Chlorine & Secrets

The pool deck at Northwood High was basically a runway for the popular kids, and I was definitely walking it wrong. My neon-orange swim trunks were two sizes too big—I'd grown three inches over summer but forgot my parents were too broke to buy new everything.

"Marcus! You joining or what?" Jake yelled from the deep end. He was swimming laps effortlessly, looking like some kind of athletic dolphin person while I stood there clutching my vitamin D supplement like a lifeline.

"Yeah," I lied. "Just warming up."

Truth: I'd only joined swim club because Chloe was the team manager. She sat on the bleachers every Tuesday and Thursday, clipboard in hand, being annoyingly perfect. I'd been basically spying on her from the hallway since September, memorizing her schedule like it was classified intel.

"Nice shorts," someone said behind me.

I turned. It was HER. Chloe. Standing there in actual clothes that fit.

"They're... vintage," I said, because my brain had apparently short-circuited.

She laughed. It sounded like wind chimes. I know, cliché, but it actually did. "You planning to swim or just stand there looking suspicious?"

"Swimming," I said, even though I hadn't been in a pool since sixth grade and nearly drowned during a game of Sharks and Minnows. "Definitely swimming."

I jumped in. Immediately remembered I couldn't actually swim well. Also immediately remembered chlorine burned my eyes like chemical warfare.

When I surfaced, spluttering like a dying fish, Chloe was still watching. But she was smiling.

"You're terrible at this," she called out.

"I'm improving," I insisted, coughing up pool water.

"Keep working on it, Vitamin Boy," she said, nodding at my supplement bottle on deck. "Maybe you'll make it to regionals."

She didn't know I'd only started taking those vitamins because I read somewhere they helped with anxiety. She didn't know I joined swim club because she managed it. She definitely didn't know I'd been accidentally-on-purpose walking past her locker for three months.

But as she sat back down with her clipboard, I decided maybe she didn't need to know. Maybe I could actually learn to swim. Maybe this was the year I stopped watching from the hallway.

"Marcus! Race you!" Jake shouted.

"You're on," I said, and meant it.