Feather. Hear the oars clank against the swivels, a dull thud resonant in the salt-burned carbon fiber, quiet and deafening in duality. Glide through the slide, feel the gentle rise of your chest as you inhale, cold air coalescing in your lungs, bitter in its taste of ocean detritus but revitalizing all the same. Your mouth is dry, now, but the boat waits for no one, gliding across the calm surface of the channel with angelic grace.
Catch. Feel the muscle fibers contract, body tensed and ready like a caged tiger’s, another thunk of the carbon fiber a heartbeat before eight oars descend into the water at once. Minimal splash on yours - Santana ought to thank you for that, though she’s not had quite enough of wet shirts, showboat that she is - but it’s good technique nonetheless. One more heartbeat.
Drive. Sense the oar lock into the water, churning the depths with your unwelcome intrusion, foam and industrial chemicals slurried below you, agitated once again. Feel the slack in your joints give itself over to trained muscle and bone, legs straining against the footplates, body lifting off the seat, levitating for but a moment, oar pulling in its lazy twelve-foot arc undisturbed by your herculean effort. The graceful glide of the boat is disturbed for but a moment, rushing forward in restrained fury, before calming once more.
Finish. Feel your back engage, momentum and core driving the oar home, handle accelerating towards your chest. Breathe out, let the burning in your legs and lungs flow out of you now, left behind in the trail of the slender vessel, drifting away into the tangled trees and pebbles that line the channel. You hear seven oar handles find their mark. Not yours, though. The others, Santana and all the rest, let their oars collide with them, finding a home against their ribs, letting the stroke gasp out its last ounce of power, turning a modicum of pain into the start of another slide. Not you. You sink that power into your hands and arms, coming to a rest just before the oar handle collides, sparing the deep bruises under your shirt.
Feather. More gentle thunk-ing of oars this time, yours once more joining the chorus.
“Angel! Tighten up that finish.”
Coach's voice comes from the stern. You know what it says before you’ve even consciously processed it, but it still stings a little. You choose to ignore it, for your own sake. You’ve got enough on your mind as is.
Your legs burn, of course, as everybody’s do. Lactic acid buildup, creeping anaerobics ever so slowly showing their toothy grins as the boat speeds along the channel, kilometer markers passing like searchlights in the golden sunset, fog creeping in from the sea like a whisper. Rower’s hands are never pretty things, yours included, callouses three layers deep and a bloody blister on your left. Ophelia had never really taken kindly to holding your hand, but she did begrudge the experience for the intimacy of it all. Most rowers carry their bruises on their sternums, where ergometer handles have left their impression, bounced off the chest in frenetic desperation in the closing five hundred meters of a test piece.
Not you. You carry your bruises on your ribs, to your great shame. You’ve gotten good at putting up your hands, but that really only ever does so much. You feel the deep ache whenever you take a breath in. Even now, with your body on the verge of exhaustion, it’s the predominant sensation in your mind, despite its dullness. Breathe in, breathe out. Stay in sync with the boat. Ollie will have your head if you don’t. Catch, drive, finish, slide. Lose yourself in the rhythm of it all. Let your thoughts slip from the boat, to your life, to the water, to nothing at all. Watch the six-kilometer mark slide by, left behind in the fading sunlight, cast in orange-red long-wave beauty, fingers of clouds stretching to swallow the sun entirely, radiance buried beneath crystal-stained magicks.
Glide it out. Let the boat’s momentum carry you for a change, slowly slowing down your strokes until the boat slows, letting the gentle ripple of the water and your heaving chest lull you into a false sense of security. You could never feel like this at home. Only on the water. Your teammates, not giving you a second glance, not worrying about your shoulders, your posture, your face, your voice, any of it. Just athletes together on the water, heavy breaths and camaraderie.
Grab your water bottle. Struggle with deadened fingers to remove the cap, letting the lukewarm-cold water hit your parched throat. It stings, for a moment, and in a heartbeat you are back there again, with Ophelia, wincing as she tended to a particularly nasty gash left after one of your altercations. You’ve always been good at gritting your teeth - she commended you on that, after cleaning out your wound with water, then antibiotic. You didn’t make a sound, and she noticed. Her eyes met yours for a brief moment, held painful in its tension, before hers darted from you, focused more on attending to your wound. You remember the grisly decor in the museum, her home, the way the bloody harpoon rested against the wall, quiet and malevolent as mundane iron could be, contrasted so heavily against her warmth and comfort.
Rest. Breathe. Let your warm body collapse down into your seat, stretch your back along the cold aluminum rigger at your rear, find your head between Noel's legs, pull yourself back up. Fading sunlight glints across the water now, sun halfway past its expiration over the buildings of Watson's Harbor, timber and red brick washed out in silhouette by copper-tones, ocean breathing in oxide-blue to black. Zinc-treated fishing vessels have begun arriving back in port, and soon enough the birds will too, everyone in this godforsaken place clawing and grasping at the dwindling harvest.
