“You’re the greatest,” she said. “I’ll be home around midnight, I guess. Gonna go change.”
I watched her hustle back to the locker room. I dropped my bag to the side and paced by the pool as Clinton finished out his laps. When he hit the wall for the last time, he grinned and took off his goggles. His black hair, so similar to mine, crawled down his ears.
“I didn’t think you’d come all the way in here to watch,” he said.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all. It’s kind of sexy to be watched,” Clinton said and flashed me a smile that could melt any girl’s insides. I kind of hated that he had that power.
“I just never learned how to swim that well, so it’s pretty cool to watch you guys do this. Lap after lap.”
“Never learned to swim? What...?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
I shrugged. It wasn’t like my previous foster mothers had had the extra cash to put me in swim lessons. And once I had taken on gymnastics, I hadn’t wanted to bother with anything else.
“You know, you’ve got the entire school talking about you,” Clinton said.
“I haven’t had time to notice,” I said, which was mostly a lie again. Of course, I noticed everyone gossiping. Mostly about how Poppy was going to kill me, or how I wanted to sleep with Theo and thought I was good enough for him. And then that I was too poor to go to Denver Athletics. They were all just assholes in my eyes.
“Sure, you have. People have started to take bets since they learned Poppy wants to kill you and you suck at biology. They figure you won’t make it through the mid-term performance.”
“That’s bullshit,” I scoffed. I fully believed it, too. I sat down at the edge of the water and yanked off my flats and tossed them back toward my bag. It felt so cool and simple to drag my feet through the water. For whatever reason, I continued. “You know, Clinton, these people will never understand all the bullshit I’ve gone through. It’s been really hard to get as far as I’ve gotten. Poppy sees me as a threat, but I’ve never seen her like that. I wanted to just be teammates, you know? But she wants to make everything so hard.”
Suddenly, Clinton wrapped his hand around my ankle and tugged me down. I crashed into the deep end and started to float down and down. The shock of the chilly water made me not fully know what to do at first. At first, I felt only anger, then shock. My black hair floated around me, and I opened my eyes into the glittery blue. Clinton was right there in front of me, smiling as he looked at me. There—he’d done it again. Completely made my anger fall away until I felt only...
Like I wanted him.
I brought my hands out and draped them across his chest, toward his abs. I just had to touch them. The chlorine made my eyes sting, and I closed them again as Clinton’s hands wrapped around my waist, under my shirt, which wafted up in the water.
It had probably been only ten seconds, maybe fifteen. Clinton held me down there, and I started to wiggle. I wouldn’t panic. I couldn’t show how anxious water really made me, even after I’d just told him. But I wanted oxygen. I opened my eyes again to look at him, but the minute I did, he pressed forward and drew his lips over mine. His lips were hungry, passionate, and I completely lost all thought of oxygen. His body closed over me: his thick chest across my breasts, his belly against mine, and his enormous arms around my back. I closed my eyes again and let his tongue slip over mine. I thought my heart would explode.
How dare he do this?
How dare he take advantage of me? Of the fact that I can’t swim?
Or the fact that he can just do whatever he wants—because of his devilish smile and his fat bank account?
But it was my first kiss underwater, with one of the richest and most handsome boys at Denver Athletics.
He used his legs to kick us up to the surface. When we reached it, he let go of me and I grabbed onto the side of the pool and blinked my eyes at him. Shocked didn’t cover how I felt.
“Why did you do that?” I asked in an angry tone. “Why the hell did you think you could just...”
I stopped not knowing what else to say. Clinton’s smile was crooked. He grabbed the ladder and swung himself up and said, “Just wanted to know what it was like. Grab your stuff, get changed, and meet me outside the pool in ten minutes. You know we have some biology to study, right?”
When I reached the locker room, Chloe had already scampered off to Max’s room. I dried off, grabbed a spare pair of sweats and a t-shirt that I had in my backpack, and walked in a daydream back into the hallway outside the pool. Clinton was already there, fully dressed, his face stoic.
