Surviving High School

moment.”
    “Like maybe,” she said, a smile breaking across her face, “until the dance.”
    He took a deep breath and leaned back into his seat. His eyes never left her, and Emily wondered if anyone had ever looked at her so intently.
    “Until the dance,” he said. “Well, then, maybe I actually will be looking forward to homecoming.”

CHAPTER NINE
    That Thursday, the Twin Branches swim team prepared for its first meet of the year, an exhibition match against its crosstown rivals, the Wilson High Badgers. Of course, all the girls on the team knew that the real competition wasn’t between the two schools at all; it was between Emily and Dominique.
    As Emily tightened her swim cap and rubbed a smudge from her goggles, Dominique approached. She walked jerkily, keeping her joints stiff as she moved.
    “Hello. Swim. Bot! Are you. Ready. To. Lose?”
    Other girls in the locker room glanced over and shook their heads.
    “Don’t be mean,” said Amanda. “You’re making fun of her—and robots!”
    “Seriously,” said Hannah. “Kessler is cool in my book.Did you see her the other night, jumping into the pool after Ben?”
    “I jumped into the pool, too,” said Dominique, her face growing red.
    “More like fell,” said Hannah, smiling.
    “She fell?” asked another girl, who had just walked in. “Wish I could have seen that. I guess I was distracted, watching Ben run around in his boxers.”
    “Speaking of which,” said Amanda, turning to Emily. “Are you two dating now?”
    “Maybe?” said Emily, genuinely unsure.
    “If you don’t know, you’re not dating,” said Dominique as she turned to leave. Once she was safely out of the room, Hannah came over and sat next to Emily.
    “Don’t listen to her,” said Hannah. “I’ve had two-year relationships where the guy never admitted we were a couple.”
    Emily felt a strange mix of emotions: first, happiness that the other girls had jumped to her aid and taken an interest in her relationship with Ben, but second, fear. What if her dad heard the girls talking like this? If he found out about Ben, who knew what would happen? Homecoming would be a no-go—not to mention any hope of a social life ever again.
    “Hey, guys? Can we, uh, keep all this stuff with Ben a secret for now?” Emily asked. “We’re still figuring things out.”
    “Say no more,” said Hannah. “You can’t be too careful. People want to know if you’re officially together, and then you feel like you have to know. And sometimes having that define-the-relationship talk turns into an end-the-relationship one.”
    “Uh, yeah,” said Emily. She hoped Hannah and the other girls really would keep quiet about this. That was possible, right? Right?
    Maybe it was best not to think about it.
    A few minutes later, Emily waited on top of lane four’s starting block. Dominique stood a few feet away in lane two. The first race was the 100-meter freestyle, an event that Dominique typically dominated.
    Emily glanced over at her rival, trying to get a read on her, but Dominique just stared down the lane, focused solely on the water.
    Emily looked across the pool toward the bleachers, where a larger-than-usual crowd had gathered. She recognized a few faces from the party: Zach, Marcus, Kevin, and Amir, not to mention Phil, who sat next to Kimi, holding her hand. Today, Kimi’s hair was done up in a bunch of impossibly tight pin curls, secured with floral clips. Emily guessed it was an homage to retro swim caps. And next to Kimi was Ben. He was sitting right in the center of the top row, holding a poster-board sign reading GO EMILY!
    Seeing the sign made her smile and simultaneously hope it wouldn’t raise her dad’s suspicions. Luckily for Emily, Coach Kessler was staring at her instead. Dressed in the same dark gray suit he’d worn to races for the past ten years, now too tight around his increasingly chubby frame, he stood motionless, his eyes fixed on Emily. As the race time neared and she bent down to grip the underside of the starting block,his eyes never left her while he silently evaluated her stance. If she had even one finger or toe out of place, she’d hear about it later.
    “Em-i-ly!” Ben shouted. “Em-i-ly!”
    It was just like back at the party, when he’d chanted her name to make her jump into the pool. And just like back at the party, the other students joined in. Zach and Marcus, Phil and Kimi, and other kids she didn’t even know; they were all rooting for