Annabelle’s throat went dry. Was this when Mrs. Sloane was going to say it? That the “qualified day student” financial aid wasn’t for students who could only get Cs? That maybe Annabelle didn’t belong at the Academy at all?
She nodded and walked out into the hallway, where she sat down on the bench and stared at those bare bulletin boards. For the first time in ages, she thought of the room that was supposed to be hers at Dad’s old apartment in New Jersey.
The room had a twin bed with a white wicker frame, but Dad had never gotten sheets or a comforter, so the shiny blue mattress had stayed bare. The bed had belonged to his friend’s daughter, and so had the other things he’d gotten for the room: an empty dresser and a little white desk with a lavender-painted bulletin board hanging on the wall. She’d forgotten about the bulletin board until this very moment.
It was so heartbreakingly optimistic of her dad to put a bulletin board in the room where Annabelle was supposed to be able to stay on weekends but never actually did. As if she’d be there enough to want to tack up mementos and reminders.
Or maybe the bulletin board was a random hand-me-down he took from his friend without thinking about it at all.
Except, no. It hadn’t been the only thing on the wall, she remembered now. There was also a poster of her favorite swimmer, Katie Ledecky, and Dad must have picked that out just for her. Even though he hadn’t decorated the rest of that crummy, too-white apartment, even when things were bad, he’d chosen a poster for her wall and gotten furniture for her room.
He had really cared, even when it didn’t seem like it.
Maybe he’d kept that stuff all this time and brought it to his new place in Boston, hoping someday she’d stay there and stick stuff on the bulletin board and give him a reason to put sheets on the bed.
The door to Mrs. Sloane’s office swung open and Mom came out.
“Come on, Belle,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t make Annabelle thank Mrs. Sloane for her time. She didn’t tell Annabelle to stop biting her bottom lip, even though Annabelle could tell by the sting that she’d chewed the front part raw. She rushed past so fast that Annabelle could feel an extra breeze on top of the air-conditioning, and she didn’t say a word until they made it outside and the real, barely salty breeze hit them.
“Well!” Her voice came out too loud, as if she were wearing earbuds and couldn’t hear herself. “That gives us a lot to talk about. Don’t you think?”
“What did she say to you?” Annabelle asked. “Is she . . . did she say anything about my financial aid?”
“That’s not something you need to think about, Belle.”
Mom said it in the same definite, no-nonsense voice she used on the phone with her event-planning clients.
Absolutely, the party will be perfect even if it rains. I know you’ll love the blue hyacinths even though you wanted pink.
As if just by telling Annabelle she shouldn’t think about the financial aid, Annabelle would stop.
As they headed back toward town, Mia texted to ask where Annabelle was and if everything was okay. It was four, which meant the high school practice was ending and the middle school one was about to start.
Annabelle didn’t want to say anything that would give Mia a reason to frown her sympathy frown again, so she put her phone away without replying.
They drove past a brand-new house—even bigger than the other ones in the neighborhood and new-cedar brown all over. Somebody had torn an old house down and started over instead of adding on to what had been there. She wasn’t sure what would bother her mom more: a house that clashed so completely with everything else on the street like this one did, or a house that clashed with itself—part new and part old—like theirs used to.
And she couldn’t help thinking how hard it must be for Mom to have a daughter who didn’t match. To sit there inside Mrs. Sloane’s office, probably wishing she had married someone as smart as Mitch the first time around, so her kid could be as successful as she was.
Chapter 16
There was a meet on Friday afternoon, so at least Annabelle had a chance to redeem herself after the last one. It was against a team from the mainland—one they hadn’t raced before, so nobody really knew what to expect.
When it was time for the medley relay, Elisa gathered Kayla, Ruby, and Annabelle together for a psych-up cheer, and then they all lined up to start.
Annabelle breathed in the familiar chlorine-filled air, focused on those steady black lines at the bottom of the pool, and visualized herself diving in at just the right time. Making everybody forget the last race.
