What You Become

Elle McFadzean‘s short story Medical Certificate was featured in the What You Become anthology.

Who decided it was a good idea to make swimming classes compulsory? Especially for teenage girls.

We stood in a line outside the change room. Skinny legs, knobbly knees, cellulite, stretch marks, body hair, goosebumps, tampon strings, colourful caps and black one-pieces.

We all felt like monsters in our skin, but I was the only one who really was a monster.

I wrapped my arms around myself. I needed to get out of this. My parents thought swimming classes would be good for me – character building. They said they’d feel better knowing I wouldn’t drown. That was a lie – they knew I could swim.

Drowning was the least of my worries.

I’d tried writing a note, forging their signature. Yen is excused from swimming classes due to her period. But Ms Turn told me to wear a tampon. Then I’d tried: due to a medical condition. But apparently I needed a medical certificate. Like I was ever going to get that. My condition wasn’t something I could prove in a doctor’s office, and without proof. . . who’d believe me?

Ms Turn blew her whistle. ‘All right girls, listen up. We’ll start with your choice of stroke. Two laps for your warm-up. Get going.’

Slowly, my classmates waddled to the edge and crouched down to feel the water. Karina squealed. ‘It’s so cold!’

‘Once you’re in, you’ll get warm,’ said Ms Turn. She clapped at them to hurry up.

I didn’t move. I stood there watching as, one by one, the girls climbed down to sit on the edge. Then, still squealing at the temperature, they slid in, until I was the only one left.

‘Yen, get over here,’ said Ms Turn.

I trudged over. The concrete floor was cold and slimy, with puddles and strands of hair.

‘In you get. You can use the ladder if you want.’ She pointed to my left. Andy had twisted her legs through the pool ladder rungs and was floating on her back.

‘Come on, Yen,’ Andy yelled up at the ceiling.

Others joined in.

‘You get used to the temperature,’ Ursa yelled.

But the temperature wasn’t my issue.

‘I can’t,’ I said to Ms Turn.

‘Course you can,’ she said. ‘I heard you used to swim every day.’

Who’d— Mum. But she didn’t know that the first time I’d had a bath after getting my period, things had been different.

‘Not anymore,’ I said. ‘Please. You can give me detention, but I can’t—’

‘Detention? No. You just need to get over—’

I felt hands shoving my shoulder blades. Panic set in and I pushed back, but it was too late. My toe stubbed the tiled edge, my arms flailed wildly and my chest toppled forwards.

I hit the pool with a loud splash.

Water gushed around me in swirling bubbles. I fled for the surface. There was still time. My limbs were weakening, turning to jelly, but there was still time.

I broke the surface with a gasp. Ms Turn was berating Andy. Everyone else was shouting, swimming towards me. I hardly saw them. I was too far gone to pull myself up onto the edge, but—

The ladder was close. I could make it.

I gripped the lane rope and hurled myself over it. Ursa was sitting on it and fell backwards, but I was already reaching for the next. I grabbed it, then lost my grip, fingers turning boneless.

I ducked underwater, but it was too late. I heard the softened echoes of my classmates yelling ‘Yen!’ in fright and worry.

And then in fear.

I propelled myself away from them, but there was nowhere to go. Tiled walls met me in all directions. Naked legs kicked in my periphery, trying to flee.

For every beat my heart pounded, faster and faster, my skin retreated, turning thicker and spongier. My legs multiplied and stretched to the pool floor, while my body compressed, squeezing my organs into themselves. As I broke the water’s surface, I screamed, but it was a roar that tore from lines upon lines of pointed teeth.

High-pitched screams rang around me. I roared again.

I reached for the side of the pool but missed. A suctioned tentacle slithered across Karina’s shoulder as she ran for the change room. She recoiled, tripped and fell back in, plunging underwater.

My limbs reeled, winding the water, desperately trying to grip something but instead forming a whirlpool beyond my control. Girls spun around me, lane ropes tangled in my tentacles and waves struck the walls. Ms Turn threw noodles and floaties in, but they were flung back out. A giant flamingo knocked her over. Tammy went flying into the lower diving board on a sprinkled doughnut.

The diving boards. The higher one extended over the pool within reach of where I was now held down, victim to the momentum. I stretched a tentacle up. It just reached. My suckers pressed to the underside, and it was enough for me to pull myself higher, for another tentacle to curl around the rail in a death grip.

I kept pulling, paying no attention to what was happening around me because I had to stop this. And I had to get out of the water to stop this.

With one last heave I hung from the diving board upside down, my limbs shaking as it violently bounced up and down and up and down. I slid higher, twisting around the board until I was perched above it. My limbs contracted, chest lengthened and fingers turned strong enough to grip the bouncing edge.

Girls were crying, still trying to escape the water. Ms Turn was blowing her whistle, tapping each girl on their shoulder as they fled past her into the change room. She went over and helped Tammy up, escorting the last of my classmates away. All the while, I watched through glassy eyes.

The floor was flooded, pool half empty. The ceiling looked like a chess board, foam panels floating below. Wall tiles were cracked and coated in mucus.

Eventually, Ms Turn came back. She looked up at me and cleared her throat. In a shaky voice, she said, ‘You can go get changed now, Yen. And you can be excused from swimming classes.’