Breathing Under Water Summary, Characters and Themes

Breathing Under Water by Jacqueline Friedland is a contemporary novel about two families whose lives become connected through autism, competitive swimming, caregiving, ambition, financial instability, and the difficult transition into adulthood. 

At its center are Berry Selinger, a mother learning that protecting her autistic son cannot mean controlling every part of his future, and McKenna Jamison, a college swimmer whose carefully constructed identity collapses after a false accusation. Their separate struggles gradually become connected through Leo, whose growing independence challenges nearly everyone around him to reconsider what support, loyalty, success, and courage actually mean.

Summary

In April 2024, Berry Selinger discovers that her sixteen-year-old son Leo has disappeared from their home. Leo is autistic, depends heavily on predictable routines, dislikes unfamiliar environments, and normally tells his family where he is going, so Berry immediately understands that his absence is serious.

She searches every place where he might hide or retreat during periods of stress, but nothing suggests that he is nearby. Unable to reach her husband Phil and increasingly terrified, Berry contacts the police.

Fourteen months earlier, Berry is working as vice principal at Stillwell Elementary Academy when retiring principal Opal Carter tells her she has been recommended as a strong candidate to take over the school. The opportunity represents an ambition Berry has carried for years, but accepting greater professional responsibility feels dangerous because so much of her life remains organized around Leo.

Leo’s best friend Sebastian is preparing to move to Brazil, leaving him without his closest peer. Berry’s sister Yvonne believes Berry has protected Leo so intensely that she has made herself indispensable, while Berry fears that reducing her involvement could leave him unable to cope.

Those concerns are reinforced when Leo calls Berry from school because a CPR lesson creates intense anxiety about physical contact. Berry abandons work to collect him, once again choosing immediate protection over encouraging him to manage the situation independently.

At the same time, McKenna Jamison is pursuing a very different future. She is a talented swimmer at Meadowbrook University, a nursing student, and a scholarship athlete whose financial security depends upon maintaining her athletic performance, academic standing, conduct, and required community-service hours.

McKenna comes from a far less privileged background than many teammates and works for additional income. Her grandmother Glory raised her, and McKenna is becoming increasingly worried about Glory’s memory problems.

During the summer, McKenna takes a job teaching swimming at Hollyhock Country Club. After learning that several autistic children have struggled with traditional swimming instruction, she proposes a special program that will also allow her to complete her scholarship’s community-service requirement.

Through Karyn, who works with autistic children at the YMCA, McKenna is introduced to Leo. Rather than simply becoming another student, Leo is invited to assist McKenna while also learning to swim.

Berry is attracted to the idea because Leo values being treated as capable rather than being regarded as someone who constantly needs supervision. Leo initially dislikes the swimming idea but becomes interested once he understands that he will have a genuine role helping younger children.

Meanwhile, Berry and Phil’s marriage is deteriorating. Phil has become secretive, emotionally distant, and unexpectedly resistant to spending money on services that might help Leo prepare for adulthood.

Berry cannot understand the change because Phil previously supported therapies and accommodations. She begins suspecting that something larger is wrong, but Phil repeatedly refuses to explain himself.

McKenna’s personal life is also becoming more difficult. Glory’s confusion worsens until she acknowledges that remaining at home is no longer realistic and chooses to enter a residential-care facility.

McKenna struggles with the decision but knows her training, nursing education, employment, and swimming commitments make full-time caregiving impossible. Losing daily life with Glory leaves her emotionally vulnerable just as the new swimming program begins.

The Mighty Marlins bring together children with different communication styles, sensory needs, and comfort levels. McKenna initially approaches the lessons as a conventional athletic instructor, while Leo immediately sees that the children need structure, visual schedules, predictable transitions, and time to adjust.

Their early disagreements gradually develop into respect. Leo proves particularly skilled at understanding the children’s reactions, while McKenna starts recognizing him as a partner rather than someone she must manage.

