Today's the second day of seventh grade; however, I like to think of it as the first, since it's the first day that us students actually go to all our classes and learn. Yesterday was only an introduction to how everything works. It seems pointless to me though, since last year, they did the same exact thing and went over pretty much the same exact rules.

I walk down the hallway with my schedule and binder in hand. School has started, I have already put my backpack in my locker, and I am now squeezing through the crowd of students in the hall, trying to find my way to room 254.

I feel lost. Last year in sixth grade, all my classes were downstairs, so I have never been upstairs, where all my seventh grade classes are located.

I round a corner and spot room 253. I breathe out a sigh of relief. I'm close!

I pass a row of lockers to finally reach my destination. WOO HOO! Accomplishment. Now just five more classrooms to search for!

Note the sarcastic enthusiasm.

I enter room 254 to see a young woman is standing beside the whiteboard, her long brown hair swept over one shoulder. She's dressed professionally, so I'm assuming that that's my teacher.

"Good morning!" she chirps cheerfully.

"Good morning," I repeat less enthusiastically, forcing a smile. Honestly, I don't want to be here. I mean, it's math. Who likes math?!

And not to mention I had to wake up at 7 in the morning. I hate waking up early in the morning. Doesn’t everyone though?

The classroom is currently pretty filled up, so I’m assuming I’m a bit late compared to others.

That’s two times in two days, really gives a wonderful impression on teachers.

I choose an empty seat in the front beside two Asian girls. Too bad none of them are Heather.

I drop my binder onto the ground beneath my desk, and it makes a loud noise. Immediately, everyone turns their heads to stare at me.

“Sorry about that.” I smile at the Asian girl sitting to the right of me.

Yeah, I don’t get embarrassed under these kinds of circumstances. I’m pretty good with people, if I do say so myself.

Except when it comes to my study hall teacher.

She scares me.

The bell rings, and my math teacher takes her stand at the front of the room, first introducing herself as Mrs. Adamson then leaping right into the lesson.

I zone out faster than you can say “math sucks”.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After math class, I have choir as an elective, and then Texas History, and then science.

I enter the science classroom pretty early. The room is currently totally empty other than like five students and the teacher.

I take a seat at the back corner of the classroom, wanting to be as far away from the teacher’s sight as possible. Some guy is sitting in the desk next to mine, his brown curly-haired-filled head laid down on his desk as he snores softly.

“Wow, sleeping in class!” I exclaim, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. “What a good role model you ar-” I freeze as I realize something.

Brown hair.

Curly.

Oh, shoot.

Shoot, shoot, shoot.

I am not sitting next to him. I quickly gather up my binder and books and stand up.

And then I look around and see that students are coming into the classroom, filling in all the other seats.

Oh, GREAT. I plop back down in my chair.

Why did I have to choose the seat next to him?

Next to-

“Harry!” I spot Angelina sliding into the desk on the other side of him, grabbing a handful of Harry’s curls and jerking his head upward. “HEYYYY.”

Nice to see you too, buddy, I think bitterly.

Harry rubs his eyes, groaning in exhaustion. “Hey. Sorry, I’m just tired from practice yesterday.”

I take my agenda out of my binder and absentmindedly copy down today’s homework.

Yeah, we have homework on the first day of school. Wonderful, right?

“Oh, you mean the test set we did?” I overhear Angelina ask Harry. What the FUDGE is a test set?! “I remember you did more than every single other person. That was so hot.”

I look at her out of the corner of my eye to see her flipping her hair. I nearly barf.

Harry starts to say something, but he is cut off by the tardy bell ringing. The teacher immediately jabs his Expo marker into the whiteboard, making a loud noise. All the student’s eyes snap up to him.

Clever, I muse.

“Hello, I’m Mr. Williams. Today, we will be going over direction sheets for a project we will be working on, due in two weeks.”

Everyone lets out an audible groan, including me. A project? On the first day?!

Wow, don’t I totally love this school.

“It will be a partner project,” Mr. Williams continues.

I groan again, but this time I’m the only one that does so.

Everyone turns to stare at me, and I simply smile and wave.

They just don’t understand. If there’s a partner project, there is a possibility I may get paired up with Harry, and that cannot happen.

“You may choose partners!”

That causes everyone to break out in conversation.

“Yessss!” I whisper-shout.

“Hey, Harryyyyy,” I hear Angelina squeal, “want to be my partner?”

He shrugs. “Sure.”

Angelina glances past him at me, mouthing, “See, he likes me!”

I mouth back, “He only agreed to be your partner because his group of friends aren’t in this class, and you asked him first!” but I’m pretty sure she didn’t get any of it. Well, I can’t blame her. Long sentences are pretty hard to lip read.

“Who doesn’t have a partner yet?” Mr. Williams booms.

Oh shoot, in the midst of attempting to send a message to Angelina, I totally forgot to find a partner.

“Uh, me.” I raise my hand.

Mr. Williams pushes an Asian girl towards me. Again, sadly, it’s not Heather. “You’ll be working with Jamie.”

“Hey, Jamie,” I greet.

She waves, not meeting my gaze.

Ah, a shy one, I see.

I’ll get her talking in no time.

“So,” I begin as we walk towards the whiteboard and take a seat on the ground beside it. Mr. Williams walks past us with the project directions sheet, and we take one for each of us. “Create a chemistry lab,” I read off of the sheet. “Interesting!”

Jamie is smiling as she reads the directions sheet. I guess that’s good news. Either she’s into chemistry and can do the whole project for us, or she thinks I’m funny.

“Well, I hope you’re smart, because I’m not. And if we’re going to ace this project, we need a smart person in our group,” I joke.

But seriously. Sadly, unlike the stereotypical Asian, I’m not a genius.

She giggles. I grin in satisfaction.

“I’m smart, I think,” she says softly. My grin grows wider.

SHE TALKED!

Improvement WOOT WOOT.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Once the bell rings, I bolt out of the classroom, take my lunchbox out of my locker, and race to the cafeteria, stumbling over my feet in the running process.

“WHA-OH,” I splutter as I nearly run into a girl walking with much grace, making me feel bad about my clumsiness.

She turns around, and I’m met with the familiar face of Heather.

“Hey, Kat,” she greets, and I can tell she’s holding back a laugh.

“Whoa there, you laughing at me?!” I demand, causing a loud giggle and a nod to escape from Heather.

“Humph,” I fake-pout, crossing my arms.

“You know I adore you.” Heather smiles, linking arms with me.

“Adore?! What the fudge, I’m not three years old.”

“Whatever,” Heather retorts, shoving me playfully.

I laugh for a moment before taking on a serious composure. She’ll think something is wrong and will also become serious.

And this is serious.

Because I NEED TO TALK ABOUT MY STUPIDNESS FOR SITTING NEXT TO HARRY I MEAN REALLY I THINK I’M THE MOST STUPID PERSON IN THE WORLD WHY HARRY WHY HIM.

“What is it?” Heather asks. Ah, she knows me so well.

“I’ll tell you at lunch, but first we need to claim our lunch table!” I exclaim, suddenly realizing that us seventh graders get to choose where we sit for the rest of the year. The day before we also got to choose where we sat, but that was only for that day. Today’s decision would affect the rest of the school year.

But Heather just waves it off. “My friends said they would get a lunch table, no worries.”

Oh.

Heather has other friends besides me.

I WANNA START BAWLING.

Okay but seriously, what did I expect, for her to be a loner? She’s obviously very outgoing, from what I can tell. And she’s super likable. We’ve only known each other for a day, and we’re already like best friends!

“Are they okay with me joining you guys?” I question.

“Yeah, completely okay!” Heather assures me. “We’re like a total Asian group. And you’re Asian too, so you would totally fit in.”

I start to smile in relief, when Heather nudges me with her shoulder. “So tell me, what happened? Is it about Harry? Angelina?”

I frown. “Actually, both. I’m in the same science class as them! And to make it worse, I accidentally sat next to Harry, and now that’s my permanent seat! WHAT DO I DO AND WHY AM I SO SO STUPID?!”

“Oh, well there’s not really anything you can do about that,” Heather says. “I doubt you can change classes or seats with an excuse like ‘I just hate Harry and Angelina so much!’.”

I pout. “Darn it.”

“I think you should just let it go and keep ignoring Harry and Angelina.” Heather shrugs. “That’s what I would do.”

We arrive at the cafeteria, and I fling the door open to hold it for both me and her. “Oh okay. Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. Thank ya!”

“No problem.” Heather grins, pointing to a table occupied by two Asians who are chattering away. “Ooh, hey, look, there’s our lunch table!”

“Race you there!” I yell, running towards the table at full speed.

I’M SO FAST, I’M JUST LIKE A CHEETAH-

Then Heather zooms ahead of me.

Oh.

Never mind.

Panting, I do a weird gallop-walk thing the rest of the way to the lunch table.

“What are you doing?” Heather snorts with laughter, watching my fail of a run.

I drop my lunchbox onto the lunch table, panting hard.

“Shut up, I’m just not a runner okay,” I grumble, feeling a stomach cramp jabbing me in the side. I look at Heather to see that she’s breathing normally, like all that running is typical for her. “How are you not tired at all?!” I demand.

She shrugs. “I run everyday after school. It’s fun.”

“Weirdo.”

“Hey!”

“You’re literally the only person I know who’s said that running is fun.”

“Wow, then you must not know a lot of cool people,” Heather shoots at me.

“Oh, be quiet; my friends are the coolest.”

“You mean girls who ditch you for hot popular guys?”

I laugh. “With the exception of Angelina.”

We sit down at the table across from the other two Asian girls who I don’t know the names of.

“Hello,” I chirp cheerfully, biting into my peanut butter sandwich.

“Hi,” the Asian girl sitting right across from me responds. “You must be Kat. Heather’s told me a lot about you.”

“Wow.” I glance sideways at my new BFF. “Looks like someone’s in love.”

“Uh-huh,” she mutters sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “I mean, lesbehonest here.”

I laugh, then turn back to the Asian. “So, I don’t even know you.” I glance at the other Asian sitting next to Asian #1. “Nor you.”

Asian #1 smiles at me. “Well, I’m Amber. And she’s Brianna.”

Brianna waves to me, her mouth too full of food to actually talk.

“You eat like a swimmer,” I remark.

“She is a swimmer,” Heather responds.

“Seriously?” I exclaim. “Me too! WOO, swimmer buddies.” I reach across the table to high five her.

“Yeah, she swims for Rosewood swim team,” Heather informs. “Heard of them?”

“Heard? I swim there.”

Brianna screams with her mouth closed, and Heather and Amber gape in disbelief.

“That’s so cool!” Brianna squeals once she swallows. “Why haven’t I ever seen you at their pool though?”

“Well, I’m in stupid Silver,” I mutter.

“Oh. I’m in Gold.”

“No wonder.” I try to push away the jealousy. As much as I would never admit it, I want to be in Gold so bad.

“Yeah.” Brianna starts stuffing her face with food once again.

Beside me, Amber and Heather start chattering away in their own conversation, so I try to stir up one with Brianna. “So do you know this girl named Angelina? And this guy named Harry?"

Brianna makes a noise resembling a groan, nodding. Once she swallows, she bursts out, “Yeah, I know Angelina, and no offense, I don’t like her very much. I mean, she’s always so clingy to Harry! And yes, I know him. He's pretty cool but can be annoying at times. He's a really good breaststroker though.”

“Yes, she’s obsessed with him!" I roll my eyes. "And about Harry, that's cool." Not.

Brianna nods vigorously. “Yes yes yes! Agreed! And the worst part is, Harry has a girlfriend. I mean, give the guy a bit of space!”

I snort with laughter. “Yeah, defi-”

“Hey, Bri!”

I snap my head to the left to see a short petite girl sliding into the seat next to me. Her black hair flows in waves across her shoulders, and her eyelashes, unlike the typical Asian’s, is long and luscious.

“Hi,” Brianna greets. She turns to me, pointing to Eyelashes. “This is Jenna. Jenna, this” - she gestures to me - “Kat.”

I wave to Jenna, and she waves back.

“Your eyelashes are cool,” I blurt. “Do you put on a lot of mascara, or...?”

“Oh.” Jenna smiles, her hand going up to stroke her lashes dramatically. “Thank ya. And no, I don’t use makeup.”

“They’re just naturally Americanized,” Brianna adds, grinning.

“Totally,” a new voice joins in.

A short girl - about the same height as Jenna - sits beside Brianna. Thick-framed glasses rimming her eyes and splashes of freckles layering her cheekbones, she looks like a nerd...but a cute one.

Another girl takes a seat beside her, her long sleek hair covering most of her face for a moment before she brushes it away.

WAIT.

I KNOW HER.

“JAMIE!!!!” I squeal.

She smiles shyly, waving.

“You know Jamie?” the girl with glasses asks.

“Yeah, I’m in her science class. We’re working on a project together,” I explain.

“Oh, cool!” she exclaims. She thrusts a hand toward me. “But there's one problem - you don’t know me yet. I’m Hailey.” I shake her hand, about to speak, but she cuts me off. “And you’re Kat, right? Heather’s told me about you.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that already,” I say, glancing pointedly at Heather. She smiles sweetly at me.

“I totally ship you two,” Amber pipes up.

“I second that,” Brianna agrees.

“We should make a ship name for them,” Jenna suggests.

“Yesss! What about...” Hailey trails off, thinking.

A soft “Kather?” floats out of Jamie’s mouth.

“Perfect!” Hailey exclaims, pumping the air with her fist.

Heather and I exchange a glance, and I grin.

I’m definitely loving my new table.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After lunch is gym, fifth period.

“I’m so excited!” Heather squeals, doing a twirl in the middle of our run to the gym room. I don’t respond, mustering just enough strength to keep up with her.

We are the first ones to reach the gym room, seeing as we were pretty much sprinting - at least in my perspective.

On one side of the gym wall lay the bleachers, with two boxes beside it - one containing volleyballs and the other holding basketballs. The gym floor is sleek and new looking, and standing in the middle of it is a buff guy coach, a scowl written clear on his face as he looks at me and Heather.

Oh no.

Looks like he hates me already.

I try not to show my fright; instead, I calmly stride over to the bleachers and sit at the very bottom of it. Heather takes a seat beside me.

“Look!” I whisper, pointing to the box containing basketballs. I hold back a scream by biting my tongue.

Basketball is my whole life. People may think swimming would be instead, with me being on a swim team and all, but truthfully, I don’t really like it. I only signed up for a swim team because my mom made me. She said it would "exercise every part of my body" and "make me skinny like a pretty girl".

Clearly, I pleaded my mom about ten million times to sign me up for a basketball team, but she refused. She thought I would “get hit in the head with the hard balls”, which may give me a concussion, which may give me amnesia, which may make me forget everything I learned in school, which may make my grades drop.

Yeah, my mom is the typical Asian mother. And me being the untypical Asian daughter, she’s constantly disappointed of me, taking pride in my successful older brother instead.

But seriously, has she never heard of meet warm-ups? One of those can inflict more pain in the head than a basketball ever could.

And also other areas of the body. One time, I was swimming breaststroke during a meet warm-up, and someone trying to pass me kicked in the thigh. And their toenails weren’t exactly dull-tipped.

And also, another time-

Just then, the door slams open, interrupting my wonderful story-telling to myself.

“Oh great,” I hear someone say.

Then I realize it’s myself.

Because striding through the doorway is Harry’s group of friends...and then, all high and mighty and so over-conceited-looking...

Harry himself.

“Hey, Coach,” he greets loudly, climbing the bleachers along with his friends to sit on the very top row.

Good; he’s far away from me.

“Just ignore him,” Heather whispers to me. “And loosen up!”

That’s when I realize my jaw and fists are clenched tightly.

“Sorry, that guy just makes me really really mad,” I hiss back.

“For no reason,” Heather mumbles, rolling her eyes.

“For a good reason,” I correct. “You sassy girl.”

Heather laughs.

Students start streaming in, most I know from sixth grade but also some others that I haven’t gotten a chance to meet yet.

“Hey,” I say to every person that walks by.

Some of my friends-but-not-very-close-friends from last year wave back to me, all the popular snobs just ignore me, and the ones that I don’t know do a variety of greetings, ranging from yelling “HI” and giving me a high five to mumbling a shy “hello”.

Angelina is not part of any of them, to my relief. Having gym with Harry is bad enough, but also with Angelina?! I do not need a repeat of science class, thank you very much.

The bell rings, and the last few students stream in and take their place on the bleachers. The coach walks over to us, a scowl still plastered on his face.

Huh.

Maybe he just scowls all the time.

“Hello to the first day of gym, students,” he says in a bored tone. “Today, we’re going to immediately go into our unit - basketball or volleyball, you choose.”

Everyone breaks out into discussion, probably deciding what to pick. Well ha ha to them, because I don’t have to even think about it!

Basketball players over there” - he points to the right side of the bleachers, in my perspective - “and volleyball players over there.” He gestures to the left end, where I’m sitting at.

I hop up and skip over to the right side, while Heather sprints up ahead.

“Show off,” I tease her once we settle down on the very bottom row.

“Shut up,” Heather mumbles, shoving me playfully.

“Oh no, you didn’t just do that!” I exclaim. Then I realize I’m the only one talking. Everyone else has quieted down.

“Oh snaaaaaaaaap,” I continue, not really caring.

“Shut up,” the coach tells me, his scowling face centering on me. I hear a few snickers from behind me, and I shrug, unembarrassed. Haters gonna hate.

The coach glares at me for a few seconds before turning to the rest of the basketball group.

Inwardly, I shudder. Okay, that one scares me.

Well, I definitely have a knack at making teachers hate me, I think, pitying myself.

“To start off, I shall go over the rules of gym,” the coach starts. “One, you cannot, and I mean cannot bring food in here. It just makes the floor messy with crumbs, and we don’t need this new, shiny gym floor to be dirty...”

I tune out the coach’s words momentarily, only paying attention again once Heather starts speaking.

“Wait, what?!” she yelps in disbelief.

Oh, this can’t be good.

“What?” I ask her.

“You guys are starting basketball tomorrow,” the coach repeats, looking at me in an exasperated way. Of course with that scowl on his face.

“WHAT THE HECK!!!” I yell. “I thought we were starting the unit TODAY!”

“Inside voices,” I hear someone behind me mutter. I turn around to glare at them, feeling annoyed with their mocking, to be face to face with one of Harry’s friends. Harry is sitting beside him, staring off into space.

“Not the time,” I growl, then turn back to the coach.

“I meant that we were going to split the students today,” the coach explains, sounding irritated. “Not actually start playing basketball.”

I grumble loudly.

“Oh well, we’re starting tomorrow at least,” Harry announces loudly to everyone. His annoying voice makes me want to strangle him.

I usually love gym. I really do.

