“Hey, is Coach around?” I asked.

“He had a lunch meeting with a parent.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Can I help you with something?”

“No . . . Well, actually I was just going to tell him that I can’t go to the awards banquet. You want to pass on that message for me?”

He laughed. “Nice try.”

“I’ll give you a dollar.”

“Tempting but still no. You know it’s mandatory, right? I don’t think you’ll be able to get out of it if you plan on swimming next year.”

I thought about telling DJ about Eric. Oh, who was I kidding? DJ probably already knew. It seemed everyone did. I knew having a dead brother had gotten me an extra bit of something—food in the lunch line, percentage points on grades, days for makeup work—over the years. I was sure everybody knew that too. The only thing I could be 100 percent sure I’d earned was my swimming times. The clock wasn’t subjective. Nobody could change that.

I shrugged. “He’ll be mad, but my conflict is important too.”

He picked up a pen and clicked the end. “I’ll leave him a message that you were here. Maybe he’ll call you out of your next class to talk.”

“Sounds good.”

“By the way, thanks for letting me tag along at the museum the other night.”

I nodded. “We kind of ditched you for a while.”

“I’m kind of a loner anyway.”

“Meaning you’d rather be alone or that people tend to leave you alone?”

“Both.”

I tugged on the straps of my backpack. “So you had fun?”

“I love art.”

“What was your favorite piece there?”

“Did you see the aquarium sculpture on the second floor?”

“No.”

“It was amazing. It looked real.”

“We were a little preoccupied that night.”

“I noticed. With what?”

I didn’t want to admit it out loud. I was embarrassed that we had ever taken the Heath Hall thing seriously. “Something stupid. But anyway, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.”

“Hadley,” he said before I could leave.

I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”

“I think you should try, like really try, to come to the awards banquet. You’ll be glad you did.”

I nodded because I didn’t feel like arguing, or telling him my parents had basically said the same thing about their event. That everybody seemed to think their thing was the most important, the most worth my time, the thing that I would be happier to attend. At this point, I wanted to skip both.

Fourteen

“Hey, Ms. Lin.” I stood in the art room after swim practice the next day, taking in all the paintings around me.

“Hadley, hello. What brings you here? Have you decided to add art to your schedule after all?”

As my mentor teacher, Ms. Lin was in charge of helping me figure out my four-year goals and I always thought she felt cheated that she got the one person in the whole school probably the least interested in art.

“Nope. Still not even a little bit artistic.”

“There’s an artist inside each of us.”

“I think I drowned mine.”

She gave a courtesy laugh, then said, “So what brings you here? Did you already fill out your schedule for next year?”

We’d gotten the sheets that morning. I liked to get things off my to-do list as quickly as possible. “Yes.” I handed it to her.

While she looked over it, my eyes continued to wander the room. Art hung on the walls and paintings were drying on easels. I bit my lip. “Did any of your students show a piece at the museum on Tenth Street for the show last week? I saw a painting there that my parents might want to buy.” This wasn’t the reason I had filled out my schedule so fast. I was not still curious about who Heath Hall was. Or at least that’s what I was telling myself.

She brightened at my mention of going to the museum. “Sounds like you didn’t drown your creative side, after all.”

“It’s for my parents,” I said again before she whipped out an eraser and started changing my schedule.

“Students don’t have to get my approval to enter pieces there. They have to submit them for consideration like everyone else. Did the piece not have a name with it?”

“No.” And I knew for a fact the piece had been snuck in and not submitted for consideration at all.

“What did it look like?”

“It was a painting of a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean.” It was dark and alive and even thinking about it now gave me goose bumps again. Maybe I did have a creative side clawing for air somewhere inside of me.

“I haven’t seen a piece like that come through my class. But most serious students work on paintings at home too.”

“Who would you say your most talented student is?”

“Everyone is an artist in their own way. I don’t pick favorites.”

I laughed. “I won’t tell anyone.”

She looked around, as if to make sure we were still alone, and led me to the far corner of the room where a half-done painting sat. Even incomplete, it was gorgeous. It was a tree, twisted and gnarled, dark and perfect. It had the same feel as the ocean scene from the museum. The same strokes or depth or something. “Yes. Who painted this?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you that without his permission. But I’ll ask him if he’s interested in selling any of his work. I’ll be in touch.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ms. Lin.” He’d know why I was asking. We’d been face-to-face in that hallway at the museum. We’d chatted online. He wouldn’t let Ms. Lin tell me who he was.

The door to the art room flew open and I whirled around.

“Hey, Ms. Lin. I heard you needed some muscle in here.” Jackson walked into the room.

Ms. Lin smiled like he was the cutest thing in the world. I curled my lip but then smoothed my hair, all too aware that I had just gotten out of the pool. Not that I cared what he thought of me, but still.

Jackson noticed me, and his mouth twisted into a sly smile. “Oh, I see you already have plenty of muscle. Never mind.” He started to back out of the room.

“No, Jackson,” Ms. Lin said. “Hadley was just here turning in her schedule. I still need your help.”

“Moore. We keep running into each other. It’s almost like you’re following me.”

He wanted me to point out that I was in here first. I wasn’t going to do that.

“I didn’t know you liked art,” I said to Jackson.

“There’s an artist inside each of us,” he said with a wink in Ms. Lin’s direction.

“So which painting is yours?” I asked.

“My artist just moves around other people’s paintings.”

Ms. Lin began pointing to some easels that Jackson immediately folded and moved to the far end of the room. “I asked for a student council member to help me stack paintings once a week and Jackson answered the call.”

“I am a call answerer. People call, I answer.”

“Yeah, got it.”