It was the meanest thing Mom could have said.

Because yes—when Annabelle had found out she’d disqualified the relay team, when Connor had commented on her personalized towel, and when Ruby had taken out her e-cigarette—in those moments, Annabelle hadn’t felt like she belonged on the high school team. But then there were other moments—when Connor flicked her ponytail and lifted her up over his head, when Elisa and Kayla talked to her like she was one of them, when Coach Colette acted like she was capable of something special—in those moments, she felt like she counted.

Swimming with the high school team, helping them win the league, even, and spending time with Connor and Kayla and Elisa—she was way more ready for those things than she was for anything else people expected her to do. She had a much better chance of doing that stuff well than of passing eighth-grade history.

Mitch took her to Urgent Care to get her wrist checked, and the doctor who took X-rays and examined her said things could be worse. She had a fracture in the lower part of her right thumb and a badly sprained right wrist. She was lucky that she was left-handed, and she didn’t need an actual cast—only a splint that had to stay on all the time except when she was in the shower. She had to wear it for a month, and pretty soon she could start doing physical therapy.

“How long do you think it’ll be before she can swim again?” Mitch asked.

“Light swimming should be okay in a few weeks,” the doctor said.

But “light swimming” wasn’t going to do Annabelle any good. Not while the rest of the team was getting to the peak of training, before they’d taper to get ready for the biggest races of the season.

Mitch didn’t clarify what he was really asking, though. He probably figured there was no point, when Mom was calling Coach Colette to pull Annabelle from the high school team, anyway.

And on the drive home, he turned the radio up loud so they wouldn’t have to talk.

He’d been so proud and happy so, so recently, when Colette had asked Annabelle to swim up with the high school team. But now that was over. There were no upcoming meets for them to strategize about. There was no point in breaking down some element of her stroke.

Without swimming, everything between the two of them was even more broken than her messed-up hand. Without swimming, she and Mitch didn’t have anything to say to each other at all.

But just when the tears had pooled in Annabelle’s eyes, her phone chirped, and there it was: what she’d been waiting and waiting for. A message from Connor. Finally.

Even though Mitch was focused on the road, she shielded her phone the way kids shielded their test papers at school.

Sorry for not texting before, he wrote. And sorry we couldn’t find you.

Couldn’t find her. So he must have tried!