But today, I think it’s safe to say that I’m really really hating it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Next period is English. I storm out of gym, angry at basically everything, with Heather warily trailing along behind me.

“Get out of my way!” I yell at two unlucky boys who happen to be walking ahead of me in the crowded halls.

“Whoa, chill,” one of them tell me as I stomp past.

The nerve! Telling me to “chill”. WHAT IF I DON’T WANT TO CHILL, EH?

“I gotta go,” Heather puts a hand on my shoulder, momentarily stopping me from my anger run. She gestures to the art classroom behind her. “My next period is art.”

“You take art?!” I exclaim in disbelief. “Wow, loser.”

Heather snorts. “Look who’s talking.”

“I never wanted to be in choir!” I call back to her as I continue along the hallway. “I only signed up because I wasn’t good at anything else!”

She didn’t respond, so either a) she didn’t know how, b) she slipped into the classroom while I was still talking, or c) she couldn’t hear me above all the other noises in the hallway. B is pretty rude. I really hope that wasn’t the cause of her lack of response.

“IF OUR LOVE IS TRAGEDY WHY ARE YOU MY REMEDY.”

Ew, who is singing that?! Foxes’ voice in Clarity is amazing and enchanting and just perfect, but that singing dude who also probably smells weird is totally ruining the song!

MY EARS, they are burning.

Disgusted, I make my way to the side doors. I push on one of them and stumble outside into the courtyard of the school, where it’s empty and quiet. This is definitely a great place for my ears to recover.

Once I have made sure my eardrums are not bleeding or injured, I walk across the outside grounds of the school towards another side door leading back inside, hoping the hallway is not filled with that nightmare-ish singing again.

I push open the door, only to find that it leads to the main office area. Oops, wrong place.

Shutting the door again, I start walking about the courtyard, having no idea where to go. There are about five doors leading inside, and they all look the same. I’m really confused; darn my unstereotypical Asian genes.

The courtyard is really quiet, and it’s currently empty. I feel chills running down my spine as a light breeze picks up. It’s only September; it’s not supposed to be chilly already!

Oh shoot, what if the light breeze was actually a ghost? And the ghost is coming after me?

Why in the world would it pick now of all times, when I’m alone in a quiet deserted area, confused on where my Language Arts classroom is located?

Oh wait. That’s what ghosts always do - choose the worst times to appear.

The sound of a door opening comes from behind me, and I whirl around, screaming, to be faced with THE TYPICAL FREAKY WHITE FLOATING BLACK-EYED SEE-THROUGH -

Oh wait.

It’s just the dude who told me to “chill” earlier in the hallway. He’s alone, and I wonder where his friend is.

“Um…” He looks at me, blue eyes wide, seeming speechless.

Ha HA he thinks I’m weird.

“Why are you here?” I glare at him. That’s when I notice the hot pink binder he’s carrying, and I snort, then sputter with laughter. LOL PINK TOTES FITS HIM.

“What?” he asks me. Now it’s his turn to glare.

“Love your binder,” I remark, still chuckling.

He rolls his eyes. “No one would trade with me.”

“Not even girls?” I ask.

“I’m too shy to talk to girls,” he explains.

“You seem to be talking to me just fine,” I counter.

He shrugs. “Well, you’re not one of those pretty girls like the ones in my class.”

“Like you’re any prettier yourself,” I retort.

“Sassy,” he muses, chuckling.

“You bet-” Just then, the door behind the blue-eyed dude is flung open, scaring the poo out of me. Once again, I let out an earsplitting scream, which soon morphs into a loud groan.

Standing there all proud and self-smitten, wearing another one of his annoying Rosewood swim team shirts, is Mr. Ugly himself.

Harry. UGH.

The dude just ignores me, turning to the blue-eyed guy and greeting, “‘Sup, Jake.”

“Hey,” Jake responds. They start walking towards someplace, not even acknowledging me as they stride past. WOW. Acting like I’m not even here. Love you too, Harry. Just kidding - I hate your guts. So much.

“We’re going to be late!” Harry yells suddenly, pulling open the door behind me and disappearing into the hallway. Jake follows him, laughing. ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS LIKE WHAT EVEN IS SO FUNNY ABOUT WHAT HE SAID.

I wait about thirty seconds before following. I need to get into the hallway, but I really don’t want an encounter with either of them. That may or may not spark some anger issues, and I feel like it’s a bit too early in the school year to already be getting detention for punching dudes in the hallway.

I enter my English classroom, hoping to see the beautiful faces of my beautiful classmates, all of whom I genuinely like as friends...

But instead, I see Jake among the students.

And, to make it worse, Harry is also in my class! I groan under my breath as I realize that the only empty desk left is the one in front of his. Stupid ghosts-coming-after-me thoughts that made me later to class than everyone else.

I stomp over to the stupid desk and throw my stupid binder on top of it before sitting on the stupid chair and crossing my stupid arms. Well, actually my arms aren’t stupid. Well, actually they are, since they can’t seem to swim stupid butterfly correctly without getting tired after 50 yards. No, scratch that - 25. That’s how bad my butterfly is. To be honest, I think it’s the stupidest stroke in the world. Oops, sorry - not.

English drags by so slowly. For the whole forty-five minutes, I try my best to ignore Harry’s really annoying annoyingness.

Once I can’t take it anymore, I whirl around in my seat. “Dude, stop tapping your pen on your desk!” I hiss. He doesn’t seem to hear me, merely continuing his persistent tapping of his writing utensil - is it just me, or is he doing it louder than before?! - and looking up at the teacher. Okay, really?! I’m right here; freaking look at me!

When the end-of-class bell finally rings, I bolt out of my seat and take off down the hallway toward my locker. I don’t usually come here after English - typically, I come after study hall - but today is an exception. I need to take my anger out on something, or else I may or may not accidentally-on-purpose punch someone if they annoy me too much.

I turn my lock, my fury slowly rising as I think back on Harry continuously tapping his pen on his desk. “That freaking little obnoxious” - I pull on the lock, hard, causing the locker to creak open - “stuck-up” - I roughly tug my backpack out - “brat!” I slam my locker door closed.

In study hall, I manage to cool down a bit - with the help of Heather - but when the end-of-school bell rings, I get annoyed all over again at the thought of having to go to oh-so-important swim practice.

After riding the bus home, I do some of my homework and then start getting ready for stupid swim practice. It’s 4:45 right now, and practice is at 5. And it lasts an hour and thirty minutes! An hour and thirty minutes too long.

I sling my swim bag over my shoulder, feeling the weight of a kickboard, a pair of fins, goggles, a cap, and a towel crush me. Weighs like a ton.

I slip on my Nike shorts and pull on a t-shirt over my navy swimsuit that reveals way too much skin.

“Sorry,” I say to myself. “I’m just feeling pessimistic today. I hate school, and I hate my classes. And I’m also a bit annoyed with swimming. I mean, I don’t want to see Harry, nor Angelina! And what if I do?”

I slip on my flip flops. Since today is Tuesday, there isn’t drylands at practice, so I don’t have to worry about wearing my tennis shoes.

Drylands are basically exercises on land that us Silverians do every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before practice. That's why it's called drylands. Because you stay dry, and you're on land. Isn't that the coolest thing ever?

If you said yes, then you’re wrong. Because drylands suck.

“You’re not going to see them,” I assure myself. “Their practice starts at 4, so they’re going to be in the water by the time you get there.”

Convinced, I walk into the garage, where my bike is parked. I climb onto the bike seat and start pedalling my way towards the Rosewood pool, which is only five minutes away from my house.

Once I arrive, I park my bike on one of those bike stands before heading off toward the bleachers at the edge of the pool, where the Silverians put their swim bags.

And guess what?

The first thing I see is Harry swimming breaststroke in the pool. Ugh.

But wow, he is good, I can’t help but think.

Well, whatever.

“Kattttt!”

I look up to see one of my Silver besties, Joanna, run over to me, followed by my best guy buddy, Calvin.

And let me make this clear: me and Calvin - JUST friends.

“Hey!” I hug Joanna and just nod at Calv. What?! Hugging a boy is quite awkward.

“How was your second day of school?” Joanna asks, linking arms with me.

“Bad,” I mumble.

Joanna is like my only close girl swim friend. We used to be just friends, but ever since both of our best friends moved to Gold, we just grew close.

She’s popular at her school and pretty much everywhere, blonde hair and blue eyes helping her with that, but she’s super nice and not snobby at all, defying the stereotype.

“Why bad?” Calvin questions.

Same with Joanna, I only grew close to Calvin because his best guy friend moved up to Gold. This is why I hate it when people call me, Joanna, and Calvin the Three Musketeers - I prefer the term “the Three Victims of Best Friend Ditching”.

Calvin is also popular at school, but, like Joanna, he definitely varies from the stereotype. He has black hair and blue eyes, and a lot of girls find him dreamy.

I don’t, though. I don’t know why, but dark-haired bright-eyed guys don’t romantically attract me.

“Problems,” I answer.

“How specific,” Joanna remarks dryly.

“People problems,” I correct.

“I see,” Calvin muses. “May I know their names?”

“Harry. Angelina.”

“Harry who?”

“Um, I don’t exactly know his last name, nor do I care. He’s on our swim team, in Gold.”

“Oh, I know him! He’s a close friend of my best friend in Gold.”

“Whatever.”

“Wait, who even is this guy?” Joanna asks.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Why not? He seems nice,” Calvin defends.

“He’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he stole my best friend away from me, and he’s sooooooo annoying!”

“How did he steal Angelina?” Joanna questions.

“She’s madly in love with him.”

“You’re judging him way too harshly. You barely even know who he is! And besides, all guys are annoying. It’s, like, in their gender. No offense, Calv.” She flashes him a quick glance.

“I don’t care,” I say, pursing my lips. “I still don’t like him. Never will.”

Joanna rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

Calvin just shrugs, eyeing me unsurely. “Okay, whatever.” He looks at the waterproof watch he always wears around his wrist. That’s sort of the reason we first met - one day while I was in the pool, I wanted to know what the time was, and he was the only one in my lane with a watch. Naturally, I asked him, and our friendship just sort of developed from there.

“Anyway, it’s 5,” he announces. “We should start heading over to our lanes.”

I sigh loudly, watching the untouched part of the pool that us Silverians are about to go into.

Yeah, I guess you could say I’m pretty much the opposite of excited.

I hate having first period math. I can barely understand Algebra while wide awake, much less when I’m half asleep! Plus, why the heck do we even learn this junk?! It’s not like I’m going to use it in my job in the future. Really - if I grow up to be a singer, am I going to be like, “O. M. G. Like, x microphones plus x speakers equals 2x microphones and speakers!” Um, how about no.

On top of that, the two Asian girls who sit beside me are so freaking talkative. Usually, I don’t have a problem with that, but this is an exception. All they talk about are grades, grades, grades. I just want to yell at them to have a conversation about something else so I can join in and won’t feel as excluded as I am now.

Yeah. I'm not a morning person. I tend to criticize everything in the morning - especially the first two periods.

“What did you get on that English test last year? It was pretty difficult, if I do say so myself,” the girl on my right - Annoying Asian #1 - asks, softly enough so that the teacher doesn’t hear, but loudly enough so that it feels like she’s screaming in my ear!

“A 99,” the girl on my left - Annoying Asian #2 - answers.

Wow. I don’t even freaking remember that English test.

Their conversation goes on for what seems like hours. When the bell finally rings, signaling that first period is over, I literally sprint out of the classroom. I may or may not have knocked over my chair in the process.

My second period class is choir. Once I arrive, I plop myself down on my assigned chair in the front row. Two really girly girls sit on either side of me, and they’re always either playing with their hair or jingling their huge amount of jewelry. It seriously annoys me.

The bell rings, and, on cue, the choir teacher enters the classroom, looking all excited and cheerful. She’s a pretty lady, with wavy brown hair and large jade eyes, but she puts on way too much makeup. At times, I can’t even concentrate on what she’s saying because of the huge amount of mascara on her lashes.

“Hello, everybody!” she exclaims, smiling at us all.

“Hello, Mrs. Myers.”

“Who’s ready for the assignment of the month?!”

Everyone, with the exception of me, cheers.

“That’s the spirit!” She claps her hands. Wow, she’s filled with way too much enthusiasm. It's quite irritating, actually. This is only the second period of the day; no one should be bubbly or excited at the moment.

“The assignment of the month is…" she continues in her high-pitched voice. Shut up, please. No offense. "...drumroll please…” Um, how about N-O.

Everyone, again with the exception of me, starts hitting the palms of their hands on their legs. I cringe as the very unharmonizing sound of their fail of a drumroll reaches my ears.

"...One Republic!"

Hm. Well, that's not too bad.

"During any time in this month, you're allowed to perform any One Republic song in this class," Mrs. Myers explains. "If you want to have music to go along with your singing, then just hand me a CD with the karaoke of the song burned onto it, and I'll take care of the rest." She looks around the room, smiling brightly. "Everyone clear?"

"No, hold on!" the girly girl to my right exclaims. "Are we allowed to sing duets?"

Mrs. Myers shakes her head. "No, this is an individual assignment. Any more questions?" When no one answers, she strolls to the corner of the room farthest from the entrance door, where her desk lays, and sits back in her very comfortable-looking plush chair. "You guys can talk for the rest of the period. Maybe even brainstorm some ideas about what song you all are going to sing!"

"I wish we could sing duets," the girly girl to my right grumbles to herself. She huffs in disappointment and flips her hair, causing the massive amount of charm bracelets on her right wrist to jingle. "So, what song are you going to perform?" she suddenly asks me, her voice cheerful. Whoa. What are you, bipolar?

I shrug. "I'm not sure. Maybe Counting Stars or something."

"I love that song!" she gushes.

I grin at her. Maybe she isn't so bad, despite all her jingling jangling of her loud obnoxious jewelry. I mean, you just gotta love people who have good music taste, especially since there aren't very many in this world.

"Isn't it great?" I agree. "What about you? What song are you going to sing?"

She shrugs. "Dunno." She gives me a playfully evil look. "Because you just stole my favorite One Republic song!" She nudges me, grinning. "Thief."

"You can call me a thief, but you should know your part," I sing part of the lyrics of one of my favorite One Direction songs.

She laughs. "Nice one!" She pauses for a moment, deep in thought, before breaking out into a large grin and singing, "Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name?"

My nose scrunches up in playful disgust. "Sorry, I'm taken," I tell her. "But yeah, sure. My name's Kat."

"Lucy," she introduces herself. She puts on a pouty face. "And you are? By who?"

"Heather!" I squeal, sighing in a dreamy way.

"Well, whatever," Lucy huffs, flipping her hair dramatically. "I'm taken too. And for real."

"By who?" I question. I'm honestly not surprised. Lucy is definitely one of the most prettiest girls I've seen in my life. She just needs to tone down the jewelry a bit. "Tell me about this special guy," I continue, sending her a fail of a wink.

Lucy's blue eyes immediately light up at the prospect of talking about her boyfriend. Awwww, so adorable. "Well, he's tall." She smiles. Awwww! She smiled! Awwww! "He's a swimmer." She bites her lip. So freaking cute I ship them so mu- "And Harry is his name."

Oh. Talk about disgusting.

Not wanting to make Lucy upset, I just stay silent, force a smile, and nod.

“Do you know him?” Lucy asks me. I hold back a cringe and just nod stiffly. “Isn’t he just adorable?! Oh my goodness, guess what he did this one time? Guess, guess, gue-”

The bell suddenly rings. Relieved, I quickly grab my binder and exit the classroom, basically ditching Lucy. Yeah, I’m sorry. I just really don’t want to hear anything about Harry. At all.

“Kaaat!”

I look over my shoulder while rushing to get to Texas History, which is on the opposite side of the school building from the choir room.

“Hey Heather.” I grin at her as she jogs towards me. Well, her definition of a jog. Looks more like sprinting to me.

“Where ya going?” Heather asks, slowing down to a walk as she reaches my side.

“Texas History.” I roll my eyes.

“Sucks,” comes a voice from behind me.

I look over my shoulder again, wondering who just said that.

Oh. Gross, it’s that Jake dude.

“Hey.” He flashes a smile at me.

“Hey.” I decide to embarrass him, just because his presence annoys me greatly. “Not sure if I mentioned this before...but I love your binder. The color really fits.”

Jake rolls his eyes, but I spot a faint shade of pink appear onto his cheeks. Awww, is wittle Jakey blushing?

"Don't make fun of him," Heather scolds me, but I can tell she's fighting back a smile.

"You know you want to laugh out loud," I tell her.

"Well, I'm holding it back for the sake of being a good person," Heather says. She throws a grin at Jake. "Sorry about Kat. She can be a total nuisance sometimes." I glare at her, causing a giggle to escape from her mouth. "Totally kidding. You know I love you."

"It's questionable sometimes," I mumble. She just sticks her tongue out at me and disappears into her next class, math, leaving me to be alone with Jake.

"I agree with her. You are a nuisance," Jake states before disappearing into the math classroom behind Heather.

Well, okay then. How nice.

Oh, how I pity Heather for having to have math with him. She doesn't deserve this kind of bad treatment. Math is terrible enough, but having an obnoxious, not to mention seriously rude, guy in the same class as you?

How about a kill me now.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Texas History goes by just as quickly as a half-asleep snail too lazy to move. In other words, Texas History went by slowly. As in, not fast. At all.

When the bell finally rings after what feels like a week, I spring out of my chair and sprint out of the classroom. Breathing in the air of the freshly-smelling-not-really hallway, I make my way to science.

With Harry.

And Angelina.

Oh, why am I suddenly feeling so reluctant to bring my feet to continue walking?

I enter the science classroom and clench my teeth at the sight of Harry's annoying face and annoying curly brown hair and annoying pen that he has clutched between his annoying fingers. His pen! Oh, he better not tap that thing on his desk again.

I plop down in my seat, crossing my arms and glaring at nothing in particular. Angelina walks into the classroom soon after. She gives me a weird look, probably noticing the scowl on my face and thinking that I'm really strange, but I could care less. I'm not kidding when I say that I seriously don't give a flip about what others think of me.

"Heyyyy, Harry," Angelina greets in a voice that she probably thinks is seductive but honestly just sounds like she's choking on a frog.

"Hey," Harry responds, beginning to absentmindedly tap his pen on his desk.

Stop.

That.

Now!

"Oh my gosh, during that breaststroke set yesterday, you were totes fast!" Angelina squeals.

Just then, Harry chooses to disobey my screaming thoughts and begins tapping his pen faster and louder.

"Dude, stop!" I screech. Harry turns around to flash me an irritated glance, while Angelina just rolls her eyes, probably annoyed that I interrupted her oh-so-important conversation with Harry. Well, oops.

"Stop what?" Harry asks in a really sassy and rude tone. "What am I doing wrong?”

