The Easy Part of Impossible - Sarah Tomp Page 0,46

and mirror and in the frames placed in line of every view were old. Outdated. She gathered them into a stack and stashed the collection into the bottom of her desk drawer. She grabbed a pillowcase and filled it with her medals. Each one stood for a long-gone victory.

It was too heavy to lift, so she dragged it to her closet and pushed it to the back, behind her shoes and dirty clothes. Then, because all the remaining holes seemed too big and glaring, she swept away everything else, too, until finally her room looked clean and bare. Anonymous.

Ready for her to leave.

Or, to once and for all, forget diving.

She wanted to move her bed to the opposite side of the room, closer to the window, but she wasn’t sure it would fit. She’d have to move her dresser and desk, too. She got out a piece of paper and drew her room, a view from above, mapping each piece of furniture in relationship to the other. Once she was sure the scale was close, she cut out each shape and moved them around her room, trying out new arrangements. It was like playing with a flat, boring dollhouse, figuring out where everything could move.

She moved the smaller furniture first, getting it out of the way, then finally she pushed and shoved, using her hips to move her bed near the window. After she’d rearranged the rest of her furniture, she lay down, checking out her new view of the treetops.

She had no idea what a room with the NDT would look like. She needed to have a window. If there was no window, she’d have to leave. But what if she hated the view out the window? What if Colorado looked ugly and wrong? She knew it wasn’t ugly in general as a place, but the view out her unknown window might be.

Ever since she’d gone back in the pool, every time she closed her eyes, she found herself falling off the edge of the quarry. She’d slip, then fall. Over and over, but she never hit the blue below. Lying here, she felt so damn tired. The fatigue started behind her eyes, but then it spread through her veins and arteries. Like oxygen, but thicker. It wasn’t a physical, overexertion kind of spent. It wasn’t that she wanted to sleep, either. Gravity had shifted. Realigned. It tugged at her. Made her body impossibly heavy. Maybe it was the weight of memories. Or the imaginary view she couldn’t picture.

It was exhausting being in this place of used to be and no idea what the hell to do next.

The first time she met Benny was at the community college where he worked in northern Virginia. Mom had been emailing and calling him for months, he later told her. She’d begged him to meet with them. Ria was a skinny hyper kid excited to miss school for a road trip. There had been two boards at the pool. One was springier, better for getting height, but the fulcrum was tight, and she was little, so she’d had to use both hands while sitting on the ground to turn it.

After her first dive—a one-and-a-half pike she’d fallen in love with, the one that made her feel like she was part bird—Benny had given her a correction. “Go more up than out.”

It was the simplest advice. Something she’d heard a million times since then. But that day, it was new. She’d gone again, doing what he’d said. She went up, up, up. It was glorious. The feeling of spring without care for the board, the attention on that flash of a moment in the air before ever hitting the water—that was all that mattered.

She knew she’d done something beautiful. She could feel it in her bones and muscles and cells that she’d done it right—even before she heard the cheers and applause when she resurfaced.

After that, Benny had taken her through a beginner novice list. She’d done each dive twice. Once to show him, then again with whatever advice he gave her. It was a simple formula. When she did what he said, she dove better.

Her coachability was the reason he agreed to move to Pierre and start a new club. She was his one and only diver. But then Mom talked to parents at the rec center, spreading the word. Before long, other divers filled in the space around her, making it a real business for him. That same coachability was one