“Chelsea!” An arm slung over my shoulders as Ashley all but tackled me from behind.

“Hey, Ash!” I said, beaming at her.

Nolan barely glanced over at her. We were walking to the school indoor pool together after our chemistry class, and so far, he hadn’t shown any signs of running away.

“Biology was so boring,” she griped. “At least we get to be together in gym.”

“Yeah,” I said and nodded. “At least we aren’t going to suffer under the hot sun today.”

“Wait,” she whispered, slowing down.

I looked at her curiously. “What?”

Ashley’s eyes darted between Nolan and me repeatedly, as if she couldn’t decide who she wanted to stare at more. “I can’t believe I just noticed that you’re walking to class with Nolan. No, scratch that—Nolan’s coming to gym today?”

“He can probably hear you, you know,” I whispered back.

Nolan yawned again.

“How?” she asked, gaping at me.

I had a feeling she wasn’t asking me how he could hear her.

“I asked him until he said yes,” I said, shrugging. “I wanted to know just what it was about gym he hated so much.”

“I know you’ve become friends with him lately,” she whispered, “but I can’t believe he agreed. He never comes to gym.”

“I know,” I said. “I can’t wait to see the expression on Mr. Robinson’s face.” And the faces of all our other classmates when they saw him.

She grinned. “You know what? Me too.”

After changing in the locker room, we headed for the pool. Melissa was already there, having an animated conversation with Derek. Based on their frowns and narrowed eyes, I had a feeling that they were engaged in their usual bickering.

“Hey guys,” I said when we reached them.

“Hey,” Melissa said grumpily.

“What’s up?” Ashley said.

“Derek’s just annoying me,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What’s new?”

He snorted. “As if you don’t do the same to me.”

“I think it’s cute how you guys only annoy each other this much,” Ashley said, wiggling her eyebrows at them.

Beside her, I coughed. They both looked at her oddly.

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Derek complained.

“Wait a minute…” Melissa’s mouth fell open as her gaze sharpened at something behind me. “Is that Nolan?”

“Seriously?” Derek said, craning his head—which was clearly for show since he was taller than all of us—and looking over our heads. “Is he really here at gym class? I have to be hallucinating. Quick, Mel, pinch me.”

Dropping her gaze at once, Melissa seized the opportunity to deliver him a nasty pinch. “You got it, Derek! You can always count on me!”

“I didn’t say to pinch me that hard!” he snapped at her, rubbing at the rapidly reddening spot on his skin.

A rush of affection warmed my heart as I watched two of my closest friends start quarreling again. I laughed and turned around to look for Nolan.

“I’m sorry, were pinches supposed to not hurt? I might just get you a dictionary for your birthday this year,” Melissa said.

It wasn’t hard to find him among our classmates, mostly because so many people were looking at him. The direction of their staring was good as a bright red arrow pointing to Nolan’s location.

Like all the other boys, Nolan was wearing swimming trunks.

Although I was the one who told Ashley and the others that Nolan wasn’t as scrawny as he looked, seeing him without a shirt and hoodie still shocked me.

His arms and torso were very toned for an average high schooler. It wasn’t like he had six packs or anything, but the muscle that was present was pretty obvious. For someone whom I had seen sleeping all day in classes and just generally giving off a hibernation vibe, this wasn’t what I was expecting.

The recollection of falling into his arms in a princess carry and the lack of strain on his face despite the impact and weight came to mind. Alright, so maybe those muscles really did make sense.

Still, it was jarring to reconcile this Nolan with the one who spent his days avoiding gym class like the plague. He clearly wasn’t lacking physically, so it was weird how he always refused to come to class.

All the people who were within a five-foot radius of him kept glancing at him, probably in a mix of why-is-he-here and I-can’t-believe-he-looks-like-that ways.

“Well, how about that?” Melissa said behind me, sounding impressed. “You were right, Chelsea. He does have muscles.”

The few girls I’d seen eyeing him dreamily before were practically devouring him with their eyes, like they had to seize this chance to commit everything to memory because they had no idea when the next time would be.

“I told you,” I said.

Nolan looked completely unruffled by the silent staring commotion around him. He seemed like he was spacing out, but then he caught my eye.

He made a small jerking motion with his head in a ‘what’s up’ sort of gesture.

