Sway

The water always had a calming effect on her.

The ocean, a wide expanse of the unknown, was unforgiving. This, she knew. The currents and tides were controlled by an otherworldly orb in the heavens, the fathomless depths contained every manner of creatures, and the waves often took boats…and people…as their captives.

She lay back on her board, letting it drift back and forth with the motion of the rippling water. Out past the breakers, she could just lay there for hours, letting the sea take her where it desired. The water could pull her from the shore without her consent, sink her into its depths, trap her in a swirl of itself, but for some reason, those thoughts didn’t scare her. With her board, she could control the wild ocean, even for a second. She could stand there in control of the chaos around her.

There was another side to the ocean — one that brought new life. It gave home and shelter to countless species of marine life. It provided food for so many others. It gifted Ashlyn new energy.

She squinted up at the bright morning sun, wrinkling her nose at its rays. Letting her feet drop into the cool water, she spun around and began to paddle back towards the shore. There before her, she could see a nice wave just starting to grow. She aligned herself just right, paddling quickly, and popped up in time to ride it back in to the sandy beach.

Control.

Everywhere else, she was less lucky. People spun around her in a sort of distorted insanity she could barely figure out on a good day. On a bad day…well, she had better be at the beach, amongst the waves, breathing in the salty air and becoming one with the water.

The sound of sandy feet padding down the worn wood of the back hallway was drowned out by arguing voices. She cringed at the sound and scurried to the small bathroom on the hall, shucking off her bathing suit as she closed the door. When she was done with her shower, towel-clad she scuttled across the hall and into her bedroom.

It was strange to see all the bags and boxes, there in the middle of the floor. She couldn’t tell if things looked more organized, stacked up and put away as they were, or more chaotic than before. Her closet and dresser both looked a little bare. The wetsuits and other surfing gear seemed lonely already in their usual corner.

Just one more day, and she would be leaving the Space Coast, her home, for North Carolina — specifically, UNC Chapel Hill. She wondered vaguely if this was the right choice, but the sound of enraged voices coming from the kitchen solidified her decision. There was no way she could stay here any longer.

Control. She would take charge of her future finally, finally and there would be nothing left of Satellite Beach to hold her back.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Ashlyn kept weaving her way through the other guests, ignoring Whitney’s protests. They’d shown up late enough for the grand majority of the people there to be on their merry way to being hammered. Ashlyn grinned, the too-loud thump of the bass invigorating her like cold water.

“We have to study.”

“Maybe you do,” Ashlyn quipped. She could hear Whitney’s groan of frustration.

“You can’t just do this every time —”

“What, party?” Ash rounded on her, making Whitney jump slightly. But she didn’t back away. “Because that’s what I do, Whit. That’s what everyone does. It’s okay.”

“No,” Whitney said sharply. “Because I know what you’re doing. You’re upset and so you’re going to get blackout drunk, make out with a few girls, and spend the next couple days nursing your regret before you jump right back in and do it all over again.”

Ashlyn paused, but couldn’t bring herself to give in. “So what?”

“So what? Ash, it’s like you’re addicted to causing yourself even more pain.”

Ashlyn tensed. She knew Whitney was probably bringing up her knee, but she could hardly hear the party, let alone Whitney, through the pounding in her ears, a dull rush and thud.

She’d been at UNC for the past couple years, but things hadn’t exactly worked out as she had planned, looking at the school from the outside. First one knee had gone, before her first season even started. Physical therapy had been a bitch, but she was determined to come back and play her first season of college soccer. Then the second knee had gone.

Why? Sometimes it was difficult to even comprehend that it had happened again. And she had been such a healthy kid. Now, she was half-crippled and struggling to figure out why she was still even at school. It was all pointless if she couldn’t play. Suddenly her reprieve from the world, her escape, turned into just another obstacle.

“Are you even listening to me?” Ashlyn bit her lip and thought, not really seeing Whitney any more. She was long gone already.

