Hot by Halloween

by Jessica Bucher

  “You both had the distinct privilege of watching me try out for the swim team?”

  “Yes,” they replied in unison.

  “So I am sure you will agree that I need some help getting up to speed with the rest of the team.”

  “Literally,” said Lucy with a giggle.

  “Well, Gray can be that help,” I said, hopping off the bed to tear my favorite top out of Nora’s hands.

  She scowled, but reluctantly handed it over. “You think Gray is going to turn you into a decent swimmer before the season ends?” The look on her face told me she didn’t think it was possible.

  I stiffened my spine and cleared my throat. “I think he is my best shot. Besides, I’ve only been to two practices, and I already feel slightly hotter!”

  Nora tugged the shirt back out of my arms, a smile ripping across her face. “I agree. You look hotter. You look like, five pounds too small for this shirt hotter. You should probably lend it to me now. At this rate you’ll be a bag lady in it by Halloween.”

  I shook my head but let her keep the top. She would probably look better than me in it, anyway. She had all the right curves, whereas my hourglass looked more like a rectangle. This was exactly why I needed swimming! I wasn’t going to grow boobs and a butt overnight but a little tone would definitely make my rectangle more appealing.

  “Speaking of Halloween,” said Lucy. “It’s about time for a progress report. What’s the plan? How can we help?”

  I stood in front of my full-length mirror and examined the source material for our plan. My wardrobe was fine. So it wasn’t like we needed a big closet intervention, but other parts of me were looking a little haggard. I waved my hands up and down as if I were performing a magic trick that would have me coming out on the other side as Salma Hayek.

  “I’m working on my physical fitness. I even ate a carrot stick the other day. And in addition to Gray’s help with my swimming, being seen with him increases my hot factor because it makes me look wanted by someone approximately seventy-four percent cuter than Mitch.”

  Nora and Lucy nodded in agreement.

  “But I could use your help on some of this other stuff,” I said, scrunching my face up at my reflection.

  Lucy beamed, “I thought you would never ask.”

  “Be gentle!” I barked as she pulled a set of tweezers from her purse at rapid speed.

  “Lie down,” she ordered in a voice I was pretty sure she usually reserved for the children she babysat. I obeyed, but only because Lucy was indisputably the hottest of the three of us and therefore probably knew what she was doing. Beside me, Nora made the rosary sign then retreated back to my closet.

  The next twenty minutes were spent wincing in pain as Lucy pulled hair after hair from my brow. When I thought I couldn’t take it anymore I threw a hand across my forehead.

  “Big eyebrows are in!” I cried.

  Lucy smirked, pulled my hand away and yanked another. “Zendaya big, not Anthony Davis big.”

  “Hardy har-har,” I mocked, pushing her hand away and pushing up into a sitting position. Lucy took a step back and called Nora out from the closet. She had somehow managed to change her entire outfit and now wore my crimson sweater with a plaid skirt and her signature cowgirl boots. Lucy tapped her finger against her lips.

  “Not perfect, but a vast improvement.”

  Nora beamed, “We should get a haircut too!”

  I could definitely do with a new style, but it was getting late, and I hadn’t touched my calculus homework yet.

  “We’ll have to raincheck the hair cut. But thanks...I think.” I said, rubbing my sore brows.

  Lucy winked at me. “You’re looking hotter already. Halloween can’t come fast enough.”

  “Speaking of Halloween,” cried Nora. “We are still planning to go to Mitch’s party right? I know it’s not ideal, but we always go, and it would be the perfect opportunity to make Mitch see the new you.”

  My stomach rolled. Of course I envisioned making Mitch regret dumping me by showing up to his annual Halloween party looking like a million bucks, but now that we were actually talking about it, my nerves were getting out of hand. What if nothing I did changed anything? And the party was just another Mitch-led embarrassment? I wanted to say yes, but something held me back, and the best I could do was shrug out, “Maybe.”

