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In her defense, she wasn't the one who signed them up for swimming classes. Maybe she did an earnest speech on the importance of swimming skills in lieu of the first performance task they got for the year. And maybe she was still basking in the smug thought of getting her A for English when Mr Holt asked how proficient she was in water safety. And maybe she sheepishly answered that she didn't actually know how to swim.
But it's not her fault that their Advanced English professor narrowed his eyes at her and proceeded to check the databases before signing everyone in the room who didn't have their Swim Cert up for a set of free classes!
This, unfortunately, is not a view shared by a plethora of Amy's classmates. Terry, the class representative, passes Amy her consent form with an apologetic look that she understands as good luck. She half expects her locker to be egged the very next day after Mr Holt hands the consent forms out.
The good news: her locker is not egged.
The bad news: her mother decides that the swim classes are a Very Good Idea and signs her consent - and Amy's Saturday mornings - away.
It is with a heavy heart that she trudges after her eldest brother to shop for new goggles the Friday before the first class.
Amy is still feeling optimistic when she reaches the swim centre. It might not be that bad, after all. She spent five hours researching her speech, and she understands the importance of knowing how to keep herself alive in the water. And she's keen to bond with her classmates. The water is cold and Gina is shooting her a trademark stare of disparagement, but Amy keeps a smile on her face.
One which drops spectacularly quickly the moment Jake Peralta walks up to the edge of the pool.
Wait, what? What is the most aggravating, annoying, asinine boy in the entirety of their class doing here? Amy doesn't remember Mr Holt passing him a consent form. And isn't he supposed to be the best -
oh no.
Jake is on the team. He's the best swimmer in the school. The country, even. He's not here to swim with them.
He's here to coach them.
Rosa seems to have come to the same conclusion as her. She turns to Amy with an accusing glare in her eyes. "I'm going to fuck you up, Santiago," she says, which would sound a lot more threatening if she wasn't desperately trying to keep her head above the water by flailing her arms in the pool to ineffective ends.
"Oh my god," Amy groans out loud, staring up at Jake.
"I appreciate the sentiment," Jake responds wittily, winking at her. "But you can just call me Jake."
If she could actually even manage to swim, Amy thinks she would drown him this very instant.
It turns out that - despite initial evidence proving otherwise - Rosa has a natural flair for Not Drowning once she gets the hang of it. Apparently she did take swim classes when she was younger, but then she discovered the wonders of martial arts and abandoned swimsuits and strokes for stances and strikes. Jake leaves her alone to practice a decent breaststroke before freestyling effortlessly to the deep end of the pool, where Amy, Gina and Charles are clinging on to the tiled edge making sure they don't sink to their deaths.
"Welcome to Swimming 101!" Jake says with a faux-authoritative voice that just makes him sound like a nasal eight-year-old with a sinus problem. "The first thing you will all have to learn is How to Not Drown and Die a Watery Death. Don't worry. It's easier than it sounds."
He starts by making them kick. Amy grips the pool ladder so hard her knuckles go white. She notes with some satisfaction that Gina kicks especially hard when Jake is in range so he gets water fountaining all over him. It's a laugh, although she has to admit that she does learn something. By the end of the lesson, she's confident enough to let go of the metal bars - briefly - and kick frantically so she doesn't sink.
"Nice work, Santiago!" Jake calls to her when she's clambering out of the pool. "Keep those legs moving!"
Amy weighs the pros against the cons of flinging her brand new pair of goggles at his head and eventually decides that infantile, base pleasures aren't worth the lenses getting scratched.
Rosa is a fast learner, and muscle memory probably helps. Three lessons in, she's helping Jake demonstrate how to do the breaststroke properly, cutting through the water fluidly and doing a lap across in fifteen seconds flat. For Amy, who can't do much more than kick and float, this is fairly impressive.
It turns out that breaststroke is a little harder than it looks. Amy ends up being forced to suffer the injustice of Jake taking her through the arm movements step by step, demonstrating how the outsweep is more of a heart shape than a diamond-style motion. He instructs Amy to watch him, going under and swimming his way towards the other end of the pool before turning around and coming back to Amy's side. It's elegant and fascinating to watch, and gives Amy a thrill at the thought that she could swim like that if she put in more effort. She's beginning to understand why, for how singularly irritating Jake is in class and along the hallways and basically everywhere, people talk about his talent.
And perhaps he's not that bad after all. When Amy manages to messily breaststroke across the pool and back, doing her best to coordinate her arms and legs, he gives her genuine smile and a thumbs-up. "That's not bad for a beginner, Santiago. Keep it up."
Gina gives her a Very Suspicious Look when she smiles back at Jake. Amy tries not to think what it could construe.
One and a half months after the lessons begin, Mr Holt calls Amy over after class. He steeples his fingers and looks her in the eye, gesturing for her to sit down.
"Miss Santiago. How are your swim classes working out?"
"Oh, they're wonderful! They're very educational, and I enjoy them, and I'm sure everyone does, too!"
"Indeed." Mr Holt has a frown on his face, but they've learned that it's a permanent default expression of his, so it doesn't say much about what he's feeling. "And what do you think of Mr Peralta as your coach?"