“You know what, Whit. Let me get drunk. You worry about you,” she said. It was like she was floating towards the kitchen, where frat boys and hot girls sloshed through tubs of half-melted ice for a cheap beer or handed out red solo cups of jungle juice and whatever strange concoctions they managed to think of. A haze dulled her hearing and vision, though she hadn’t touched a drink yet.

“Harris!” a boy called out to her, his sweating beer raised in greeting. Ashlyn half-saw him, bumped her fist to his, and accepted the drink he held out to her, determined beyond anything else that she wouldn’t remember this night.

And she didn’t.

Whitney was less than impressed, to say the least and she made her displeasure known the next morning, once Ashlyn had crawled out of her cocoon of covers, her entire body throbbing, to get some water from the little kitchenette. Whitney was already sitting in there with a cup of coffee and a look that would’ve terrified Ashlyn had she not been preoccupied with the act of walking. Her knee hurt like a bitch.

“Can we not do this, Whit?” Ashlyn sighed. She reached up to snag an old plastic cup and filled it to the brim with lukewarm water. She took long gulps that burned her throat with the strain.

“No. No, you know what? I won’t back away from it this time, Ashlyn. You’re being destructive to yourself and you need to stop.”

“I just had a bad day. I wanted to relax, that’s all.”

“Once or twice, okay. But this is becoming a problem, Ash. You’re…well, you’re not the same as you were when we met.”

Ashlyn stared at her a long time, simply blinking. She could feel her heart beating hard against her ribcage. In the back of her head, the angry voices of her parents echoed shrilly. She swallowed again and decided she should have some more water.

“Ash, I know you don’t want to have this talk, but I care about you and…Look, I don’t want to see you throw everything away. You’re a good keeper. Just wait until your knee gets better and you’ll see.”

The season was already half-way through, though, and Ashlyn was becoming discouraged with her progress in physical therapy. The first ACL had been one thing, but the second seemed to pain her in a different way. With every twinge, she could feel time slipping past her and, try as she might, she could not catch any of it in her grasping fingers.

“Come on, Harris, keep up!”

“Push it, Harris!”

Ashlyn bit her lip to hide her grimace as she tried her best to work past the pain. It was time for fitness testing again and her body seemed to be falling to pieces with every sprint, every lift, every jump. It wasn’t just her knee, though that was the worst of it, but her lungs, her abs, the muscles in her legs and arms and back. She hurt everywhere. She couldn’t keep up.

With the final whistle that signaled that the last test of the day was over, Ashlyn collapsed on her chest, her face buried in the cold grass. She shut her eyes against the burning tears that threatened to show themselves. She didn’t want to cry. She hated it, but she always seemed to do it anyway. It was just another betrayal of her body.

Really, she hadn’t stopped hurting. This year had been one pain after the other, melding into a continuous stream of Tylenol, cheap booze, and heat cream — not in that order.

She only looked up when she felt a soft tapping on her shoulder. A body knelt beside her quietly, just sitting there in muddy cleats, socks streaked green and brown. Get on up, she said with her touch and Ashlyn, too tired and too sad to shake her off, obeyed.

She was quiet in the locker room and, to her surprise and relief, the other girls avoided her. She was quiet on their walk out to the parking lot, and she was quiet as the doors of Whit’s car thudded shut behind them. They just sat there, the keys in Whit’s hands, not making any move towards the ignition, Ashlyn’s breathing sounding too loud in her ears.

Despite the scalding hot shower she’d just taken, her muscles were still screaming at her, enraged at how they’d just been treated. Ashlyn could feel the tears again, beginning to edge out of her eyes. It only made her more angry. She wanted to hit something, but she was too tired to do much of anything. Whit’s dash felt the brunt of her anger, but she couldn’t do any real damage.

“My body just won’t fucking work!”

“I know, I know. Sometimes it seems like you’re your own worst enemy, but you don’t have to be.”

