Amber and Jessa are near the diving well, taking pictures and swapping theories with a group of our teammates about who might’ve done this. How anyone managed to get their hands on that many rubber ducks—there are hundreds—and sneak them all in before morning practice is a total mystery.
Dave is red-faced with anger and disgust. He hates pranks, and the ducks are one thing, but all that soap can be bad for the filters. Whoever did this is going to be in a lot of trouble.
Harry catches my eye and comes over to stand next to me, leaning that effortless lean.
“Fun fact,” he says. “Bath toys are cheap when you buy them in bulk off the internet.”
“That is a fun fact,” I reply. “You did this?”
He shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell,” I promise. He shrugs again, but his grin ruins the charade. “Wait—there’s no way you were able to get this many rubber ducks off the internet overnight.”
He steps back to admire his handiwork. Dave has a group of freshmen attacking the ducks with skimmers, but it’s slow-going. There are just so many of them.
“I didn’t actually buy them. My friend Tucker’s uncle manages Wacky Waves, that water park up in Hartbrook. These are from their annual rubber ducky derby. He said I could borrow them as long as I returned them.”
“How are you going to get them back without Dave finding out it was you?”
“I’ll confess,” he says. “Getting away with it wasn’t the point.”
“What was the point?”
“Maybe I’m just a lord of misrule,” he says. I roll my eyes and smile. “Or maybe I figured there’s someone on this team who could use a laugh. And a little revenge.”
“Revenge?” Then I remember what Dave said to me at the invitational: I could’ve put one of those plastic duck toys in the pool in your place and it probably would’ve had better splits!
“But you’ll get in trouble!”
“I can’t have him thinking it was you,” he says. “Although, honestly, I’d be surprised if he remembers all the shitty things he says. He probably won’t make the connection, which is a bummer.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” I tell him.
“Obviously. If I had to do it, it wouldn’t be half as charming.”
God, he’s so arrogant. And yet, when he smiles at me, I feel light-headed. Clearly, I’m suffering from low blood sugar. I should’ve eaten more than the granola bar I scarfed on the car ride over.
“The fact that you know it’s charming makes it half as charming,” I say.
“That’s what my stepdad’s always telling me. He says my antics would come off more lovable if I didn’t act so pleased with myself all the time.”
“You do stuff like this a lot?” I can’t imagine having that kind of time or energy to devote to anything besides swimming.
“I dabble.” He touches my arm and leans in close, lowering his voice. My skin tingles under his fingertips. “Hey, my friend Tucker—”
“Heir to the rubber duck fortune?”
He laughs. “His mom’s out of town, so he’s having a party on Saturday. You should come.”
I stiffen. Harry is nice, and I like him, but no guy has ever paid me this much attention and I don’t know what to do with it. Part of me wants to spend more time with him, but another part—a much stronger, more familiar part—panics at the thought of him figuring out I’m not as interesting as he thinks and wants to stay far, far away so he never gets the chance.
“You can bring friends if you want,” he says. “Invite whoever.”
“I’m not much of a party girl,” I tell him. “But I’ll think about it.”
Harry beams at me. “Cool.”
“Hey!” Dave shouts.
Harry jumps. Sixty heads swivel in Dave’s direction. Amber hides her phone behind her back.
“Stop gawking and start helping! I want this pool cleared in fifteen minutes!”
“You heard the man, Susie,” Harry says, kicking off his deck shoes. “Let’s go duck hunting.”
* * *
Later that week, after evening practice, I knock on the door to the coaches’ office with a tin of cookies in my hand. Beth smiles when she spots me through the glass. She waves me in.
“Hi,” I say, feeling silly now that I’m here. Beth has been nothing but friendly, but it’s always weird with new coaches. I thrust the tin at her. “I brought you some of my mom’s Mexican wedding cookies. We made them last night, so they’re fresh.”
“Ooh,” she says, lifting the lid off the tin. Powdered sugar gets all over the fleece she’s wearing.
“I should’ve warned you. They can be messy,” I say.
She swipes at a white spot on her jacket before giving up with a shrug. “No worries. I was going to wash this, anyway.”
“There are nuts in them,” I warn her as she picks up one of the cookies and pops it into her mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t even ask if you were allergic.”
“I’m not,” she says around the cookie. She swallows hard. “These are delicious. I’m going to have to ration them.”
“We make them for every GAC bake sale, so there’ll be opportunities to have more.”
“You guys do have a lot of bake sales, I’ve noticed,” she says, glancing at the GAC events calendar hanging on the wall.
“Those cookies are a popular item. They always sell out.”
“You’ll have to give me the recipe. They’re called wedding cookies?”
“That’s what we’ve always called them. They have other names. My family is Mexican, but my mom is part Polish, too,” I tell her. “She says her babcia used to make them, but she called them Russian teacakes. They’re an international cookie.”
Beth makes me so nervous I’m reduced to babbling about baked goods. She comes off so cool and collected. There’s a part of me that wishes I could be more like that and less like...well, me: anxious and worried and too tightly wound.
“Thank you, Susannah,” Beth says, replacing the lid on the tin.
“You’re welcome. I just wanted to say I appreciate that you stayed late the other day so I could spend more time in the pool. That was nice of you.”
“It was no problem. But if you ever want help with anything—if you need extra coaching or you want to talk about stuff—you can always come to me. I’m here for you guys. And I know what it feels like to struggle with your training.”