Underwater(34)

“No. My mom even said she saw part of the old me coming back.”

“Exactly.” She writes down a note. Like she’s really getting to the meat of things. “Be honest with Evan. Tell him what’s bothering you. Then let him decide. My feeling is he’ll say he’s okay having a friend who’s going through some stuff. And you’ll feel better knowing he’s okay with it.”





chapter twenty-four

I decide to wait for Evan at the bottom of the stairs after Brenda leaves. I’m afraid I’ll chicken out if I don’t wait outside for him. Hopefully he’ll come straight home from school so I don’t have to sit out here forever. Because the stairs get more uncomfortable the longer I sit on them. I shift from butt cheek to butt cheek every few minutes as an hour passes by. I look at the water in the swimming pool and remember what it feels like to jump into it. I never hesitated to jump into the pool on hot days. It was the only good thing about Paradise Manor. After I scooped all the leaves out, I loved to leap in, swim to the bottom, and pop back through to the surface. It was one of the best feelings in the whole world.

And it hits me that I actually miss it.

I miss swimming.

At exactly that moment, Evan comes through the front gate. My heart rate speeds up and my palms get sweaty because I’m going to apologize. But then my heart sinks. Because Evan’s not alone. He has Taylor Schneider with him. She only lives a few blocks from here, so it makes sense that they go to the same school now. And have probably fallen madly in love with each other.

She’s blond.

She’s cool.

She has a scar across her right shoulder where a bullet grazed her.

I know her, but we aren’t friends. I don’t dislike her or anything. We’ve just never hung out aside from swim team. We had matching team suits and the same lane assignment, but I wasn’t friends with her like I was with Chelsea, Brianna, and Sage. Taylor was another long-distance swimmer on the team. But I held the school record and she didn’t. And here she is now. She’s standing in front of my feet. With Evan. And she’s staring at me. They both are.

Everything about the way Evan is staring says he’s annoyed with me. The muscle in his jaw is ticking, and he’s gripping the strap of his backpack so tightly that his fingers have gone white. I want to talk, but there’s no way I’m getting into it with Taylor here.

“Morgan, oh, my god!” Taylor gasps. “You’re so … different.” She grabs some chunks of her hair, pulls them up and lets them drop back down over her shoulders. I know what she’s trying to say. She’s trying to say my hair isn’t streaked blond and shiny from chlorine anymore. I don’t have a tan. Or muscle tone. I shrug my shoulders because there’s nothing else I can really say. She’s right.

But she’s not exactly the same, either. The Taylor I remember was flirty and flouncy. She wore pink tutus and body glitter to football games. This new version of Taylor is ripped. The muscles in her arms are a billion times bigger and more defined. They aren’t the kind of muscles you get from only swimming. They’re the kind of muscles you get from lifting weights. At a gym that plays loud metal music. And is full of guys in tank tops with the sides cut out from top to bottom so you can see their stomach muscles through the gaps.

This Taylor is different. I don’t know her.

“Thanks for ignoring me all weekend,” Evan says, shaking me from my Taylor trance. His tone isn’t kind, and I jerk back when his words feel like they’ve slapped me in the face.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“Well, at least you’re outside,” he says.

Taylor leans down and punches me playfully in the arm. “Oh, I knew it! I knew all that junk about you staying inside all the time was BS. I bet you sit out here every day, soaking up the rays, while we’re all stuck in some boring classroom. You’ve got it all figured out.”

I know she can tell by looking at me that what she said isn’t true. I wish I could tell her that it is. I wish I were capable of fooling the system like that. But Evan and I know the truth. We both know that my being all the way down here on the bottom step, practically in the courtyard, is not even close to typical.

Taylor grabs on to the stair railing and tries to maneuver her way around me. That’s when I realize I’m blocking the two of them from getting to Evan’s apartment. They want to go inside together, and I’m in the way. I scramble up and dust off the back of my jeans.

“Sorry, geez. I’ll move.”

“Evan’s teaching me to surf,” Taylor says brightly. She’s wearing a tight black tank top with the mascot of her new school on it. A snarling wolverine. And I can see the keloid scar from the bullet on her muscular shoulder. It’s thick and shiny and red.

“Oh, wow.” I look at Evan, and he shrugs. “That’s really cool of you.”

And of course Evan should teach Taylor to surf. Taylor is what Evan deserves. She’s a pretty girl who has a zest for life and wants to be with him in the ocean. And she knows how to flirt and be pretty. She used to wear a bikini to practice instead of the dorky one-piece Speedo I wore simply because I associated it with bringing me good luck. We shared a lane with the league-winning foursome of senior guys who consistently won the 4x100 freestyle race, and in between sets, Taylor would hoist herself halfway out of the pool to grab her water bottle from the pool deck. All the guys in our lane would watch her, checking out her butt while she drank. She’d tell them to stop looking, playfully kicking water at their faces. Maybe she’ll do that to Evan today. Out in the ocean.