CH.4 - You Owe Me
1079 Words
Anna's POV
Leo finds me the next day.
I'm barely out of my first class when he falls into step beside me, all easy warmth and that smile every girl in this school has lost sleep over, and a week ago my heart would've climbed straight up my throat. Today it just sits there, tired.
"Anna. Can we talk about yesterday?"
"What else is there to say between us?" I keep walking. "You threw out my birthday gift to you. Message received."
"I didn't throw it away." He catches my arm, gentle, and I stop because making a scene is exactly what the watching crowd wants. "Anna, I swear I didn't. Someone must have done it without me noticing. I'd never do that."
I look at him and the longer i do so the more convinced I am that he means it. That's the worst part. There's no lie in his face, just this soft regret that makes everything harder to be angry at.
"I should have spoken up for you sooner," he says, quieter. "When they laugh at you. I see it and I stay quiet because I don't want the trouble, and that's not fair to you. I'm really sorry."
It's a good apology and it genuinely would have meant the world to me a month ago.
But the hallway has noticed. Of course it has. Girls cluster by the lockers, watching Leo apologize to the fish girl, and I can see the exact moment it curdles in them, the way it always does, like I've stolen something that was theirs.
"Why is Leo even apologizing to her?" one of them says, loud enough to carry. "To her?"
And just like that, I've made it worse by existing near him.
The rest of the week proves it. On Wednesday I spin my locker open and everything inside spills out at my feet, books, notes, the spare goggles I keep for meets, all of it dumped and trampled, and somebody's keyed a word into the metal door I won't repeat. The hall goes quiet around me, waiting. That's the part they want most, the moment my face cracks, the fish girl finally crying where everyone can watch.
I crouch down and gather my things, slow and steady, and I don't give it to them. I've been swimming in this their whole lives. I know how to hold my breath.
But it's exhausting. The constant small cruelty of people who decided who I was before I ever opened my mouth wears on a person, and by Friday I just want the pool.
The pool is the one place that makes sense. Coach Daniel's already there when I come out of the changing room, clipboard under his arm, that knowing look he gets.
"Heard you confessed your undying love to Leo," he says, not even looking up. "Today's race should have you extra motivated, yeah?"
"If you want to scold me, just scold me." I tug my cap on. "Don't dress it up as a pep talk."
He laughs. Daniel's the rare adult who treats me like a person instead of a project, and even on a week like this one he can get half a smile out of me.
"Fair." He sobers. "But I mean it about today. You need to win this one, Anna. It matters for your scholarship. No boy is worth that. Understood?"
"Understood."
And I mean it. The scholarship is the whole reason I'm here. Everything else is noise.
I'm heading to warm up when a girl I half-recognize tells me there's a problem with my lane assignment in the equipment room. I should know better. I do know better. But the race is close and I can't risk it, so I go, and the door swings shut behind me, and the lock clicks, and through it comes the giggling.
"I'll let you out in time for your race," one of them sings. "Maybe."
I don't panic. Panicking is what they want, and I've been locked in worse than a supply closet. I bang the door once, hard, and start hunting along the shelves for another way out, a window, a vent, anything. There's nothing. Just damp concrete and the smell of chlorine and rubber, and the minutes bleeding away on the other side of the wall.
The race. I can hear the meet starting up faintly through the wall, the whistle, the splash, and my chest tightens because the scholarship is in that pool and I'm in here, and for the first time all week something close to real fear gets its fingers into me.
Then the lock turns from the outside.
The door opens. Evan's standing there.
Of course it's him. Of course he's the one who turns up, here, now, when I'd give anything for it to be literally anyone else.
For a second neither of us moves. He fills the doorway with that same unbothered stillness from the boat, and I'm caught between needing to bolt and the stupid, inconvenient jolt of him being the one who came.
"It's not your place to behave violently in here," he says, past me, to the girls already scattering down the corridor, and there's something flat and cold in his voice that wasn't there in the dark on the water, something that makes them move faster.
Then he steps aside to let me through.
There's no time. I shove past him, close enough to catch that scent again, salt and something warmer underneath, and I run, and over my shoulder I throw a thank-you I don't have the breath to make sound like one.
Behind me, easy as anything, he calls back.
"You owe me a favor."
I don't answer. I make the race with seconds to spare, salt and chlorine and adrenaline, and I win it, because Daniel's right that no boy is worth the scholarship and I'm stubborn enough to prove it in the water.
After, the whole team spills toward someone's party to celebrate, still buzzing, towels around our necks.
I almost don't go.
I should be tired of parties. The last one ended with my heart in a trash can. But Elsie's got my arm and the team's got that giddy post-win glow, and some reckless part of me that's had a long, mean week just wants one night that isn't about being the fish girl.
So I go.
Not knowing that I am walking straight toward him yet again.
- Writer
