A synchronised swimmer launches into the blue two days before a national competition in the latest in our series of flash fiction
By Maria Reva for Flash Fridays by Tin House, part of the Guardian Books Network
Two days before the synchronized swimming nationals, our Flyer vanished. I don’t mean she didn’t show up to training, and I don’t mean she left the pool through a door and didn’t re-enter the door. In the ninth hour of training, we threw Uta Franke into the air and Uta Franke did not land.
The only person who was not underwater at the time, apart from the Flyer herself, was our trainer, Olivia. She sat in her usual spot, the fold-out chair beside the stainless steel ladder. Olivia says her eyes were averted from the pool because she was reaching for the stop button on the stereo. We hadn’t executed the barracuda position in time with the music, which was an unforgivable fuck-up two days before a competition, and she’d seen six-year-olds execute a smoother barracuda, and at this rate she might as well take twelve dogs from the shelter and throw them in the pool and they would still out-barracuda us, and—why not—look better in turbo swimsuits too. This is what she claims she was thinking that instant, when she banged stop.
Continue reading...
0 comments:
Post a Comment