Oh, I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong, you little-

The bell suddenly rings, signaling the beginning of class. The chattering students' voices fade away as Mr. Williams, looking as strict and stiff as ever, enters the room. He then briefly tells us that we're going to be working on our projects today, so we should get with our partners, like, now.

No need to tell me twice. I immediately stand and walk over to Jamie's desk at the very front of the room, where she's currently sitting and writing something in a notebook.

"Hey," I greet.

She looks up, startled. Seeing me, she immediately drops her pencil and snatches the notebook away from my line of sight.

"Whoa there," I mumble, a bit surprised and slightly offended that she doesn't want me to look at whatever she's writing. I mean, I totally thought we were BFFs!

"Sorry," Jamie apologizes softly, but doesn't make a move to bring the notebook out of the cubby of her desk.

"Uh..." I shrug. "It's okay, I guess."

"Girls." Mr. Williams comes over to us. "You might want to stop chit-chatting and start working on your project. Today is the last day we're going to be doing it in class. Whatever part of the project you don't finish is going to be homework."

Inwardly, I groan. You are kidding me. I hate doing projects at home, especially if they're with a partner. I'm usually the one that has to go to the partner's house to work on the project, and during the week or weekend, I don't exactly like to get out of my house unless it's absolutely mandatory. Examples would be stupid school and stupid swim practice.

"Okay," I mutter. The teacher nods in satisfaction before walking away. To Jamie, I say, "Girl, we gotta finish today."

She nods and hands me two sheets of paper. One has the barely started rough draft on it and the other states the project directions.

"Okay, what exactly do we need for the lab?" I question, grabbing Jamie's pencil and absentmindedly tapping it against the desk. I abruptly stop when I realize what I'm doing. "Any ideas?"

Now, one would think a shy girl - especially a super shy one like Jamie - would always be quiet and not very outspoken, no matter what. However, I guess chemistry is Jamie's passion or something, because she suddenly goes all smartie-pants on me and rambles on and on about what is needed for the lab, what the lab should be about, these chemical equations that should be included in the lab, and other stuff that makes my head hurt. I try to write down everything she says, but there are two problems. One, she talks so fast, and every other word she says there's a complicated element compound thingy that I have no idea how to spell. Two, I am literally the slowest writer in the world. This is exactly why I hate taking notes, writing essays, and just school in general.

I'm in the middle of writing "calcium chloryd" when the bell suddenly rings. I groan, annoyed that class has ended before Jamie and I even finish the rough draft. To make everything worse, I probably only wrote down half - no, even less - of the ideas that streamed out of the Jamie's mouth.

"Can you finish the rough draft at home and type up the final draft too?" I ask - no, plead - as I hand her the two sheets of paper.

Jamie looks at me a bit unsurely. Okay, fine. My request does sort of exceed limits. After all, a partner project is called a partner project for a reason, right? I can't just make Jamie do all the work.

"Only kidding!" I force a laugh, and Jamie giggles with me. I walk over to my desk, gesturing for her to follow with her binder. "We can meet up sometime this week or weekend, since this project is due Monday. When are you free?"

Jamie shrugs. "Anytime, I think."

I nod, grabbing my binder. "Same here, except for 5-6:30 PM on weekdays."

We exit the classroom, get our lunchboxes out of our lockers, and head towards the cafeteria together, continuing on deciding which day and which time to meet up. We finally settle on Saturday at 2:00 PM at...guess who's house?

MINE. For once!

I skip into the cafeteria happily, feeling like nothing can break my joyful mood, when suddenly Heather sprints past me gracefully and effortlessly. Wow, thanks for making me feel like I suck at running. Which I do, but no one needs to know that...

Huffing indignantly, I walk over to our lunch table and plop down onto the seat beside Heather. Jamie trails me and sits beside Hailey, who waves a hello to me. I grin and wave back.

"Oh, look who’s here! Kather!" Jenna, who is already at the lunch table, squeals. She claps and bounces up and down in her seat.

Heather and I laugh. "Fangirling?" I ask, amused.

Jenna gives a thumbs up sign. "At it’s best.”

After about thirty minutes of eating and chitchatting and the occasional mini-food fight between me and Heather, the bell rings, signaling the beginning of 5th period. Yay for basketball, but nay for Mr. Scowls...

I take off towards the gym room behind Heather, my chest heaving as I take in large gulps of air while sprinting. Just like yesterday, we are the first to arrive.

“So excited!” I squeal once I catch my breath and make sure I’m not about to die from the run. “I loooove basketball!”

Mr. Scowls, standing in the middle of the gym room like yesterday, scowls at me. “Quiet down, please. And take a seat, girls.”

I roll my eyes but obey, sitting in the center of the right end of the bleachers with Heather. That’s when Harry and his friends decide to come barging into the gymnasium - and not very quietly.

“Hey, are we playing basketball today!” Harry asks - no, yells - as he and his friends climb onto the bleachers and sit down on the row behind Heather and I. Way too close for my liking.

“Yes,” the coach answers. Wow, so you tell me - not Harry - to “quiet down” , when he was clearly louder than me? How totally fair.

Other students start streaming into the gym room, but I’m too annoyed to say hi to any of them today. Instead, I remain sitting, my arms crossed and my eyebrows scrunched together, scowling at nothing in particular. I earn some very strange looks from my friends-but-not-very-close-friends passing by. Well, I can’t blame them. If someone else was looking like I do right now, I would probably think, What a weirdo, trying to be a Mr. Scowls look-alike.

Once the tardy bell - the bell that signals the beginning of class - rings, the coach immediately starts splitting us basketball players into five-people groups to shoot hoops with. I’m with Heather and three girls that I don’t know. Good thing I’m pretty much the expert at meeting new people.

“Hey.” I leave Heather’s side and walk over to stand by one of the girls, a tall brunette. “I hope you’re good at basketball, because if we’re going to be playing any practice games with our group, we’re a team against” - I gesture to Heather, who’s currently stirring up a conversation with the two other girls - “them.”

The brunette nods, causing her high ponytail to slightly bob up and down. “I’m definitely good,” she reassures me. Oh, how I envy her modesty.

For the rest of the class, Heather, Flora - the tall brunette - Cammie - one of the two girls Heather was talking to - Zoe - the other girl Heather was talking to - and I shoot hoops and talk. It turns out, Flora is amazing at basketball. However, Cammie, Zoe, and Heather are not too bad themselves, so we definitely got some fierce competition.

“That was super fun!” Cammie gushes once the end-of-class bell rings. We’re pushed out of the gym room and into the hallway by the huge mob of gym students, and I have to fight to keep myself from being face-planted onto the ground.

“Totally!” I manage to call to Cammie, who has somehow ended up way ahead of me and is now chattering away with Heather.

I shoulder my way through the crowd of people in the hallway, wanting to catch up with them. In the process, I accidentally step on Harry’s foot. He screams like a girl, causing me to snort with laughter. Oooops, not sorry.

When I'm finally right behind Cammie and Heather, Heather has already disappeared into her art classroom. I'm about to greet Cammie instead, when she slips into the theater room located beside Art. I sigh in defeat and set off to English - English with the first two dudes on my hate list... Fun, right?

"If I ever did that, I think I’d have a heart attack!" someone - the same guy from yesterday, I'm assuming - half-sings half-yells. Oh, no. Please just shut up now before I-

"Never put my love out on the line; never said yes to the right guy!"

Okay. That’s it. "You're not a very good Demi Lovato!" I call to whoever is singing, but I don't think he hears me.

"I think I’d have a heart attaaaaaaaaaack!" My ears just tingled with annoyance. Now I'm debating whether that's even possible or not.

"I don't have time for this," I mutter, pushing one of the building’s side doors open and escaping into the courtyard.

I take the route I took from yesterday back into the building and then stride into the English classroom. Wow; I'm genuinely surprised I didn't get lost today. I look around the classroom. It's empty, with the exception of the teacher and a group of three dorky boys currently talking and laughing like idiots. This is absolutely crazy; I'm actually early today!

I take a seat at the desk I sat at yesterday and go through my binder absentmindedly. The first week of school hasn't even gone by, and my binder is already a huge mess. Half of my notebook paper is either crumpled, torn, or ripped up, and the gum I store in my pencil bag has pencil marks all over it. Good thing the wrapper is the only part of the gum that was affected by the writing utensil. The gum itself, I think, tossing a piece into my mouth without the teacher's notice, is perfectly fine!

Grinning to myself, I take out the nouns worksheet we had to do for homework yesterday and flatten out the crumpled up sheet of paper onto my desk. Then, I lay back in my chair, close my eyes, and attempt to briefly catch up on sleep. However, I only got to doze off for about a second before the tardy bell rings, jolting me awake. Yes; I literally jolted awake and even hit my knee on the bottom of my desk in the process. Ow...

I hear a snicker come from behind me, and I turn around to glare at the meanie who also probably smells and looks weird.

It's Harry. Not a surprise. I was totally right; he does look weird. His smell, though? I have no idea, and I'm not about to sniff him anytime soon.

My gaze travels to Jake, who's sitting in the seat behind Harry. I can totally tell he's fighting off a laugh. I mean, having your face be ten shades redder than it usually is, covering your mouth with your hands, and having smile crinkles at the edges of your eyes are not very good ways to be subtle about your laughing.

Therefore, note to self: kill those two jerks later.

The rest of English goes by painstakingly slow. Every once in a while, Harry would continuously tap his pen on his desk and then stop after a few minutes. The first time he started tapping, I told him to "shut up", but he said "no" in that rude and sassy tone of his, started tapping louder and faster, then stopped after about a minute of me being silent. The next time he started to tap, I didn't say a thing, knowing that leaving him alone was the best option.

After the end-of-class bell rings, I make my way over to study hall, which is just across the hallway from my English classroom. Convenient, eh? Finally - one good thing about having 6th period English.

I plop down in my seat and take out some of my homework, all the while chomping on my gum very noticeably. Oh, oops; bad habit, especially in a classroom where gum is prohibited. Hopefully Mrs. Hawthorne didn’t see that. I doubt it, as she seems to be very absorbed in whatever she’s glancing at on her laptop. What even do teachers look at on their laptops, besides their emails? Facebook? Pinterest? Tumblr? I snort with laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

I glance up, surprised, meeting Heather’s gaze as she slides into her seat.

“Oh, nothing much.” I grin. “I was just thinking about something funny.”

“That’s cool.” Heather removes her iPad from the top of her binder and unlocks it, revealing an unfinished document. Looking closely at it, I realize that she’s working on her lab.

“Who’s your partner for that?” I ask her.

“Jenna,” Heather answers just as the bell rings. She quickly types a few more words onto the document before exiting the app.

“What are you doing now?” I question her, curious.

Lily, the girl that sits on the other side of me, shoots a glare in my direction. “Be quiet, please.”

“Instagramming,” Heather answers me quietly, opening the Instagram app.

I chortle loudly, earning another glare from Lily. “Instagramming? What kind of word is that?” I ask in a soft voice, unable to suppress my smirk.

Heather just sticks her tongue out at me. “Don’t judge.”

“I will judge. Aren’t you supposed to be working on your lab, anyway?” When Heather, being too concentrated on doing something on Instagram, doesn’t answer, I snatch the iPad away from her. “Let me see that!”

“Give it backkk,” Heather whines.

I simply shake my head, pressing the different buttons at the bottom of the Instagram app. I’m so confused, having never used Instagram before. I just could never get an account or even the app, as I don’t own any Apple devices at the moment.

“You have one friend request thingy,” I inform Heather, clicking on it. A person with the username @__jakeypoo, huh? Not strange; not strange at all.

“Who is it?” Heather questions.

“Jakey poo,” I answer, fighting back a loud laugh.

“Is it that Jake guy that you and I were talking to earlier?”

I shrug. “If it is, I’m definitely going to start calling him Jakey poo. I’ll never let him live it down!”

Heather just stares at me for a full second before breaking out into a grin. “You like him, don’t you?”

I crease my brow, taken aback. “No way,” I answer, shaking my head vigorously. “Ew. I definitely don’t like him. Not in a million years.”

“Mmhm.” Heather continues to grin at me.

“Will you stop that?” I demand, handing her the iPad. I cross my arms, slightly annoyed. “It’s creepy.”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.” Heather responds, prying her gaze away from me and fixating it on her iPad screen.

I just roll my eyes and start on my piles and piles of homework. Just kidding; it’s only a few worksheets and a project, but it still feels like a truckload.

I’m working on a difficult problem on the math homework when the bell rings, driving me out of my seat. For a second, I hear the click of an Apple device’s camera taking a picture, but I’m not sure if I imagined it or not. However, when the lively sound of Heather’s laughter reaches my ears, I realize that it was she who had taken a picture of me with her iPad. But why?

“Give me that.” I grab Heather’s iPad and scroll through her photos, clicking on the most recent one. It’s a picture of me in the middle of bolting out of my seat, my knees still bent, my butt hovering just a few inches above my seat; I’m slightly blurred, and I have a really strange look on my face. Bursting into a laughing fit, I nearly drop the iPad. “I look absolutely ridiculous!”

“Yep,” Heather agrees, snatching her iPad away from me, “and it’s going to be your new Instagram profile picture, whether you like it or not.”

I flash her a strange look. “Uh…last time I checked, I didn’t have an Instagram.”

Heather grabs her binder. “I just now made one for you on my iPad, so Jakey poo can follow you, and you can follow him back.” She winks. “I already followed him for you!”

“Evil,” I grumble, heading out of the classroom at her side. “You are evil.”

Heather giggles. “Just wait until he follows you back, sweetheart. Then you’ll thank me.”

I just shake my head and start shouldering my way through the crowd of students in the hallway to get to the buses. Once I board my bus and arrive home, I immediately start on my math homework, trying to decipher the answer to the math problem I was stuck on. After fifteen minutes, I still have no luck, so I give up, skip that problem, and move on to Texas History homework. Thirty minutes later, I finish about half of it. Feeling pretty accomplished, I start getting ready for swim practice.

I drag myself, along with my swim bag, downstairs. I spot my mother in the kitchen, baking some great-smelling thing.

“Hey, whatcha making?” I ask, slipping on my tennis shoes and mentally preparing myself for the life-threatening drylands that us Silverians would have to go through at practice today.

“Chocolate chip cookies,” Mom responds.

“For me?” I question hopefully.

“Nope.” I sigh. I should have known; after all, when has my mom ever started making unhealthy food for me to eat?

“It’s for a friend,” Mom continues. That’s not a surprise. Mom likes to show off her cooking, so every time she makes a new friend, she bakes them her famous mouth-watering cookies. She used to constantly make them for me, but that was before I became the fatty I am now.

“Whatever,” I mumble, slinking out of the kitchen and into the garage. I ease myself onto my bike and start pedalling towards the Rosewood pool, following the familiar route that I’ve been using for about a year already. Once I arrive, I park my bike onto the bike stand near the pool. Then, I walk over to the bleachers and throw my swim bag onto the very bottom row of it.

“Hey, Kat!” I hear someone call. I turn around to see Joanna bounding towards me, Calvin slowly trailing her.

“Hey,” I greet them.

“How was your day today?” Calvin asks. “Better than yesterday, hopefully.”

“Not really.” I shrug. “But whatever. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“You sure?” Joanna asks. I nod. “Okay then... We should probably start getting ready for drylands. I have a feeling we’re going to be running the mile.”

I groan. “Please don’t jinx it. I am not in the mood for running today.”

“When are you ever?” Calvin asks jokingly. I glare at him.

“I’m never in the mood for running either… It’s a swimmer problem!” Joanna declares, causing Calvin and I to chuckle.

Joanna - a great way to make your day ten times brighter and better.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When swim practice is finally over, I’m completely exhausted. We did indeed run the mile, which really fatigued my leg muscles. Hold on...what leg muscles?

After the mile, the coach immediately made us swim a 200 yard freestyle for warm-up, and then ordered us to swim five 100 yard freestyles on a minute-and-thirty-second interval. I know; dead tiring, right?

By the time I arrive home, I, half-asleep and so sore, finish my homework, which takes quite a while. I then brush my teeth, crawl under my blanket, and immediately crash. My mind shuts down completely, and I let myself fall into the deep black pit called “sleep”.

Days passed, consisting of the usual - school for seven whole hours, swim practice for an hour and a half. I had grown super close with each and every one of the Asians sat at my lunch table. They were super funny, nice, and likable, even Jamie if you could get her to talk. During our science project, I had grown so close to her that we could have full conversations about non-chemistry things. Also, we got an A+ on the project. That’s a first for me!

I had also become really good friends with Lucy, despite having to endure the pain of constantly listening to her blabbing about how cute her boyfriend is. After all, she did say that my Counting Stars performance was excellent, even though I could tell from everyone’s lack of applause that it was, in fact, not good at all. Knowing me, it was probably just because I didn’t put enough emotion into singing the song.

In addition to that, I had surprisingly become really great friends with Jake. Ever since he followed me back on Instagram after Heather made me follow him, she was totally convinced that we were madly in love with each other. Every single time Jake would make some snobby remark to me in the hallway, which was usually when Heather and I were walking together to third period, Heather would start sprinting away from me. This forces me to walk with Jake, because I don’t have the ability to catch up to Heather. I also don’t exactly love being a loner in the hallway; it’s just too boring.

Me and Jake’s friendship first started out as plain rudeness. I would make fun of his pink binder, and he would make fun of various habits of mine, an example being my constant wearing of yoga pants. Then, our friendship slowly morphed into actual friendliness as we started talking about other things, such as basketball. Apparently, Jake loves basketball too and is actually a really good basketball player, as Heather told me Hailey, who is in his gym class, said.

Currently, it’s the first week of October, the week before my swim team’s first meet of the season. I’m really excited; I want to get into Gold so badly, and this meet may help me with that. Yes, the tremendously-hated Harry and Angelina are in Gold, but I honestly don’t care anymore. I have a goal in mind, and I’m willing to sacrifice anything to reach it.

I leap into the Rosewood swim team pool, jolting myself out of my ambitious thoughts. I shiver and scream once I make contact with freezing water.

"Is it really that cold?" Joanna asks worriedly.

"Yes!" I yelp. It’s especially cold because the air outside is just as chilly. Today's weather is like a winter day's. October is way too early of a month to be this cold.

Good news is, we Silver swimmers are tapering, which pretty much means that we're doing easier sets on an easier interval. Basically, everything we do is easier during tapering, so we get a chance to "rest" the week before a meet.

An hour later, the Silver coach dismisses us from practice. Everyone immediately climbs out of the pool and runs, screaming, toward their towels lying on the bleachers. Everyone but me, Calvin, and Joanna, that is.

"Wow, we got out early today," Calvin remarks.

"Yeah, the plus side of tapering." Joanna grins.

I shove my cap and goggles into my equipment/mesh bag and dunk it into the water. "Is there even a down side to it?"