Their friendship grows outside the pool as well. McKenna speaks honestly with Leo about Glory’s decline and her jealousy of people whose lives seem easier, while Leo talks about aviation, happiness, loneliness, and the difficulty of relating to teenagers his own age.

McKenna also becomes interested in Harrison, Leo’s older brother. Harrison has spent years quietly helping his family, but Berry worries that he has been forced to sacrifice too much because of Leo’s needs and wants him to build an independent life.

The swimming program suffers a major setback when McKenna unexpectedly changes a carefully planned lesson and introduces kickboard races. The sudden shift overwhelms several children, Leo uses his whistle while trying to restore order, and McKenna yells at him.

Leo interprets her raised voice as personal anger and refuses to return. McKenna soon realizes that she ignored the importance of predictability and regrets hurting him.

Before they can fully repair the situation, Hollyhock cancels the Mighty Marlins after club members complain about the children’s behavior. McKenna regards the decision as discriminatory and becomes furious.

She publicly confronts Ainsley Lowell and Christine Thomaston, club members who support ending the program. Her anger becomes uncontrolled enough that Kathleen, the club manager, sends her home and her job effectively ends.

Berry recognizes the exclusion immediately because she has watched Leo encounter similar barriers throughout his life. Programs and institutions have often treated his needs as inconvenient, and she understands why McKenna is angry even if McKenna’s confrontation has created serious consequences.

McKenna later visits Leo, apologizes, and learns that his experience with the younger children has changed his view of himself. He enjoyed teaching and begins imagining a future working with autistic children.

He also admits that friendships with people his own age feel nearly impossible. McKenna encourages him not to assume that repeated rejection means every future relationship will fail.

McKenna’s problems then multiply. Coach Warren Catapano, who arranged her Hollyhock job and serves as a father figure in her life, criticizes her conduct and warns that further trouble could affect her swimming career.

Soon afterward, McKenna sells Glory’s house expecting the proceeds to help cover long-term care, only to learn that Glory had taken out a reverse mortgage. After the debt is repaid, far less money remains than McKenna expected.

An even greater disaster follows when Hollyhock’s pool is deliberately vandalized with gasoline and other substances. Because of McKenna’s angry confrontation with club members, suspicion immediately falls on her.

Coach Catapano believes she may have committed the vandalism. Deeply wounded that someone who has known her for years could consider her capable of it, McKenna reacts angrily and is removed from the swim team.

At almost the same time, Berry finally discovers Phil’s secret. His company made a disastrous investment and is preparing for bankruptcy, and he has spent months secretly seeking help from his father Hollis and possible investors.

The secret explains Phil’s mysterious Westchester trips, his reluctance to spend money on additional services for Leo, and much of his emotional withdrawal. Berry is furious that he excluded her but reassures him that losing his company does not make him a failure.

Their marriage begins recovering once Phil stops hiding what is happening. Berry gradually sees that some of her own frustration came from trying to solve a problem whose existence Phil would not even acknowledge.

McKenna receives no comparable recovery. Glory’s dementia worsens to the point that she sometimes fails to recognize her granddaughter, and McKenna’s former teammates distance themselves from her to avoid involvement in the Hollyhock controversy.

Three months later, she has lost her scholarship housing and is effectively homeless. She sleeps in Glory’s old car or hides in campus buildings, uses university facilities to shower, and remains enrolled in nursing because completing the degree is one of the last promises connecting her to her mother and her previous life.

One unexpected connection remains: Leo. He secretly begins messaging McKenna again because he values their friendship and wants advice about becoming a teacher.

Leo later tells her that an underground drone-racing organization called Shadow Jet Racing has offered him money to manipulate competing drones. McKenna advises him to refuse because genuine friendship and worthwhile work should not require him to violate his values.

She also helps him navigate his developing relationship with Tatiana, a girl from Wunderkinds. During one of their meetings, Leo discovers that McKenna is homeless and learns that no evidence has ever cleared her of the vandalism accusation.

Leo suddenly remembers that one of his drones may have recorded what happened at Hollyhock. Although the drone has already been sold, he becomes determined to recover it.

