When she took a test at school, that buzz of nerves overtook her muscles and then her brain until she couldn’t think at all. But now the buzz shrunk down smaller and smaller, as if she were turning down the volume on music one notch at a time. The water stopped fighting her and there it was: that feeling she loved. Of knowing exactly what she was doing with every stroke. Of being completely in control of her body.

When she raised her head for a breath, she was dimly aware of the usual background noises—laughter, low voices, splashing. A couple of times, she even made out the sound of someone cheering her name. She sped to the end of the pool, turned, and flew back the other way, her muscles firing.

And when she picked up her head, she could hear two things: the splash of Elisa’s arms hitting the water to start her freestyle leg and applause. Loud cheers, coming from everybody on the team. Ruby was clapping along, and Kayla gave Annabelle a high five. And Connor Madison was right there in the front of the pack, letting out a giant whistle. For her.

Chapter 8

When practice ended, Annabelle felt better than she had in ages.

Visualize yourself achieving your goals. That was another thing Mitch always said. He visualized silly things, like pulling the car into an empty parking spot if they drove into town for ice cream when everything was mobbed with summer people, and important things, like getting the newspaper to run a story about Mom’s new event-planning business at the start of last summer.

“We’ve been needing a strong butterfly to round out the team,” Colette had said.

“We almost never won last year,” Elisa had said.

And Annabelle knew exactly what to visualize.

She pictured herself reaching the wall ahead of the competition on her leg of the medley relay at the Labor Day Invitational, after she’d helped the team win their entire league. The cheers would be ten times as loud as today, and Kayla and Ruby would jump up and down and hug her as they all watched Elisa bring home the win.

Last year the relay team had almost never won. This year, Annabelle wanted to make sure they never lost. Then Mia and Jeremy and everyone else who had ever felt sorry for her would know that she didn’t need their pity.

And even if her grades got worse and worse and she couldn’t stay at the Academy, it wouldn’t be quite so humiliating that she hadn’t been smart enough to make it there. People would think, Sure, she isn’t the smartest, but have you seen that girl swim? When all Mom’s friends and all the summer people whose parties she planned asked about Annabelle, Mom wouldn’t be able to tell them that Annabelle went to the Academy anymore. But she could tell them, My daughter led her high school relay team to a championship as an eighth grader!