Open Water by Caleb Nelson (books to read in your 30s .TXT) 📗

of ­lookers-­on. You don’t say much to each other, but nod as you depart, understanding what has gone unsaid.

‘Can I ­ask –’

‘Three. Me and two other girls. You?’ You’re on the sofa now. She knocks your hand with her knee as she bunches her limbs up to assume a ­cross-­legged pose. She’s miscalculated, or perhaps this is a precise manifestation of desire unspoken; either way, neither of you say anything as her leg rests against yours, your hand now lazing atop her thigh.

‘Four. Two boys, two girls. Year below me didn’t have any,’ you say.

‘Lonely, no?’

Like Baldwin said, you begin to think you are alone in this, until you read. In this instance, two books are being spread open along the spine, despite the fact you don’t remember some of these pages. She’s looking at you and there is nowhere to hide here, nowhere to go. An honest meeting.

‘Sometimes. Had some good people, though. And I found ways of coping,’ you say.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. You would find me either in the library or on the basketball court.’

‘Of course, you played basketball.’

An activity which seems wholly arbitrary yet is anything but. The first time, you all stood in a semicircle and your coach showed you the ­moves – a bounce, pick up, two steps, extend towards the hoop, soft against the backboard, the ball slipping through the net. He told you it wouldn’t come straight away, no, this would take practice. The confusion when you picked the ball up and did it the first time. Do it again. It wasn’t a fluke. You just got it.

How does one articulate a feeling? There was a sensuality to the sharp movements you took towards the basket. Feeling rather than knowing; not knowing and feeling it was right. The moment slipped and shed. You had new skin. Bypassed something, the trauma, the shadow of yourself. This was pure expression. The steps were quick and sure like the intention of brush on canvas. No, you didn’t just put a ball through a hoop. You received a new way of seeing, a new way of being.

It made you skinny, that game, that life. The ­T-­shirt hugged your chest, long, strong arms hanging loose out of the material. Time will do that. You measured time in how quickly you could get up and down the court, the squeak of rigid rubber soles an aural stopwatch. In the last few years, on Fridays, you were ­relegated to the smaller sports hall, where badminton lines ­criss-­crossed with your scoring markers. Basketball was an afterthought in this space, the court boundaries pressed up against the walls. You had to crack open the ­fire-­exit door to soften the sting of chlorine wafting in from the adjacent swimming pool. Warm in there too. Just you. Sometimes, a teammate would join for the first hour; when fatigue began to set into your bodies, they would depart, while you continued to work out angles, to shoot until the swish of the ball through the hoop gave the sound of a violent snap. Practice? We talking bout practice? You had no real understanding of your ­ability – a blessing, a ­curse – but knew that this was something you must do. Especially after the injury, your shoulder out of your joint like an unfastened button. Trauma makes you considerate.

You wanted to put a ball through a hoop, and repeat. You didn’t want to have to think about what it meant to wander the unending acres of the grounds, the series of coincidences and conditions which confirmed your place there, loud in the silence. You didn’t want to have to think about what was seen when you offered a grin in the corridor; the discrepancy between what they thought they knew and what was true scared you. You didn’t want to play a game in which you had no say in the rules, or the arena.

So, you ­retreated – or let’s say you ­advanced – to the basketball court. The move was to grow closer to yourself so this was progress, no? You wanted to carve a home here, on the wooden floor with fading markings. You wanted to stretch into the outer limits of your body and beyond. You wanted to be breathing so hard you became breathless. You wanted to sweat. You wanted to ache. You wanted to launch a ball from half court, the orange orb spinning quicker and quicker as it approached the basket; the net making a splash when leather hits string. You wanted to smile, raising your hands in jubilance. You just wanted to feel something like joy, even if it was small.

You just wanted to be free.

‘And you?’

‘And me?’

‘What was your thing?’

‘My thing ?’

‘You’re making me sound crazy. Come on. Black kid at private school? We all had a way of staying sane. Even if it was just yours.’

She nods, appreciatively. ‘I hear that. Dancing. That was my thing. Still is.’ You feel her body ease into the sofa as she speaks. ‘When someone sees ­you – I’m just talking about day to day, you ­know – you’re either this or that. But when I’m doing my thing?’ A pause, as memory holds her, warm, thick, comforting. ‘When I’m doing my thing, I get to choose.’

The silence is similar to whatever memory has gripped her, and you’re both content to swim in it for a moment. A distant grumble approaches and groans, like an oncoming train speeding through the station, and she asks, ‘Shall we eat?’

The sky is darkening and it’s late afternoon. She places the last dish in the drying rack and turns off the tap. ‘Think I gotta get going soon.’

‘Is that all you’re wearing?’ you say, in a way you hope sounds caring, not judgemental. It’s here that you notice how tidy and slender her frame is. She’s wearing a white polo neck and a black wraparound, black tights, and arrived with only the clothes on her body.

‘Yeah,’ she says, looking down. ‘I’m gonna be cold, aren’t I?’

‘Take my hoody.’

‘The black one? That’s your favourite.’

‘Take it. You can give it back or