“What took you so long?” he demanded.
“Um, it’s been ten minutes,” I said. Jekyll and Hyde, I thought.
“Let’s go. I want to grab a snack on the way.”
As we ate granola bars and studied biology over the next two hours, Clinton made zero mention of our kiss, hardly looked me in the eye, and generally gaslighted me. It was kind of torture, but it did force me to study biology a bit harder since I just wanted to get the session done. When I answered the last round of questions about photosynthesis in plants correctly, he sighed and said, “Okay. Let’s have one more session before the test. But all in all, you don’t seem to be as big of an idiot as everyone says you are.”
“Fuck you,” I said. I stood and collected my books and stomped out of the library. But as I whirled down the stairs, my heart still thumped with excitement. All the days before today, I had never been kissed. And now, I had. Nothing else could change the way I felt—not Clinton’s asshole attitude, or Poppy’s volatility, or even the fact that suddenly, it was so cold outside that I had to run all the way back to my dorm. It was late-September, and fall crept over everything. Memories of summer felt long-ago.
Chapter Thirteen
I stayed up that night until Chloe got home. When she sprung into the room, she looked breathless, her cheeks bright red and her eyes as big as saucers. She spotted me and then clambered up into my bunk and wrapped her arms around me and said, “Oh my god. I almost had sex.”
“Woah.” I gaped at her as she flung back and described what happened. I had to give full brevity to the situation—this was a big deal. She said she had never been so into someone before, but that she panicked about not having any condoms. “Also, I feel like sixteen is kind of young? I don’t know. I feel like I want to wait. At least a little while longer,” she said and gave me a sad shrug. “Is that pathetic?”
“No! Not at all,” I said. “You have to wait until you’re ready.”
“Thanks, Roon. I feel like if I told anyone else that, they would make fun of me,” she said. She rubbed her eyes and looked lost in thought. “Anyway, how was tutoring?”
I felt a little stupid as I explained to her the events of my very first kiss, especially since she had just spent the night almost-hooking-up for real. But she squealed and made me feel like my story was just as big as hers.
“With Clinton!” she said. “God, he’s so hot. I see him every day with his shirt off and I’m still not over it. I mean, he’s really mean and on a power trip, but still. Most girls would do anything for one kiss.”
“But not you because you’re falling in love,” I joked with her. She rolled her eyes again and her cheeks burned red.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she muttered. “I feel weird enough about it already. And I know we both have to focus the next few weeks before the mid-term competition. God, I’m so nervous. There’s this girl, the senior swimmer Ashley, and she’s been racing me at practice. Normally, I’m the best at the five hundred meter, but she’s racing me every day. My muscles are screaming.” On cue, she yawned, proof that she was just as exhausted as I was. She eased down the ladder and changed into an oversized t-shirt and shorts. Within a few minutes, she was back in her bunk.
“I think it’ll be so weird to fall in love,” she whispered. “I kind of never thought it would happen for me.”
I realized I had always felt the same.
But I didn’t say anything. It almost felt too honest. I swallowed and turned over and faded to darkness. Before long, we both heard the squawk of the first 4:45 alarm, and a new day began.
On Sunday before the biology test, Clinton requested that we meet in his room for tutoring. The text came in on my little brick phone and at first, I had no clue who it was. “How did he get my number?” I demanded of Chloe.
Chloe was down below my bunk in the middle of a stretch. “Who knows. I’m sure there are a ton of ways to access a cell number.”
I gathered my biology book and notepad and took a bit of extra time to do my eye makeup and brush out my black hair before I went off to Clinton’s. Chloe called me out on it and winked in the mirror and teased me, but I just shrugged it off. “He’s not interested in me,” I told her. “He’s just playing with me or something.”
“Who doesn’t like a little bit of a game?” Chloe said.
