“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.