When the buzzer went off, Kayla got out to an easy lead, and Ruby pulled farther ahead on her leg. Annabelle’s heart rate slowed down. Her team’s second-best relay group was ahead of both groups from the other team.
Colette had told her not to think about leaving the blocks early—to approach the start the way she always had. But when Ruby touched the wall at the end of her leg, Annabelle was cautious. As long as she didn’t get DQ’d again, this was an easy win, so she might as well play it safe.
When they won the race, they all high-fived and Colette told them good job, but when Annabelle turned to walk away, Colette called out to her.
“Hey. You have to trust yourself, okay?”
And Annabelle felt as if she’d let the team down and lost them the race, even though they’d won by half the length of the pool.
“I’ll do better next time,” she said, and Coach Colette nodded.
“I know.”
And in Annabelle’s individual races, she did. It was easier to dive off the starting blocks right when the buzzer went off instead of waiting for someone else to reach the wall. She couldn’t quite forget about the risk of diving in early, but she could measure her own start off of the swimmers on either side of her. She dared herself to be the first one into the water—the way she and Mia used to dare each other to try flips and back dives off the diving board—and each time, she was. She won both individual races she swam in, which meant that she earned six more points for the team, all by herself.
The score wasn’t close, but it felt good to win by a lot. And they still had a chance at making it to the Labor Day Invitational as long as they could win most of their other meets and beat South Shore when they saw them again in August.
Annabelle wrapped herself up in a plain navy towel—no more monogrammed purple for her, even though Mom kept setting that one out as if Annabelle had forgotten she had it. The middle school meet was after the high school one this time. Jeremy was talking to some of the boys, but Mia grabbed Annabelle’s arm and dragged her away from the group before it started.
“Are people going out?” she asked.
Annabelle didn’t know what she meant at first.
“You know,” Mia said. “Like Kayla or Elisa or anyone? I’ve heard people sometimes hang out at night after they win a meet. Did you hear about any plans?”
Annabelle glanced over at her teammates. Kayla was talking with Ruby, and Colette was showing Elisa something on her clipboard. Connor said something to Jordan, who laughed his obnoxious seagull laugh.
“I haven’t heard about anything,” she said.
“Boo.” Mia wrinkled up her nose and then picked at one of her fingernails. They were bright pink.
Annabelle felt a pang, thinking of their old movie-and-manicure nights. Usually at Mia’s house, where Mia’s mom made the best Greek dishes—spanakopita and souvlaki with tzatziki sauce—even though Mia begged for pizza. And where the TV was twice the size of Annabelle’s, and there was a cushiony extra bed right there in Mia’s room.
She almost asked if Mia wanted to have a sleepover tonight. It had been so long since they’d had one, and maybe it would feel right to talk to Mia about her dad’s letter if it was only the two of them, eating those soft chocolate chip cookies out of the box and painting each other’s nails and talking and talking instead of paying attention to whatever movie they’d chosen.
But then Mia leaned in close to whisper.
“Connor and I were both in line at the snack stand the day you weren’t at practice, and we started talking about lacrosse. Did you know he plays?”
Annabelle opened her mouth, but no noise came out.
“He said maybe we could throw the ball around sometime after swim practice or something.”
She said it like she thought Annabelle would be excited about it. Like this was something fun they could share, the way they’d shared a crush on a cute actor and gone to see his movie together last summer.
“Come on, Mia!” the middle school coach yelled.
“I guess you’d better go,” Annabelle said. “Good luck.” She squeezed her balled-up swim cap in her hand as she headed toward the locker room. She told herself Connor didn’t really want to throw around a lacrosse ball with Mia. Or if he did, it didn’t mean anything.
But right now, he was chatting with that pretty college-aged lifeguard, and when Ruby stopped to talk to him, he put his arm around her shoulder.