She was right. Ever since he’d kissed me, I had thought of almost nothing else. His muscular body over mine, his lips, his tongue, the huge bulge in his swim trunks that I had really wanted to touch. I had never felt this type of fire in my belly, this overwhelming lust, but here it was and it felt like it took charge of everything else. I had only let it sneak into my head once while on the balance beam, but Coach Jonathon had called me out and said, “I can see it, Rooney. You don’t have your head on straight.” Poppy had scoffed and I had shot her a horrible look. Then, I had landed every single mark on the rest of my routine until her smile had fallen off her face.
When I reached the top floor of the boy’s dorm, I was surprised to find Mr. Piper striding down the hallway. At first, he gave me a big smile, but then he stopped short and looked at me. I stopped walking, too, suddenly afraid I had done something wrong.
“What’s up, Mr. Piper?” I asked, feeling the nerves in my stomach.
“Hi, Rooney,” he said. “I was actually going to call you to my office later tonight or tomorrow. Do you mind if we speak privately for a moment?”
I furrowed my brow. He led me to the side of the landing and glanced up and down the hall to make sure we were alone. He looked sweaty and nervous like Karla did when she woke up hungover.
“Rooney, I just wondered if you’d had a chance to think about the offer Coach Jonathon and I made you at the beginning of this semester,” he said. His voice was low and gravelly.
Offer? What did he mean exactly?
“Basically, we gave you 75% tuition for the semester, with the idea that you would pay out the rest of it by mid-semester. Mid-semester is in just a few weeks.”
“I know. I’m training non-stop for the mid-semester competition,” I said, my nostrils flared. How the hell am I supposed to train non-stop, study non-stop, and also collect $5,000 dollars?
“Right. Well. I wanted to warn you about that privately,” Mr. Piper said. “I didn’t want to send you some sort of sterile letter. I want us to be friends, Rooney, and I know you know how important this is.” His smile felt forced and I became a little uncomfortable, but I didn’t show it.
“Sure. Thanks a lot, Mr. Piper,” I said, smiling. “I’m off to study for biology. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“I knew you would get it. Good job, Rooney. You’re doing amazing,” he said. Then, he gripped the staircase railing and stomped down. Each footfall created a weird meditative rhythm.
I inhaled slowly and tried to think about what to do. Maybe there was some kind of outside scholarship I could apply for? I would look for one after my lesson with Clinton. There was only one option, and that was me finding the money to keep going. I had been in tighter situations before.
Clinton’s door was no more than eight feet away from where I had been speaking with Mr. Piper. To my surprise, it was cracked open, and when I knocked, Zed called, “Come in!” My heart pattered wildly as I opened it to find both Zed and Clinton in his enormous bedroom, with Zed’s long legs stretched across the bed and Clinton standing up by the kitchen counter drinking what looked to be scotch or some kind of whiskey. Clinton gave me this half-smile, while Zed looked preoccupied, almost worried.
I had a feeling they knew exactly what had been going on in the hall.
“There she is. Our little orphan,” Clinton said. He cut the glass toward his lips and sucked down a drink, then pointed at it and asked if I wanted one.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“She has to keep her mind sharp for the hard days ahead,” Clinton smirked. “What do you think about that, Zed?”
Zed grabbed a magazine from Clinton’s bookcase and flipped through it absently. I lifted my biology book and said, “Should we get started?”
In the next room, Theo hollered Clinton’s name. Clinton nodded toward the bed next to Zed and ordered me to sit. I glanced toward the only other chair in the living area, and it was covered in swimming suits and goggles and towels that stank of chlorine. I sighed and marched toward the edge of the bed, far from Zed, as Clinton walked through the bathroom that connected his and Theo’s bedrooms.
Silence ticked on between Zed and I as Clinton and Theo had their separate conversation about something I couldn’t quite make out in the next room. I swallowed and wished I was anywhere else but here. I felt so fucking exposed.
“You have to be really careful about it,” Zed muttered. He kept his eyes on the magazine as I tore my head around and gaped at him.
