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you for the team.”
    I felt an unfamiliar swell of pride at that. “You know I don’t do well with teams.”
    Lancaster scowled. “Look, son, the team needs you. I get it. You think you’re too cool to join a school team.”
    “I don’t think that.”
    “Don’t interrupt.” I shut my mouth and let him continue. “I was you, once. I was terrible at everything. I was slow and clumsy—last picked for every team. Then I discovered I was good at something. My something was wrestling. Yours is swimming. Is it really worth pissing away your talent just because you think you’re too cool for school activities?”
    I didn’t much like being scolded by my least favorite adult. I wrapped my towel tighter around myself and glared at him. Soaking wet and shivering, I’m sure I really intimidated him.
    “That’s not it at all. I just know how the story ends and it’s not with a ‘happily ever after.’”
    “So you’re so scared of failing you won’t even try?”
    “I’m not scared,” I told him through chattering teeth. “I just don’t want to.”
    Lancaster rolled his eyes. “Well, we practice every day at two. If you change your mind, come on by.”
    “Okay,” I told him, turning to leave.
    “Oh, and I should mention, being on a team counts as your P.E. credit, so you wouldn’t have to be in this class anymore.”
    That stopped me in my tracks. “Really?”
    “Yep.”
    I wasn’t sure that was reason enough to risk the inevitable humiliation of trying to infiltrate the ranks of the jocks, but it was a pretty good incentive. The coach might be a bastard, but he apparently wasn’t stupid.
    “I’ll think about it.”
    So now I had that on my mind. I couldn’t deny that I was really flattered to be asked. Over the summer, I’d gotten a letter inviting me to join the track team. Since I had never done track, there was no reason for me to get such a letter unless they just sent one to everyone. So there was nothing special about that invitation.
    Coach Lancaster had seen my embarrassing attempts at basketball, though. And he had seen me in the water. He knew what he could expect from me. So his invitation was a lot harder to ignore. But it wasn’t that simple.
    Being on a team could mean friends and having a place and maybe not being a total freak. Those all sounded good, but they weren’t guaranteed. I could easily be the odd-man-out on the team as well, the one people put up with because I had made the team but who they avoided because I was still me. It’s not like getting on the team would change who I was—the gay klutz with the glasses and the weird way of talking.
    And what if I lost? What if I turned out to be a total failure? Then I’d go from being the weird kid at the school to being the dead weight dragging the swim team down. I couldn’t even guess how bad things would get for me then.
    All in all, it sounded like a very, very bad idea. There was just way too much risk with a very small chance for reward.
    Liam wasn’t in English class either. At that point, I just wrote him off as one brief but very weird high school experience. It was probably for the best, I decided. He was one complication I really didn’t need. My mom would freak out if she found out I was hanging with a guy who did drugs.
    “How’s it hanging?” Zach asked when I got to Physical Science.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Oh, you’re smiling. Who’s the lucky girl?” he asked.
    I hadn’t even noticed that I was smiling. What was that all about? What was wrong with me? “I, uh, it’s not…. I had a good morning.”
    Zach’s grin got even bigger. “Like I said, who’s the girl?”
    Not being straight, it took me a little bit to add things up to figure out what he was suggesting. A braver me would have said something like, “Dude, girls aren’t my thing.” But that wasn’t me. I didn’t even know how to banter without offending people. Now that was a class I would happily take—”How to talk to people.”