

“Can’t wait.”

“I may have something cooler than karaoke for us to do,” Lily says, trying to smooth wayward strands in her long blond hair, “but I don’t want to jinx it yet.” She stands and grabs my wet towel, rolling my swimsuit into it for me.

“Something cooler than karaoke?”

“Seriously cooler.” She hands me the towel roll.

“What is cooler than karaoke? A hint? Just one?”

She slides onto the bench again, her hand soft and warm on top of my wrist. She’s done her nails again—I love the color. I never do my nails because the chlorine from the pool water makes the polish brittle.

“One hint: it involves music.”

“Oh, come on! Another hint! Please?”

Lily throws her head back in an exaggerated evil laugh. “Okay, only one more hint: it involves LIVE music.”

“Are you serious?” She knows how much I love live music.

My phone vibrates against the metal bench, startling us both. I hold it up for her to see, the giddiness evaporating in my chest. Text from my dad: Get a move on. We need dinner. Talked to Coach about [butterfly emoji].

“Your dad uses emojis to talk about swimming?”

“Rarely. The family counselor said emojis could be a ‘fun’ way for us to communicate.”

“My mom discovered the poop emoji and she thinks it’s funny to use all the time. For everything,” Lily says.

“Trent Andersen would be mortified if I sent him a poop emoji,” I say.

“You could try it. Maybe when he’s being a jerk about not giving you any days off.” Her phone timer chimes. “My break’s over so call me later, after you talk to your dad about butterflies or whatever.” She backs toward the door, talking in a loud whisper. “And don’t despair, Songbird! Saturday night is only forty-eight hours from now!”

“Don’t call me ‘songbird’!” I yell after her, but the screaming locker room door drowns me out.

Forty-eight hours to ace an Advanced Bio exam, get through swim practice tomorrow and first thing Saturday morning—and, of course, survive my dad’s inquisition.

Ironically, it’s Coach Tosto’s voice I hear in my head: “One stroke at a time, songbird. One stroke at a time.”