“I don’t think I can do this anymore, Whit,” Ashlyn continued. “I’ve tried and tried and I just can’t do it. It all hurts so bad.”

In the driver’s seat, Whit nodded seriously.

“What are you going to do?” Ashlyn looked at her for a long, silent moment.

“I think I’m done, Whit,” she said finally. “I don’t think I’ll ever get better.” Whit nodded seriously again, and Ashlyn couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking.

“What hurts most?” she asked after some time. Ashlyn furrowed her brows at her. “I mean, is it your knee? Is it because you’re out of shape?” Whitney paused, taking a deep breath before quietly adding, “Or is the pain emotional?”

Ashlyn’s first instinct was to protest loudly. No, it’s my fucking knee — the one whose ACL I just tore. But she didn’t know that that was strictly true. She’d had surgery ages ago. PT was grueling, but no more so than usual. She knew she was out of shape — her body told her so very loudly. But that wasn’t really it.

“I…This was supposed to be how I got out,” Ashlyn said quietly. “This was supposed to be easy.”

“Nothing ever is,” Whitney replied. “Look, Ashlyn, you’re only going to get out of your body as much as you put in. If you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re never going to get the results you want. And I don’t just mean working out and eating well. You’ve got to take care of how you’re feeling. You have to make sure your head is in the right place.”

“I can’t give my body anything else,” Ashlyn protested quickly. Whit gave her a look and she shied away again. It was the worst, to be caught in the lie. She normally could convince herself it was true

“You really think so?”

Ashlyn had to force herself not to give another flip answer. She had been so confident that going to UNC would be her true escape, her golden path leading to a life entirely different from the pain of her childhood. Instead, she was greeted with more and more hurt. And then, looming in the distance, there was the threat of failure. What if this was all going to come to nothing? What if she had to go back? It was something she was reminded of every day she spent with the athletic trainer, every day she spent watching from the sidelines or doing stretches to strengthen her shitty knees.

“It hurts,” she repeated meekly, unsure what exactly she was referring to. “I just…I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much.” She wiped aggressively at her eyes, rubbing the wetness on her shirt.

She couldn’t go back. There was nothing for her there except a mess of family she wished didn’t share her blood and the ghosts of fights and drunken rages and drug-induced benders. It was a place that held memories of difficult choices, the horrors of school, days spent blowing away her education so thoroughly she almost didn’t graduate. What would become of her if she was left there to become mirrors of her parents? Fucked up, sad, working to scrape by, eaten away by depression, blood pumped through with alcohol just to be able to stand the day.

“Ashlyn, look at me.” She did. “Ashlyn, you’re being faced with two paths. You can go one way, or the other. Now, I’m going to push you in one direction, but you have to make the choice in the end, okay? You need to figure out what’s best for you. And I don’t want you to do this for the wrong reasons. Your circumstances may be out of your hands, but what you choose to do with them isn’t.”

Ashlyn nodded and wiped at her eyes again.

“You may not believe in you right now, but I do, Ashlyn Harris,” she continued. “I believe that you can do it, if you really wanted it bad enough.”

Whitney left after she dropped Ashlyn off at her dorm, excusing herself for some study time. Ashlyn was left alone in her room, staring seriously at the pile of soccer gear that rested against the wall. She sat on her bed twirling her right cleat in her hands, thinking seriously. There were a couple beers in the fridge. She contemplated popping one open just to take off the edge.

“You only get out what you put in,” she muttered to the dirty cleat.

She knew she had to make the choice. The paths were laid in front of her, her soccer bag to the left, her overflowing trash can to the right. She sat there for another hour, listening to the quiet screaming in her body, the way her sore muscles rippled with each movement, the way the bright white scars twisted as she bent and straightened her knees. Maybe she hadn’t made the choice to get injured again and again, but she could choose where to go from there. So she got up, and she made her choice.