Which is fine, don't get me wrong. But it's not exactly the same girl who threw herself into a hug with me at her Halloween party.
It does make it easier to blow her off, though. “I'm not involved in any whatness,” I tell her, in what may be my most straightforward lie yet. “They're just people I hang out with. That's all. I was distracted by the play and now I am all swim team all the time.”
She sighs. “We've got that Faulkner exam.”
“Yeah, I don't care about that, though. I'm Swim Team Taylor. One hundred percent. Butterfly or die.”
She cracks a smile and holds the edge of my cap to my forehead so I can pull it over my head. I take a deep, watery breath as I get drenched.
“Go warm up,” she says.
Three days and one less-than-stellar Faulkner exam later, it's time for the big meet. It's ridiculous how nervous I am about this, and it's a sign of the power of Elisha's stress-witchcraft that I am, because we have zero, absolutely zero, chance of winning this meet. Everybody knows it. Their team is twice as big and ten times as skilled, and the run their practices like military regimes while we make up dirty names for drills and splash each other in the shallow end like small children when we're supposed to be doing stretches. And that was back when we had a present coach and captain.
But I have it in my head that it is possible, possible, in some possibly existent universe, that I can win the hundred-yard butterfly. I hear their best butterflier is a sprinter and doesn't do well after the fifty-yard mark. So there's no hope for my team, but it's very possible there's hope for Taylor, and there absolutely is a T in Team.
It's not helping my stress levels that my mother and Dominic are coming. The meet's on a Saturday morning, so I have an entire carbo-load of a breakfast with them to hear them talk about how excited they are that they're finally going to get to see me swim, since this is my first meet that's been on a weekend.
“Alexis is excited too,” Dominic says.
I look up from my many pieces of toast. “What?”
“Uh-huh. Lucas called us up and said he's bringing her and to save them seats.”
“She asked to come?”
“That's what Lucas said.”
“Huh.”
“It's so sweet you two are getting along,” my mom says.
“Of course,” I say. “Lexie's great.”
My phone buzzes. It's a text from Josey—or, really, a picture from Josey, of her holding up a pristinely—of course—glitter-glued sign that says GOOD LUCK, TAYLOR! She has a basketball game at a school in the next county today, so she can't make it.
Theo's coming to mine and not hers because winter break starts at the end of next week and after that he'll be on that senior class college trip with Jose and a bunch of people who aren't crazy about either of them, and then he goes to his half-eyeless grandfather's house for Christmas, so I won't see him for two weeks.
I'm not really going to think about that right now. My real problem at the moment is that Josey made me an adorable sign to wish me luck at my meet and I have made exactly nothing to wish her luck at her game, and with Dominic and my mother flitting around and fussing over me and otherwise adorably acting like they're about to see me swim in the Olympics, I don't like my odds of being able to sneak away long enough to raid Lexie's closet looking for glitter glue.
So I settle for just texting her: thank you!! you're gonna be awesome <3 <3 <3
Her reply takes a few minutes, but it's a <3 back, so the wait is okay. I know it doesn't necessarily mean anything—Aanya and I text each other hearts all the time—but right at this moment I don't really care if it necessarily means anything. It's good just how it is, all by itself.
But it also makes me realize how long it's been since I've talked to Aanya.
We do still text, reasonably frequently, mostly in big spurts every couple of days, when we'll sit down with our phones and really commit. We said we'd talk on the phone every day but we're not even close to that, once a week at most. We comment on all each other's Facebook statuses, but so do people we haven't seen since second grade day camp who we're for some reason Facebook friends with.
It's very uncomfortable, having Aanya even on just that one level comparable to people from second grade day camp. She's Aanya. She's been my best friend since we were old enough to choose our best friends and not just stuck with whomever our moms wanted us to play with, the kids of their friends or the ones they think will be good influences. No one would mistake my Aanya for a good influence. Maybe that's why we stuck together so fast and so hard.
So what does it say that I'm getting un-stuck? I haven't suddenly stumbled across any good influences here, obviously. Anyone could see that.
Maybe I'm the good influence.
Sure, yeah, getting B minuses on exams and skipping swim practices. I'm a hero.
Divisionals can't take place at either our school or our rival's, because it has to be in a “neutral pool.” It's this whole thing. So we're being hosted by another school. Unfortunately, this school is very close to our opponent's and not at all close to ours, which means that they're definitely more invested in their team than ours, so this it's really not such a neutral pool at all. It also means it's a long enough drive in Dominic's creaky mini-van for me to get both anxious and
