Twelve
On Wednesday, I slog into World History seconds before the first-period bell rings. Arielle canceled morning practice because of an afternoon swim meet. I plop into the desk behind Kristen.
Besides Mr. Meyers, I’m the last to arrive.
The class goes quiet, except for the tick of the only working clock in the entire school.
Kristen grabs my hand and squeezes it, and I yawn, plopping into the desk behind hers.
The night before had been no sleep and all nightmares.
Raincoat Guy-slash-Gary—my almost mugger from the night I met Dark Static—featured as the conductor of a huge locomotive coming straight at me.
I woke up before finding out if I was doomed to die.
A brown napkin appears on my desk. “Here, Roberts. Got this for you.” Damian Scott Jr. holds a fat cinnamon roll with fresh swirls of powdery nutmeg.
Crackly glaze flakes off when he sets it down, and I can’t tell if the love I feel in that moment is for Damian or Super Sweets , the bakery in Capital City known for creating these legendary “Super Rolls.” Super Sweets is near League of Comics, but not near Damian’s house, and he would have had to go out of his way to get the roll before school.
Damian raps his knuckles on my chair and returns to his seat at the front of the classroom. Fox also has a cinnamon masterpiece on his desk .
Fox.
He plows through his in three bites, glaze plastering the corners of his mouth.
He looks over at me with bulging cheeks, like an overgrown chipmunk.
Something releases, and I just start laughing.
Whole body, can’t breathe laughing… Fox catches my eye and starts laughing too—shoulders shaking, filling the room.
The rest of our classmates exchange uncertain glances.
Fox and I crack up until Mr. Meyers arrives, and my tight jaw and high shoulders—tense for two days straight—finally soften.
“Thanks,” I say to Damian. He answers with a coy nod, just knowing this was exactly what we needed.
~
Things get weird again that afternoon.
We have a home swim meet. Our fourth this season.
As always, I’m the second person out of the locker room.
Arielle is the first. She sits on the metal bench beside the pool and scribbles on her clipboard, finalizing the set list and diving routines.
Instead of starting my warm-up, I chuck my towel, goggles, and swim cap on the bleachers and approach her.
Arielle’s ponytail seems tighter than usual, and damp spots already soak her cropped pants.
Arielle usually keeps a thin towel behind her clipboard that she dabs herself with in the inevitable event of being splashed, but today she appears to have forgotten it.
Extra layers of makeup smear the bags under her eyes.
Could it be that she’s having an “off” day?
Talking to her while she’s feeling “off” is basically asking for extra sprints after the meet, followed by toweling off the entire pool deck.
But I’m feeling extra risky today.
“When you married Phil—”
“Not now,” Arielle snaps. She jots something down on the clipboard with her impeccable handwriting.
“Did you know? Have you known she was murdered this entire time?” I blame my lack of sleep. Had I been more on top of things, I would have approached Arielle from a different angle, rather than catch her so off guard. Instead, my current route seems to be the blunt, inconsiderate sister.
I can’t stop thinking about what my dad had said. Arielle and my mom fought right before she died. It had to be about Phil, right?
Arielle keeps her nose in her notes. “Madeline, please. I thought we’d finished discussing such absurd notions.” She sounded like she was chiding me for having some kind of routine episode that exhausted her.
“That’s not an answer, and we never talked about this,” I point out.
Now she looks at me.
“There’s nothing to answer,” she says evenly. “What happened is unfortunate. That’s all.”
“Why did you marry Phil, Arielle? Was it to help the police cover up the ‘accident?’” I mime air quotes.
“It was because I was in love with him. Don’t you dare imply otherwise.” Was? Is she saying that she doesn’t love him anymore?
She lifts her head. If it weren’t for her unblinking stare, I would have dropped the matter and saved the topic to discuss with D.S.
, whenever I see him again. But Arielle has worn thick contacts since she was ten.
She blinks more often than Fox looks at himself in the mirror—she’s using every acting trick and bit of energy she has to keep her face expressionless.
“What did you and Mom argue about that night?” I whisper.
Arielle stays deadpan. “Go warm up.” When I don’t move, she slaps her clipboard. “GO!”
The rest of the team, dressed by now, hovers by the diving boards, springing into action to not look like they’ve been eavesdropping.
I pass them without a word and jump into the water, making the biggest splash I can.
Arielle readjusts her clipboard as if I’ve been a minor annoyance, like a spam caller who’s stolen five seconds of her day.
When I start my laps, the nightmare returns. Raincoat Guy speeds inside a train, heading right for me and laughing like a maniac.
Chooo Chooo.
I blow through the warm-up at record speed. When I finish, I press my palms into the deck, hoisting myself from the water.
“Yo,” Fox says. “Ready for me to beat you in free?”
“I’d love to see you try,” I reply. I find my towel on the bottom row of bleachers and wrap it around myself.
Fox grins mischievously. “Take it out on the water, got it, Maddragon? Turn this into a splash-tastic day.” Logically, Fox has to be in a bad mood.
He can’t not be. His dead parents could have been murderers .
But his confidence lifts his chest, and his long lashes point right at me, and he seems like Fox.
As if to prove that, Fox ruffles excess drips from his hair and goes to flirt with a sophomore by the diving boards.
I’m left standing on the deck with Aaron.
The bleachers hold a small audience, though they could seat six times as many people.
Swim meets don’t normally draw large crowds.
Today, none other than Damian Scott Jr. sits among the spectators.
On a normal afternoon, this would startle me. For now, his presence is calming.
Damian fixes his stare on one person in particular. That person broods beside me. “You look sick,” Aaron says, in his quiet way. He flexes his otherworldly biceps, aware of an audience.
“I’ll be fine. It’s just jitters.” Not for swimming though. Never for swimming.