"True," Joanna muses, pulling her own mesh bag into the water. Once Calvin does the same, we start swimming towards the other end of the pool with the mesh bags.

We Silver swimmers swim in the middle section of the pool. The Gold swimmers swim in the end closest to the entrance to the pool, and the Bronze group, the level below Silver, swims in the end opposite them. A few yards from where the Gold people swim, there’s a door that leads to an inside area, and it's so warm. Joanna, Calvin, and I placed our swim bags in there before practice, so afterward, we could just climb out of the pool and run inside. The only bad part of the plan is that the Gold swimmers - including Angelina and Harry - put their stuff in there too, but I could care less. I'm freezing, and it's a risk I'm willing to take.

"Ready?" Calvin asks. Joanna and I nod. "Go!"

I throw my swim bag at the pool's edge and climb out. Immediately, the icy wind tears through my skin, freezing my insides. I start shivering like crazy. "Shoooot! It's cold!"

"Thanks, Captain Obvious!" Joanna screams. She picks up her mesh bag and races toward the inside place, followed by Calvin.

I grab my mesh bag and bring it to my chest.

That was a bad idea.

The mesh bag is really wet from being in the water, and let's just say that my chest is now absolutely soaked - and not with warm water. To make it worse, the wind is literally tearing at me, making me feel like I'm going to die from coldness.

I hold the mesh bag as far away from myself as I can before running towards the inside room.

"Stop right there!" someone says. I halt and look over my shoulder to see a burly lifeguard. "No running on deck! You go back to where you were before, and walk towards the inside room."

Are.

You.

Kidding.

Me.

Inwardly groaning, I obey his instructions. By the time I'm inside, I'm frozen. I don't even care that the Gold swimmers are in here right now, chatting amongst their group, and that Harry and Angelina are part of that very group. That's how cold I am.

I jump over other people's swim bags to get to my own. I quickly unzip it and grab my towel, wrapping it around me. Soon, it's soaked and cold as ever. I shiver, discontent. My nose is stuffy, and I can start to feel mucus sliding into my throat.

Shoot! Am I catching a cold?! I have a meet next week! I can't get sick now!

“Are you okay?” Joanna asks as I break out into a bout of coughing. Some people turn to look at me. I wish I could just smile, wave nonchalantly, and make some clever remark like I usually do, but all I can do right now is cough.

Calvin pats my back, seeming unsure of what to do.

Once I finish my loud hacking up of mucus, I just change into my shirt and Nike shorts before heading outside towards my bike. I don’t say goodbye to Joanna or Calvin, which I know is rude, but they understand that I’m not feeling well.

I ride my bike home, the wind threatening to freeze my face. Half the time, I can’t even breathe because of my stuffy nose and throat.

At times, I seriously despise my source of transportation. I’m pretty sure I just froze up more than before, and I didn’t even think that was possible.

However, through all the chaotic hating on bikes going on in my head, one question stands out.

How in the world am I going to fully recover before the meet?

A month passes, and I’m still not getting any better. I had to miss both the October and November meets because I was way too sick. Swim practice was also a no-no for me, so basically, seeing the amount of junk food I secretly eat everyday at lunch - “secretly” because my mom doesn’t exactly know - I’m really fat and out of shape now. Just to make it worse, everyday I have to sit on the bleachers during gym, bored out of my mind, while my friends get to shoot basketballs and dribble and all that jazz. Sometimes I have to watch them play against the boys, including Harry. It hurts how much I want to be part of the team. Then, I could beat Harry and humiliate him for losing against a girl. Maybe I could even “accidentally” throw the ball so it lands on his face.

In mid-November, the basketball/volleyball unit ends, and the students - with the exception of the very ill Katarina Liang - all get a choice of whether they want to do a running or soccer unit. Guess what Heather chooses? Running. What a surprise.

Also in mid-November, Lucy breaks up with Harry because of all the hate she was getting from people, especially a certain Angelina. When she tells me this news one day in choir, whilst in tears, I’m so surprised I nearly fall over in my chair. Seriously; with all her fangirling over his cuteness, I never in a million years would have imagined her to cut things off with him. If it was the other way around, I wouldn’t be too surprised. I was actually looking forward to Harry breaking up with Lucy; then, I would have a perfectly reasonable excuse to punch him in the face. I guess not, though.

About a week after the break-up, I start to recover from being sick. Gradually, my coughing ceases, and my head stops throbbing every second of the day. Four days later, I’m totally better, with a little runny nose here and there.

“Thanks for getting better now,” I complain to myself while getting ready for swim practice the first day I’ve fully recovered, “when the basketball unit is over.”

“You’re so welcome,” I respond as I put on a huge parka. Can’t risk getting sick again.

I climb onto my bike and start pedalling towards the Rosewood swim team pool. I’m not very excited for swim practice, but I still have to go. I need to get into Gold as soon as possible, and the only way I can do that is if I work at it. The next meet is a week later, so maybe, if I train hard enough this week, I can achieve my goal there.

I arrive at swim practice and stride over to the entrance of the inside place, expecting Joanna and Calvin to be there. I expect them to tackle me, to jump out at me, to do anything…

But instead, I catch a quick glimpse of them in the pool.

Swimming with the Gold level.

“WHAT?!?” I shout, gawking in disbelief. Well, don’t they have a lot to explain.

The rest of practice sucked. Since I hadn’t been swimming for a long long time, the coach gave me the regular workout to do while everyone else got to do taper. It was unfair, seeing the other swimmers getting out of practice thirty minutes early while I still had to swim. Being totally fat and out of shape didn’t help either.

When my practice is over, I sprint from the pool to the inside area without the lifeguard’s notice, immediately wrapping a towel around me. I’m still cold, but definitely not as cold as that day in October.

I feel lonely, being the only Silver person inside. I still can’t believe Calvin and Joanna moved up without me. I know it’s not really something they can control, but still. No fair. If I had not gotten sick, then I would have probably also made it.

Stupid sickness. Stupid lifeguard. Stupid mesh bag. Stupid towel. Stupid bike.

I put on my parka before riding home on my bike.

And for the second time in my life, I feel truly excessively miserable.

For the next few days, the only thing on my mind is my goal to move up to Gold. At swim practice, I even ask the Silver coach if she could put me on faster intervals, so I could get better. That’s how dedicated I am; before, I would never - and I do mean never - go that far to reach my goal. Then again, my goal wasn’t even too big back then, at least not compared to now.

In addition to that, I can barely concentrate in my classes at school because of my daydreaming about Gold. When I mean concentrating in my classes, I mean being very annoyingly aware of Harry’s tapping of his pen behind me in English and beside me in Science. To be honest, however, I’m starting to not hate him as much as I used to. Yes; he irritates me to death, but don’t all boys? I’m not even sure why I despised him so much in the first place; I guess I was just too caught up in the hurt I felt when Angelina constantly ditched me for him. However, now that I have pretty much erased the annoying redhead from my mind and even made new better friends, I can’t really loathe Harry that much anymore. Don’t get me wrong, though; I definitely still hate him...just in a more toned-down fashion.

“Kat!” Jenna calls to me as I’m walking towards the benches in the courtyard on a cold December morning before school. I immediately snap out of my thoughts on - surprise, surprise - Gold and turn to face the long-eyelashed Asian, who is currently bounding towards me, full of energy as usual.

“Hey, Jenna!” I call back to her.

She reaches me and halts, barely panting. “Heyyyy!” she greets.

“No one should be so energetic this early in the day,” I chide, shaking my head.

Jenna smiles widely. “But I got early Christmas presents for my teachers!” she squeals excitedly, drawing a plastic grocery bag out of her backpack and showing me the boxes of chocolate packed inside of it. “That’s definitely a good enough excuse for my bubbly energy!”

I laugh. Oh, Jenna, always the sweet one. “Not really. Not if you didn’t get me a box.” I wink.

Jenna chuckles. “Here’s the deal: I have a few pieces of chocolate left in the box I already opened for myself, so I’ll give you some of those.”

“Yesss!” I cheer.

“But only,” Jenna continues, “if you come into the school building with me right now and accompany me while I deliver the boxes of chocolate to each of my teachers.”

I shrug. “I can do that.” Anything for chocolate.

Jenna whoops, then grabs my arm and enters the school building, dragging me along. The halls are empty and eerily silent, what with most of the students either studying in the library or sitting out in the courtyard before school. Nobody is allowed in the school building before classes start, unless it’s an emergency. Examples would be retests, tutorials, or - in Jenna’s case - the delivering of chocolate.

“You can let go of me now.” I slip my arm out of her grasp. “I can walk perfectly fine without you pulling me along.”

Jenna giggles. “Fine. By the way, we’re almost at the first classroom,” she informs me, jogging ahead and turning a corner. Suddenly, all at once, I hear Jenna’s shout of surprise, see boxes of chocolate flying everywhere, and spot Harry in the middle of all the chaos. When did he get here?

“I’m so sorry!” Harry exclaims, flustered. Hold up! Harry...actually apologizing? “I was in a rush to get to tutorials, and I didn’t see you! I didn’t mean to run into you and make your chocolates go flying. I’m sor-”

“It’s fine.” Jenna smiles at him. “Really.”

“Are you sure?” Not even waiting for a reply, Harry drops down to his knees and starts stacking the boxes of chocolate into the plastic bag. Once he finishes, he stands and hands them back to her. “Here.” Whoa; that was actually really sweet. Harry...being nice. Whoa. I could get used to that.

Jenna’s smile grows wider. “That wasn’t necessary, but thank you.”

“It was necessary,” Harry assures her, flashing her a goofy grin.

“If you say so...” Jenna waves him off. “Now go along, child. You don’t want to miss them tutorials.” She gives him a thumbs-up sign.

“Oh, right. Bye! And sorry again for making you spill your boxes of chocolate,” Harry calls as he walks away.

“It’s totally fine! Bye-bye; have fun!” Jenna then turns to me with a huge grin on her face. “Is that the ‘mean and annoying Harry’ you were talking about at lunch a few months ago? Yeah; he’s totally mean and annoying.”

I shrug. “I’ve never seen this side of him before.”

I honestly haven’t. I didn’t even think Harry had the ability to apologize or be a gentleman. Maybe he likes Jenna? one unsure part of my brain suggests. I wouldn’t be too surprised. Jenna is super duper pretty, and that would definitely explain why he was a totally different person in front of her.

That’s so adorable! An annoying and obnoxious boy that’s sweet and caring only in front of the girl he likes - awww! Also, maybe Jenna likes him too; nobody smiles that big for no reason.

They would be so cute together. It doesn’t even matter that they’re not the same race; the only thing that matters is how much they like each other, which is probably a lot from what I can tell.

Well, that’s that, I silently muse as I follow Jenna through the hallways as she delivers the chocolate to her teachers. My new goal in life - following my Gold one, of course - to get Harry and Jenna together!

“Keep me safe inside
Your arms like towers
Tower over me”

I quietly mumble the words to the song, We Are Broken, by Paramore, as I dry my hair with a towel after a long hot shower. I just finished swimming the second day of the December two-day swim meet, and I’m absolutely exhausted.

“Yeah
‘Cause we are broken”

I sigh. That’s exactly how I feel right now - broken. I didn’t make the qualifying time in my 50 freestyle to get into Gold, no; in fact, I did worse than the last time I swam it.

I throw my towel onto the ground. “Why do I even try?!” I roar in frustration. “Face it! I’m never ever going to get into Gold, no matter how hard I work!” For a second, I can’t breathe, overwhelmed with hatred of myself and of the stupid impossible qualifying times of Gold, but then I take a deep breath and slightly calm down. I turn off my mom’s iPod, shutting up the screeching sound of The Script’s Hall of Fame. I usually love this song, but I’m just currently not in the mood for the pumping-up type of music.

I exit the bathroom, enter my room, and collapse on my bed, my muscles absolutely dead. Good thing it’s winter break right now; otherwise, I wouldn’t have the strength or motivation to work on homework, study for tests, or basically do anything productive.

I’m about to drift off into sleep when my phone suddenly blares my annoying ringtone that I have no idea how to change because my phone is confusing and a poo.

“Who the heck is calling me at this very inconvenient time?” I groan. Bleary-eyed, I reach over, grab my phone from my nightstand, and answer the call.

“Hello?”

“Kat!” Oh; it’s Joanna. Well, doesn’t she sound happy. Then again, why would she be upset? After all, she did make it into Gold, unlike Katarina the Terrible Swimmer Who Can’t Even Improve On the 50 Freestyle.

“What is it?” I respond.

If Joanna hears the exasperation in my voice, she doesn’t seem to care. “Guess who got first place in the girls’ 100 breaststroke at the Gold swim meet today?!?!?!” she squeals.

“Your mom,” I mutter under my breath, just soft enough so that Joanna doesn’t hear. Louder, I say, in a voice fakely coated with excitement, “Good job!”

“Thanks! How’d you do at your meet?” she questions.

“Um-” Click. I hang up on her, not ready to tell her about the results of my meet yet. I know, I know. That was totally rude.

My next call is from Jake, who also asks me about my meet. Truly annoyed, I yell at him for ten minutes about how it’s so impolite to ask a girl how they did at their meet when she’s obviously sad and not pumped.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry!” Jake apologizes once I reach the end of my lecture.

“Whatever,” I mutter, hanging up rudely - again.

Five minutes later, Calvin is calling me. Groaning with annoyance, I answer and yell in a harsh tone, “What is it!”

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of their bed this morning,” Calvin jokes.

“That saying is so old!” I complain. I can’t help but notice how much more deeper Calvin’s voice has gotten, though. Someone hit puberty.

Calvin laughs briefly, then shuts up. “So, Kat…”

“So…?”

“Are you okay?” Calvin asks in a concerned tone. “Joanna told me about you hanging up on her, and-”

“The only reason I did that was-” I interrupt, but Calvin cuts me off.

“Meet me and Joanna at Starbucks, like...now,” he orders. “And be prepared to explain everything.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Five minutes later, my mom has dropped me off at Starbucks. I hop off the car and enter the café, not sure if I’m going to regret my decision of coming here. I could have just as easily ignored Calvin’s message, stayed home, and slept, but truthfully, I want to see Joanna and Calvin after about two months of separation. They are two of my best friends, after all.

“Kat!” I jerk my head to the side to see that Joanna and Calvin are already sitting at a table with their drinks, gesturing for me to join them.

“Hey,” I greet them, coming over and plopping down in the chair across from Calvin. I don’t meet their gazes, not exactly wanting them to see how upset I still am about my failure of making it into Gold.

Joanna removes herself from the chair next to Calvin and sits next to me instead. “Hey, girl!” She gives me a hug. “I missed you!”

I briefly hug her in return before pulling back. “Whoa, you got prettier,” I note. She blushes. “It’s true.” And it is true. Joanna’s previous curly blonde hair has grown out to be slightly wavy, with streaks of brown in the blonde. In addition to that, she’s gotten taller and more muscle-y, probably from practicing with Gold everyday.

“You have too,” she compliments.

I shake my head. “I doubt that. I haven’t been swimming with Gold.”

“That doesn’t matter!” Joanna contradicts. “There are both good and bad sides to swimming with Gold. Practicing everyday for two hours pretty much prevents the growth of boobs, and at least you have some-”

Calvin coughs. “I’m right here, you guys.”

“Oh, sorry, Calv,” Joanna apologizes, taking a sip of her Starbucks drink.

I snatch the cup out of her hands and drink from it, savoring the warm sweetness of the peppermint hot chocolate before handing it back to her. “Nice choice of drink,” I compliment.

“Thanks.” She grins.

“So, Kat…” Calvin changes the topic. “How are you?”

For the first time in about two months, I actually glance at him, and my heart immediately leaps with surprise. He has changed - so much. Not in a bad way, either.

“I- uh, I’m okay,” I respond. Like Joanna, Calvin’s gotten taller and more muscle-y, totally different from the short, skinny boy I last saw two months ago. His black hair has grown flatter from the spikiness that it was before, and it now lays in a messy heap upon his head. However, it’s not a disgusting messy; it’s...it’s a cute kind of messy.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Kat, shut up. No falling for your best friend.

“Did you not make it into Gold or something?” Joanna asks me worriedly, interrupting me from my thoughts.

Oh, dang, she guessed it.

I just shrug. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I state bluntly.

“It’s okay, you know,” Calvin assures me. I avoid his gaze, not wanting my hormones to get all crazy again. It seriously scares me, as this is the first time I’ve actually felt affectionate toward a guy. “Sometimes, people fail at reaching their goals. You’ll make it next time though; I’m sure of it. You’re actually a really fast swimmer, you know that?”

“Sure,” I mumble sarcastically, getting up. “You know what, I’m done here. I’m going home. I have more important things to do.”

“Like what, bathe in your depression?” Joanna retorts. Whoa there; Joanna being sarcastic and rude? That’s definitely a first.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m intending to do,” I respond, not in a very nice tone myself. I whirl around and storm out of the café, not exactly sure of what motivated me to snap at her. It was definitely jealousy, but I’m not sure what I was jealous of - her being in Gold…

Or her being in Gold with Calvin.

It’s the morning of the first day back at school from winter break, and I’m actually feeling a bit better from the depressed mood I was in just a few weeks ago. Calvin’s everyday calls probably helped with that. It’s weird; I’m still not exactly sure of what liking someone feels like, but I’m pretty sure I do like Calvin more than a friend. After all, just hearing his voice causes shivers to run up my spine and my heart to thump and race even louder and faster than I thought possible. I know that I'm such a hypocrite for liking him. After all, only a few months ago did I tell Angelina that she would never have a chance with Harry because of his popularity, and now here I am, liking a popular guy myself. But this is different, I can't help but think. Calvin is only really popular at his school. At swim practice, he's average. Plus, I'm already best friends with him, so it'll be a lot easier to get him to fall in love with me than Angelina with Harry. ((Besides...I'm honestly helpless to my heart's longings.))

At the moment, I’m walking down the hallway from Texas History to science class. Once I reach my destination, I inwardly groan. I’m just too excited to learn more about all that chemistry stuff about those equation things with compounds like calcium chloryd, as you can obviously tell.

For a brief moment, I wonder if Harry is going to be in my science class this semester of the school year. I know for a fact that Jenna is - Jamie isn’t, though, to my disappointment - so if he is too, I can totally look for signs that they like each other! My heart races with excitement at the prospect of doing that instead of paying attention to the teacher whose lessons I really don’t care about.

Entering the science classroom, I immediately spot Jenna sitting at the back of the room, copying something down onto her agenda. I make my way to her side and plop my binder down on the desk next to hers. “Hey, Jen,” I greet.

Jenna looks up and waves at me, smiling. “Hey, Kat!” she responds before resuming her copying down of what I presume to be today’s science homework.

