I put my suit on and take a quick shower. When I come back to my locker, one of the other girls on my team, Denise, is upset and looking through her bag madly. She’s one of the girls who has been warming up to me since I joined, so I ask her if there’s something I can do to help.
She sighs and knits her brow in frustration. “I rushed here so fast today that I forgot my goggles and my swim cap. She drops her bag on the bench before us and plants her hands on her hips, looking up at the ceiling.
“Well, I don’t have goggles, but I would be more than happy to loan you my swim cap,” I say. I look at her thick head of dark curls. “It’s not going to keep the water out, obviously,” I say, gesturing up to my own tinged locks, “But it’ll keep it out of the way.”
She looks at me like I just handed her a lottery ticket.
“Really? Oh my gosh, that would be amazing.” She tells me she gets real bad swimmer’s ear if she doesn’t wear one, and wastes no time pulling it on over her head and beaming at me gratefully.
We start diving in and swimming our laps, until, after several times around, I spot Astor, Victoria, and Blair sitting on the bleachers beside the pool. Victoria looks mad about something, but she always looks mad at me, so it’s nothing new.
We aren’t more than five or six minutes in the water when Denise hurries out of the pool screaming, and yanks the swim cap I loaned her off of her head. I’m at the opposite end of the pool, so by the time I climb out of the water on the other side, she’s already surrounded by most of the rest of the team.
She’s screaming and pulling fistfuls of hair from her skull, her eyes wide and unbelieving. The loaned swim cap lays on the ground, a suspicious white substance oozing from the inside. Another girl spots it and sniffs it between two fingers.
“It’s hair remover. Why the heck did you put it in your swim cap?”
Denise’s breaths have grown ragged, and it looks like she might be about to have a panic attack. She still isn’t believing what she’s seeing.
Meanwhile, I catch Victoria making a swift exit from the pool hall out of the corner of my eye. That’s right bitch, didn’t play out according to your plan, did it?
I’m not the only one who notices. While most eyes are on Denise, Wills sees her too and he looks from her, to me, and then to Denise. He clenches his jaw.
“This isn’t mine. It’s Teddy’s,” Denise says, looking over at me blankly. “Did you … why did you do this?”
I’m all geared up to defend myself, certain no one is going to believe me—when a miracle happens.
A new girl, a freshman who doesn’t fear Victoria, pipes up. “There was someone else in the locker room before, and she had it.” She points over to the bleachers. “She was sitting just over there a minute ago. The one with the dark hair?” She mimes Victoria’s long, flowing locks perfectly.
A couple of the other girls exchange looks, and the muscle in Wills’ jaw only clenches harder.
“It doesn’t matter who it was!” Denise cries out. “Look at my hair! What am I going to do?”
I take her into the locker room, and she goes to shampoo her head and clean it as best she can. The damage is splotchy; there are chunks of her hair missing here and there, but it’s not a total loss. I tell her that we can figure out how to style around it until it grows back. Luckily her hair is thick enough that no one will be able to tell with a little creative bobby-pin work—and that’s coming from someone who barely knows how to straighten her own hair.
It isn’t until she’s started to calm down that I’m able to fully realize my own fury towards Victoria. She meant it for me, which was bad enough … but someone else got hurt in the process. This can’t look good for her. Even Wills and Blair, maybe even Astor, have to be able to see that.
Wills is gone when we come out of the locker room, but I know he saw and heard what happened. This might be the first time his group of close friends has interfered with his team, and that’s a Venn diagram of boundary crossing. It leaves me curious wondering to which side his loyalties will be strongest. Victoria might have actually just did me a huge favor … not that I’m going to be admitting that to anyone anytime soon.
After all, I’m not a psychopath. I think.
I head up to the room, and Dana and I get to work studying for this weekend’s SATs again as soon as I relay the story to her. I can’t let my grades start slipping, or she’ll figure out what I’m up to. I can’t have her sound and logical judgement undermining the crazy thing I’m trying to do.
Shit. Maybe I’m the sociopath.
Studying makes up the majority of my spare time these days … at least when I’m not sitting in on the drama club, out shooting photographs around the school campus, swimming and practicing to shorten my times in the lanes at the pool, or going to class and doing homework. Hopefully, if I do well enough on this test, I’ll have a little more space to breathe.
I’m ready, but not exactly confident, when the day actually comes. Dana makes up for what I lack in pre-game pep talks.
I’m all jitters, especially when I spot Wills inside at one of the desks. He’s leaning back in his chair trying to look nonchalant, but I know him better than that. His hand is tapping his pencil in that way he does when he’s struggling at a math problem, and his eyes are glued to the clock like he simultaneously dreads the start of the test and also can’t wait for it to be over.
I frown and I can’t look away from my boy. “Why is Wills here?” I ask, not really listening to Dana. I wasn’t expecting any of my holy trinity to need to take the test, certainly not alongside the rest of us who are only here because we did so poorly the first time. Or, like me, skipped out on it altogether.
Dana raises a brow slightly, with no real interest. “Does it matter?”
“No,” I say, hastily. “I guess not.”
I nod as if I’m not really interested anyway, which is about the furthest thing from the truth.