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nine

Sebastian didn’t text me to offer me a ride the next morning and I didn’t ask.

Dean still planned to go to school early, but I got up early to go with him.

Even though I hadn’t seen Sebastian all day, I still felt his presence around.

Just the knowledge that he was in the same school as me was enough to keep him on my mind.

I channelled all my anger towards Tiffany’s words–and myself for asking so much of Sebastian in the first place–into my swimming that afternoon.

It must have made a big difference, because Coach congratulated me on how well I was doing and pointed out that everybody else should be working as hard as I was.

Like me, everyone else was gasping for breath by the end of the grueling practice so I wasn’t sure that they hadn’t been working as hard as me, but nobody seemed to hold it against me.

Clementine even smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

I was pretty sure she was the only one of us who could feel our arms after the grueling practice we’d just been put through, but then, she always looked happy .

I stumbled after everybody into the locker room, barely staying on my feet as I hit the showers.

My arms were practically jelly and it took me three tries to press the button hard enough for the water to begin spraying.

I immediately decided I wouldn’t be washing my hair right now and just rinsed off before heading to the lockers.

I only got a step inside before Clementine grabbed my arm and pushed me back towards the showers.

I didn’t fight her, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to, but I did look at her weirdly as she shoved me toward the nearest shower head and turned the spray back on.

“What’s with you?” I asked. She reached around me to the shower niche where we all left our various shampoos and body washes.

We weren’t supposed to leave anything behind in the locker rooms, but nobody ever got mad about us leaving our stuff here and it was easier than pulling it out after practice three times a week. Nobody else used these showers anyway.

Clementine shoved the bottle of shampoo into my hand—it wasn’t mine, but everyone used each other’s anyway—and said, “You need to wash your hair.” With the serious look on her face, you would think not washing my hair was going to kill someone.

“I’m going to wash it when I get home.” Normally, I did wash it when I was here because it was better to get chlorine out immediately, but I seriously didn’t have it in me right now.

I figured I’d go home, probably take a little nap, eat something, and then figure out if I could hold my arms up long enough to be able to actually shampoo it.

If not, I would just have to deal with it in the morning, which I did more often than I cared to admit.

“No,” Clementine said, putting her hands on her hips over her bathing suit. “You need to do it now.”

“Since when are you the hair-washing police?”

“Just do it,” she said. I was too tired to argue with her over it, since I knew that Clementine pretty much won every argument that she got into.

So with a sigh, I squirted some shampoo on my hand and started to lather it in my hair.

She nodded like I was doing the right thing then went to wash her own hair.

The showers here were communal, although none of us ever took off our bathing suits when we showered anyway, and Ainsley was across from me.

She looked like she was laughing a bit at the interaction between me and Clementine.

“Do you know why she’s being insane?” I asked, my voice echoing off the tiled walls.

Clementine narrowed her eyes at me playfully but I ignored her, still looking at Ainsley.

After our conversation in the library the other day, I’d started to wonder if the reason Ainsley never spoke at swim practice was just because she wasn’t sure if she was welcome.

And since she almost always went places with Imogen, who was definitely the more outgoing twin, she wasn’t used to having to push her way into friend groups on her own.

I thought the least I could do was try to engage her in conversation and see if it helped her open up at all.

“No clue,” Ainsley said softly. She glanced at Clementine warily, like she was worried about her reaction to Ainsley basically agreeing with me that Clementine was acting crazy.

“Come outside with us after,” Clementine said with a wink. “You’ll see.”

The words felt strangely ominous to me and I was suddenly very nervous to go outside with her. I knew Clementine wouldn’t do anything to upset me, but I also wasn’t sure that her definition of something fun would match mine. But Ainsley smiled brightly at the invitation.

“You have to blow dry it too,” Clementine said. “Make it nice, okay? Like a proper blowout.”

“There’s no way I can do that,” I said. “Have you seen the hair dryers here? They’re terrible.”

Even calling them hair dryers was a stretch.

They were really just crappy hand dryers with a tube attached so you could point it at your hair.

I usually just let my hair air dry after swimming, since it seemed like a waste of time to do it nicely.

What was the point of that if I was just going to get it soaked again the next day at practice?

There wasn’t anybody at school that I was really trying to impress.

Well, there hadn’t been—not until Friday night, when I suddenly became a lot more aware of Sebastian’s existence.

But he had a girlfriend and, as I kept reminding Clementine, I couldn’t be interested.

Every time that I thought of him today, I just reminded myself of Tiffany’s words, reminded myself that he probably saw me as the same charity case that she clearly did, and I didn’t need to be another stressor in his life. He had enough going on without me.

“I have a blow dryer,” Ainsley said timidly. Clementine and I both turned to look at her.

“You do?” we asked in unison—me in just general surprise, her in elation.

“I keep it in my locker,” Ainsley said. “Because I need my hair dry when I go to dance class right after swim team. ”

“Ainsley, you are a lifesaver!” Clementine squealed.

