Surviving High School

something. Like a duck.”
    “Do you think having one breast slightly bigger than the other makes you curve to the right as you swim? How do you adjust for that?”
    And thus began Emily’s new swimsuit-changing system. To avoid Dominique and the other girls, she would always arrive at practice first and leave last. Her dad called it dedication to the sport; Emily called it self-preservation.
    As soon as she got to the locker room, Emily pulled out her suit and changed. Once the nylon fabric covered her, she felt an immediate sense of relief. There’d be no new insult from Dominique today. As Emily gathered her hair beneath her rubber swim cap, she heard other swimmers approaching, their laughter echoing off the locker room’s tiled walls.
    “I heard she was crying at lunch today,” said Dominique as the door creaked open. “Paula totally heard her sobbing in a bathroom stall.”
    “Over a boy, you think?” asked Lindsay.
    Over Sara , thought Emily. Would they still talk like that if they knew what I was really crying about? Probably.
    “As if a boy would even touch her,” said Dominique. “Emily—she’s basically not a person. Dating her would be like dating a toaster. She’s a robot. A swimbot. Oh! Swimbot. I think someone just got a new nickname!”
    The girls appeared from behind a row of lockers and ceased their conversation as they noticed Emily. An awkward silence settled in the room.
    “Hello,” said Emily with a half smile, hoping to pretend she’d heard nothing. Dominique, though, had other plans.
    “Hel-lo,” mocked Dominique in a robot voice. “I. Am. Swimbot.” She moved her arms in jerky motions, like Emily had seen b-boys do on America’s Best Dance Crew . “Hel-lo. Hu-man.”
    Lindsay was in hysterics, hiding her smile behind a hand and crying with laughter.
    “Take me. To. Your. Leader,” continued Dominique.
    “That’s an alien,” corrected Emily. “Not a robot.”
    “Alien. Does. Not. Compute.”
    More girls had arrived and were peeking around the corner, laughing at Dominique’s impression.
    “Just stop it, okay?” said Emily.
    “Stop. What?” asked Dominique. “Need. Fuel. Give me. Weird. Almond. Butter. Flax. Seed.”
    Just hold it together , thought Emily. Don’t let her see how it gets to you. Keeping her cool would have been hard enough under normal circumstances. But today? After seeing Nick Brown in the cafeteria? After hearing him call her Sara?
    “Nobody. Asks me. Out,” Dominique continued. “Why don’t. Human boys. Like me?”
    The growing crowd of girls laughed even harder, and Emily felt her face go red.
    “I haven’t seen you with a whole lot of boyfriends, either,Dom,” said a voice from behind Emily. “I think I’m starting to see why.”
    Emily turned around to see Samantha Hill, the captain of the girls’ varsity team, staring down at Dominique. Although only five foot seven, Samantha had a presence that made her seem six feet tall. It didn’t hurt that she was model-gorgeous without a speck of makeup. She had supposedly thrown last year’s prom king out of a speeding car when he tried to touch her leg on the way home from the dance. She definitely wasn’t above hitting a girl.
    The locker room went silent as Samantha leaped to the top of a wooden bench.
    “Listen up, ladies. Save your insults for those girls from Wilson or Jackson High. Dominique, you two are teammates. You’re worried Emily might be better in the pool? Work harder. You think you’re so hot that you want to offer Emily some dating advice? Get your own boyfriend first. And don’t flatter yourself. I’ve seen you getting out of the water and without that mountain of concealer, you look like a before model in an acne-cream ad.”
    Samantha hopped down from the bench, opened a locker, and took out her suit. The crowd of girls was still staring at her, too shocked to speak. Samantha turned back and, noticing they were still there, barked, “We’re done here. Go. Now.” The girls scattered like flies off a kicked Dumpster.
    “Thanks,” Emily said when the other girls had scurried to their lockers. She turned away quickly, trying to avoid staring directly at Samantha as she pulled off her clothes.
    “Don’t think I’m your friend,” said Samantha, glancing at her. Then, after a second, she added, “You know, you remind me of your sister. I mean, you look just like her.” There was something odd about the way Samantha said it, though, as if she’d known