Berry and Phil notice that Leo is hiding something, but instead of immediately searching his belongings or internet history, they make an important decision to respect his privacy. Berry finds this especially difficult because monitoring Leo has long been one of the ways she expresses fear and love.

Leo traces the drone from owner to owner until he learns it has been taken to Georgia. When the current owner’s family tells him he must collect it himself, Leo interprets the instruction literally.

He secretly leaves home and begins traveling south by bus. His disappearance creates the emergency seen at the beginning of the novel.

Police eventually trace Leo through transportation surveillance footage from Port Jefferson to Manhattan and later to Richmond, Virginia. Berry is horrified both by the danger and by the realization that Leo has independently navigated environments she assumed would overwhelm him.

McKenna learns about his disappearance and tells police everything she knows, including Leo’s contact with Shadow Jet Racing. Harrison initially responds with suspicion when he discovers that she and Leo have secretly remained friends.

Leo is eventually found safe. He explains that he was trying to reach Georgia because he believed recovering the drone could prove McKenna’s innocence.

The journey turns out to have been unnecessary. When Leo originally purchased the drone, he configured it to stream its recordings to Hollis’s computer, and the stored footage still exists there.

The family reviews the recording and discovers that Vanessa Catapano, Coach Catapano’s daughter, vandalized Hollyhock’s pool. The evidence finally clears McKenna after months of isolation and punishment.

The Beckers also discover that McKenna has been homeless and invite her to stay with them. For the first time since the accusation, she has people who believe her and are prepared to help without demanding that she prove her worth first.

Coach Catapano later explains that Vanessa acted partly from anger connected to his own neglect and obsessive investment in the swim team. After he reports the truth, Meadowbrook offers McKenna reinstatement.

McKenna refuses.

Losing swimming, housing, friends, financial security, and Glory’s dependable guidance has forced her to reconsider the identity she built around athletic achievement. She realizes that returning to the team would restore familiar privileges but would also return her to a system in which she measured herself primarily through performance and approval.

Meadowbrook instead offers her a position as a resident advisor in a Health and Wellness community. The job provides housing and fits naturally with her nursing career and her instinct to support others.

Berry experiences a related change. She becomes permanent principal of Stillwell after successfully managing a curriculum crisis and learns that neither leadership nor parenting requires constant personal control.

Leo receives encouragement from his school to apply to Whitby College, whose support program believes he could succeed there. He begins taking greater responsibility for ordinary life skills because he wants to learn them rather than because Berry has arranged another intervention.

The novel closes in June 2025 at Leo’s high-school graduation. Phil has built a new career, Harrison is preparing to launch his own food venture, and McKenna has completed college and is preparing to become a nurse.

Leo gives a graduation speech in which he discusses loneliness, difficulty, failure, and courage. When he briefly loses his place, Berry stops herself from intervening, trusting him to recover on his own.

He speaks about McKenna as someone who kept moving toward nursing after losing almost everything and explains that she also considers him a hero because he helped clear her name. Leo’s conclusion captures the growth of both characters: being heroic does not require being exceptional at everything, only the willingness to attempt difficult things, act according to one’s values, and continue forward even when other people underestimate what is possible.

Characters

Berry Selinger

Berry is one of the central figures in Breathing Under Water, and much of her development comes from the conflict between loving Leo intensely and recognizing that love cannot justify controlling every part of his life. She has spent years responding to emergencies, arranging services, monitoring medication, managing school problems, and anticipating situations that could overwhelm him.

Her vigilance is understandable because Leo has experienced depression, sensory distress, social isolation, and periods when he concealed important problems from his parents. Yet the same habits that once protected a younger child become increasingly intrusive when Leo begins demanding privacy and responsibility.

Berry’s professional ambition creates a parallel conflict. She wants to become principal of Stillwell, but she repeatedly assumes that accepting greater responsibility at work would mean failing Leo at home.