“What...” I whispered. I splayed my hand between us on the bedspread and waited for him to explain. Slowly, his right hand traced down toward the blanket between us, then eased over the very tops of my fingers. My heart stopped.
He turned his beautiful green eyes toward mine and said, “You owe money. You’re broke. I get it. I barely scrape by coming here. The other kids here, they won’t make you forget it.”
Still, he didn’t move his hand. Outside, a wind rushed up against the window. It kind of felt, suddenly, like it was only Zed and me against the world—the two most broke students at a top-level athletic academy, barely surviving.
“How do you manage?” I whispered.
He shrugged. “Scholarship. And I have parents, and they send what they can. Don’t know what the fuck I would do in your case, though.”
“I had a job, I just...” I continued.
Clinton burst back through the door. Zed ripped his hand off of mine like it was scalding hot. He turned his eyes back to his magazine as Clinton boomed, “All right, Orphan Rooney, let’s get started. You like it when I call you orphan?” He reached over and twirled a strand of hair over my ear, and I glowered at him.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” he demanded.
I shrugged and said, truthfully, “I don’t know. Somebody just dropped me off and didn’t leave their fucking name. That was thirteen years ago, and I would really like it if we could talk about anything else. Like fucking biology, for example.” I smacked my book against my lap and my head felt like it burned with anger. I ripped open the book to Chapter three and waited for him to respond.
Clinton beamed. “The girl has stamina, doesn’t she, Zed? Don’t you wonder what it would be like? All that drama and anger in bed?”
“Fuck you,” I spat. I burst up from his bed and walked to the door and whirled around. “You’re not going to speak to me like that. I’ve gone through too much shit to let it happen. If you don’t tell Mr. Collins we had this second tutoring session, then I’ll tell him what you said. I’m sure he would love to hear it.”
“Right. And I’m sure he’ll believe you over me,” Clinton said. He leered at me and his black eyes seemed darker than ever. “But run along. Fail your biology test, for all I care. Maybe I can teach you remedial biology if they don’t kick your ass out first. Or—again—if Poppy doesn’t find a way to murder you.”
If looks could have killed, he would have been dead. It was my word against his and he was a royal pain in my ass. I rushed through the door and stomped down the steps, ready to kill something. Before I knew it, I stood in the cent
er of the arboretum, between the boy's and girl's dorms, and about fifty feet in front of the main dining hall. It was nearly dinner time, and students streamed in from the other side—some limping from intense practices, or wearing slings around their arms or wrist. I glanced around for some sign of Chloe, but couldn’t find her yet. The stress of the money, plus Clinton’s arrogance, plus the weirdly insightful and intimate words from Zed, had made me want to stress eat a ton of food and just go to bed.
On my way up to the main dining hall, I spotted Max. He sidled closer to me like I was this weird target he was after, but he did it so slowly like he didn’t want anyone to notice. I tilted my head and furrowed my brow at him when he was finally sitting right next to me. I finally asked, “Max? What are you doing?”
He pressed his finger to his lips and made his eyes wide as he looked around quickly. He pointed toward the side of the main dining hall, off near a line of trees. I shrugged and followed him over there. I’d hardly talked to Max at all since he and Chloe had started their “thing,” and I half-prayed that he wasn’t about to dump her through me. Was that a thing guys did? I would not be able to do that.
But when we reached the trees, he eased beneath the shadows and said, “Thanks for coming over here. I know Chloe’s about to arrive and I wanted to get you alone for a sec to talk.”
“Um. Okay?”
“Yeah. So. She mentioned to me that her birthday is actually the day of the mid-semester competition,” he explained and shoved his hands in his pocket like he was nervous. “And I have no fucking clue what to get her. She’s my first... um.” He palmed his neck and scrunched his nose. The embarrassment had fully taken over him.
I chuckled. I couldn’t help myself.
“What?” he demanded.
I tried to calm down. I leaned forward and inhaled slowly. “No, no. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just....”
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