LePrince

CW: Grief and tragic accidental death.

To be a beautiful extraordinary person in love, that is one of life’s greatest gilded lies. So many fail, but those who succeed are truly worse off. I chose a life of joy and heartbreak and scars. Many years ago I never understood that to be young was to be inherently dumb. I’ve lost a lot due to my youth. I remember being young so vividly, back before the golden walls of LePrince arena were even built. Yes I’m that old. I live through memories that were created half a century ago. Sometimes I wish I could go back, I try really hard to, but it never works.

The band blares, background dancers grin in dresses that make them look like mermaids, the only telling factor is their little teal kitten heels that peak out under their shimmering skirts. Then the camera pans up and I see her. She’s wearing a green one piece pathing suit that’s covered in little tiny scale like sequins. The sides go out at her hips and the little gold accents catch the light. Her platinum hair is mostly under a cap covered in jewels, but a little bit still peaks out. I don’t need to hear the announcer say her name. No one does. It's been four decades and everyone still knows who she is. Fountain beams spray up on each side of the fantastically high diving board. She waves and a second later she’s tumbling down in a way so graceful to this day it still amazes me. Annitta LePrince the name floats through my mind every single day. The girl I grew up with. At this point I always turn off the TV. No matter what performance it is, I always turn it off now. I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the glittering symphony that follows every time. The background dancers without fail jump into the water and the dive is celebrated with a breathtaking synchronized swimming Routine that pins Annitta in the center. I don’t need to watch the endings to remember them, I was there for almost every one. I don’t need to watch any of the tapes to remember them. I watch them because my greatest fear is that I’ll forget her. I won’t, still though I can’t risk it.

There will always be one performance I will never watch however, the tape sits in the back of a small light blue cabinet. There’s a piece of white tape that reads July 24th 1955. Her last performance. Her hair is down, a rare occasion, and her bathing suit is a cream white with pearls. She wears a small gold and pearl crown. It was all her idea, she wanted to finally show the world. The white was a nod to our engagement. At the end of the whole performance she stands at the top of the stage and says “Finally please everyone give a round of applause to my exquisite fianceé Finn Rivers” she looks at me and waves giggling. “That’s about it for tonight thank you everyone”. There was outrage after that. No one except a couple friends knew she was dating, much less engaged. No one knew that America’s Treasure was already taken. I remember being shocked, I thought the white was an odd choice but I didn’t know it meant something. Later that night she threw her arms around me and told me that she had planned the whole thing weeks in advance. I’m a pebble, nothing bad but nothing special and I’ve always been okay with that. But she, she was like sea glass. She was something truly remarkable. I never felt the need to be spectacular. I was lucky enough to have someone striking love me. People like that will sweep into your life only to disappear without a trace.

We were married 23 days later. It was a small wedding in a private chapel in the woods of New Hampshire. It’s funny that the best and worst days of my life are just 72 hours apart. I wish I could stop us there. I wish I could fix it all and have the honeymoon never exist. But I can’t undo it. Every single time she will wake up on August Nineteenth and go for a swim. Every single time I will wake up sick and scared wondering where she is. I’ll eventually make my way to the beach and I’ll see her swimming. And that is when my fever ridden body will give out. Five hours later I will wake up in a hospital. I’ll ask for her and the doctors will tell me that I passed out with a temperature of one hundred and two. I’ll ask for her again and at that moment I’ll know something is wrong. Then finally after whispered debates they’ll tell me that she got caught in a rip-current trying to save me. This is when my whole world shatters. I’ll bawl my eyes out for weeks. Annitta LePrince -one of the strongest swimmers in the world gone from a rip tide. This is what the headlines will read. I wish the roles were reversed. I selfishly sometimes think that it must be easier to be dead than to live without the dead. I know this isn’t true, I should be grateful to be alive but sometimes it’s awfully hard to.

I donated all of her costumes so that they could be enjoyed instead of mourned. And at LePrince arena to this day divers still dive and swimmers still swim in the pools that she once used. There is a section of the arena where her costumes and props shine proudly. She has her own little museum there, pictures are everywhere. In the front of the building there is a giant gold fountain and in the center she stands slightly leaned forward on her tippy toes with her arms stretched back. She looks as though she’s about to take one final leap, one final dive for the last time.