The Well's End Read Free Page A

which was funny enough, but then there was another boy, Steve, passing by Eric and his wiener was out, flopping like a third leg, and when I came up gasping for air, they were all exposed, swimming around me like dirty dolphins, laughing to tears.
    I might have been able to get them all expelled, but probably not. Their parents own the world (Eric’s from Manhattan, his father a vice president at Goldman Sachs, his uncle a congressman), while my dad works in a cave. Coach Hart saw it all and did nothing. Well, not nothing. He put me back with the girls, who no longer wanted me. So I swim faster now, just to get away from them.
    At one point in my life, I swam to win. But the summer before last, I watched the London Olympics, saw Phelps after twelve years and that many medals; I thought,
what’s the point?
I’ll swim my way into a good college and then give it up. Or at least give all this
team
sport mumbo jumbo up.
    I rest my arms on the pool’s edge, my nose sucking in the chlorine, and watch Jo make her dive from the platform. She twists perfectly, her tall body a ball of muscle and slick edges, and then dissolves into the pool. I smile. At least I have one friend in the pool
area.
I’ve known Jo forever; she’s one of six townies at Westbrook Academy, though we weren’t always this close. Her father teaches AP Calculus, which is why most people think Westbrook let her in, but watching her dive, I know that’s not entirely true. She, like everyone at Westbrook, has a legit talent. The standard entry formula is obscene wealth and power coupled with talent, but if your father teaches at the school and you get invited to the junior nationals for platform diving, that usually works just fine too.
    â€œMia!” shouts Coach Hart. “Get your ass back in gear.”
    I look around, startled, and I see all the other girls already on the starting blocks watching me, their eyes encased in plastic, their expressions dull and robotic. They hate me. I might hate them too.
    I climb out of the water and shake my limbs, loosening my muscles, stretching my neck. Back to the block, where this time Hart tells us we’re going to hold our breaths and swim under for fifty meters, then freestyle back, then under for fifty, then back. Ten times. They’re called “over-unders”—surprise, surprise. And I’m the best at them too. No wonder my teammates don’t like me.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Jo’s dressed first and leans against a locker next to mine, humming a country song I sorta recognize, looking effortlessly perfect as usual. It’s eight thirty at night, our second practice of the day and last before the meet. Normally, we’d be up at five thirty going at it again, but Coach gives us one off to rest the muscles. How thoughtful of him. I’m in my flip-flops, trying to avoid getting plantar warts, and am scrambling to change. Everyone else is gone, Coach made me do a few more laps, and Jo is kind enough to wait almost every day. For the morning sessions, that means we’re usually late to first period. Now, she’s off in her own world, her lips puckering a touch, as if she’s about to actually sing, when suddenly she bolts upright and grabs my arm.
    â€œShit, I meant to tell you.”
    â€œWhat?” I ask, slipping my shirt over my head.
    â€œOdessa’s throwing a party tonight.”
    I groan. Of course she’d throw a party on a Thursday. Odessa’s one of the other townies, and she lives next door to Jo and me. We all live there, in what the students like to call “Scholarship Row,” though I have seen Odessa’s house, and I know for a fact she doesn’t need a scholarship to attend Westbrook. The thing about Odessa is that she’s done all she can to connect to the others, to prove that she isn’t some new-blood rich girl from a backward town that doesn’t understand the ins and outs of social