  Chapter Six

  Gray

  “No, no, no. Arms in, close to your ears. You can’t get any speed with your limbs flailing around like that,” I barked from the edge of the pool. I could feel eyes on me from the other swimmers doing their laps in their preassigned groups. Griffith was preoccupied with the captains, planning meets or something in the corner, so I was relieved that none of them looked over when I raised my voice.

  “I am holding them close to my ears, but how am I supposed to move my arms if they’re always glued to my ears?!” Addy was shrieking back to me from the middle of the lane, and I could tell we were causing a scene.

  Amy tried to mediate between the two of us. “I think what he means is just keep your arms more narrow when you’re reaching them over your head.” She demonstrated the exact position I had showed Addy, so I pointed to her with a smug expression, which I had to wipe away. I was getting too worked up. This wasn’t working.

  I had coached so many swimmers before. I could remember plenty of newbies in the pool who needed pointers, but I had never been more at a loss than I was now. I wanted to make her a better swimmer, I really did, but if she wouldn’t listen to me…

  “I feel like I go faster when I do it my way,” she said as she approached the starting block. “You know...freestyle.”

  “That’s not—ugh…” I had to bite my hand between my teeth to keep from saying something I would regret. Instead, I leaned down and tried to speak as calmly as possible, but it was like this girl had me forgetting how to even form coherent phrases. “You can be disqualified for not performing the stroke correctly. So if you try to swim ‘freestyle’,” I scolded with finger quotes for emphasis, “without the proper form, then you will cost the whole team the meet. If you want to be a team player, then you have to learn the stroke.”

  Addy stared up at me with a deer-in-headlights gaze. Swallowing down my guilt, I stalked off, feeling like even more of a jerk than before. I was being too hard, I knew it. But if she didn’t listen to me, then I couldn’t make her better. Everything was a joke to her.

  I needed to just bite the bullet, so without turning back toward Addy and Amy, I headed toward the coach. He was still sitting on a chair in the corner with the two team captains, Freddy and Willow—whose names I finally remembered. They all looked up at me as I huffed over, probably looking just as frustrated as I felt.

  “Coach...Griffith, can I have a word?” I didn’t look at the captains as they seemed to read the situation and walked away without another word.

  “What’s up, Gray?” he asked, standing up.

  “We can’t just let a senior join the team. She knows nothing about swimming. She can’t even do a freestyle correctly. How are we supposed to—”

  “Let me stop you right there, Turner.” He put a hand up, and I had to pace in a small circle, but I let him talk. “I can sense your frustration, but son…” he said as he put a hand on my shoulder, which made me clench my jaw so tightly, it clicked. “We’re not going to state.”

  My heart dropped as I looked up at him, waiting for him to clarify. He couldn’t mean that. Shouldn’t he at least tell us to try?

  “We’d be lucky to go to regionals,” he continued. “We’re just out here to swim, and if you want a team that puts trophies over teammates, then you should find a different team.” He took his hand off my shoulder as he walked past me toward the pool.

  “I just want our team to win,” I answered, feeling dejected and honestly, shocked.

  He turned back to me and looked straight into my eyes as he said, “Then, help turn us into a winning team.”

  I stood there dumbfounded
as he started giving directions to the swimmers in the nearest lanes. The captains were watching me from the bleachers. I couldn’t go back to Addy and Amy. At the moment, I didn’t want to return to that pool at all. What I really wanted to do was get in my mom’s crappy car and drive back to Encinitas to be on a team that could win, a team that listened to each other. Far from Addy Altman.

  Out in the hallway between the pool and the locker rooms, I leaned back against the wall and let myself slide down to the floor. How was I going to pull this off now? Some kid from Delinki, Minnesota wasn’t going to get a swimming scholarship if his team couldn’t even make it to regionals.

  I felt them approach before I lifted my head to see Freddy and Willow standing there.