Her development comes when she realizes that both a school and a family can function without her supervising every moment. By the end of the novel, she has not stopped worrying about Leo; instead, she becomes more capable of allowing worry to exist without automatically turning it into intervention.

McKenna Jamison

McKenna’s story in Breathing Under Water examines what happens when a person has based nearly all of her security on performance. Swimming provides her scholarship, housing, friendships, routine, status, and a surrogate father in Coach Catapano, making athletic success much more than a sport.

Her strengths are inseparable from her weaknesses. McKenna is disciplined, loyal, compassionate, protective, and willing to work extremely hard, but she also suppresses vulnerability until anger becomes one of the few emotions she allows herself to express openly.

The Hollyhock confrontation shows how her sense of justice can become impulsive when she feels powerless. She is right to recognize the unfair exclusion of the autistic children, yet her inability to regulate her anger creates consequences that make it easier for others to dismiss her.

Her transformation is completed when Meadowbrook offers to restore her old life and she refuses. McKenna finally understands that recovering everything she lost would not necessarily mean becoming the person she wants to be.

Leo Becker

Leo becomes the emotional center of Breathing Under Water because his growth challenges nearly every assumption other characters make about ability and independence. At first, people around him focus heavily on his anxiety, autism, sensory needs, social difficulties, and dependence on predictable routines.

Yet Leo repeatedly demonstrates qualities that are less obvious to those who view him primarily through what he struggles to do. He is observant, technically gifted, morally serious, deeply loyal, honest about his limitations, and unusually capable of understanding younger autistic children.

Working with the Mighty Marlins helps Leo discover an identity beyond being the child who requires accommodations. Teaching gives him authority, responsibility, and the experience of being useful to others.

His dangerous trip toward Georgia demonstrates both his limitations and his capabilities. His literal interpretation of the instruction to retrieve the drone places him in danger, but the journey also proves that he can plan, navigate transportation systems, solve problems, and act independently to help someone he loves.

Phil Becker

Phil’s crisis in Breathing Under Water is driven by shame rather than indifference. Berry interprets his secrecy as emotional withdrawal and eventually suspects infidelity, while Phil is actually hiding the approaching collapse of his company.

His behavior reveals how thoroughly he has connected financial success with personal worth. Because he believes bankruptcy makes him a failure, he tries to solve the crisis privately instead of trusting Berry with the truth.

Phil’s resistance to spending money on Leo’s services is therefore partly financial fear disguised as a parenting philosophy. Once his secret is exposed, he becomes more willing to communicate and begins reconsidering the values he inherited from Hollis.

Later, Phil becomes an important advocate for giving Leo privacy. His insistence that Berry should not search Leo’s room or browser history marks his own movement from fear toward trust.

Harrison Becker

Harrison occupies an important position in Breathing Under Water because he shows the less visible effect that a high-needs family dynamic can have on siblings. He has spent years cooking, helping at home, spending time with Leo, and filling gaps when his parents are overwhelmed.

Berry recognizes that Harrison’s reliability could easily become a trap. She does not want him to grow into Leo’s permanent caretaker simply because he is loving and capable.

His relationship with McKenna reveals both his patience and his protective instincts. He is attracted to her and initially accepts her admission that anger can become difficult for her to control, but the vandalism allegation causes him to prioritize Leo’s safety and distance himself.

By the epilogue, Harrison is building his own food business. His movement toward an independent career confirms that he is finally constructing a future defined by his interests rather than by the needs of his family.

Glory

Glory is the emotional foundation of McKenna’s early life. She raised her granddaughter, provided stability after the loss of McKenna’s mother, and represents the one relationship McKenna assumes will always remain available.

Her dementia therefore creates a loss that occurs gradually rather than all at once. McKenna can still visit her physically, but the familiar source of advice, recognition, humor, and reassurance becomes increasingly inaccessible.

Glory’s decision to move voluntarily into residential care shows foresight and love. She understands that McKenna cannot simultaneously manage college, nursing, swimming, employment, and full-time caregiving, and she tries to prepare practical arrangements before her condition removes that ability.