As she’s writing, I keep shooting anxious glances at the entrance to the classroom. What if Harry isn’t in this class after all? What am I going to do to keep myself preoccupied while the teacher drones on and on about stupid science stuff?!

Then, just when I’m about to tear my eyes away from the doorway, the familiar tall brown-haired boy enters the classroom, and my face immediately breaks out into a relieved grin. I spot him shooting a glance in me and Jenna’s direction, and inwardly, I let out a squeal.

Oh, what a wonderful start on their to-be relationship!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After science is lunch. Me and my Asian table are pretty much the most boisterous out of the whole lunchroom, as usual. Jenna is especially loud today. Hmm, I wonder why? CoughHarrycough.

Once the lunch-is-over bell rings, I immediately take off to the gym room, knowing that Heather will soon catch up. Might as well have a head start, right?

As if on cue, Heather sprints past me, causing me to scowl, give up, and slow down to a walk. Whatever. Running is for losers, anyway. Clearly, swimmers are the real deal.

I reach the gym room about thirty seconds later and enter to find Heather sitting on the very bottom row of the left end of the bleachers, in her perspective.

“You show-off,” I huff, joining her.

She grins. “You know it.”

Just then, the door to the gym swings open, and Harry, leading his group of friends, enters. As he passes me, I decide, right then and there, to talk to him - nicely. If he’s going to be dating Jenna soon, he’ll have to approve of her best friends, right?

“Hey, Harry,” I greet him, smiling. He just glances at me strangely, walking past me without even responding. Well, I guess I can’t blame him. After all, I have been pretty rude to him most of last semester, so why would I be talking to him now? Oh, if only he knew!

Then, I realize that Harry wasn’t the only one that was glancing at me strangely. I sheepishly grin at Heather, who now has an eyebrow raised in a questioning manner.

I’m still debating over whether I should tell her about my plans for Jenna and Harry when she asks, “Whoa, do you have a crush on him?!”

That’s it. I’m telling her. I can't have her think I'm actually romantically attracted to Harry. Ew; just the thought of it sends shivers down my spine.

“Yes, Heather,” I respond, my voice coated with sarcasm, “I totally have a crush on Harry, the guy I’ve been hating on for most of last semester.”

“Knew it!” Heather fists pumps the air. “Love-hate relationships are the best!”

“I was being sarcastic, hon,” I inform her. “The only reason I was nice to him was because I think Jenna likes him, and I’m planning to get them set up on a date in the future. First, though, he’s got to approve of her friends, right?”

“Wait, whoa there. Slow down.” Heather glances at me, eyes wide with surprise. “Jenna likes Harry?”

“Yeah,” I confirm. “Why; is that a bad thing?”

Heather shakes her head vigorously. “No! No; that’s actually so perfect!” She claps her hands and squeals a very un-Heather-like squeal, causing a few of the students entering the gym room to glance our way. This includes Jake, who I enthusiastically gesture at to come over and sit with me and Heather.

“Isn’t it?” I agree, as Jake makes his way towards us. “Jenna and Harry would make such a cute couple!”

“Especially because Harry can totally help Jenna get over her heartbreak from-” Heather is interrupted by Jake, who takes a seat next to her and yells a loud “hey”.

“Hey!” I greet, but all I can think about is, Heartbreak from what? Absentmindedly, I give Jake a brofist - basically a fist bump, just with a cooler name.

“Hey, Jake.” Heather smirks as she watches our hands make contact. Inwardly, I groan. Does she really still think we’re madly in love with each other?!?!

“Hi, Heather,” Jake responds, looking a bit uncomfortable. That’s not a surprise, though; he and Heather don’t really know each other all that well. Last semester, Heather was way too busy trying to get me and him together that she and Jake barely even talked at all.

“So, how’s life?” I question, trying to stir up conversation and get rid of the sudden awkwardness that settles in the air.

“Good,” Jake states simply.

“Great,” Heather adds.

“Lucky,” I comment. “On the contrary, life has been a huge meaniehead to me.”

“Because of your bad performance at your meet?” Jake guesses.

“You got it,” I confirm, brofisting him again. “You know me so well.”

“How bad did you do?” Heather questions me. “Did you not make it into Gold or something?”

“Yeah, I didn’t,” I answer, shrugging. “I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway, Heather, what were you saying before? Something about Jenna and heartbreak?”

“Wait, she didn’t tell you yet?!” Heather exclaims. I shake my head. “Oh. In that case, I’m not sure I’m the right person to explain…”

The tardy bell suddenly rings, temporarily preventing me from responding. Once the noise dies down, I say to Heather, “I don’t care; just tell me.”

“But-” Heather is interrupted by Mr. Scowl’s heck of a loud boom-y voice.

“Our first unit for this semester of gym is either tennis or softball; you choose,” Mr. Scowls begins, scowling. “Those who want to play softball, sit on the right side of the bleachers, in my perspective.” So basically, the left side of the bleachers, in my perspective. “Also, those who want to play tennis, sit on the left side of the bleachers, again in my perspective.” The right side, again in my perspective.

“Which unit are you guys choosing?” Heather asks.

“I’m not a guy,” I correct. “I’m a gal. Get your facts straight, loser.”

“Rude,” Heather chides.

“My specialty.” Heather fake-sniffles, and I giggle. “I love you!” I exclaim, hugging her.

Heather immediately grins. “Oh, I know you do.”

“We’re never going to stop loving each other,” I say. “After all, we’re Kather, right?”

Heather whoops. “Sisters before misters!” I laugh. “So, softball or tennis?” Heather asks, getting back down to business.

I shrug. “I don’t really care.”

“Do tennis with me!” Jake urges. “Please?”

Heather winks at me. “Yeah, Kat. Choose the tennis unit! Then you’ll be with” - she leans towards me, her voice dropping down to a whisper - “your precious Jakey Poo.”

Oh. My. Goodness.

“You know what, fine,” I give in, standing and pulling Heather to her feet. “But you have to choose the tennis unit too and later help force Harry to freaking talk to me.”

“I doubt he wants anything to do with you, but I’ll try,” Heather promises. Jake stands, and all three of us walk to the right end of the bleachers. I deliberately sit on the row right in front of Harry and his group of popular friends, and Heather and Jake join me.

“This is the perfect opportunity,” I hiss to Heather. “Talk to him, and I’ll find a way to join in.”

“Sure.” Heather glances behind her shoulder at Harry, who is laughing very noisily about something. “What’s so funny?” she questions.

Harry waits until his laughter dies down before answering, with a bright smile on his face, "Oh, just something... It's a long story."

"We've got time," I pipe up. Harry's smile immediately morphs into a frown when he sees me. Pretending to not notice that change, I continue, "After all, we don't actually start the unit until tomorrow."

Harry glances at me coldly. "Well, why I'm laughing is not any of your business," he retorts, "so why don't you just stop talking to me?"

Taken aback, I'm actually speechless for a moment, but that doesn't last long. Soon, anger and annoyance overcome me, and I snap, "I'm just trying to be nice here, okay? And if all you're going to do is be mean to me, then I should just stop trying to befriend you!"

"That'd be wonderful!" Harry shoots back.

"Good! Then get away from me!" At that, stupid, rude, annoying Harry, followed by his group of stupid popular friends, stand and storm off to sit far away from me. I glare after them, literally seething with rage.

"Whoa there. Chill." Heather places a hand on my shoulder, trying, in vain, to calm me down.

"That freaking jerk!"

"Kat!" Heather exclaims. "Get yourself together! Remember - Jenna and Harry? Your sole purpose to actually talk and make friends with Harry? You're making everything worse by yelling at him and then calling him names!"

Jenna and Harry... I struggle to think through the thick reddish fog of anger clouding my mind. / It's hard to think, as there's a thick reddish fog of anger clouding my mind at the moment.

"Jenna and Harry!" I cry out, suddenly recalling my goal to get them together. "Shoot! I just ruined everything! Shoot, shoot, shoot!"

"Just..." Heather sighs. "Don't talk to Harry for a while, okay? His hate for you will tone down eventually."

"Or not," Jake mutters quietly.

Great. Just great. My goal of Harry approving me as one of Jenna's closest friends, much less getting him and her to start dating, is going to be so much harder than I thought.

January passes by fairly quickly, loaded with both it's upsides and downsides. The downsides: I'm a hundred and fifty percent sure Harry hates my guts, which is not good for his and Jenna's future relationship. Maybe I should have listened to Heather when she told me not to talk to him for a while. I'm pretty sure he loathes me even more than he used to. Well, oops.

Now for the upsides: There's a lot, but most importantly...

I made it into Gold!!! At the January meet, on the last few days of January, I made my qualifying time in the 50 yard freestyle. I haven't gone to any of the Gold swim practices yet; my first one is today after school. I seriously can't wait to start swimming with Calvin again. Joanna too, I guess.

In addition to that, Jake and Heather have gotten really close, thank goodness. I don't think I could've put up with any more of the awkwardness we had on the first day of this semester's gym.

Another upside is that Calvin and I have been calling each other almost every weekend. Our conversations are really sweet, mainly filled with "I miss you"'s.

Many times this past month, I've considered telling my Asian besties about my liking for him. Truthfully, my feelings confuse me, and I want to appeal to them for help. However, I end up not telling them, as I'm afraid Calvin will somehow find out about it. If he does, then our friendship will be awkward as heck, and boy, do I not want that to happen.

"So, you excited for swim practice?" Heather asks. We're both currently in study hall class; I'm looking at the clock impatiently, willing the second hand to turn more quickly, while Heather is on her iPad, typing away.

"You bet I am!" I answer, holding back from letting out a full-out squeal. I don't think Lily would've been very happy with that.

A minute until the bell rings.

"That's awesome!" Heather grins, her gaze still fixated on her iPad screen. "I'm so happy for you."

Fifty-five seconds.

"So excited," I breathe. I remove my binder from my desk's cubby and get ready to sprint out of the classroom with it.

Forty-five seconds.

I watch as Heather shuts off her iPad.

Forty seconds.

She places both her binder and iPad on her desk.

Thirty-five seconds.

Lily, from the other side of me, neatly arranges her pile of books on top of her thick binder.

Thirty seconds.

Heather sneezes. "Bless you," I say.

Twenty-five seconds.

"Thanks," Heather responds, flashing me a smile.

Twenty seconds.

"When it gets to ten seconds, that's when we count down," I tell Heather.

Fifteen seconds.

"It's a plan," Heather agrees.

Ten seconds.

"Nine..."

"Eight..."

"Seven..."

"Six..."

"Five..."

"Four..."

I will myself not to scream. Not in front of Lily, who scares the heck out of me. (look ahead...repetition much?)

"Three..."

Almost there...

"Two..."

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

"One..."

The bell rings, and I sprint out of the classroom, grab my backpack from my locker, and ride the bus home. Once I enter my house, I'm literally screaming and jumping with excitement. When 3:45 arrives, I think I'm dancing the whole entire time while putting on my swimsuit and parka and getting my swim bag ready. I finish preparing for practice in approximately five minutes, which is a new record for me. Feeling proud, I spend a few seconds congratulating myself and giving myself a pat on the back before I hop onto my bike and start pedaling towards the Rosewood pool.

Gold practice, here I come!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I'm parking my bike on the bike stand near the pool when I suddenly hear the familiar voice of Brianna close to my ear. "So I heard you made it into Gold, huh?"

I turn around, grinning. "Bri!" I squeal, giving my Asian-slash-swim-team bestie a brief tight hug before letting go.

"I'm so glad you're in Gold!" she squeals back.

"I am too!" I start towards the inside area to set down my bag, and Brianna follows.

Once I throw my swim bag beside somebody's green one, Brianna says, "Let's go outside; it's really hot in here."

"Oh, sorry," I say, smirking. Brianna rolls her eyes, laughing. "Kidding!"

We both exit the inside area and walk over to the bleachers where the Silver group - a.k.a. the group that I'm not in anymore!!!! - puts their swim bags. Joanna and Calvin are sitting together on the very bottom row of the bleachers, seeming deeply engrossed in a conversation with each other.

"Wait." Brianna puts a hand on my shoulder, preventing me from going over to them and interrupting their conversation that I'm not visually enjoying right now. Yeah, you could say that I'm feeling jealous.

"What?" I ask, failing to mask the impatience in my voice.

Brianna points to Calvin and Joanna, who are now laughing together about something. "Don't they look adorable together?!" Brianna gushes. Adorable?! Adorable?!?!? No. No way.

"Let's not interrupt them," Bri continues. "Here, come with me instead, and I'll introduce you to some of my Gold friends."

"But-"

"Come on!" Brianna links arms with me and drags me over to a tall blonde dude standing just outside the inside area, looking at something on his iPhone. "Yo, Christopher!"

Christopher looks up from his phone and, seeing Brianna, grins. "Hey." His gaze travels to me. "Who is this?"

"I'm Kat." I flash him a peace sign.

"Are you new?"

"Yep, I made it into Gold just yesterday."

Christopher high-fives me. "Congrats! Welcome to the family."

"Thanks!" I squeal. I start jumping up and down, suddenly feeling hyperactive with the actual sense of being in Gold. "I'm so excited!"

"Not trying to kill your hopes and dreams, but there really isn't anything to be excited for," Brianna warns. "The workouts are hard, especially when you're new."

"Oh, but I don't care!" I declare. "I already made it into Gold; measly workouts are nothing!" I fist-pump the air.

Christopher laughs. “We’ll see about that.” He glances at me, then at Brianna. “So, you two go to the same school?” he asks.

I nod. “Yep!”

“Nice. Do you know Harry and Angelina? They go to your school too.”

“Yeah, I know them,” I answer.

“She hates them,” Brianna informs.

Christopher looks surprised. “Why? Well, I guess I understand why you hate Angelina. She’s a heck of an annoying girl. But why Harry?”

I shrug. “I don’t hate him. I used to.”

“Why?” Christopher questions.

“He was annoying. Still is, but I’ve learned to deal with it.”

“Okay, Harry is not annoying,” Brianna argues.

“He is to me.”

“The only girls that actually think he’s annoying secretly like him,” Christopher says. “You know his last girlfriend? Lacey…?”

“Lucy,” I correct.

“Ah. Well, Lucy used to constantly complain that Harry was so annoying, but in reality, she thought of him romantically. So I don’t know, but it sounds like you sure do like him, Kat.” Christopher winks.

“Okay, that is gross,” I declare.

Christopher just smirks, saying nothing.

I watch as people start to file out from the inside area, and I realize that practice is starting. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are the days that Gold - as well as Silver, but we're talking about the more-important Gold at the moment - have drylands before practice. Today is Monday, so clearly, there are drylands.

"Kaaat!" My heart immediately starts pounding when I hear Calvin's voice calling me from behind. I turn around to see him running over towards me, with Joanna slowly trailing him.

"Hey," I greet him, and I actually hug him for once. Wow, I can literally feel the six-pack under his shirt- Ewwwwwww, gross thoughts. Don't think that.

"Hey, Kat," Joanna says once Calvin and I part. She smiles slightly.

I force a grin. "Hey."

She reaches out her arms, looking as if she's about to wrap me in a hug, when the Gold coach strides up to the group of Goldians, or whatever we're called, and announces, "We'll be running the mile toda-"

Before he even finishes his sentence, I'm already groaning with annoyance. Everyone turns to stare at me, including Harry and Angelina, both of whom I suddenly spot standing near the coach. Murmurs of "who is she?" and "wow, she really needs to shut her mouth" break out among the crowd of Goldians, mostly from people I don't know.

"I can hear you guys," I say, amused. "Well, first of all, my name is Kat. I'm talented at pretending to be sick in order to skip school, forgetting to do my homework, and not studying for tests only to end up failing them. In other words, I'm pretty much anything but Asian."

I'm about to continue when the coach gives me a death glare, and the creepiness of it pretty much shuts me up.

"As I was saying," the coach barks, causing everyone's attention to avert from me to him, "we will be running the mile today. If you want, you can quickly go get your phones and earbuds to listen to music. In no later than five minutes, however, meet at the usual place where we run the mile.”

At that, about 95% of the Goldians enter the inside area to fetch their phones and earbuds. The 5% slowly slinking past the pool towards a sidewalk right outside of the Rosewood swimming pool area - a.k.a. the sidewalk that leads down many blocks of houses, the sidewalk where the Rosewood swimmers run the mile, and also the sidewalk I use to ride my bike to swim practice everyday - includes me, who does not have a smartphone and instead owns a poopy thing that can't play music, text, or even connect to wifi. And my mom has the freaking nerve to call it a phone... / who does not have a phone that can play music and instead owns a crappy thing that my mom has the nerve to call a phone.

At the very edge of the sidewalk, where the coach now stands, I halt and watch in jealousy as Calvin and Joanna stroll together towards us, each holding an iPhone. However, I'm not sure of what I'm jealous of - their phones, or them walking together?

"Kat, you ready?" Joanna asks me, grinning brightly.

"Never," I sigh.

Calvin chuckles, which makes me smile. Wow, that boy's laughter can light up the world. Inwardly, I cringe at the cheesiness of that thought.

"So, what's your best mile time, Calv?" Joanna asks. Whoa, thanks for including me in this conversation, Jo. Then again, she probably already knows all my horrendous mile times from Silver.

"Bri!" I call to my Asian bestie as I spot her heading towards the sidewalk, just as Calvin answers, "9:06."

Brianna comes over to me, an Android phone in her hand. Not an iPhone, but it'll do. "You're running with me," I tell her, stealing her phone, "and we're listening to music together. Hold on, you're not going to run at Heather-speed, are you?"

Brianna laughs, attaching her earbuds into her phone. "No way. You don't have to worry about that."

"Brianna's a bad runner," Calvin informs me, grinning at her. "I mean, she isn't bad, but she never actually tries."

"Nice!" I high-five Brianna. "We can not try together!"

Brianna cheers, and Calvin, looking up from his watch, announces, "Thirty more seconds until we start."

I smile at his watch. I can't even express how grateful I am for that thing. Without it, I probably never would have been such good friends with this beautiful guy standing before me.

...Wow, I really do have it bad, don't I?

"Well, I'm pumped!" Joanna exclaims enthusiastically, bouncing on her feet. I glance at her strangely.

"She's changed," Calvin explains. "She actually likes running now."

Jokingly, Brianna adds, "She's gone to the dark side!" causing me to break out into an oh-so-attractive spluttering laughter.

"Twenty seconds," Calvin informs, shutting me up.

"Great," I mutter, turning on Brianna's phone and unlocking it with the four numbers "0314". Even if she hadn't told me her passcode a while back, I still probably would have guessed it, as her birthday is March 14.

"Whatcha doing?" Brianna asks, peering over my shoulder as I click on the music app.

"Just seeing if you have a good music taste or not," I answer. I scroll through her songs, which mainly consists of Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood, and only a tiny sliver of pop artists. However, that tiny sliver would do. As quick as I can, I make a playlist of all the pop-genre songs she has, and miraculously, I finish just before the mile run begins.