Amy considers the question carefully before responding. "He's proficient. I mean, he knows what he's doing, and he's a good teacher. All of us are learning. So I can't complain." In hindsight, after interacting with him for three hours every Saturday morning, Jake is becoming a lot less exasperating. He's still cocky and a little juvenile, like, all the time, but now that she's gotten to know him out of Advanced English classes, Amy can respect that he's patient and helpful and has a good heart underneath it all.
She's enjoying swim classes. Not just because of him, of course, but well, it helps.
After everyone gets the hang of the breaststroke, Jake moves on to the backstroke. This is even more complicated. Jake assigns Rosa to stick with Gina, since she's the most competent out of the three of them, and focuses his attention on Charles and Amy. His thorough guidance makes it a lot easier for her to grasp the salient skills and soon enough she's backstroking with the rest of them - lagging behind a little, but not flailing.
Jake always commends her at the end of three hours, praising her progress. She wonders when she began to enjoy that.
It's when they're learning how to tread water that the first and only real disaster strikes.
Amy oversleeps by an hour and has to all-out run to the swim centre. She doesn't do her warmups before jumping into the pool to join the others, and halfway through the session, she gets a cramp.
This on its own wouldn't be tragic, but she's in the deep end, in the bigger pool, alone, while the rest are taking a water break. She thrashes for a bit before the inevitable happens, and her heart seizes at the thought of possibly drowning and dying in a public pool. That's not how she wants to go. But there's nothing she can do - she's hyperventilating in the water and she keeps trying to swim but she's not making any headway. Amy keeps trying to stay afloat, keeps trying to breathe, and just when she thinks she's really going to go under and submerge as a corpse she hears a familiar yell.
"Amy!" It's followed by the sound of running, or at least she thinks so - she can't really see. But moments later Jake's by her side, and with the help of the others they manage to get her out of the pool and call a first aider over from the emergency room.
They take her to the hospital just to be safe. Her parents and brothers berate her for being so foolish after they have a good relieved cry. By the time the first bit of drama is over, Amy is exhausted.
Jake ends up being the one who brings her a sandwich and a bottle of juice, sitting by her side with an apologetic expression on his face. "I'm really sorry, Santiago. I should have been there to make sure you were OK."
"It's not your fault." She gives him a faint smile. "Thanks for saving my life."
That's a sentence she never thought she'd have to say to Jake Peralta, but she means every word. Despite her parents' concerns, Amy goes back to swim class the very next week after a solemn promise to always do her warmups no matter what. Jake keeps an eye out for her, and she'll admit it, it makes her feel just a little bit happy.
Jake schedules their penultimate lesson one week before their final exams for the year and explains that their last class will be pool party style. They've come a long way - after around nine months' worth of weekly lessons, they've managed to master the breaststroke, the backstroke, treading water and they can even use specific articles of clothing as makeshift flotation devices. They deserve a good old fun session, where they can just kick out and play. Apparently, Jake has an honest-to-god real pool in his backyard, so they'll be having a barbecue there and they can just swim around for hours and use the jacuzzi.
That is 1 of the 50 reasons Amy writes on the list she puts on the inside of her locker, the one she looks at whenever she grabs her textbooks. Reasons to Power Through Finals and Not Give Up Even When It Gets Really Hard.
She doesn't have much to worry about. Amy sits for all her papers confident she'll do well, and she does. She gets her A for English, and that makes her more proud than her results for any of the other subjects.
Jake texts her right after her last paper. c u 2nite santiago!!!!!! It's his first text to her and she's not even surprised he uses contractions and lots of unnecessary exclamation marks.
She texts back nevertheless. see you, jake!
The pool party is singlehandedly the best night of her entire high school life. Gina hogs the jacuzzi for the entire night. Charles monopolises the barbecue and somewhere into the night, strange, exotic cuisine begins to appear on the grill. Things that Jake confirms do not come from his fridge or pantry. They all taste good and they trust Charles' judgment, though, so they just eat. Rosa is probably the only one who actually takes advantage of the huge pool and really swims. Amy estimates she does twenty laps before she even gets out to grab a chicken wing.
And her?
For some reason, she ends up gravitating towards Jake, and they sit on the lawn chairs just talking about trivial things for an hour, only getting up to fill their plates with more food. Somehow or another the conversation turns to their swim classes, and Amy asks what she's wondered from the start. "So, why'd you decide to help coach us?"
Jake has that familiar smirk on his face. "Well, Mr Holt's one guy whose good books I need to get in. And besides, I kinda wanted to know you better." He gives her a flirty wink that makes her stomach flip a little. "And I did."
Against her will, Amy feels a hot blush rising to her cheeks. "That's not a joke, right? Because I'm going to push you into the pool if that's a joke." She's well aware of the futility of this threat, but Jake just throws his head back and laughs. "It's not a joke, Santiago. Amy. Ames. Seriously."
Ames. Nobody's ever called her that. But she likes how it rolls off Jake's tongue.
With tentative movements, Jake reaches across from his lawn chair to take her hand, and she lets him.
By the end of the night their secret is out to the rest of the swim kids. Rosa rolls her eyes and presses a dollar bill into Gina's hand - the latter has a shit-eating grin on her face as she pockets it. "I totally called it!" She yells triumphantly over Charles' clapping.
Amy smiles sheepishly at Jake and he squeezes her hand, and she silently thanks her past self for so wisely choosing her English speech topic.