Remember When **Under MAJOR Editing**

Chapter 15

Baby, r u still coming to the swim meet tonight 6pm?

I shouldn't have sent the text before English. Then I wouldn't have ached for class to end so I could turn my phone back on and see whether Zack had answered. We turned our phones off during class or they were confiscated. A fishbowl on the counter in the school office swam with phones on vibrate.  And I wouldn't have glared quite so hard at the back of Dade's head.  Somehow he knew I hadn't heard from Zack since Saturday.  He knew I'd texted Zack this morning out of desperation.  Zack did give a shit about me, I could have sworn.  When the bell rang, I grabbed my backpack and clicked on my phone.  No message.

Dade didn't turn around.  He hadn't met my eyes the whole class.  But he glanced over his shoulder, looking while trying to look like he wasn't looking.  If I'd been half an actress I would have busied myself thumbing my phone, composing a fake response to Zack's fake answer.  I didn't think of this until history class.

Finally, during break, after Dade had already limped out of the room so it didn't even matter, I got Zack's response:  Glad u reminded me.  I'll ask Stephane. 

For a ride, I finished for Zack.  Surely he only meant he'd ask her for a ride.

***********

I plunged off the block into the water and glided until the precise moment when stroking would propel me faster.  Then I broke the glide and kicked for all I was worth, with my anger at my mom and my dad and Zack and Dade behind me.

I had fresh reason to be mad at Zack.  Stephanie Wetzel I had brought him to the meet, all right.  And she had visited him in the stands several times.  Once I glanced up from the pool deck to wave at him and caught him sipping her coke, then passing it back to her.

Right then I vowed that I would win  the 400IM--which I had never done before.  Usually I came in sixth or so.  I would recapture Zack's attention.  I would make him feel the pride I felt for him when I watched him score a touchdown.  Actually I hadn't seen it happen last Friday because Dade had distracted me, but I would be sure to see it this Friday.

And I had a fresh reason to be mad at Dade, like I didn't have enough reasons already.  After his show of caring about the team yesterday, he'd spend most of tonight's meet texting on his phone.  I wondered whether he was LOLing and ROFLing with another girl from Houston who didn't know he'd been to juvie.  He'd decided I wasn't worth the wait.

That got me to the first turn in record time.  Between strokes I couldn't raise my head far enough to see the clock on the wall, but it felt like the cool water slipped past my skin faster than ever, and the chicks from Fort Worth and San Antonio, that were in the lanes on both sides of me were nowhere in sight.  Anger was such a beautiful thing.

I pushed off the wall hard.  Every time I took a breath, I heard Dade yelling my name.  Amazing that I could pick out one voice from the hundred or so in the bleachers and around the deck, especially when my ears were full of water.  If thought hollering for me would refresh my anger and make me swim even harder, it was working.  Then it occurred to me Zack might not like Dade cheering himself hoarse for me.  I decided Zack was not as jealous as I'd thought.  Zack had shared a Coke with Stephanie Wetzel.

Zack did not in fact give a shit about me.  My kick was powerful, my whole body in sync.  Angrier and angrier, I would win this race.  At the next turn I flipped toward the wall.

Something grabbed me like the cold tendrils of the undertow snagging me in the ocean. It grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I screamed underwater, inhaled pool, and thrashed to get away until I didn't know which direction was up. The thing dragged at me, pressing me against the side of the pool. But now I could tell from the warmth of the setting sun that my head was above water. Gulping air, I pushed up my goggles and came face-to-face with my mother.