Chooo Chooo.
Aaron brushes my bare shoulder with his thumb.
The gesture brings a little relief to my anxiety.
The feeling lasts until an official blows his whistle to signal that the first race, the 200m medley relay, will begin soon.
Kristen, who’s on the relay team with me, jumps out of the pool and drags me to the starting block.
“Let’s go, Mads. Arielle gave you fly.”
The hardest leg. Of course she did. The medley relay is a race with teams of four people.
The first person swims a lap of backstroke, the next swims breaststroke, the third swims butterfly, and the anchor swims freestyle.
I usually swim in this race, but almost always I’m assigned to the last leg of freestyle.
I’m stewing when Kristen pushes me onto the diving block.
Fly would be okay if I weren’t so exhausted. As it is…
Oh no.
Jackie, the breaststroke swimmer, has half a lap left.
I have about fifteen seconds to pull myself together.
I rush to snap on my goggles. Jackie bobs toward me and I swing my arms, poised to dive as soon as she touches the wall.
I don’t know what place we’re in, and I don’t have time to check, but when Jackie shoots into her last glide, I launch off the block and start my rhythm of kick swoop , kick kick swoop.
Shoot—Aaron gave me tips for this. I have no clue if I’m pulling them off.
My guilt over being distracted carries me to the finish.
Kristen dives in for her leg and I push out of the pool, knowing that I’ve swum neither my best nor my worst race.
I wouldn’t normally accept that performance, but given the chaos of today, I’ll take it. It is what it is.
My next race is the 100m freestyle, one of the most competitive races in the meet, and my favorite, because it requires two laps of raw speed.
A whistle blows, and I climb onto the starting block.
I’m ready for this one. My goggles are in place long before they have to be, and I position my legs on the block.
Coarse plastic keeps me from sliding in and as I curl my hands over the edge, my thoughts clear. I’m more than ready.
Ready to fly, Fox’s words cut through my preparations.
Focus, Mads, I tell myself.
“Set,” calls the official, his voice bouncing off the water. I grip the starting block and pull back, ready to burst into my dive.
Splash. A commotion ensues near lane six, where a girl from the other team has false-started.
Great , now I have to recheck everything.
Goggles still good, arms still good. Check and check .
Then I look up. Ahead, Arielle stares at me, a frown creasing her elastic skin.
When we make eye contact, she straightens, putting her poker face back on.
Why is she anxious? That expression on her face unleashes my nerves.
Immediately, I’m back in my nightmare. But this time, Phil—not Raincoat Guy—conducts the train. “Set,” the Official faintly commands. Phil’s train steamrolls closer. And closer. And closer. Until the locomotive screams, directly above me.
Then I’m moving. The starting gun blasts, and I dive before I’ve fully reentered reality.
You’re moving . He can’t get you if you’re moving . The water pushes me along its surface, like tumbling down a rapid. On frantic autopilot, I complete my first flip turn. SPLASH.
The train’s whistle blasts with deadly determination. SPLASH. The second flip turn.
Phil’s face leers from the train. Have I taken a breath yet this race?
I must have. SPLASH. The third and final flip turn.
I kick frantically. The wall grows so close, so fast, and I don’t even feel the water.
My hand slams against the tile. The rest of the lanes finish the race, and I finally inhale to my full lung capacity. I won.
I climb onto the deck and Kristen pounces. “That was crazy fast, Madeline. You broke your personal record by six seconds.”
“Holy Aces.” My breath catches. “Really?” Six seconds is a lot of time in the 100m. Especially when I’m already past qualifying for nationals by four seconds.
“I wish I could swim like you.” Kristen hugs me. I let her squeeze for a moment longer, using her to convince me that I’m safe.
A sing-song voice saunters up to us. “Nice race, Maddragon,” says Fox. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Swam like it too.” Is that concern on his face? Concern isn’t in Fox’s vocabulary, so the answer would be no.
Fox is only a head taller than I am, but it still feels like he towers over me. He folds his arms, highlighting their tone.
“I’m fine, Fox. Go back to being happy for me.”
“Yeah, right. Where’s your towel?” he asks, already striding to where I’d left it on the bleachers, which are empty. No more Damian. How long had he stayed?
“I can get it.” But he drapes it over my shoulders an instant later.
“Take better care of yourself. Sheesh! We can’t have our star swimmer getting too frazzled.”
“Aren’t you our star swimmer?” I ask. This is the first time he’s admitted that I’m as good as him. Fox usually compares himself to Olympic gold medalists.
“Not for the girls’ team.” He sighs, as if it is physically paining him to explain. “Besides, you and I are a team. I push you during practice and you push me. If you’re not up to snuff, I’m going to suffer too.”
“ I just cut six seconds off my hundred time, thank you very much.” That means my time is 0.1 seconds behind his.
He clenches his jaw like he’s struggling to say something the right way, or trying—for once—not to be a jerk. “Your race was fast,” he says, “but it might have been fast for all the wrong reasons.”
Why can’t you just be happy for me, Fox? I think, stunned at his boldness. A race like that could unlock a lot of doors for me. And what reasons does he mean? Could he tell how much I was panicking?
Fox lifts the goggles from my forehead, wiping away the vapor on the lens. An official’s whistle blows—time for the next race, the boy’s 100m freestyle. Fox’s race.
“Your turn,” I tell him, but his shamrock eyes stay fixed on me.
“LEVINE,” Arielle shouts from the other end of the pool.
He hastily pushes the goggles back into my hands. “Watch and learn, Maddragon.”
As he leaves, Kristen takes his place. “That was weird, Mads. Since when does Fox talk to you at swim meets?”
“Yup.” I agree.
As if the day couldn’t get any weirder.