So maybe it didn’t mean anything that he talked about lacrosse with Mia . . . but then maybe it also didn’t matter that he’d offered Annabelle a ride to practice or flicked her ponytail twice or watched her walk by with that look in his eyes that made her belly go hot-chocolate warm.
Maybe he flirted with everybody and made everybody feel that warm and special.
Mia’s cousin had said it was a good thing if the person you liked was nice to everybody, not just you. But it had to be even better if that person was nice to everybody but even nicer to you.
Right when she’d almost convinced herself that maybe Connor wasn’t extra nice to her, a hand tapped her shoulder, and when she turned around, there he was. Connor. No shirt. Gym shorts over his racing suit, slightly sunburned chest, and messy, half-dry blond hair.
There were pink marks around his green eyes where his goggles had dug into his skin. Everybody got goggle lines after racing, and Annabelle hated how they looked on her own face. But that hot-chocolate warmth filled her belly as she imagined reaching out and touching those reddish indents on Connor’s.
She shouldn’t want to touch someone else’s goggle indents, but with Connor . . . there was something about those marks that made him seem the tiniest bit vulnerable. Imperfect. And somehow that made her heart swell with so much affection she couldn’t believe it still fit behind her ribs.
“Nice races, HB,” he said.
“You too,” she squeaked out. “Your backstroke’s been incredible. You’ve been, like, flying.”
That had sounded weird, maybe. Like she was trying too hard to compliment him. But Connor’s grin was extra wide.
Jordan joined him then. “Way to race, kid.”
Ugh. Kid?
But then Connor said, “Bye, Annabelle.”
She loved the way her name sounded coming out of his mouth. He said it carefully, like it was in a foreign language and it mattered to him to get every sound right.
He said it like she mattered to him. A whole lot more than Mia or Ruby or the lifeguard or anybody else.
Chapter 17
Mom and Mitch both had work events that night, so they left Annabelle money to order dinner. She was picking up her phone to call for pizza when the text came in.
Connor.
She dropped the phone, and it bounced off one of the couch cushions and onto the ground. It buzzed a second time before she could find it.
A bunch of us from the team are going to the creamery if you wanna come.
Getting there in 30.
Annabelle’s smile spread so wide that her lips nearly split in the front where she bit them when she was nervous. This had to mean something, Connor going out of his way to invite her.
Cool. See you there, she typed back, her fingers shaking so much that she almost dropped the phone again. She put in an exclamation point and a smiley face at first, then deleted them.
She texted Mom to say she was biking to get food instead of ordering, which wasn’t a lie exactly, and then she added that she might get ice cream with Mia, which was.
She could have been getting ice cream with Mia, if she told Mia about meeting Connor and the rest of the team. But the truth was, she didn’t want Mia there. So she put away her phone without sending another message.
Annabelle locked up her bike a few blocks from the Creamery. The line looped around the corner, like it always did in the summer.
What did “meeting at the Creamery” mean, exactly? There wasn’t any room to hang out inside when it was this crowded. Was she supposed to find the whole group so they could wait in line together? Or order her ice cream by herself and go find them outside?
She tried to make herself walk normally, even though she had no idea what to do with her arms or how to scan the crowd for the rest of the group without looking like some pathetic girl who couldn’t stand to be on her own.
At the end of the line, there was a family with two men and two little kids, and then there were a bunch of older guys wearing those faded T-shirts that are already faded when you buy them. Annabelle took a spot at the back and pretended to check something on her phone.
“Hey!” Jeremy rushed up, with Kayla a few steps behind him.
“What are you doing here?” Annabelle asked.
“Uh, same as you, I’m guessing,” Jeremy teased. “Getting ice cream.”
“Thanks to your generous sister who let you tag along,” Kayla added.
“Mom made her bring me,” Jeremy fake-whispered.
Kayla gave him a little shove, but it was a jokey shove. Kayla and Jeremy didn’t fight for real the way lots of siblings seemed to.
Kayla held up her phone. “Ruby says they’re almost at the front of the line and we should meet them. You guys coming, or you want to wait?”
