“If I didn't swim my best, I'd think about it at school, at dinner, with my friends. It would drive me crazy.”

“I didn't think my day could get any worse until my best friend told me she might be going crazy. Again.”

“He'd been looking for me? I forced myself to remain cool about this, to not pump my fist in the air. I wondered where I'd been. Probably swimming in my pool or driving around town or sprawled out on my bed and thinking about him. There was something beautiful about the idea of us reaching invisibly across town for each other.”

“It would drive me crazy to be a guest in my own house.”

“I'd begun to think that he'd given up on me in the weeks that had passed. Or that he no longer cared about me. Hated me even. And the idea of losing him forever, my best friend, the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets, was so painful I couldn't stand it.”

“Think your mother will let me drive you to school tomorrow? Now that we're all friends and united by a belief in the careful use of contraception?"My cheeks burn, the memory of my mother's mortifying behavior distracting me for a moment. "Yes," I mumble. "I think so.”