Her decline eventually forces McKenna to accept a painful reversal: she is no longer the granddaughter who can seek comfort from Glory but the adult responsible for protecting a woman who may not even recognize her.

Yvonne

Yvonne functions as both Berry’s critic and one of her strongest sources of support. She repeatedly argues that Berry has organized too much of her life around Leo and must help him prepare for adulthood rather than remaining permanently dependent on his mother.

Her comments can frustrate Berry because advice is easier to give from outside the daily reality of parenting Leo. Still, many of Yvonne’s observations anticipate conclusions Berry eventually reaches herself.

Yvonne is not merely judgmental. When Berry’s marriage appears to be collapsing, she provides immediate emotional support and accompanies her home to face Phil.

Her role demonstrates that difficult honesty and loyalty can coexist. She challenges Berry precisely because she wants her sister, Leo, and the whole family to have fuller lives.

Coach Warren Catapano

Coach Catapano is initially one of the most powerful people in McKenna’s life. He believes in her athletic ability, helps arrange her Hollyhock employment, and occupies the emotional position of a father figure.

His support, however, is tied closely to performance and discipline. When McKenna behaves badly at Hollyhock, he concentrates on the danger she has created for herself and the team rather than fully engaging with the injustice that provoked her.

His greatest failure occurs when he accepts the possibility that McKenna vandalized the pool without proof. Because she has trusted him for years, his suspicion damages her more deeply than the judgment of strangers.

After Vanessa’s guilt is revealed, he is forced to confront his own failures as a father. His intense attention to swimming and his athletes has contributed to his daughter’s resentment, giving his eventual apology more complexity than a simple admission of being wrong about McKenna.

Vanessa Catapano

Vanessa first appears as a teenager who resents her father’s obsession with athletics. Her hostility initially seems like ordinary frustration with a demanding parent, but the later revelation about the vandalism changes the significance of her behavior.

She damages the Hollyhock pool while McKenna is already publicly associated with anger toward the club. Whether or not she intended every consequence that follows, her act allows suspicion to settle naturally on someone else.

Vanessa’s actions destroy McKenna’s scholarship, housing, friendships, athletic career, and reputation for months. Her role therefore demonstrates how one person’s private resentment can create devastating consequences for an innocent person when institutions are willing to act on assumption rather than proof.

Hollis Becker

Hollis is Phil’s father and represents an older definition of success based heavily on professional status and financial accomplishment. Phil’s fear of disappointing him contributes to the shame surrounding the collapse of his company.

Yet Hollis also becomes practically useful to the family. Phil secretly seeks his help during the financial crisis, and he later becomes more involved with Leo and the household.

His computer becomes unexpectedly important because Leo had configured his drone to stream footage there. The preserved recording ultimately provides the evidence that clears McKenna.

Phil’s eventual willingness to challenge Hollis’s expectations marks an important change in their relationship. He begins choosing work according to what gives him satisfaction rather than according to his father’s standard of prestige.

Karyn

Karyn helps create one of the novel’s most productive connections by introducing McKenna to Leo. Because of her experience running the STELLAR program at the YMCA, she understands that autistic children require informed support rather than simply being expected to adapt to conventional programs.

Her suggestion that Leo serve as McKenna’s assistant proves especially significant. She recognizes that lived experience can provide knowledge McKenna does not possess through athletic expertise alone.

Karyn’s role is comparatively small, but the consequences of her decision are enormous. Without the introduction, Leo may never have discovered his interest in teaching, and McKenna may never have formed the friendship that later helps both of them survive major crises.

Kathleen

Kathleen manages Hollyhock and initially encourages McKenna’s idea for the swimming program. She is open enough to help make the Mighty Marlins possible but remains constrained by the institution she serves.

When club members complain, Kathleen tells McKenna that the program must end because the members effectively control the facility. She may sympathize with McKenna’s position, but her professional responsibility leads her to protect the club’s expectations.

