Mariana, the surfer's Arc

Chapter 5 of 1

Mariana climbed the block alone at dawn. The pool sat flat and empty. She held the stopwatch in her fist, thumbed it, and dove. She hit the water chest-first, a hard slap, and swam. Forty-two. Worse than before. She tried again. Forty-two again. Her dive went flat every time, and no one stood there to tell her why. She stopped counting laps. She started counting failures. Ten dives, ten slaps. She could not see her own body in the air. She could not fix a mistake she could not watch. The stopwatch only told her she was slow. It never told her how to be fast. Coral arrived for her morning splits. She was the rival who had brought Mariana here, the swimmer who wanted their race to be fair and hard. She watched Mariana dive once, then walked to the block edge. "You're throwing yourself out," Coral said. "Not down. Look." She climbed up and set her feet. "Head between your arms. Chin tucked. You want one clean line into the water, not a belly flop." Mariana tried it. Slap again. "I can't feel the difference," she said. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong until I've done it." Coral thought. Then she pulled her phone from her bag and held it up. "I'll film you. You dive. Then you watch yourself." Mariana dove. Coral filmed. They crouched together on the wet tile and watched the small screen. Mariana saw it at once. Her hips dropped early. Her chest hit first. The whole entry broke apart before she was under. "There," Coral said, pointing. "Your hips. Lift them." Mariana dove again. Coral filmed again. They watched again. This time her line held longer. She saw her own mistake shrink. She dove a fourth time, a fifth. Each clip showed her the next fix. She stopped needing Coral's words. The screen corrected her. On the tenth dive she cut in clean. No slap. Just a seam in the water and her body sliding through. She surfaced, sprinted, hit the wall, and stopped the watch. Thirty-nine. Mariana stared at it. Two seconds gone from the dive alone. She had never touched thirty-nine before. Coral looked at the number over her shoulder. Her sharp smile came, but slower this time. "Thirty-nine," she said. "You found it." "I can fix myself now," Mariana said. "I don't need you standing here." Coral was quiet. She took her phone back and slid it into her bag. "No," she said. "You don't." She climbed onto her own block for her splits, and for the first time she did not look relaxed. Mariana climbed out and dried her hands. Thirty-nine. Three seconds from Coral now, not five. The gap was closing, and Coral had just watched it close. Mariana wondered how long the rival who taught her would keep teaching once the numbers got this near.