Joyland by Emily Schultz Page B

going out with college guys. I can not even be trusted with myself.”
    When Tammy looked over at Sam, she gazed out the window, peering at the houses as if it was L.A. and she might spot the home of someone famous, like Matt Dillon. The unrolled window tossed Sam’s hair around her face so Tammy couldn’t see her expression.
    “When are you moving?”
    “A couple weeks,” Sam answered, without looking.
    Joyce turned the radio up and began to sing along to the Cars’ “Good Times Roll.”
    On the bridge between the south and north sides, Tammy spotted a green Volkswagen Beetle coming toward them.
    “Punch Buggy!” She leaned into the front seat and landed one on Sam’s shoulder.
    “Ow!” Sam yelled, whipping her head around. Freckles stood out like little flecks of blood on her vitreous face. “It’s not my fault,” she hissed, and Tammy could see immediately she’d been crying silently. “Mom says I can come back in the fall for school if I don’t mind bussing in.” Sam reached around herself to rub the bruise that Tammy knew would come.
    Tammy nodded and nodded, as if it would make Sam’s statement come true.
    Above the pool, the sounds lingered, amplified between the fixtures. Tammy lifted herself out backward, plopped her wet butt on the concrete edge.
    She watched as Sam passed into the shallow end and came up about fifteen feet short. Her red ponytail spread out like a thick round hood on her shoulders. She snapped her goggles up into her hair. Sam liked butterfly stroke best because, she said, you didn’t have to put your face in the water. She coughed. Water lapped around her pelvis. Her hips were like handles beneath the gradient green to mint-green spandex. In her bathing suit, Sam was all angles, white elbows and collarbone. Under the water, her thighs were twice as white, even though Tammy knew they were covered in sandy freckles. Sam wrapped one hand around her ribs. The other trailed behind in the water like a kite-tail as she waded toward the ledge where Tammy sat waiting. Even coughing, Samantha was graceful. Tammy didn’t know if it was a trick of the bleach, but an hour into the lesson, the lights overhead always seemed to take on small white and blue halos. She tipped her head back and stared up at them as Sam climbed onto the deck. The combination of frailty and boldness made Tammy squishy with affection, as though she had swallowed too much water.
    Sam stretched out full-length on the tiles behind Tammy, put her head down on crossed arms until her breathing regulated. On the deck in front of her, her goggles lay like the unseeing white outlines of a second set of eyes. Two more of their group were underwater swimming the lap now. They looked like blobs of gelatin. If it were ever quiet here, Tammy thought, rubbing a hand across her eyes, I would hear the lights humming.
    Three more days of laps, then they would begin mouth-to-mouth. Tammy could only rub her eyes and hope Samantha wouldn’t leave her to do it with someone else.
    In the dressing room, Tammy held the towel around her, shifted it down to her hips once she had her T-shirt on.
    “Hurry up!” Samantha hissed. “My mom’s waiting outside.”
    Tammy tucked one end in at the waist, sat down on the bench. Underpants were difficult. They always twisted halfway up her leg, wet skin and cotton not a winning combination.
    Sam zipped up her gym bag, went and took a quick look out the change room door.
    Tammy stood, pulled underwear past her knees before she felt the towel loosen and slip. She made a mad grab at it.
    “Don’t be such a prude.” Sam snatched it away completely, exposing the perverse crimped black swatch between Tammy’s legs.
    Two girls from the Lifesaving Two group looked over and laughed behind their fingers.
    Tammy yanked up her useless Fruit of the Loom, followed by her shorts. She pulled her tube socks up as high as they would go. After being wet, the hairs looked darker, and stuck to her calves at odd