  “We’re seniors too, and this is our last chance to be on a good team. It’s not fair that one person can come and ruin it all,” the red-head said with her hand on her hip. She was being a little dramatic.

  “Yeah,” Freddy said. “We agree with you. The coach shouldn’t just be fair; he should be a coach and do what’s best for the team.”

  It was as if they had a punchline I was waiting for them to deliver.

  “If you want her off the team, we have some ideas,” the girl said, finally. There it was. I wasn’t the only one who wanted Addy off the team, but as I looked up at those two, like they were scheming something villainous, I felt sick to my stomach. I could try to have her kicked off the team, but I didn’t like the idea of someone else doing it.

  Quickly standing, I nodded at them to show that I heard them, but would not give them the satisfaction of joining in on this bully plot.

  “I’ve got it covered,” I said as I opened the door to the pool. Walking over to our lane, my mind was racing. There was no way I was going to go behind the coach’s back to get her booted...if that’s even what they were thinking. I wanted a better team, but how far would I go for that?

  Just as I stopped at the pool’s edge, I looked down to see Addy making another lap back toward the starting block. The other girl was coaching her all the way down, reminding her to keep her legs level and her body parallel to the floor. Every movement of her straight arms circled from the side of her body to over her head as she glided through the water much faster than before. And as I stepped up, I noticed that her arms stayed perfectly close to her ears.

  Addy

  I needed an in with Gray, something he wanted that only I could provide. I toyed with the notion of tutoring him in calculus, but quickly realized he wasn’t bad at math, just staying awake. Maybe I could teach him how to be nice. Based on his commentary in the pool today, that was the area he most needed help with. It wasn’t until he took his shirt off at the pool and I spotted the mosquito bites on his shoulders that I knew exactly what to use as leverage.

  After practice, I changed out of my suit as fast as possible and jogged out to the parking lot. Just as I suspected, Gray’s car was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he was headed toward the main road on foot.

  I jumped in my car and pulled up beside him, rolling down the passenger side window so I could shout loud enough to be heard over whatever was blaring in his headphones.

  “Hey! You need a ride?”

  Gray pulled his oversized headphones down to rest around his neck. They were the spendy wireless type. The kind you saw in commercials, not in Delinki.

  “I’m fine, but thanks.” He didn’t quit walking which was awkward because it meant I had to drive alongside him at a crawl to continue the conversation.

  “You sure?” I asked, “The mosquitos are on a real tear today.” I purposely stared at the three raised bumps peeking out of his shirt collar. I wanted him to know it was noticeable he was out here being eaten alive.

  The psychological effect kicked in and he reached up to itch one, then another, until his hands were desperately clawing at his neck. As fate would have it, a mosquito chose that exact moment to land directly on his forehead. Not that much fate was required. This was Minnesota in September. Every day looked like that scene in Charlotte's Web when the baby spiders are floating off in clumps. Only for us it was mosquitos, the grossest of all bugs in my opinion.

  Gray slapped himself, brushing the dead mosquito off his face in disgust.

  “I don’t want to inconvenience…”

  “No worries,” I said probably too eagerly based on the reserved look on his face. He hadn’t fully committed yet, so I put the car in park and leaned over to push the passenger door open.

  Behind us, the boys team captain, Freddy, honked his horn. He couldn’t very well say no now, not with the line of headlights beginning to form. Gray cast a look back, then tossed his bag in the front seat.

  “Thanks,” he said begrudgingly. “I live on 5th and Main.”

  I nodded then pulled out of the parking lot, my car now smelled like chlorine and generic man shampoo, a scent I found myself oddly attracted to.

  Once Gray was buckled and unlikely to bail, I began the longest possible route to his home. He rather quickly noticed I was headed toward the outskirts of town and not Main Street.

  “Do you need to put my address in your phone?” he asked, looking out the window as we passed the suburbs and turned toward Nora’s farm.

  “Actually,” I said. “I know where Main Street is.” What I didn’t tell him was how well I knew it, my boyfriend of two years lived on that street as well. “But I wanted to talk to you for a minute. So I figured I would take the scenic route.”

