Read Landlocked (A water witch novel) for Free Online Page B

I hit my mark. Clarissa took a seat next to me, beaming.
    “World!” she whispered in a throaty voice.
    “Domination!” I replied in an equally deep tone. “Shouldn’t we say water world domination?”
    Clarissa dabbed her face with her towel. “No way, that movie sucked!” The next race went so terribly Clarissa threw her stopwatch into the towel at her feet. “No point in clocking when we’re getting spanked that bad.”
    “There really is no point in clocking since the refs and the scoreboard do it for us,” I said.
    “Whatever, I’m old school.” After the race, she leaned over and whispered, “The other teams could have exited the pool and had a tea party long before our girls touched the wall, if they had a mind to.”
    I laughed; she was so bad at losing. My race was next, and I bubbled with excitement. I had a pool at my house, but it wasn’t the same as this. The two girls who had lost the race returned to their chairs, dejected.
    “It’s all right, you guys made good time. They were just crazy fast,” I reassured as my event was called to the block.
    I made my way around to my designated perch and looked up into the stands to smile at the eyes that have never left me, but it hadn't been Sylvia’s eyes I'd felt on my back… It was his. When I saw Jaron’s face, all of the other people in the crowd faded away, and he was all I wanted to see. He looked openly curious, either surprised to see me there or wondering if I was going to do well—I couldn’t tell which. He smiled and cocked his head to the side, making me think it was the second.
    “Swimmers, to the blocks,” someone called.
    My heart jumped into my throat. What was he doing here? I climbed up the short ladder on shaky knees. I’d never been nervous before a race. I closed my eyes, trying to steady my pulse and ease my breathing. I shook out my arms, attempting to throw off the unease. What if I didn’t do well? I wanted to win; I wanted him to see me win. I slipped my goggles down over my eyes, hoping it would hide my tension.
    “To your mark,” the annoying voice prompted.
    I was usually anxious to get into the water, but I was too out of it to feel the normal excitement. I’d never had to deal with nerves before, and I just knew that I wasn’t going to do well. Bending over, I waited to hear the signal, although I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hear it over my pounding heart.
    “Ready.”
    I put myself in position, fighting the urge to steal a quick glance into the stands. The gun popped and I propelled myself into the water with all of the force my wobbly legs could manage. As the cool water hit my face, the anxiety eased a bit. Being completely submerged felt amazing. For a moment I forgot that I needed to give it all I had to make up for the time that my nervous muscles would make me lose. I surfaced, starting the butterfly stroke; it was the one I liked the least because it felt so awkward and unnatural. I sliced my pointed fingers through the water like a hot knife through butter.
    Touching both hands to the wall , I rolled into my turn. I shoved off the surface hard, frustrated. There was no way to be sure, but it felt like the lap took me longer than it normally did. I pushed myself harder, turned at the starting wall, and flipped backward into the backstroke. This was the stroke I would usually relax in, just swim and gaze up at the clouds. But not today. If my uncharacteristic distraction cost my team the meet, I would feel terrible. They put way too much stock in me.
    I thought my backstroke went okay, but my breaststroke felt like it dragged on, so I went into freestyle like a mad woman. My freestyle was a strange mix of the front crawl and what Clarissa lovingly dubbed ‘the wounded dolphin’. I had always thought that was funny, but with Jaron in the stands, I hoped I didn’t actually look like an injured porpoise. When my fingers finally touched the wall on my last leg, I was relived. Whether I'd raced a