Kathleen therefore represents institutional compromise rather than personal cruelty. She illustrates how exclusion can continue even when the person enforcing it does not necessarily share every prejudice behind the decision.

Sebastian

Sebastian is Leo’s closest friend at the beginning of the story, and his move to Brazil creates a major emotional turning point. Because both boys are autistic, their friendship offers Leo a relationship in which he feels understood without constantly having to explain himself.

His departure exposes how narrow Leo’s social world has become. Once Sebastian is gone, Leo struggles to imagine forming meaningful friendships with teenagers who have often mocked or misunderstood him.

Sebastian’s absence indirectly pushes Leo toward new relationships with McKenna and Tatiana. The loss is painful, but it eventually forces Leo to test whether connection can exist outside the one friendship that previously made school socially manageable.

Tatiana

Tatiana represents the possibility of peer intimacy that Leo has almost stopped expecting. She meets him through Wunderkinds and shows genuine personal interest by inviting him for coffee.

Leo initially risks retreating because rejection and ridicule have taught him to expect social interactions with peers to go badly. McKenna helps him interpret Tatiana’s invitation without treating every uncertainty as evidence of humiliation.

Tatiana’s importance is not based on the romance becoming the central relationship in the story. Instead, she shows that Leo’s social future does not have to remain defined by previous failures.

Neil Rumson

Neil is Berry’s professional rival at Stillwell. As curriculum coordinator, he challenges her authority and promotes changes that could improve his own standing within the school.

His curriculum project later develops serious flaws, including incorrect links, missing materials, and poor organization. Berry’s response becomes one of the clearest demonstrations of why she is capable of becoming principal.

Rather than concentrating on humiliating Neil or protecting herself politically, Berry organizes the practical work needed to repair the damage. Neil therefore functions as a professional test that reveals Berry’s competence when she must lead under pressure.

Opal Carter

Opal is the retiring principal who identifies Berry as a serious candidate to succeed her. Her confidence matters because Berry has spent years questioning whether she can pursue ambitious professional goals while remaining sufficiently available to Leo.

Opal’s recommendation effectively opens the career path that Berry has wanted but feared accepting. Her decision also confirms that Berry’s leadership ability has been visible to others even when Berry herself has measured her choices primarily through family obligations.

Ainsley Lowell and Christine Thomaston

Ainsley and Christine embody the privilege surrounding Hollyhock’s decision to exclude the Mighty Marlins. Ainsley initially praises McKenna and supports the program, but her support disappears when the autistic children become disruptive enough to challenge the club’s controlled environment.

Their position infuriates McKenna because the club possesses resources that could benefit children who have struggled to find suitable instruction elsewhere. The confrontation exposes both the exclusion McKenna is opposing and the danger of allowing justified anger to turn into behavior that weakens her own position.

Lark, Rae, and Jenna

McKenna initially sees her teammates as family rather than simply fellow athletes. Her willingness to abandon personal plans and stay with Lark after a breakup demonstrates how completely she commits herself to the people she loves.

Their later distance is therefore one of the harshest parts of her collapse. Once association with McKenna threatens athletic careers and creates the possibility of NCAA scrutiny, loyalty becomes conditional.

Rae’s later encounter with McKenna confirms that the separation is not temporary. Their behavior does not erase their earlier affection, but it reveals how fragile a chosen family can become when membership depends on remaining useful, successful, and free from controversy.

Mindi

Mindi appears during one of McKenna’s most vulnerable periods, when she is secretly sleeping in university dormitory lounges. Instead of exposing or humiliating her, Mindi recognizes what is happening and warns her before an RA can discover her.

Later, McKenna begins accepting ordinary companionship from Mindi. That willingness matters because months of betrayal have trained McKenna to expect relationships to disappear whenever she becomes difficult or inconvenient.

Mindi represents the possibility of forming connections that are not based on swimming, achievement, or long-standing obligation. She becomes part of McKenna’s movement toward a new life.