And that was how I ended up sitting on a bench in the locker room while Ainsley blow dried my hair for me.

I told her I could do it myself, but when she handed over a round brush, it became obvious immediately that I had no idea what I was doing, so she took over.

There wasn’t a mirror for me to see myself in while she did it, but as I watched Clementine’s reactions, I had a feeling it looked good.

Once my hair was done, Clementine insisted on me putting on whatever makeup I had—just some mascara and lip gloss—and said the clothes that I usually wore after swimming weren’t good enough.

I still didn’t know what she was dressing me up for, but whatever it was she was probably right about the clothes.

I didn’t like to put my uniform back on after swimming, so I brought a pair of stretchy workout shorts and a T-shirt, which were the easiest clothes to get on quickly.

But Clementine came prepared, waving around a summer dress that she just “didn’t like anymore” that I could keep if I wanted.

“You’re ridiculously transparent,” I told her as I tugged the dress on.

She pretended to look surprised. “Who, me?”

By the time I was ready by Clementine’s standards, we were the last people in the locker room.

I dragged my feet as we walked out into the warm fall air.

I was just happy that it was one of those September days that felt more like summer than fall, because the dress I was wearing was almost backless with only criss-crossy straps to hold it together.

I followed Clementine’s lead as she led us through the parking lot, as if we were going to a car on the far side near the fields, barely stopping myself from running into her when she suddenly stopped and cupped a hand over her eyes like she was blocking the sunlight.

“Oh, look,” she said. It was clear she was pretending to be surprised, and if she hadn’t forced this makeover on me, I might have believed it was real. But it was very obvious that this was a set up of some kind. “It’s Thomas!”

“What?” I probably should have seen it coming.

I couldn’t think of any reason other than a boy that she would dress me up like this.

But I’d completely forgotten about our conversation about Thomas the other day and even if I did remember it, I didn’t expect her to actually do something about it.

But sure enough, there was Thomas walking toward us.

He was walking off the soccer field, still dressed in his workout clothes and running a hand through his blond hair.

By my estimation, practice should have ended twenty minutes ago, so him being out here must have been part of the set up.

“Clementine,” I hissed, elbowing her in the side. Why would she do this to me?

“Hey, Thomas!” Clementine called, waving a hand so that he saw us. He smiled and walked over, not looking the least bit surprised to see us, which only confirmed what I had already suspected.

Clementine waved while Ainsley leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear, “Say the word and I’ll save you from this.”

I glanced at her in surprise, not expecting the offer. I was sure it was obvious that I was a bit uncomfortable, but not to the point that I thought she would say something. I smiled gratefully but murmured back, “I think it will be okay, but thanks. ”

I was really regretting ever mentioning to Clementine that I liked Thomas.

My supposed crush on Thomas was just a means to an end.

A way to convince everyone that I couldn’t possibly be interested in Sebastian, because I was interested in someone else instead.

But the beauty of him was that nothing would ever happen between us.

It would be hard to continue using him as my fake crush if I blundered in front of him here, because it would be obvious to everyone that nothing was ever going to happen.

If I tried to say I was still interested, everyone would just feel bad for me, knowing that nothing would ever happen between us.

“Well, don’t you three ladies look nice?

” Thomas said as he walked up. The sun glinted off his hair, and I realized with a touch of disgust that it wasn’t that his hair was wet—it was that it was sweaty from running around.

Obviously, I understood that people sweat when they were doing sports, but I didn’t want a visual of it, especially when I’d just been forced to dress myself up for this interaction.

Couldn’t he have showered and gotten changed as well so we both looked nice?

I tried not to hold it against him, because maybe Clementine hadn’t been clear and made it sound like a super casual thing, but as I looked at him now, I wondered if Sebastian would have done the same. I bet the answer was no.

“Thomas, I’m not sure if you know my friend Nora,” Clementine said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

Since she was facing me a little bit more than him, she winked at me, and I felt some of my annoyance towards her dissipate.

She thought she was doing me a favor, and I appreciated the thought, but I was so uncomfortable that I didn’t know how to deal with this. “Nora, this is Thomas.”

“Hey,” I said, awkwardly twisting my fingers in front of me.

What was the right way to introduce yourself to somebody?

Was I supposed to shake his hand or would that feel too much like we were at a business meeting?

Girls were easier because you could almost always go in for the hug, but I didn’t think boys did the same.

Plus, I really didn’t want to hug this near stranger, anyway.

“Hey,” I said, “it’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” he said, and then the awkward silence prevailed because I did not know how to keep up the conversation.

Really, the fact that I could even talk to Sebastian whenever we were in his car was a miracle.

But even when we didn’t talk, the silences there were normal, comfortable.

I felt like we could sit in them for a long time.

This silence was awkward and stifling, and I wanted to get away from it as soon as I physically could.

“So, you just finished soccer practice?” I asked, looking at the field behind him. And oh boy, was that a mistake, because who else should be walking off the field right at that time but Sebastian Novak?

And, of course, he immediately spotted me.