Tweet Cute(11)

Our eventual mortality aside, there’s no way in hell I’m letting her lead warm-ups on the first day of the season. I earned my spot as the captain of the girls’ team. For once, I had a clear-cut victory over her: I’d gotten the votes. I’d won the numbers game. Coach Martin made her a co-captain in some attempt, maybe, to soften the blow, but if anything, that just made me all the more determined not to let her undermine me in the first hour of the season.

I head out to the pool deck, the smell of chlorine heavy in the air. I probably shouldn’t love the smell so much—and maybe I don’t. It’s the kind of smell that aches, that takes up too much space in your lungs and displaces you in time. It could be last season, or five years ago, or back to a kiddie pool with my floaties on all at once.

I’m knocked out of whatever lingering nostalgia I have, though, when I look down at the pool and see a bunch of people already in it, their arms and legs cutting through the water.

For a second I am frozen, horrified at the idea that Pooja just walked out here and led practice on her own. That I’m going to look like an idiot in front of the whole team because I took an extra minute to write another one of those stupid tweets. But then I see Pooja striding up to me, looking livid.

“We’ve got a problem.”

I follow her scowl to the wall of the pool, realizing I don’t actually know the person who is clinging to the edge of it, shaking water out of her goggles. I look farther up the lanes of the pool and see that really, there is only a cluster of fifteen or so swimmers—just enough to take up most of the three lanes the school is allowed to use at this pool, but not enough for it to be our team.

Someone swims toward the wall and does a flip turn so aggressive, it manages to soak me and Pooja both. I can’t see his face from underwater, but whoever it is seems to be smirking, like I can feel the smirk all over his body. And that’s when I realize it’s none other than Jack Campbell and the band of misfit toys that is our dive team.

Pooja is still sputtering in shock when I take a step toward the pool and mutter, “I’ll handle this.”

I run up to the edge of the pool for momentum and get enough air on my dive that I’m only a few feet behind Jack when I hit the water. I catch up to him in another few seconds, tapping his foot. He keeps kicking as if he hasn’t felt it. I speed up, rope my fingers around his ankle, and yank. Hard.

After a moment of floundering in surprise, Jack emerges from the water, shaking out his dark hair. For a moment, he looks ridiculous without a swim cap on, like a shaggy dog who jumped overboard from someone’s rowboat. Then he runs his fingers through his hair and pushes it back so fast that it’s almost striking, seeing his brown eyes wide on mine, close enough that I can see they’re already tinged with a bit of red from the chlorine.

“Yeesh, Pepperoni,” he says, grabbing the lane line. “No need to go all Sharknado on me.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Um. Right now? Wondering if the lifeguard will stop you from drowning me, mostly.”

“You can’t be here. We booked the pool. Besides, don’t you guys have a plank to go jump off?”

Jack grins one of those half grins of his, the kind that means he’s about to say something he thinks is super clever. I usually manage to ignore it—but even when it’s not aimed at me, it’s something I’ve come to notice after four years of him in the periphery, interrupting peaceful silences in class or the library or when the rest of us are trying to nap on the pool deck in between heats at swim meets. Jack is the kind of person who fills silences. The kind of person who doesn’t necessarily command attention, but always seems to sneak it from you anyway.

The kind of person who steals your pool lanes and makes you look like an idiot on your first day as team captain. And even though Jack has seemed determined to knock me down a peg for years, this time there’s way too much of my pride on the line to let him.

“You talk a big game for someone who’s terrified of that plank.”

My eyes narrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jack’s eyes gleam from under his goggles. We both know I absolutely do.

The swim team and the dive team sometimes stay late after Friday practices to play informal water polo games with a beat-up soccer ball, and there’s always some dumb bet based on who loses. It’s why I have some rather off-putting memories of Jack and his brethren gagging on a Kool-Aid–pool water concoction after a loss, and why the swim team was forced to jump off the high dive after we bit it once freshman year.

Except I didn’t exactly jump. It turns out whatever evolutionary compulsion not to die that’s hardwired into my brain is a lot louder than the rest of the team’s, because I stared at that infinite distance between the diving board and the water and immediately climbed back down so fast, I don’t even remember making a conscious decision to do it.

Unlike Jack, who seems to remember the incident all too well.

But I’m not taking the bait. “Your season hasn’t even officially started yet. Get your team out of our pool.”

Jack blows out a breath, the grin’s wattage going down a notch. “Ethan’s our captain this year,” he says, more to the pool than to me. “Take it up with him.”

“Everything okay over there?” I hear someone call. “What’s going on?”