Sweat dripped down my face as I clambered up the seemingly endless stairs  to the pool deck. I had just finished a particularly grueling bout of what my swim coaches called “dry-land,” but I called pure evil, which consisted of essentially non-stop push-ups and crunches. It had finally ended a few minutes earlier, and I was still flushed a deep red from the exercise.

I hauled myself up the last of the concrete steps, dragged myself through the YMCA lobby, and, arms shaking, pushed open the door to the swimming pool. There, I turned and walked quickly to the bags I had left on the bleachers that faced the four-lane pool, searching through my swim gear to find the waterbottle I had forgotten to take with me to dry-land. My throat felt like a desert.

As I greedily gulped down half, I noticed that there were still some little kids in the water, splashing around for the last five minutes before my swim team started. I was distracted by watching them swim when I heard a deep voice reading the words on my T-shirt. For some reason it sent a wave of cold up my spine.

“‘So lazy, can’t move.’ Ha! I like your shirt.”

I turned to see a pudgy, middle-aged man sitting on the bench below me. He looked like he had just gotten out of the water, and he was wearing an orange and blue swim cap. Something about the way he was staring at me told me not to trust him, though his words had been perfectly friendly. Maybe it was the way his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, or maybe it was the way he was looking at me a little too intently.

I smiled and thanked him, turning back around to get out my goggles, expecting that to be the end of it, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I could tell he was still staring. I squirmed a little.
“You’re thirteen, right?”
I rotated again so that I was looking at him and nodded, desperately wanting this guy to leave me alone. I glanced around the deck, relieved to see my coaches heading in through the nearest door.

The man grinned, showing teeth that, to me, seemed sharper than that of a normal person. I suppressed a shudder, wondering if I should have lied about my age.

“Ha! Lucky guess.”

Trying to end the conversation, I dug into my bag, pretending that I was busily searching for something so that I wouldn’t have to look at the man. Practice would start soon, but I really didn’t want to strip off my loose gym clothes to the tight-fitting swimsuit underneath in front of this guy. He seriously gave me the creeps.

Acting like I had found what I was looking for, I pulled my swim cap from the depths of my blue bag and stretched it so that it would go over my long ponytail more easily, trying to look as though I was completely engrossed in my task, and definitely not interested in conversation, hoping that the strange guy would lose interest.

He’s probably just somebody’s dad. Maybe even one of the swim team parents. He couldn’t hurt me, anyway, not in such a public place with all these people around, I thought, trying to reassure myself.

There were still little kids in the pool, and my friends on the team had already started to gather around the end of the lanes. I needed to get over to them and away from the man, but to do that I needed to be in my swimsuit and ready to get in the pool as soon as the coaches were ready, which looked, thankfully, to be fairly soon. There was probably a way to take off my clothes without being right next to the creepy guy, but I was a little frightened and just wanted to get over to my friends as quickly as possible.

I sucked in a deep breath and stepped out of my sweatpants, making sure that my shirt still covered me for the most part. I looked over at the man and was unsurprised to see that he was still looking at me, a little too closely, in my opinion. Then, bracing myself, I peeled of my shirt, trying to get it off as fast as I could so that I could leave. It stuck to me, and I panicked a little, irrationally thinking that I might be stuck next to the creepy man forever while I tried to work the shirt over my head.

Finally, I pulled it off of me and I stood in my racing suit. Usually I felt completely at ease, but today I felt like it covered much too little of me, especially as I had to pretend that I hadn’t seen the man watching me intently the entire time I had been taking off my clothes.

I was thoroughly freaked out. Nobody should stare at a thirteen-year-old like that while she changed. It was completely inappropriate.

I looked around again, making sure that my teammates and coaches were still nearby. Hurriedly, I dragged my swim gear from its bag and tried  to leave as fast as I could without seeming to run away.

“Ah, you came prepared! Keep practicing, it’s the only way to get better swimmer. Maybe even better than me!” He chuckled, fat stomach wobbling, while staring at some part of my body that was definitely not my face.

Creep! Creep! Creep!, I thought.

I forced a smile and walked away as fast as possible without slipping on the wet blue tile to find a friend in the crowd of my teammates. I struck up a loud conversation with her about how the coaches right over there were likely to give us another difficult practice, and that I was lucky to have so many friends here to support me, and that I was so glad my mother was right outside to see me swim.

I could still feel the weird guy watching, but when I snuck a look, it looked like he was getting ready to leave. He had put a towel around his neck and he was shuffling his way off the bleachers before gathering his things.

The girl I had been chatting with looked concerned and asked “Are you alright? You look kinda stressed.”

I assured her I was fine, and scurried over to my lane, thinking that it was true, finally. Still, as I leaped into the water I was relieved to see that the man was pushing the door closed behind him as he waddled out of the pool deck and, hopefully, out of my life forever.