"Go!" I hear the coach's starting call, and I immediately slip Brianna's phone into the waistband of my Nike shorts.

"Hopefully, it doesn't fall out," I mumble, handing one earbud to Brianna while placing the other one in my left ear. We start jogging slowly as "Hall of Fame" by the Script comes on.

"Oooooh, my meet song!" Brianna cheers.

"My meet song is better than yours!" I yell.

"You did not just go there!"

"Well, guess what? I just did!"

We run the rest of the mile talking - well, more like yelling - and getting/get about ten stomach cramps in the process. Running while talking just does not work.

"You girls got a mile time of eleven minutes and six seconds," the coach tells us once we reach the beginning end of the sidewalk. I nod in satisfaction, handing Brianna’s phone and earbuds back to her. The coach glares at me. "Kat, I expect you to get a better time next time."

My jaw drops. Um, is this for real?! Is he seriously chastising only me when both me and Brianna got the same exact time?! What?! I can't believe this!

Agitated, I accidentally ditch Brianna and storm past the Rosewood pool into the inside area, where Calvin, after seeing my annoyed expression, asks me what's wrong.

"Nothing!" I bark. "Just nothing!"

I'm about to angrily zip open my swim bag, rip out my mesh bag, and dump it onto the ground when Calvin gently grasps my arm and turns me to face him. "You really expect me to believe that? Really...what's wrong?"

My eyes meet his, and I suddenly don't feel as aggravated anymore. In fact, I actually feel content. Inwardly swooning at Calvin's intense gaze, I answer calmly, "The coach was being a poo, and being the mood-swingy teenager that I am, I got mad. I'm good now, though."

"Oh, okay." Calvin smiles. Oh my god, that smile. "That's great."

"Yeah," I mumble, very aware of his hand still resting on my extremely sweaty arm.

"Calvin, quickly!" Joanna strides up to him and tugs at his arm, causing his hand to fall to his side. "I want to get into the water as soon as possible. I'm so sweaty it's disgusting." Joanna's gaze travels to me, and her eyes widen as if just now realizing my presence. Wow...what happened to being best friends, like we were in Silver? "You too, Kat!"

I just nod curtly, unzipping my swim bag and pulling out my mesh bag. "So, where are Nicola and Jeremy?" I ask. Before ditching them to move up to Gold, Nicola and Jeremy were Joanna and Calvin's best friends, respectively. They're not here today, making me wonder where they could be.

"Oh, they skip practice every Monday," Calvin explains, as the three of us exit the inside area. "I don't exactly know why though."

"We aren't very close anymore," Joanna adds. We make our way to the end of the pool farther away from the inside area, where the Gold swimmers start their practice.

Calvin nods. "Ever since they moved up without us, we've just sort of spread apart." Like Joanna and I, I can't help but think sadly.

"Oh." I follow Calvin and Joanna's examples as they dump their mesh bags at the very edge of the pool. Glancing down at the slightly rippling water, I suddenly feel a rush of exhilaration about the prospect of finally swimming with the Gold level. "I'm excited!" I can't help but squeal. I'm about to put on my swim cap when I realize that I forgot my water bottle inside.

While quickly racing towards the inside area, I pass...guess who?

Harry!

And this is my first time seeing him shirtless. Oh my goodness, now that's visually attractive. Jenna would totally love those abs!

Smiling to myself, I enter the inside place, quickly grab my water bottle, exit, and head towards Calvin and Joanna. They are currently standing side by side at the edge of the pool, capping each other. "Capping" is basically a swimmer's term for putting a swim cap on. See, "putting each other's swim caps on each other" just takes too much time to say and is very repetitive and annoying, so we swimmers use "capping each other" instead. Much easier, eh?

"Hey, what do we do for warm-up?" I ask Brianna, who is standing near Joanna and Calvin and talking with Christopher and Harry. Once I enter the conversation circle, Harry immediately walks away, leaving just me, Christopher, and Brianna.

"A 400 yard freestyle; a 300 yard IM of 50 yard drill and 25 yard swim repeating; a 200 yard IM kick, Mondays and Wednesdays are on your front, Tuesdays and Thursdays are on your back, and Fridays and Saturdays are with a kickboard; and four 50 yard sprints on a minute, first two are freestyle and the last two are choice," Brianna explains rapidly.

My eyes widen. Ohhhhkay. That is pretty...overwhelming. In Silver, the warm-ups were always so short, like a 200 freestyle only, and in Gold...oh goodness. Yes, I did feel like I could do anything at first, but this... I wasn't expecting this!

"Is this practice getting difficult yet?" Christopher smirks.

I lightly punch him in the arm. "Shut up."

Christopher laughs before putting on his goggles and jumping into the lane that Harry is currently swimming in. Brianna dives into the water after him.

Realizing that I'm now the only one out of the water, I quickly cap myself and put on my goggles. Then, I dive into the lane Calvin and Joanna are swimming in, the lane right next to Brianna, Christopher, and Harry's.

I dolphin kick exactly once before reaching the surface of the water and immediately taking a breath. I swim the 400 freestyle with a breathing pattern of every two strokes, and once I finish, I'm totally exhausted and out of breath. However, I barely even get five seconds of rest before I have to start on my 300 yard IM.

I sigh. Warm-up isn't even finished, and I'm already totally hating Gold practice.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After that warmup - that very long and strenuous warmup - I am totally fatigued.

The coach is explaining the first main workout set to us Goldians while I'm just striving not to drown. In my lane, the water is so deep that I can barely stand, but the pool wall is too crowded with people hanging onto it. Therefore, I have no choice but to look like a drowning weirdo. Seriously. I have to stand on my tippy-toes, and even then, my face is barely above water. It's a good thing I honestly don't mind looking like a drowning weirdo in front of others; otherwise, I probably would have died of embarrassment, right there, right then.

Since I'm so concentrated on not drowning, I end up not hearing a word the coach says. "What's the set?" I ask Calvin, tapping his shoulder gently.

"Look at the sheet," he answers, gesturing to a sheet of paper stuck on a kickboard. It has the main sets listed on it, which I find strangely fascinating.

"That's so cool!" I yell, feeling the need to express my emotions. "In Silver," I continue in quite a loud tone, "we never had papers like this!"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After the first set - an all-freestyle set - I'm already dead. It did not help that the coach forced me to do two dolphin kicks off each wall and breathe every three strokes. Since I have a bad habit of doing one dolphin kick off every wall and breathing every two strokes, I was seriously suffering from lack of oxygen throughout the whole set.

After the second set, I die once again.

After the third set, I die for the third time.

What even am I going to do about this? A girl just can’t die three times everyday.

After that terrible practice is over, most of the Goldians immediately climb out of the pool into the freezing cold air and run, screaming, to the inside area. I, on the other hand, am smarter than them and instead grab my mesh bag, dump it into the pool, and, using my mesh bag as a kickboard, start kicking breaststroke to the end of the pool opposite from where the Goldians started and ended practice. The end that I'm kicking towards is closer to the inside area, so if I get out there, I won't be cold for as long.

Soon, I arrive, and I prepare myself to face the freezing air outside the pool. Just as I pull my now soaked mesh bag out of the water and dump it at the edge of the pool beside my water bottle, I hear someone from behind me yell, "Wait up, Kat!" I glance over my shoulder to see Joanna, followed by Calvin, kicking over to me with their mesh bags.

"Oh, hey!" I smile, remembering when the three of us used to do this together all the time in Silver.

"You ready?" Calvin asks, placing his mesh bag beside mine.

Joanna puts hers beside his. "Not really, but let's do it."

"And this time," Calvin says to me, "please don't falter before running inside. You did that before, and we all know how badly that turned out..." Aw, considerate.

"Oh, I've learned my lesson," I assure him.

We quickly climb out of the pool and grab our mesh bags and water bottles. Suddenly feeling the cold wind searing against my skin, I let out a scream and run towards the inside area, hoping the lifeguard doesn't catch me this time. Even if he does...too bad, I'm still running.

I enter the inside area and jump over about five swim bags before reaching my own. I dump my mesh bag and water bottle next to it before taking out my towel and wrapping it around my frozen body.

Brianna, whose bag is near mine, spots me and comes over. "How was practice?" she questions.

"Hard," I grumble, slipping on my parka.

Brianna smiles sympathetically. "Yeah... It gets easier though, so don't worry."

Oh, but I am worrying. Now that I've actually practiced with Gold, I seem to have lost all motivation to continue being in this level. Even though I do feel fast swimming with people like Christopher and Brianna, the difficulty of the workouts just makes it not very worth it.

Sighing, I stuff my mesh bag, water bottle, and towel into my swim bag, and, with (a heavy) displeasure weighing on my shoulders, I bike my way home.

The next day is Tuesday, a school day, and I'm not happy about it. I'm the most exhausted I've ever been, having died three times at practice the night before. YOLO or YODO or whatever is definitely not true anymore. Plus, since Gold practice is freaking two hours long, I barely had any time to finish my homework when I got home. Therefore, I had to stay up until midnight, and now - in fourth period science class - I face the consequences. I'm pretty much half asleep when I'm supposed to be looking for signs that Jenna and Harry like each other. Every time I sneak a glimpse at Harry to see if he's glancing me and Jenna's way, I end up spacing out and staring at him for a long, long while. And I mean, I wouldn't mind gazing at him if he was Calvin-hot, but the thing is, he isn't.

For the rest of the school day, I'm also pretty much half asleep. This includes gym, where Jake hits me in the head with his tennis racket numerous times to keep me awake, and study hall, where Heather gushes to me about how loving it was of Jake for continuously knocking me in the head with the racket.

In addition to that, even though I'm obviously not in any shape to exercise, my mom makes me go to swim practice. For the whole two hours, I feel like I'm swimming in a pool of syrup. That may sound tasty and even fun, but trust me - it isn't. I can barely breathe, stroke, or kick without getting absolutely fatigued, and the water is definitely not tasty.

This goes on for the next few days until Friday night, when I finally get a good night's rest. I crash at 7:00 PM, which is probably a new record for me. Wow, I'm just on a roll, aren't I? Setting two new records in one week!

The next morning, I wake up at 7:40 AM for swim practice. Gold has 8:00 AM morning practices on the Saturday of every week, as if swimming two hours each weekday isn't enough.

Despite sleeping at seven the previous night, I'm feeling sluggish and weary, causing me to have to take eighteen whole minutes to get ready for swim practice. This leaves me exactly two minutes to bike towards the Rosewood pool, which - at my rate - is not at all enough time.

I end up arriving five minutes late, much to the coach's annoyance. Managing to ignore his really creepy evil stare, I hop into the heated-up pool and begin the daily warm-up, which, even after five days, I'm still not totally used to.

After all the Goldians that actually came to morning practice - about eight - finish, we start the first set. I haven’t exactly mastered the skills I’ve been working on the entire week, but I do have to give myself credit with the fact that I’m able to kick two dolphin kicks off almost every single wall and breathe every three strokes most of the time.

Once we Goldians finish the first set, we begin the second set. Once the second set is finished, the coach tells us all to get out of the pool and stand in a line.

"Is he joking?" I exclaim loudly, climbing out of the water. Calvin hushes me.

"No," he answers.

"Then why the heck are we standing here in deathly cold air?!" I hiss.

"We're probably going to do relays, like we do at every Saturday practice," Joanna suggests.

"We do relays at every Saturday practice?!"

Calvin nods. Ooh, maybe Gold isn't as terrible as I once thought.

"Hey, slowpokes," Christopher barges into the conversation, "get in a line."

"Well, aren't you just the nicest?" I mumble, lining up in between him and Joanna.

"I totally am," Christopher responds, just as the coach calls, "How many of you are here today?"

"Eight," Brianna, from the other side of Christopher, answers.

"Alright, you all are going to be split into groups of two for relays," the coach explains. Immediately, Joanna grabs Calvin's arm, much to my dismay. "And I'm choosing the groups," the coach quickly adds. Thank goodness.

In the end, Joanna gets paired up with Christopher, Calvin with Brianna, and this dude that I don't really know with this other dude that I also don't really know. Guess who that leaves?

Me and...

Harry a.k.a. Jenna's lover.

I honestly can't believe my luck. This is the perfect opportunity to get him to be friends with me. He can't run away from me now!

Boldly, I walk up to Harry, who is currently talking to Christopher.

"Heyyyy," I greet, interrupting their conversation.

"Hiiii," Christopher replies. "Okay, I'm just going to leave you two lovers - I mean partners - alone." He flashes a grin at me before turning around to talk with Joanna and Calvin.

Lovers?! Please tell me he's joking.

"So," I say to Harry, who glares at me in annoyance. Okay, wow, can I not say one word without him totally hating on me? I feel a flash of anger within me, but I quickly push it away for the sake of Harry and Jenna’s future date. "I guess now you're pretty much forced to talk to me, huh?" I continue, smiling pleasantly.

Harry rolls his eyes. "Okay, I'm just going to be blunt here. I don't like you."

"Yeah, I think I got the memo," I tell him jokingly.

Harry is about to say something back when the coach begins explaining the first relay. “This relay will be a choice relay,” he starts. “Each of you will swim a 50 of any stroke, with the exception of freestyle.”

“So, breaststroke, butterfly, and backstroke,” I mumble to myself.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Harry retorts. My brow creases. Wow, this guy is irritating me, and the fact that it’s 9:45 in the morning does not help.

I decide to switch the topic to avoid going all Hulk on him, again for the sake of Harry and Jenna’s future date. “I’ll go first on the relay,” I volunteer, stepping forward so that I’m at the very edge of the pool.

Harry roughly pulls me back to where I was originally standing. “Excuse you? Who made you the leader here? I’m going first.”

Without thinking, I snap in return, “Um, who made you the leader here? Everyone knows that the fastest swimmer should go last in a relay. You’re obviously the fastest, as I just recently moved up from Silver.”

“Too bad,” Harry retorts. “I’m still going first.”

I clench my teeth. What exactly is his goal, to make me absolutely furious? Well, I definitely won’t let him achieve it! “Fine,” I respond, grinning with remarkable composure.

For a moment, Harry looks surprised, but he quickly covers it up with annoyance. “Finally you agree,” he mumbles.

I force a laugh.

“Also,” he adds, “swim butterfly. It’s the fastest stroke besides freestyle.”

What?! Butterfly?! Ew! I absolutely loathe that stroke, and now Harry’s forcing me to swim it, without my consent? Um, how about no.

“Excuse you?! I hate butterfly!” I exclaim.

“Too bad! You’re swimming it. We’ve got to win this relay, and, as I’ve said before, it’s the fastest stroke besides freestyle.”

I shake my head. “Um, no way. Not if I absolutely suck at it.” I don’t know why I blurt the next part out, but I’m just so infuriated by his bossiness and rudeness and stubbornness that I do. “I’m definitely swimming breaststroke instead.”

Harry’s jaw drops. “Are you an idiot?! Dude, at least swim backstroke if you don’t like butterfly!”

“Five seconds until we start!” the coach calls.

“I suck at backstroke too!” I tell Harry.

“I don’t care, okay?! Just swim anything besides breaststroke!” he orders.

“But-”

“Two seconds!”

Harry yells, “I don’t want to hear anything else come out of that annoying mouth of yours!”

I’m about to holler something back at him when the coach announces, “Swimmers, take your mark…”

Harry throws one last glare at me before moving into the position of a swimmer about to dive into the water.

“...Go!” the coach calls, and Harry and Goldians from the other relay teams dive into the pool.

“So. Freaking. Irritating,” I mumble to myself, glaring at Harry while he’s swimming butterfly. You know what, I think. I am so going to swim breaststroke. I am not going to listen to that poophead.

And that’s what I do. When Harry touches the wall, finishing his race, I dive in and swim breaststroke for the entire 50 yards. I climb out of the pool with pride, not caring that we most likely got last place out of all the teams.

“Hey,” I greet an open-mouthed, wide-eyed, enraged-looking Harry.

“Dude, what was that for?!” Harry demands. “Why did you swim breaststroke?! Thanks to you, we lost!”

“Oh, did we?” I muse. “Well, guess what?” I smile sweetly. “I don’t even give a flip.”

Harry clenches his teeth. “Were my instructions seriously not clear enough?!”

I flash him an evil glare that I hope scared the pee out of him. “Well, maybe I would’ve actually followed them if you were being nice!”

Harry just glances at me crossly. “Wow, aren’t you something?” he snarls.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I hope you do know that if you want someone to be nice to you, you should be nice to them…not do something the person doesn’t want you to do.”

I smile. What can I say? I don’t roll that way. “Well, I’m special.”

Harry nods curtly. “Yeah, you are. And excessively annoying.”

Ugh. This is impossible, getting Harry and Jenna together. I can’t even complete the simple task of becoming friends with Harry. When am I ever going to get to the date planning part?

In both frustration and determination, I decide that I should do something that I never ever do - apologize. It’s going to be hard, but everyone knows that achieving a goal isn’t an easy thing to do.

“Okay,” I begin. “I know why you dislike me. It’s because I was really mean to you last semester, correct?”

For a moment, Harry doesn’t reply. Then, he nods slowly, pursing his lips.

Great. Here comes the apologizing part. Taking a deep breath, I continue, “Well, I’m so sorry about that, but I did it only because I was really upset about my ex-best friend, Angelina, constantly ditching me for you. However, now I know that I shouldn’t have taken all my anger out on you. It wasn’t your fault, not at all; it was hers...and I’m sorry about that and pretty much everything that happened last semester, I really am-"

"Hold up," Harry says quietly. I quickly shut up. "Are you actually apologizing?"

"Uh, yeah," I answer.

"I didn't even know you were capable of doing that," Harry admits.

"Wow, thaaaanks," I drawl out.

Harry smiles - and not a smirking kind of smile, but an actual genuine smile that allows his dimples to appear on his cheeks. Aw, dimples. Wouldn't Jenna just love those on her future boyfriend!

"Whoa. Did you just smile in front of me?" I ask in disbelief.

Harry nods, his brow creasing in confusion.

I grin. "I didn't even know you were capable of doing that."

Harry laughs. "Touché.Touché."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next - and last, sadly - relay is a freestyle relay. I manage to convince Harry to let me go first, and this time, we place second out of all the relay teams. Not bad, not bad!

“So, I heard you’re, like, superhuman when it comes to breaststroke,” I tell Harry once we finish our warmdown, a 200 yard freestyle.

Harry chuckles, running a hand through his wet brown hair as he shoves his goggles into his mesh bag. “Uh, I wouldn’t say superhuman,” he corrects.

“Uh-huh,” I mumble sarcastically, shoving my cap and goggles into my own bag. “I’ve seen you swim breaststroke, bro, and you are as close to superhuman as a human can be.”