Port side, row. You're snapped out of your musings by a sharp call from the coxswain's post, echoing through the beat-up speaker system embedded into the delaminating carbon fiber hull. Evidently, someone took care of these boats once, just like someone took care of the docks and the schools and everything else in this place, but that someone is gone now, and no one else is willing to step up to that role. It won't be you today. Regardless, you row. The boat turns slowly, gingerly, but it turns nonetheless, facing back towards the boathouse, two kilometers down the line.
You don't even need to hear the coxswain say it to know when to row. The subtle shifting of the center of mass, rolling of the seat tracks, ripple in the water, muscles tensing in Sam’s back through her tank top - you've always been envious of her - all connected like one all-encompassing nervous system of one massive creature. A hive mind, less than the sum of its parts, driven to simply move forward despite reason, pain, and fear. The creature is familiar to you. You know its face. It’s always there to greet you when the razor meets the skin of your face in the mirror, wondering why you keep walking into that maze of broken glass. You've never had an answer for it before, and you still don't have one today, so you row, leaving the thought behind in the gentle, eight-marked wake of the vessel you've come to understand so deeply.
The sun's last rays have blinked out, guttering like candles in a storm before being swallowed entirely, fog front moving into the town as a chilled embrace. The electric lights do their best to keep the fog at bay, streetlights glowing as beacons, the flickering argon-blue sign of the Wharf's Edge beckoning sailors as a respite from the darkened docks and as a remedy for their parched throats. Quiet by any other name. You feel as if one day you might join the sailors at the bar, eager to think about nothing but the jukebox and the taste of the next drink on your lips. The cold has yet to settle in for you, your core burning up despite your sparse clothing, chest furnace-hot and lungs like foundry bellows, but the creeping tendrils of fog will find their way yet.
Power ten, in two. It's the call you dread most. Something to take you out of the routine. Something to wrench you from your dissociation back into the limelight, kicking and screaming, inadequacies on full display. Ophelia told you once that nothing seemed to scare you more than being present in the moment. She meant it in concern, really, but to you it almost read as a compliment. Able to endure anything if you could only disconnect enough. Despite the fear, though, your legs press with even greater force, feeling the oar wrench into the water, nearly bending with the exertion. Finish, catch, drive. You get four strokes in before your inadequacies show themselves.
On the fifth stroke, the finish comes early for you. As you feather, your oar handle, dragged along by the water, slams into your ribs. The pain is immediate, white-hot, and blistering in its agony. Ophelia is not with you this time, only your darkened room and ragged breaths accompany you now, fog coating your window outside, quiet whispers in your ear. You're sixteen again, keeping your voice down after an exceptionally rough punishment. You know Ophelia is waiting for you at the park, but you can't risk it again. You just need to ride it out. One night.
Five strokes left. If Coach saw your slip, she didn't say anything. Neither did Noel, at least. What they don't know can't hurt them. Find the rhythm again. If you don't, Ollie will have your head. Let those neurons creep back into your mind, let the feel of the boat find you once more, let the pounding in your ribs abate to nothing, let the quiet rusted remnants of the shoreline industrial area fade into a dull blur in the corner of your vision, let that mysterious attic light burn out, let the world collapse itself into feather, catch, drive, feather. Let your heartbeats merge, let your breathing match the twenty-six stroke-per-minute song of the boat, let your mind go quiet, empty, complete.
You don't know when the power ten concludes. You don't know if it even does. The next thing you remember is a call to glide, and the starboard rowers bringing in the boat gently to the dock. You’re hardly breathing. Let your insensate hands struggle with the gate, eventually lifting the oar outside the rigger. Everyone else is free, now, only your body remains in the shell, still strapped to the foot-plate, splintering composite and synthetic woven shoes keeping you held back.
Santana offers to take your oar, and you let her, being careful not to look in her eyes. She laughs a little at your timidity, but takes your oar and stows it well. You cast your eyes away as soon as is able - you’d hate to be caught staring despite your envy. Reduce yourself, stay alive. Let your waifish physique and nonthreatening demeanor carry you along, your quiet smile an unspoken savior. You don’t have the privilege to be like her even if you wanted to. You could never wear her grin, her strength, her confidence; the worth would be peeled from you like an unwanted sticker on imported fruit.
Undo the shoes. Simple enough. With some dedicated fiddling, you can free yourself simply enough, slipping your shoes back on just in time to lift the boat. At least this is one scenario where you can relax. You and Robin are too short to make any real difference, taking this moment to cool down and feel the quiet cold of darkened fog creep in, slowly replacing the lactic acid-warm afterglow of the sunlit practice. Boathouse lights do their best, but you could do this in your sleep. With the boat stowed, your responsibilities here have faded. Some retire to the locker rooms, some simply pack their things and go. Kris is changing into her overalls, Ollie is throwing on a coat, Noel is brushing her hair. Not you. Best to slip out now, before anyone notices your absence; let your feet guide you, unthinking, one step after the next on the long walk home.
Left. Quiet your mind. Turn off the dread that waits for you under the porchlight, turn off your self preservation instincts, let the worry flow from you, leaving on your exhale.
Right. Slow your breathing. Bear the cold - it's only fifteen minutes.
Left. Ignore the face of the creature in the puddles by the sidewalk, ignore every screaming neuron, take a deep breath in, take another step forward.