Excerpts from a new book....
“On a medium campus in a small town near a big city, two teammates trudge through the snow to breakfast after Friday morning lift. One is tall, one is shorter. One is shy, one is chatty. One is slower, one is fast. One is gay. Both are exhausted. They are friends. They speak but don’t speak; talk about practice and class and their other friends but not about the things that live inside their heads, the things waiting to be talked about.
On the inside the tall shy teammate thinks about what she will eat, what she should eat, and what she did eat, and wishes she never actually had to eat again. On the outside she makes a sarcastic joke and feels butterflies in her stomach when the chatty teammate laughs. She tries to kill the butterflies with her mind.”
“In Jenna’s mind Ted is a sculptor, sitting behind the stages of their lives and constructing an atmosphere that will help them swim fast, fixing the little things that need to be fixed. In this role he is caring, helpful, devoting his efforts to the good of the girls and the team. And yet underneath her admiration, underneath her gratefulness, deep down Jenna knows that sometimes he walks a thin line between simple caring and the dark side of too much. Too much behind the scenes, too much outside of swimming, too much in their private lives.”