“I’m honestly not,” Harry responds. His modesty is annoying me. I mean, if I was as good as him, then I’d be bragging to everyone.

“I mean, I’m not even in TAGS,” he continues.

Uh...what? For this past week in Gold, Brianna has taught me like twenty new different swimmer terms - examples being test set, inverted fly kick, and get-out swim - but not one of those was TAGS.

“What’s TAGS?” I question.

“Uh… It basically stands for Texas Age Group Swimming, and it’s a group of freakishly fast swimmers from all over the state. There are a few meets dedicated to the TAGS group, but you have to make a certain time to get in.”

“And I’m guessing the time is freakishly fast, so you’re not in it,” I conclude.

He nods. “Pretty much.” Glancing at me strangely as I dunk my water bottle and mesh bag into the pool, he asks, “What are you doing?”

“Kicking to the other end,” I explain, “since it’s closer to the inside area than this end is.”

Harry pulls his own mesh bag and water bottle into the pool. “Smart,” he compliments.

“Yeah…” I begin kicking to the other end, Harry at my side. “Calvin, Joanna, and I used to do this together all the time.”

“I see.” Harry gestures to Calvin and Joanna, who have already reached the other end of the pool. Watching them climb out together - without me - makes me feel jealous, left out, lonely, upset, and just all these miserable emotions. “Are they official, or what?” Harry asks, which does not at all help.

I shrug, willing myself not to snap at him. Remember Jenna and Harry, I tell myself.

“Well, they should be.” Harry smiles as he watches them run to the inside area, side-by-side. “They’d look cute together.”

I shrug. “Sure.”

“That sounds a lot like sarcasm,” Harry notices.

“It isn’t,” I lie.

Soon, we reach the end of the pool. I climb out and run inside, quickly followed by Harry.

“You cold?” Christopher calls to us as we enter.

“Very!” I answer, my teeth chattering. I leap towards my swim bag, which - before practice - I strategically placed near Harry’s. Never would I have guessed that today would be the day I would become friends with him.

Wrapping my towel around myself, I watch as Harry takes his phone out from his swim bag and looks at something on it. Five minutes later, Harry’s gaze is still planted on the phone screen, making me wonder what in the actual heck he’s looking at.

“Hey,” I greet him, deciding to be straightforward. “What are you looking at?”

Harry glances up at me. “Oh, hey. Uh, I’m just reading a book.” He shows me his phone screen, which, sure enough, is open on a page filled with text.

At this, I can’t help but burst into laughter. “You read books?”

Harry looks baffled and slightly offended. “Uh, yeah… What about it?”

“It’s just…” I shake my head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, this is so mean. I just never thought a popular dude would spend his free time reading books.”

“Hey, just because I’m popular, doesn’t mean I don’t have any passions,” Harry defends.

“Yeah, but I thought your passion would be something sports-related.”

“Ugh. That is such a stereotype.”

“Okay, bro, I’m sorry,” I apologize reluctantly. “But tell me one thing - why the heck do you love reading so much?”

Immediately, Harry’s eyes light up. Oh, great... I feel a long explanation coming along. “To me," he begins, "reading is basically a huge adventure. I never get bored listening to what the main character is thinking, saying, or doing; it is so interesting to be able to take a peek into the life they're living. I never get annoyed with all the plot twists in stories; I yearn for them. I never get aggravated with the author's style of writing; they're all so unique and one-of-a-kind-"

"Okay!" I exclaim. "But what good does reading do for you?"

"Well, first of all," Harry starts, "reading books is basically my escape from the cruel thing called life. It's basically my stress-reliever, as it relaxes me when I’m feeling annoyed, frustrated, upset-”

“But you’re not upset right now," I remark.

Harry laughs. “I don’t just read books when I’m upset. I also read them for fun.”

“How is reading fun though?”

“How is reading not fun?”

“Well, staring at words on a page isn’t exactly my definition of having a blast.” I shrug. “That’s why I just don’t read.”

“You what?!” Harry exclaims loudly, causing a few heads to turn our way.

“I don’t read books," I repeat.

For a few seconds, Harry just stares at me, his jaw dropped. “Okay, that’s it,” he then declares. “I am going to show you the beautiful and wondrous world of reading by taking you book shopping. Meet me at Books ‘N Nooks tomorrow at 3 PM, okay?”

“Um, no way,” I rebuff immediately. Then, I come up with an idea that causes me to totally change my mind. “Wait! Actually, I will, but on one condition. Can my book-loving friend, Jenna, come too?”

Harry shrugs. “Yeah, I don’t care,” he says nonchalantly. I smirk because I know that he does care and that inside, he’s squealing excitedly at the prospect of becoming good friends - and later, developing a romantic relationship - with Jenna.

“Okay, cool.” I grin and shove my mesh bag, water bottle, and towel into my swim bag. “Well, I gotta go,” I announce as I slip myself into my parka and sling my swim bag over one shoulder. “My mom’s probably wondering where I am.” I roll my eyes. “These past few days, she’s been making me do tons of math problems out of this workbook thing. Like...great. Extra homework. Love you so much, Mom.”

Harry laughs. I just shrug and start towards the exit of the inside area, but I’m stopped by him calling, “Wait!”

“Yeah?” I ask, turning around to watch him leap over a few swim bags to get to me.

“You know, Kat…” he starts, smiling slightly. “You’re okay.”

At this statement, I can’t help but feel somewhat victorious. After five long months of being hated on by Harry, he’s finally realized that I’m not such a bad person. But I've realized something about him too. I’ve realized that beneath his popular and snooty exterior lies his nerdiness, his sweetness, and his funniness. I’ve realized what a good person he actually is and that Jenna totally deserves someone like him.

So I smile back and say, “You are too.”

The next day at 3:00 PM, Jenna and I are standing at the entrance of Books ‘N Nooks, waiting for Harry to arrive. Earlier today, I had gone over to Jenna’s house and forced her to wear a pretty turquoise-colored dress, much to her confusion.

“I still don’t see why I had to dress up fancily just to go book shopping,” Jenna complains to me now.

“It’s always great to look good when going somewhere, right?”

“Uhhh...sure,” Jenna answers. “But this is book shopping, not prom night!”

I just smile, absentmindedly watching as a small gray -- passes us and parks a few yards from where Jenna and I are standing. The door to the shotgun seat opens, and out steps Harry.

“Hey!” I call to him, waving vigorously.

He jogs towards us, a huge smile on his face. Aw, someone’s excited to see their future girlfriend!

“Hi,” Jenna greets when he reaches us.

“Hey,” he responds, shaking her hand. “I’m Harry.”

Jenna smiles. “I’m Jenna.”

“You look familiar,” Harry remarks. “I can’t exactly remember where I’ve seen you before, though.” Ooh, acting dumb to hide the fact that he actually goes all stalker on her. Clever.

“Well, you’re in my science class,” Jenna suggests, “so maybe that’s why you recognize me.”

“Also,” I add, “you accidentally dropped her boxes of chocolate last semester, and you apologized quite effusively.”

Jenna laughs. “Oh, yeah. I remember that.”

Harry scrunches up his nose in confusion. “Uhh...I don’t.”

Yeah. Right.

“It was a while ago,” Jenna states. “Maybe that’s why.”

Harry shrugs. “Maybe.”

Jenna nods. “So, I heard you liked reading,” she remarks. “I do too.”

“Yeah, Kat told me. That’s awesome.” They high-five, and I can’t help but smile.

“Do you two want to stroll through the bookstore together alone,” I suggest, “while I go get something to drink from the Starbucks next door?”

“Uh, sure,” Jenna agrees, but Harry shakes his head.

“No way. Nice try, Kat, but you are coming with us. Don’t you dare try to get yourself out of going book shopping with me.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine.”

Jenna laughs. “Dude, Harry, this girl seriously hates reading. I’m not sure how you even convinced her to go book shopping with you.”

“I’m very manipulative,” Harry boasts with a smirk.

“Yep,” Jenna agrees as I follow her and Harry into the bookstore. “Very, very manipulative.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“I can’t believe you are going to make me read this truckload of words” - I gesture to the single book I’m holding as Harry, Jenna, and I exit the bookstore - “and expect me to finish by the end of this month.”

“It’s not that hard,” Harry assures me. “I finish 600-page books in a week. That book you’re holding is only what, 300 pages?”

I just shake my head in exasperation, looking down at the cover of the book I have in my hands. “The Fault in Our Stars,” I read. “What kind of title is that? It doesn’t even make sense!”

“It will once you finish reading the book,” Jenna tells me.

“Uh-huh, yeah, sure.” I sigh. “Whatever you say.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s mid-February, and I haven’t touched The Fault in Our Stars ever since that day Jenna, Harry, and I went book shopping together. Oops...I’m sorry. Not.

“I’m sorry, I just seriously don’t have enough time to read,” I explain to Harry and Jenna in science one day. We are at his desk, and the tardy bell has yet to ring. The moment Jen and I dumped our binders on our desks, I dragged her over to Harry’s. The plan was to get them talking while I surreptitiously snuck away, not to get them to discuss my progress on The Fault in Our Stars.

“You don’t even have time on the weekends?” Jenna challenges, looking slightly frustrated.

I quickly make up the perfect excuse. “Swim practice is very time-consuming,” I explain.

Harry glares at me. “Yeah, right. You only practice for two hours on Saturday.”

Oops. Maybe that wasn’t such a perfect excuse after all.

“Well, I…” I rack my brain, trying to come up with an excuse that, hopefully, won’t utterly fail like the last one did. When I can’t think of any, I simply exclaim the truth, “I just hate reading, okay!”

Harry sighs. “I know you do. Just...try reading The Fault in Our Stars. Please? If you don’t like it, then you can stop, and I will never ever bother you about it again.”

I spend a moment thinking about that deal. I will definitely not enjoy reading The Fault in Our Stars; therefore, the chances of me never having to be forced by Harry to read ever again is 100%. Wow, that actually does not sound too bad.

“Okay, okay,” I give in. “Fine.”

The tardy bell rings, causing me and Jenna to hastily stumble to our seats. Actually Jenna gracefully and elegantly strides over to her seat, while I trip over my own feet. From behind me, Harry lets out a snort of laughter.

For the entire science class, I’m watching Harry and Jenna for signs that they like each other. I don’t see Harry looking back at us, but I do catch Jenna staring at Harry numerous times. Awww. Now, that is a crush.

When the bell for lunch rings, I call a goodbye to Harry and Jenna, who are both struggling to balance their numerous books onto their binders, before exiting the classroom.

“Those bookworms,” I mumble to myself with a smile. “They’re literally perfect for each other.”

“Who?” Brianna asks, appearing at my side.

“Jen and Harry,” I respond. “They’re, like, endgame.”

I expect Brianna to laugh and call me a seriously obsessive fangirl, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, she looks at me for a long time, her eyes grim.

“Uh, what up?” I question.

Brianna’s unsmiling gaze morphs into an astonished look. “What?! Did they- Did nobody tell you about what happened with Jenna and that douche that she fell in love with?!”

“Um, no…” My brow creases, and I feel slightly offended that a secret of one of my closest friends was being kept from me.

“Are you se-” Brianna starts, but I, suddenly recalling something, interrupt her.

“Wait. A few months ago, Heather mentioned something along the lines of Jenna and heartbreak, but she never actually told me the whole story. And plus,” I add, “unlike you, she seemed pretty excited about Jenna and Harry.”

“It’s just my opinion. I don’t think Jenna should go out with another guy so soon after her last boyfriend dumped her, hard. Besides, Harry’s cool and all, but he’s popular, which gives me a reason to trust him less.”

“I see,” I respond. “So, what’s the douchebag’s name? I can totally go beat him up right now.”

“Pete, I think. He goes to another school though, one that I don’t know the name of, so we might have to postpone the beating up for a little while,” Brianna explains. “He’s Asian and honestly not that bad-looking, judging by Jenna’s pictures of him. They met at their younger siblings’ soccer game, and they, like, fell in love at first sight or something. At least, Jenna fell in love; I’m not exactly sure Pete ever loved her back.”

Immediately, I spit out a truckload of questions. If someone hurt my best friend, then I have got to know all the deats. “Why? What happened? How did he dump her?” I ask.

“Actually, Jenna dumped him, but for a heck of a good reason. It was nearly their one-year anniversary of them being together when she discovered that he was dating another girl all along. And, just to make everything worse, he didn’t apologize when Jenna confronted him about it; all he did was nod and shrug and ask Jenna if it really took her that long to find out.”

For a few moments, I’m silent. I feel my heart ache with sympathy, then rage, as I start to actually process what Brianna said.

“What a freak,” I growl. “Okay, where does he live? I need to show him that he shouldn’t have ever messed with my best friend.”

“I don’t even know where he goes to school, so obviously I couldn’t know where he lives. I wish I did, though,” she answers in a disappointed tone. “Jenna might, but she’ll most likely not want to talk about him. She hasn’t brought his name up ever since they broke up.” Brianna pushes open the lunchroom door, and we enter. “Anyways, do you now understand why Harry and Jenna aren’t exactly at the top of my favorite pairings list?”

“Okay, um, not really,” I state. “Sure, Harry may be super popular, but he loves books.”

Brianna and I make our way towards the lunchline as she argues, “Why exactly does it matter that Harry loves books...?”

“Well, not many popular guys like books,” I explain as Brianna and I take our places in the lunchline, “so that just proves that Harry isn’t like many popular guys.”

“Christopher likes books,” Brianna counters.

“Is he popular?” I challenge.

Brianna answers, a bit reluctantly, “Well, I mean, not really. But he’s friends with Harry, so he’s sorta popular.”

“But he isn’t popular.”

“But he’s semi-popular.”

“But we’re talking about totally popular here.”

“You are impossible.”

“That’s why you love me,” I say, grinning victoriously. Whoop, Kat wins this one!

Brianna smiles and is about to say something, when her phone suddenly vibrates loudly. She takes it out of her jean pocket and announces, “It’s Christopher. Sorry. Hold on, okay?”

I nod as she answers the call and begins chattering away. Now bored, I look around the cafeteria. I spot Harry at his lunch table, just two tables away from mine. He’s engaged in conversation with his “clique”, a.k.a. the group of friends I saw him with on the first day of school. In the middle of his conversation, Angelina rudely and annoyingly goes up to him, twirling a strand of red hair around her finger. Ew. If only she knew that he was into someone else.

“Okay, well, see you later!” Brianna exclaims into her phone, hanging up, as my gaze slips past Harry’s table to my own. Heather is there talking with Hailey, Jamie, Jenna and Amber(?) , and Jake soon comes up to them, joining the conversation. He slides into the seat next to Heather, and she and the other girls all greet him. Jake says something back, then slowly, very slowly and a bit nervously, slides his arm around Heather’s waist. Wait. What?!

Forgetting all about Brianna and buying lunch, I rush towards my lunch table. “Okay, I have got to know what the fudge is happening, right this instant.”

Jake looks startled. “Uh, what do you mean?”

Brianna arrives at my side. “Kat, what is going on? We have lunch to buy-”

I wildly gesture to Jake’s hand on Heather’s right hip. “Are you two together?”

Heather grins at Jake, then at me. “What does it look like?”

An enthusiastic squeal escapes from my mouth. “Oh my goodness, I never would’ve suspected! You two are so so so so cute together!” I wink at Heather. “Who’s the one liking Jakey Poo now, huh?”

Heather and Jake both blush a bright red.

“Just putting it out there, but I was the one who talked Jake into asking Heather out,” Hailey tells me.

“You are amazing,” I compliment, hugging her.

“I know.” She smiles.

I laugh, then turn back to Heather and Jake. “You two are cute and all, but there’s one thing that I’m confused about,” I say.

“What is it?” Heather asks.

“Why didn’t you two tell me earlier?!?!?!?!” I screech thunderously, causing Heather to jerk her hands up and cover her ears.

“Jeez, Kat, you seriously have got to calm down,” she mutters.

“Love you.” I grin widely. “Anyways, please proceed with your explanation.”

“Well, Jake asked me out last night,” Heather starts, “and at the time, we weren’t exactly sure if we wanted to make the fact that we’re dating public or not.”

Jake adds, “It wasn’t until the beginning of lunch that we decided we did.”

“No wonder you two were acting so weird when we were walking to third period together,” I muse.

“We were not acting weird!” Heather protests.

“Yeah. Seriously, no. Every single time you noticed that I noticed that you two exchanged smiles, you would clear your throat really obviously deliberately.”

“That sentence you just said was grammatically awkward,” Jenna puts in, her brow creased.

I stick my tongue out at her. “No one cares, bookworm!”

Just then, the loud growling of somebody’s stomach reaches my ears. It takes me a moment to realize that that stomach is mine. It takes me another moment to realize that I haven’t even bought my lunch yet, and another one to discover that Brianna has disappeared.

“Hold on. Where’s Bri?” I ask my table.

“I think she went to go buy her lunch,” Jamie tells me.

“What?! Ditcher!” I start for the lunchline, quickly buy my lunch, and head back to my table. However, before I can stuff my hamburger into my mouth, the bell rings.

As Heather, Jake, and I walk towards gym together, I finish one half of the hamburger before stuffing the other half into my mouth. I finish that half just when we arrive at the gym room.

“Done!” I announce, flinging open the gym room door.

“Congratulations!” Heather claps as we enter the gym room.

As usual, the three of us take a seat at the bottom row of the bleachers. However, this time, Heather and Jake talk while I’m awkwardly listening to them. Great, I love third-wheeling.

Suddenly feeling very lonely, I call out to Cammie, Flora, and Zoe, my old basketball buddies, to join me.

“Hi!” Cammie greets, sitting on the side of me that Heather’s not currently occupying.

“Long time no talk!” Zoe adds, plopping down next to Cammie.

“You gonna audition for the school musical next Wednesday?” Flora questions, taking a seat next to Zoe.

I’m about to answer when Heather abruptly joins our conversation. “Wait, what?” she asks. “This school’s making a musical?” (awk sentence)

Flora nods. “We’re doing Annie Jr. But of course you wouldn’t know. You aren’t taking the amazing, wonderful, brilliant theater elective, like I am. And you just wait. I am going to get the lead role because I am an absolutely perfect actress and singer.”

Ugh. I had forgotten how annoyingly boastful Flora could be.

“I don’t know if I want to try out,” I say. “First of all, I can’t sing. And even if I make it in, I’m not sure I’ll have the time to go to rehearsals. My schedule’s already really busy, with swim practice almost every day and such.”

“It doesn’t matter if your singing is terrible, and I’m sure it isn’t!” Heather exclaims. “It’d be really fun just to audition together. Jake’s going to try out too, right, Jake?”

He shrugs. “Why not?”

“Okay, fine, but what about my swimming schedule? I can’t do anything about that.”