Annabelle scanned the line in front of her. She hated when people saved spots so their friends could cut.
“Maybe we’ll stay back here and meet you outside?” Jeremy said.
He looked at Annabelle to see if that’s what she wanted, too. But she didn’t need Jeremy to answer for her. And if Connor was up there with Ruby, she wasn’t about to get stuck back here.
“I’m coming,” Annabelle said.
She ignored the annoyed looks from the dads with little kids as she and Kayla pushed their way forward, and she ignored the way Jeremy kept saying, “Excuse me, I’m so sorry.” It wasn’t like she’d told him to follow her.
But when they reached Ruby, she was only with a couple of other girls from the team. No Connor. No Elisa, either.
Annabelle and Jeremy always used to order a large cup with half peanut butter cup for her and half double-chocolate chunk for him because it was cheaper than two separate small cups and the same amount of ice cream. But she was afraid Ruby would make a thing of it if they shared a cup of ice cream now, so she said, “Okay if we each get our own?” and Jeremy shrugged but didn’t complain.
After they got their orders and walked outside, she finally saw Connor, sitting with Jordan on one of the gray wooden benches along the street. “You made it!” he called. He didn’t clarify who he meant when he said “you.” Was he talking to all of them, or mostly to her? Had he texted Kayla and Ruby and the other girls, too?
“My legs are suuuuper tired. I need a seat,” Ruby whined. She plopped herself down in between Connor and Jordan, just assuming they’d scoot over so she would fit, and they did.
“Aww, poor Rubes,” Connor said.
The next bench opened up, and Kayla and the other girls sat down. That only left Jeremy and Annabelle standing there.
“Curb?” Jeremy asked.
Annabelle looked at Connor again and then at Kayla and the others, but it was kind of pathetic, standing there waiting to be included. So she and Jeremy found a spot a few feet away from the benches.
Jeremy glanced over at Kayla before he sat. He’d done that a lot ever since she’d come back from her treatment program last summer: c
hecked on what she was eating and whether she was having fun.
When Kayla had first come home, Jeremy had told Annabelle that it wasn’t easy for her to eat as many calories as she was supposed to, and sometimes breakfast went on for ages because she had to work so hard to eat all the food. Annabelle wondered if it was still tough for Kayla that the plans people made to hang out usually involved eating. Tonight, Kayla had gotten sorbet instead of ice cream, and Annabelle had noticed that in a way she knew she wouldn’t have if it was someone else ordering, which she felt sort of guilty about.
Kayla stuck her tongue out at Jeremy, and he stuck his tongue out back. Then he plopped down right smack next to Annabelle, and she slid away a tiny bit, so Ruby and Jordan and Connor wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
“No Pricey tonight?” Connor asked Kayla, and Kayla hesitated a second before saying, “Um, I think she’s with some people she works with at Beach Buzz.”
Then Connor started talking to Ruby and Jordan, so Annabelle figured she might as well talk to Jeremy.
“How were your races today?” she asked.
He looked down into his ice cream. “I had a PR in the 50 free.”
Annabelle stopped mid-bite. “That’s great! Why didn’t you text me?”
He shrugged. “It’s still not that fast a time.”
“Whatever,” Annabelle said. “It’s a big deal to beat your own record!”
He went to push his hair away from his eyes, even though it still wasn’t long enough to reach his eyebrows.
Annabelle remembered how it had felt in sixth-grade science when Jeremy and Mrs. Mattson had told her she asked smart questions—how that was better than when someone told her what a great swimmer she was or called her pretty, because they were complimenting her for something she didn’t already feel good about, deep down.
“Seriously,” she said. “It’s extra impressive since the other team wasn’t very good. I bet you’ll be able to swim even faster when the competition is stronger.”
Over on the bench, Connor laughed, and Annabelle turned her head. Was it Ruby who had made him laugh like that? Or only Jordan?
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