  Gray’s face went pale. “Why does this feel like the beginning of a murder plot?”

  I tossed my head back with an evil laugh. “No one would suspect dear, sweet Addy.”

  “And no one would miss the random new guy who sleeps in class and eats alone,” he added with a grin.

  He didn’t eat alone today, though—not that I was monitoring his whereabouts or anything, but I had noticed Simon Hawkins abandoned the jock table in favor of hanging out with him, which made sense. Simon was no jock.

  “What did you want to talk about?” asked Gray, as if he could sense me drifting off.

  I had mentally prepared to make this pitch for the last hour and a half but now that the moment was here I felt oddly insecure about it. What was I supposed to do if he said no? Just drive him home in silence? That sounded mortifying.

  “Addy?” he prompted. “No offense but I’d like to get home at a decent hour.”

  “Right,” I said, pulling the car over to the side of the dirt road circling Nora’s property. With the engine still running I turned to Gray and made my plea.

  “I want you to teach me how to swim. Really swim, like not drag the team down every time I get in the pool swim.”

  Gray squirmed in his seat, turning his deep brown eyes everywhere but toward me.I couldn’t quite read his expression. He didn’t look mad which was good, but he didn’t look happy either. To be honest, his pretty plump lips were closer to a frown than a scowl. He couldn’t be sad though; that didn’t make sense.

  “I can do something for you too,” I continued, still optimistic that he would see the brilliance behind my offer. “I’ve noticed you walking instead of driving, and I’m guessing it’s because of the dead battery or whatever. It’s not my business, here’s my offer. You teach me to swim, and I will drive you to and from school each day.”

  “I’d rather walk,” said Gray, with a small laugh.

  I rolled my eyes, wishing he weren’t making this difficult. “Think about it this way. The time you spend walking is time you spend not swimming, or not doing homework, or not applying for scholarships.” I knew I had his attention now. I’d seen him scrolling through the scholarship sites at lunch. I knew he was hoping to turn his skill in the water into an avenue for college. “Teach me to swim and I’ll save you the time it takes to walk, and if you do a good job, just maybe we will make regionals and the right scout will see you.”

  Gray sighed, as if everything I was saying was completely bonkers. “I’ll think about it.”

 
; I could see the wheels turning in his head. We weren’t so different, me and him. We were both willing to do whatever it took when we wanted something, and he wanted that swim scholarship, bad.

  Chapter Seven

  Gray

  I was on the couch watching old clips of the Rio Olympics, trying to focus on Phelps’s form, when I heard the front door open.

  “Hey, kiddo,” my mom called as she walked into the kitchen. “You’re up late.”

  I looked back at my phone and noticed it was past ten. “Oops,” I answered. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. That ride home with Addy was unexpected, and her offer was even more. No matter how many times my mind kept immediately thinking “no way,” I kept reconsidering it.

  What was a few extra lessons if it meant my mom could have the car? I’d be selfish to not take the deal. But then again...teaching Addy Altman to swim was about as impossible as it could get.

  “Go get some sleep,” she said as she kissed the top of my head on her way to her bedroom to change. “You can take the car tomorrow,” she called from the hallway. “I work another late shift and I don’t want you missing sleep. I’ll Uber.”

  As she closed her door, my head fell back with a groan. Thanks, universe. There was no way I could let my mom take an Uber in the middle of the night when I had a perfectly good ride opportunity.

  Opening the text app on my phone, I found the text Addy sent when I gave her my number in the car. I let out a chuckle reading it again.

  Addy: Hey loser.

  I promised her I would think about it and text her when I made my decision. “This is a terrible idea,” I whispered to myself.

  Me: Okay. Fine.

  The whooshing sound of the sent message confirmed my fate. It didn’t take long to regret it. A moment later my phone pinged with her response.

  Addy: Not with that attitude.