Mauricia

Mauricia works at Glory’s care facility and becomes an understated source of compassion for McKenna. She helps explain the realities of dementia when Glory stops recognizing her granddaughter and prepares McKenna for the painful reversal of their roles.

As McKenna’s homelessness worsens, Mauricia also offers practical assistance by providing food and occasionally allowing her to remain at the facility. Her kindness is important precisely because she has no obligation to rescue McKenna.

She demonstrates a quieter form of care than the dramatic loyalty seen elsewhere in the novel. Small acts of attention help McKenna survive when larger systems have failed her.

Amara Links

Amara Links, Leo’s guidance counselor, offers a perspective that helps Berry reconsider what Leo’s dangerous journey means. Berry naturally sees the trip as evidence of vulnerability and risk, while Amara also recognizes the independence, planning, and social growth that made such a journey possible.

She contacts Whitby College and helps create an educational possibility suited to Leo’s needs without assuming that support and independence are opposites. Her approach reflects one of the novel’s central ideas: assistance can expand autonomy when it is designed to help someone build a life rather than keep that person permanently dependent.

The Mighty Marlins

Elias, Matthew, Johnny, Rohan, and Lindy form the group that changes both McKenna and Leo. Their different sensory, communication, and behavioral needs quickly demonstrate that no single teaching strategy works for every autistic child.

They expose the limits of McKenna’s conventional coaching methods and allow Leo’s knowledge to become valuable. Through them, Leo experiences himself as a teacher and McKenna learns that expertise requires listening to the people she intends to help.

Their removal from Hollyhock also exposes the social barriers faced by children whose needs become visible or inconvenient. The program’s cancellation affects the entire story because McKenna’s reaction begins the chain of events leading to her false accusation and eventual transformation.

Eloise Lowell

Eloise is one of McKenna’s early private swimming students at Hollyhock. Teaching her helps McKenna discover that instruction can provide a form of satisfaction similar to the caregiving work she hopes to pursue through nursing.

Her presence also introduces McKenna to Ainsley, whose later opposition to the Mighty Marlins creates a sharp contrast with her earlier praise. Through Eloise, McKenna initially encounters Hollyhock as a place where teaching can create meaningful relationships before the institution becomes associated with exclusion and conflict.

Mike Cromwell

Mike Cromwell is one of the few adults at Leo’s school whom he instinctively trusts. After the failed prom invitation, Leo retreats to Mike rather than remaining in a social situation he cannot interpret.

Mike’s significance lies in the sense of safety he provides. Leo’s reliance on him shows how carefully he distinguishes between people who make him feel pressured and people around whom he can recover without needing to perform socially.

Piotr Tomashefsky

Piotr represents the school board when Berry expects that Neil’s curriculum disaster may damage her chances of becoming principal. Instead, he explains that Berry’s handling of the crisis has strengthened the board’s confidence in her.

His announcement confirms that leadership is being judged through Berry’s actions under pressure rather than through flawless circumstances. He therefore provides the professional recognition Berry has spent much of the novel doubting she can accept without compromising her family.

Themes

Independence, Protection, and the Right to Take Risks

Protection becomes complicated when the person being protected is approaching adulthood. In Breathing Under Water, Berry’s love for Leo has been shaped by years of genuine dangers involving depression, medication, sensory overload, social rejection, and difficulty communicating distress.

Those experiences teach Berry that vigilance keeps Leo safe, but they also make it difficult for her to recognize when vigilance becomes intrusion. Searching his room, checking his medication, monitoring his activities, and wanting to investigate every unexplained behavior all come from fear rather than cruelty.

Leo’s growth repeatedly forces the family to confront the fact that independence cannot be learned without uncertainty. He must experience misunderstandings, rejection, difficult choices, practical responsibilities, and even mistakes if he is going to develop confidence in his own judgment.

His journey toward Georgia presents this conflict in its most extreme form. The trip is dangerous and based partly on a literal misunderstanding, yet it also reveals planning, persistence, technical skill, public transportation competence, loyalty, and courage that his family had underestimated.