“Yeah, you can,” Heather contradicts. “Just tell your mom that you auditioned for the musical without thinking and may have to miss some swim practices for rehearsals. She won’t mind!”

“You obviously don’t know my mother very well,” I tease. “However, because of the fact that Gold practices totally suck and that I definitely would not mind missing some of those, I’m totally in.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s the week before the end-of-the-short-course-season meet aka the championship meet aka the most important meet of the season, so guess what we Goldians are doing?

Tapering!

Tapering pretty much means that we're doing easier sets on an easier interval. Basically, everything we do is easier during tapering, so we get a chance to "rest" the week before the meet. That’s why instead of arriving to swim practice a little later than everyone else, I arrive fifteen minutes before we Goldians have to be in the pool.

“Yoooo!” Christopher hollers at me as I enter the inside area with my swim bag.

“Yoooo!” I yell back, mimicking him.

“We’re tapering!” he says loudly as I set down my bag beside Calvin’s.

“I know!” I respond, just as loud. I try to fight back a huge smile as I catch Calvin waving to me from where he stands next to Christopher. I approach him, striving to remain calm and non-jittery. “Hey, Calv.”

“You’re earlier than usual,” he remarks. “It’s 3:45. Don’t you usually arrive at around 3:55?” Awwwww, he noticed! Then he adds, “Joanna isn’t even here yet. Typically, she comes at 3:50-ish.” Of course he noticed that, I think dryly.

“Yeah, and Harry usually arrives at 3:57-ish,” I throw at Calvin, aiming to make him jealous with the hope that he at least has a tiny crush on me.

To my surprise, Calvin actually frowns in response. Wow, maybe my love life isn’t as terrible as I thought.

Then, I catch a glimpse of Christopher smirking, raising his eyebrows most likely at me simply mentioning Harry in a conversation. Oh, great. A good example of what I was not aiming for.

I turn around when I hear the door of the inside area creak open. Brianna, smiling at the sight of me, Christopher, and Calvin, slips inside and throws her bag onto the ground.

“Heyyy, guys,” she greets, joining our conversation circle.

“What’s up, girlfriend,” Christopher squeals in an extremely high-pitched voice.

Just then, the door creaks open once again, and this time, Harry enters, followed by - ew - Joanna.

“Joanna!” Calvin calls.

Seething with absolute jealousy, I holler Harry’s name without dwelling on the terrible consequences that Christopher would no doubt provide.

“Hey, what’s up?” Harry greets, coming over to us. Meanwhile, Calvin links arms with Joanna and walks away from our group.

“Thanks for ditching,” I mutter furiously.

“Oh, look, the two lovebirds have headed off!” Christopher calls, which doesn’t at all help contain my anger.

“You came early, Harry,” Brianna remarks.

“Yeah, I did it for the taper,” Harry responds, grinning.

“So did Kat!” Christopher informs. “That just proves that you two are meant for each other.” I glare at him, barely able to contain my fury. “Aww, the cuteness of you two lovebirds is just overwhelming! You guys and Calvin and Joanna should definitely go on a double date sometime!”

And that’s when I explode.

“Okay, no way!” I scream. “I am so done. Christopher, I can’t stand you! Why are you so freaking annoying?!”

Christopher, looking taken aback along with Brianna and Harry, stutters, “Uh, wh-what?”

“Kat, what’s wrong?” Brianna adds, looking concerned.

I’m too rage-filled to be able to connect simple words into phrases, so instead of responding, I whirl around and indignantly storm outside, slamming the door close behind me. Sinking down against the wall of the building, I rack my brain, endeavoring to find something in there that will calm me down. However, all that appears in my head is the replaying image of Calvin walking away from me, his arm linked with Joanna’s.

They look like boyfriend and girlfriend, and they’re not even dating, I can’t help but think, which does not at all help my situation.

“Kat?” I hear a voice, very faint, call. My anger seems to be obscuring everything around me, or maybe it’s just my senses that are being clouded up.

“Kat!” the voice, louder, persists.

“What do you want?!” I demand, jerking my head upwards to face the source of the voice.

It’s Brianna, and Harry’s standing right beside her. Great. Should’ve known they would come to confront me.

“Kat, what’s wrong?” Brianna asks worriedly. “What did Christopher do to make you so mad?”

“Was it the fact that he kept talking about how me and you should go out?” Harry questions. “Because trust me, I definitely don’t agree with that, but I don’t think you should take it so seriously. Christopher’s just the type of guy that likes to pair people up romantically.”

“That’s very true,” Brianna agrees. “One time, he paired me up with this guy that I liked because he knew I liked him. It was cool at first, but then he started to become, like, hardcore with the shipping. He constantly yelled our ship name out loud in front of the whole swim team, and it embarrassed me so much.”

Harry laughs. “I’ll bet.”

As they converse, I gradually ease out of my rage and into my senses, and I groan as I realize how terrible Christopher must be feeling now that I’ve let out all my jealousy of Calvin and Joanna on him.

“I need to go apologize to him,” I declare, standing up.

Brianna and Harry turn to me. “We can come with you, if you want,” Brianna volunteers.

I shrug. “Sure.”

We enter the building and walk over to Christopher, who is sitting against the wall opposite the door. I sit down next to him.

“Hey,” I greet.

“Oh, so now you’re going to apologize to the annoying freak, are you?” Christopher retorts, and immediately, I know that a simple “sorry” isn’t going to resolve everything.

Brianna sits down next to me, and Harry, next to her. I turn to them, and they smile reassuringly.

“I never called you an annoying freak,” I tell Christopher.

“Yeah, you did,” he grumbles.

“No, I said you were freaking annoying. Not an annoying freak.”

“Big difference,” Christopher growls sarcastically.

I stare at him. His brow is creased, and the typical glimmer of cheeriness in his green eyes is now replaced by gloom. It saddens me to see him, usually joyous and full of spirit, feeling down. It saddens me even more to know that I’m the one that made him feel this way.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I apologize, which, as usual, is difficult for me. “I really am. It’s just that…” I pause. Am I seriously about to tell him, plus Bri and Harry, that I like Calvin? I mean, do I even know that they’re trustworthy enough??

Then, I think, Well, might as well do it anyway. They’re three really good swim friends of mine. The secret’s going to slip out of my mouth sooner or later.

“Well, basically,” I say, lowering my voice, “I...well, I sorta like Calvin.”

The very moment I finish saying those four words, Christopher’s jaw drops, Brianna’s eyes widen, and Harry mutters a surprised “what the h*ll?!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble. “I actually like someone! Wow!”

“Wait, what exactly are we talking about here?” Christopher questions, seeming to have forgotten about his despondency for the time being. “Do you like him slightly more than a friend, or do you have, like, a full-blown crush on him?”

“Full-blown crush, I think.” I sigh.

“Wait, how long, exactly, have you liked him?” Harry asks.

“Since December-ish.”

“Oh my god.” Christopher pulls on his dark hair in frustration. “I’ve been shipping you with the wrong person this whole time.”

Harry scoffs. “Yeah, you sort of have.”

Christopher smirks at him. “Don’t worry, Harrietta, I’ll find some other girl to ship you with in no time.”

“Ah, wonderful,” Harry mutters.

“Calvarina,” Brianna suddenly speaks up.

“What?” I question, confused.

“You guys,” Harry says.

“You and Calvin’s ship name,” Brianna explains, grinning. “Calvarina!”

“You guys,” Harry repeats, a little louder this time.

“That’s perfect!” Christopher gushes. He smiles at me, and I smile back, glad that he’s forgiven me.

“Guys!” Harry exclaims.

“What do you want?” I demand.

A grim expression lies on his face as he announces, “It’s 4:05.”

“What?!” Brianna and I yell.

“Shooot!” Christopher hollers.

Oh, great, I think. Coach is going to kill us.

It is Wednesday, the day of the musical auditions. Every auditioner was required to choose one of three songs from Annie to sing: Tomorrow (Reprise), Little Girls, and NYC. I chose Little Girls because Heather told me that I could totally pull off the song with my naturally disgusted personality. I was pretty offended by that comment but took her advice anyway. I do get sickened by many people, after all.

Currently, I’m waiting outside the auditorium, where the auditions are being held, with Heather, who looks so nervous that she’d probably jump a few feet in the air at a mere poke, and Jake, who looks the polar opposite of her.

“I’m so scared!” she mumbles under her breath. “What if my voice cracks? Tomorrow has really high notes in it, you know.”

I roll my eyes. “Chill.”

In her nervousness, Heather crumples the slip of paper she’s holding. The slip contains the number 36, which basically states that she’s going to be the 36th person to audition. Right after school, every auditioner rushed out of their study hall classrooms, through the hallways, past the front office, and to the area outside the auditorium to receive their slips of papers from one of the stage managers, a tall Latina eighth grader. Heather and I ran here together and got our slips of papers right after each other, therefore causing me to receive the number thirty-seven. Jake arrives at the area outside the auditorium a bit later than us, so he got the number forty.

“Don’t you see? I can’t,” Heather responds to me. “Kat, what if I forget the lyrics of Tomorrow?”

“You only have to sing sixteen measures of it, Heather.” Jake puts an arm around her, attempting to calm her down.

“And anyways, I thought you were just doing this for fun,” I say. “I didn’t think you’d want to get into the musical this badly.”

“It’s not the musical I’m worried about,” she replies. “It’s the singing in front of others. At the time I convinced you to try out with me, I was confident I could sing well, but now? Not so much.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll do fine,” Jake assures her.

“I’m going to make a total fool of myself in front of the judges!” she cries.

“Watch her end up getting the role of Annie or something,” I tell Jake, throwing a wink at Heather.

“Not going to happen,” she mutters.

As Jake continues to comfort her, I absentmindedly peer around me, and guess who I spot exiting the auditorium? Luke. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s auditioning since I’ve already seen the non-stereotypical side of him, but boy, I am.

A tall brunette girl, another one of the stage managers for Annie, follows him out and calls, “Thirty-first auditioner, you’re up!”

“Wow, they’re really fast,” I remark. “I didn’t expect them to be on number thirty-one already.”
Jake, who also noticed Luke exiting the auditorium, calls his name. Seeming slightly bewildered, he looks around for a few seconds before his gaze lands on Jake. He strides over to us, waving. He’s alone, as none of BFFs are trailing after him like they usually do.

“Hey, where are your friends?” I ask him the moment he’s within earshot distance of me.

“Uh, they went home,” Luke responds, throwing me a strange glance as if it was obvious.

Whoa, okay, no need to make me feel all stupid when I already know that I totally am.

“Help me calm Heather down,” Jake pleads Luke. “She’s freaking out about her audition.”

Luke briefly glances at a starting-to-hyperventilate Heather. “Honestly, auditions really aren’t that bad. You sing for about twenty to thirty seconds in front of only three people, the judges and one of the stage managers. That’s literally all there is. There’s nothing to worry about. And I already auditioned, so I know this for sure.”

“She’s afraid she’s going to forget the lyrics to her song,” I put in. “Maybe you could help her with that phobia?”

“If you mess up,” Luke tells Heather, “you can always ask to restart. These auditions are middle school auditions, not high school ones, you know.”

“Smart aleck,” I mutter under my breath.

“Really?” Heather asks at the same time. “Okay, whew, that makes me a little less worried.”

“That’s wonderful,” Jake says, “because you’re up next.”

The stage manager that followed Luke out a few minutes ago is now following a girl out of the auditorium, at the same time announcing, “Thirty-sixth auditioner, it’s you’re turn!”

“Go, Heather!” I call as she very nervously walks toward the auditorium door. Right before she enters, she glances back at me and mouths, “Help.” But before I can mouth back words of encouragement, she disappears into the auditorium.

“Well, I’m next!” I announce. “Can’t you just sense my excitement?” I question Jake and Luke in a dull voice.

Jake nods vigorously, while Luke chuckles.

About half a minute later, Heather exits the auditorium, a huge smile on her face. Jake rushes up to her, asking her how it was and how she was and all those typical, sweet boyfriend questions. Meanwhile, I just silently slip past them, for the millionth time feeling like the third wheel among those two, and enter the auditorium. I confidently stride to the downstage center part of the stage, mentally preparing myself to sing well. Wow, I’m starting to sound like my swim coach; I just need to replace the “sing” with “swim”. Oh, and I also need to be just a tad bit more mean and annoying and infuriating.

Quickly, I scan my surroundings, and immediately, my jaw goes slack. The auditorium is huge, causing me to openly gape at its vastness. I had been here before from time to time for occasional entire-grade announcements, but I’d always seen the auditorium from one of the hundreds of seats for the audience, never from the stage itself.

In front of the hundreds of seats lies a long table and two chairs that seat two judges. A stage manager sits at the edge of the stage a few feet away from me, a CD player in hand.

“Hi,” I begin. “My name is Katarina Liang, and I’ll be auditioning for Annie with the song Little Girls.”

The stage manager presses a few buttons on the CD player, causing Little Girls to blare out of its speakers.

With two judges staring at me intently and one stage manager inspecting her nails as the song’s beginning tune plays, my lips part, and I sing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Heather squeals a very un-Heather-like squeal the moment I step out of the auditorium. Before she can even ask, I say, “My audition was good, Heather. Honestly, I don’t give a flip about this.”

Luke, standing beside her, has his hands stuffed in his jean butt pockets. I can’t help but wonder why guys even do that. Are they trying to warm up their hands, or what? Wow, those idiots obviously don’t understand the purpose of jacket-slash-hoodie pockets. “Why did you even try out, then?” he asks.

Shrugging, I explain very elaborately, “I just did.”

“Wonderful explanation,” Luke responds, and I can literally see an aura of sarcasm glowing around him. “I give it an A+.”

I smile at him. “Wow, it’s my first!”

A loud voice, coming from the auditorium entrance, follows my exclamation. “Number forty, where are you?” the brunette stage manager calls.

"Wait, what?!" Jake's voice is unusually high-pitched. He groans, "Not me."

Heather gives Jake a reassuring kiss on the cheek, while I merely brofist him. “You’re up!”

Fiddling with his fingers, Jake trudges into the auditorium after the brunette, shoulders tense, eyes suddenly finding his shoes a very interesting sight.

"Aw, he's so insecure about his singing." Heather smiles. "It's so cute."

Watching her gush about a small petty characteristic of her boyfriend, I can’t help but let out an “Awwww”. It delights me to see that she and Jake, after an entire week of dating (??), have grown to become such an adorable couple. After all, without me, they would not be as close as they currently are. Wow, I am a pretty awesome matchmaker, even if my matchmaking of this couple was not at all intentional.

However, despite the fact that I think Jake and Heather are one of the cutest couples on Earth, joyfulness is not the only emotion that stirs within me whenever I see them together. The other emotion is jealousy; not just a teensy tiny bit of jealousy, a healthy bit of jealousy that lies in every human body, but instead, jealousy to the extreme(?? should this be there) max. I know it’s terrible to feel this way, but I can’t help it, especially when lately, Calvin has been hanging out with Joanna every single second of every practice. At times, I just wish I could be her, beautiful and blonde, instead of an Asian that’s not even smart.

“You two are cute together,” Luke remarks. “Wasian-Asian couples are adorable.”

Heather smiles. “Thanks, and yes they are.”

I take this as my cue to jump in and ask him questions that would help his and Jenna’s to-be-relationship. “I love Wasians. Don’t you? Would you date an Asian girl? Then you two would be a White-Asian couple, and that’s sort of Wasian.”

“Um…” Luke looks a bit taken aback. “Actually, I’m more into white girls, but I’d date an Asian if she was hot.” Suddenly, he smiles and jokingly asks, “Do you like me? Is that why you’re asking me these questions? Because if it is, Christopher would be elated.”

Distracted for a moment, I respond, “Wait, I thought Christopher shipped Calvarina…”

“He says that, but deep within his heart, me and you are his OTP.” Luke shrugs. “I’m just saying though, I’m not interested in you at all.”

“No worries. The feeling’s mutual. I feel slightly betrayed that Calvarina isn’t his OTP, though.”

Luke laughs, while Heather just seems bewildered. Before she can ask what is going on and what “Calvarina” is, Jake exits the auditorium, a totally different picture from what he was like when he entered. He strides over to me, Heather, and Luke, his back straight, his head high, a smirk implanted on his face.

“Did you rock that audition?” Heather yells.

“I totally rocked that audition!” Jake hollers.

He envelops her in a hug, while I mutter to Luke about how I thought Jake didn’t give one flip about the musical. He laughs and tells me that I was so proven wrong.

“So, Kat,” Heather turns around to face me, arms crossed and eyes prying. “Anything you need to tell me? What in the world is ‘Calvarina’? Do you like someone?!”

“Kat? Who is it?” Jake questions as well.

“Um…” I exchange an uneasy glance with Luke. “Okay, first, you both need to promise not to tell anyone, or I’ll pop your heads like zits.”

Heather laughs, but my face yells absolute seriousness. “Okay, okay.”

“Deal,” Jake agrees.

So I tell them I like Calvin, and I’m met with two dropped jaws.

“What?! It isn’t that big of a deal,” I mumble, glancing at Luke for help.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I mean, they’re best friends, and best friends always fall in love with each other.”

“I thought you two were just friends! Isn’t that what you told me when you first talked about him?” Heather questions me.

“Yeah, well, people change.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually romantically interested in somebody, Kat,” Jake murmurs, glancing at me as if he’s seeing a whole different person.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I snap.

“Nothing, nothing.” Jake puts his hands up in surrender. “I just never expected you to like anyone, what with your constantly disgusted personality.”

“Told you!” Heather pumps the air with her fist. “You do have a disgusted personality!”

I glare at her.

“Anyways, back to Calvin.” Heather quickly changes the subject. “Sooo…? Give us the deats!”

“Don’t say deats.” I shake my head, nose scrunched up with disgust - oops. “And there’s nothing to talk about, besides the fact that Ms. Love Life Ruiner, Joanna, hogs him up all the time.”

Luke snorts. “Ms. Love Life Ruiner,” he repeats, chuckling.

“I’m so very glad I humor you, Luke,” I snap. “But I’m not joking when I call her that, so can you maybe shut up?”

Luke stops laughing, holding his hands up in surrender. Meanwhile, Jake and Heather exchange a long look before glancing back at me. “Um…” Heather speaks up. “I love you, Kat, but maybe you should just give up on Calvin and let Joanna have him. I mean, don’t they like each other? At least, that’s what Brianna told me a few weeks ago.”

Are you serious.

“Yeah, well, she told you that before I confessed to her about my crush on Calvin, before she started shipping Calvarina instead of Joanna and him,” I say, irritated. Then I sigh, pleading, “Can’t you just ship me and Calvin? It’s non-canon, yes, but pretty darn perfect.”

Jake shrugs. “Okay, okay, okay. We will.”

“But only if you ship Jather,” Heather adds.

I smile. “Not a problem.”