“What’s up, Pricey? Fun hanging out with you, Hummingbird!” Connor called on his way into the guys’ locker room.

Elisa raised her eyebrows, and Annabelle wanted so much to talk to her about Connor. To get Elisa to help her analyze all of the interactions she’d had with him today the way she knew Mia probably wouldn’t.

But Mom was waiting and only getting angrier, so she hurried to get dressed and then hurried to the car, where tulle and fake flowers from one of Mom’s parties littered the passenger-seat floor.

“You’re going to call Janine to apologize as soon as we get home,” Mom said as she started the engine. “And you’ll be on dishwashing and trash and laundry-folding duty until I say otherwise. What were you thinking?”

She didn’t wait for Annabelle to answer, though. She kept on talking, and Annabelle zoned out enough that she only caught a few select words. Irresponsible. Inconsiderate. And, of course, worried.

Annabelle looked out the window as they left the pool. She watched five or six kids chasing each other around the emerald-green lawn of a summer house. They were about ten or eleven—around the age Annabelle had been when she’d moved to the island. Even though the car windows were closed, their shouts and squeals streamed in.

“And from now on,” Mom said, “if I don’t approve of your ride to practice, you don’t go. Got it?”

Annabelle nodded, but it was hard to care too much about her punishment after Colette had put her with the second-fastest freestyle relay team during practice and Connor had gone out of his way to flick her ponytail twice.

“You get one warning here, Belle,” Mom added. “This is it. If anything like this happens again, you’re showing me you can’t handle the extra responsibility of the high school team, and it’s back to the middle school team for good.”

That got Annabelle’s attention. “I won’t mess up again,” she promised.

Because she couldn’t lose being on the high school team.

Because after today, it didn’t seem all that impossible that a guy like Connor really might choose a girl like her. And that would be as good as—or maybe even better than—an A in Mr. Derrickson’s history class.

“Oh,” Mom added as she pulled into their driveway. “Mrs. Sloane called this morning. Something opened up in her schedule tomorrow afternoon, so she wants to meet us then.”

Annabelle’s throat went dry. She was supposed to have so much time left before the meeting. And it was supposed to be in the morning, not in the afternoon when she had practice.

“It’s good, I figure,” Mom said. “The sooner the better.”

“I’ll miss practice,” Annabelle pointed out.

But she could have recited her mom’s response along with her. “School comes first.” Always.

Chapter 15

It was strange to be back at school during the summer. In the hallways of the middle school building, the maroon lockers sat open and empty, and the bulletin boards were stripped bare. It turned out those bulletin boards were covered in peeling gray-blue paint under the bright paper teachers usually covered them with and speckled with old thumbtack holes and the occasional shine of a staple that hadn’t been pulled out. No “exemplary student work” hanging on them now.