Berry’s eventual progress does not come from deciding that Leo no longer needs support. Instead, she learns that useful support should create more room for self-direction rather than permanently preventing risk.

The graduation scene completes this development when Leo loses his place during his speech. Berry’s instinct tells her to rescue him, but she remains still and allows him to recover for himself.

Identity Beyond Achievement

McKenna has spent years believing that effort and excellence can make life secure. Swimming rewards discipline, gives her a scholarship, provides housing, creates friendships, connects her to Coach Catapano, and allows her to imagine herself as someone whose difficult childhood has been overcome through achievement.

The problem is that almost every major part of her life is attached to the same system. When she is suspected of vandalism, she does not simply lose participation in a sport; she loses housing, financial assistance, status, friends, routine, and the community she considered family.

Her collapse reveals the danger of allowing performance to become the primary measure of personal worth. McKenna begins treating homelessness and deprivation almost as punishment because part of her believes that losing control means she deserves suffering.

Being cleared creates a second test. The university offers her reinstatement, which could restore the identity she once fought desperately to preserve.

Her refusal demonstrates how much she has changed. She recognizes that returning to competitive swimming would place her again inside a structure that demanded constant excellence while leaving little space for vulnerability, uncertainty, or changing desires.

Becoming a resident advisor allows McKenna to retain qualities that always mattered more than race results: responsibility, empathy, leadership, and a desire to care for others. Nursing then becomes a future she chooses rather than another achievement she must use to prove her worth.

Belonging, Loyalty, and Conditional Relationships

Nearly every central character is searching for a place where acceptance does not disappear when life becomes inconvenient. Leo loses Sebastian and believes friendships with teenagers are nearly impossible, while McKenna assumes her teammates will remain her family because years of training have created intense closeness.

Both discover that belonging can be more fragile than it appears. Leo has repeatedly experienced institutions and social spaces that accept him only when his needs remain manageable, while McKenna watches teammates distance themselves as soon as association with her threatens their own standing.

Hollyhock provides the clearest institutional example. The Mighty Marlins are welcome while the program appears controlled and charitable, but support collapses once the children’s behavior disrupts member comfort.

Against these conditional relationships, the story presents quieter connections built on choice. Leo continues contacting McKenna when almost everyone else has abandoned her, even though his family might disapprove.

McKenna responds because she refuses to make him pay for what has happened to her. Their friendship becomes valuable precisely because neither person is useful to the other in the conventional sense.

Mindi, Mauricia, Yvonne, and eventually the Becker family provide other examples of support offered during difficult circumstances rather than only during success. The novel therefore treats belonging not as permanent approval but as the willingness to remain present when another person becomes complicated, vulnerable, or socially costly.

Redefining Success and Courage

Success repeatedly changes meaning across Breathing Under Water. Berry initially associates it with becoming principal without failing her family, Phil connects it to keeping his company alive, McKenna measures it through athletic excellence, and Leo often assumes success means performing social situations correctly enough to avoid rejection.

Each definition eventually breaks down. Phil’s company fails, McKenna loses swimming, Berry cannot control every crisis, and Leo continues experiencing situations in which he misreads expectations.

Yet those failures create possibilities that previous definitions of success could not accommodate. Phil discovers work he enjoys more after bankruptcy and begins resisting Hollis’s expectations rather than trying to recover his former status.

Berry becomes principal while learning that strong leadership does not require her to be physically present every moment. McKenna loses competitive swimming but gains a clearer sense of the caregiver and nurse she wants to become.

Leo’s final speech gathers these changes into a different understanding of courage. He does not define heroism through winning, perfection, exceptional talent, or independence without help.

Instead, courage comes from attempting difficult things, trying to act according to one’s values, accepting that other people may doubt you, and continuing anyway. His aircraft metaphor at graduation therefore reflects more than optimism about the future; it shows that he now sees adulthood not as a test he must pass perfectly, but as permission to begin moving forward under his own power.