Lame girl

a story by J. Aaron Courts

Courts, Chezarae C. Version 27, LOL. 2024. Personal digital collection.

Lamia’s father had called up twice and now he was jogging up the stairs.

“Lami, sweetheart. We’re going to be late.”

“Dad, I…” She took a shallow breath. “Can we tal—”

“Hope you move faster in the water than you do getting ready,” he interrupted. “Take your marks. Bang!”

Her brow wrinkled and she closed her eyes. The girls on the swim team had started calling her Lamey. Jules, the team captain, brought red and white arm floaties on the third day of practice. The girls inflated them and fell to the ground holding their sides when Jules threw the floaties in the pool and pushed Lamia in after them, still dressed in her school uniform. Lamia road the city bus home dripping but hadn’t told her father anything. She asked him for better razors though and some moisturizing shaving cream after she found her underwear lathered in hair removal lotion and hanging out from the bottom of her locker like a fat tongue, but he’d given her a bulk-sized bag of blue single-use disposables instead and some mint-scented shaving cream that burned her skin.

“You won’t need any more for months,” he said and laid a plastic shopping bag on the corner of her bed. Lamia picked up the razors and turned them over to look at them. Value Pack. “Good deal, huh?”

She would smell like mint now— like menthol— and she wondered what the girls would call her if they saw the razor burn. No, when they saw the razor burn. A tear splashed on her forearm.       

“Lami,” her father called as she cleared the bottom step and made for the front door.

“I asked you to quit calling me that.”

“Whoa. You’re my Lamia. You’ll always been my Lam—”

“It’s not cute, dad. It’s lame!”

The door slammed and her father looked at their dog sprawled on the floor for an explanation, but the dog didn’t pick his head up. “Lamia it is,” her father said and exhaled through his nose.

The coach had taken a girls-will-be-girls approach. Lamia half-expected a pep talk about the other girls’ insecurities, or the innocence of harmless razzing, or a prove-them-wrong motivational speech, but the coach hadn’t said anything, and Lamia knew it was kindergarten bullshit anyway. These girls were vipers in an Olympic sized pit.

Jules was long and toned, drove a Mercedes, had guaranteed scholarships, and a boyfriend who had already graduated. She didn’t seem to have hair anywhere but, on her head, and it was blonde and looked brushed and perfect even fresh from under her swim cap. Lamia was more like an old, rotting stump than she was Jules.

The girls on the team had been together forever. They went to summer camps, and they vacationed together— boyfriends in tow. They were clones on guaranteed tracks to money and their own fragrances. Lamia had moved three times since middle school. She lived with her dad and deaf dog. And she thought the hunched Dominican woman who cleaned the locker room was prettier than the photos of her mother she’d seen— and that her mother was prettier than she was.

If self-loathing could be used as fuel in the water, then Lamia could swim to Atlantis— but it couldn’t. Long limbs, though, and large lungs and years of private coaching could, and Jules and the others had enough of them to swim to the moon before breakfast.

“Lamey,” someone said sneering, “Need to borrow my mirror?”

“She needs to borrow your dad’s gun.”

Laughter erupted and echoed across the pool. A voice whispered close behind and the hair on her neck raised.

“I thought I told you to quit. You’re not fit for my dog’s bath water, let alone a pool. You’re not dragging us down.” Lamia’s knees began to shake. “And you’re not fucking up my senior year.”

“My dad—”

“I don’t care what your border jumping daddy said. I’m not letting you—”

A sharp whistle blew, and the coach’s voice echoed off the water. Lamia jumped and another round of laughter stung.

“Yes coach,” Jules screamed behind her.

French tipped nails dug into Lamia’s neck and a foot pressed against her own. When Lamia tried to walk away, she felt her stomach lurch into her chest.  

The crunch filled her skull. Tiny pieces of enamel skittered across the wet concrete and into the pool at the same time she heard her face splat. A flash blinded her. Her ears were muted by the ringing and the muffled echo of girls screaming. Blood filled her mouth, and she tried to spit, but beneath the swelling skin her broken bones and smashed gums moved with the consistency of soured milk.

Lamia sat up. Her trembling hands cradled unfamiliar jowls and slack lips and all she could think about were the names they would call her now. A thousand needles pricked her face.

When she tried to speak, Jules stepped back and tripped herself. A gush of blood poured into Lamia’s lap and pink swirls turned crimson and spilled into the pool and unfurled pink again, like clouds at sunset. Chlorinated air was tainted with a metallic odor— then bile.

Jules and Lamia locked eyes, and Lamia saw fear in the viper’s eyes. Lamia tried to speak but couldn’t. The needles pricking her face turned into deep-driven nails, and when she moved her tongue, a hot coal filled her mouth. She tried to press the tip of her tongue against the jagged remnants of her front teeth to speak.

Lamia couldn’t keep her throat from gulping, and she swallowed mouthfuls of her own blood. Her stomach floated. She didn’t care Jules had tripped her. All she wanted was for someone to hand her a towel. Why aren’t they helping? Jules had a hand over her own mouth and pointed at Lamia’s lap and mumbled something.

Lamia pushed her tongue forward, again, to touch what was left of her front teeth, or the roof of her mouth, or something she could press it against to make an articulate sound— anything. She pressed harder— farther. Nothing. Jules began shuffling backwards and calling for someone. Her voice vibrated softly at first then grew louder until it broke and a barbed cry only a swimmer’s lungs could fill drug itself from Jules’ porcelain throat and cast in every direction.  

Lamia lowered her gaze. What is that? What is—

A small twitching thing worked its way off Lamia’s menthol thigh and onto the textured poolside floor. It was bloody— blood was everywhere now— but it looked firm, not like the coagulated globs of dark jelly that kept falling out of the mouth she couldn’t close.

A hand grabbed her shoulder, and she looked up. Coach. Coach. Pleading thoughts. She couldn’t find where to press her tongue.

“Cosh!” she finally cried.

The coach shrieked, and Lamia heard herself. She looked at the pink muscle working itself towards the pool and began to cry.