I grinned back at him.

Abruptly, I felt eyes on me. I glanced around to see a few girls staring at me. One of them was glaring. Yep, they were definitely his admirers. Why couldn’t they just approach him themselves if they wanted to interact with him that much?

Mr. Robinson blew his whistle to get our attention. “Okay, everybody! Gather around please.”

When he reached the end of his usual headcount, his facial expression changed vastly from that of hopefulness to surprised joy.

“Well, everyone’s here today,” he said, beaming in wonder around at us. “Is Nolan here today?”

“I’m here,” Nolan said, and immediately the people who were standing the closest to him snapped their heads around to look at him.

As usual, he ignored them.

I kind of expected Mr. Robinson to get mad at Nolan for skipping class so often, but instead of blowing up, he just smiled more widely.

“Great! I’m so glad you decided to come to class, Nolan. If you came more often, you wouldn’t have so many detentions to attend, you know. Anyway, let’s get started.”

Someone snickered.

Yikes. Evidently, Nolan was getting quite a bit of punishment for his little acts of truancy.

He clearly wasn’t embarrassed by any of this, though. Nolan just stared at Mr. Robinson with indifference written all over his face.

“He does not care,” Ashley whispered to me.

“Not even half an ounce,” I whispered back.

Mr. Robinson led us to the competitive section of the indoor pool with lane lines. “We’re going to be doing something fun today. I’ll split everyone up into groups of four—no, you can’t choose your group, Claire—and you’re going to compete against each other in a medley relay.”

Some of our classmates started talking excitedly, but there were a few others who groaned at the same time as I did. Mr. Robinson had done this competition thing several times during our swimming sessions, and he often grouped the good swimmers with the terrible ones to ‘level the playing field’. I was decent at swimming, but that was all I was.

A medley relay required every one of the four team members to cover a different swimming stroke each during the race, and I hated it. More specifically, I hated being one of the people who dragged down their more capable teammates.

“Yes,” Melissa hissed through gritted teeth as if she had just won a bet. “I love that. Derek, I bet that I’ll win against you. I bet on the snacks that we’ll have the next time we go out for a movie.”

“It’s a team effort,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Even if you’re quicker than me, if your teammates drag you down, you’ll still lose.”

“I’m just saying,” Ashley said, but her voice was light with amusement, “but you don’t even know if you’ll be in different teams yet.”

Melissa’s face dropped. “Right.”

“…Jordan, and Sheila,” Mr. Robinson was saying as he made each group form a small line. “Kenneth, Melissa, Cheryl, and Derek, over here.”

A frustrated cry escaped from Melissa’s mouth. Both Ashley and I grinned.

“Guess you are going to be in the same team,” I said.

Ashley raised her eyebrows. “I don’t want to say I called it, but … I called it.”

“Don’t worry, Mel,” Derek said to Melissa in a consoling tone, “I’ll make sure you don’t drag us down too much.”

“Speak for yourself,” she snapped, stalking towards Mr. Robinson. “You barely beat my track time last week.”

“That was on land! We’re going to be in water soon—if you haven’t noticed!” He followed her.

She snapped back something I couldn’t quite hear.

As I shook my head at them, Ashley chuckled.

“Before graduation,” she mouthed at me.

“After,” I mouthed back.

“Claire, Chelsea, Keith, and Nolan. Over here,” Mr. Robinson said, gesturing beside the team that had just formed a line. “Now, please.”

“Hi,” I said to Nolan when we formed our little team line.

“Hi,” he said before yawning again.

Mr. Robinson finished assigning the rest of my classmates into their team and then said, “Okay, you can decide among yourselves which swimming stroke you each want to do. I won’t be dictating that. Just bear in mind that for this mini competition, we’re going in the order of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle respectively. If you use the wrong stroke, you’ll be disqualified. Let’s spice this up a bit. The winning team gets a large pizza on me. So put in some effort, everyone!”

Everyone started murmuring at that last line.

That was basically the reason why Mr. Robinson had his fair share of student fans in the school, despite not having as handsome a face as Mr. Jameson. Melissa loved him not only because he was easygoing and fit, but also because he was genuinely generous. He really cared about student engagement in his classes, even if it meant that he had to pay out of his own pocket sometimes.

“Which swimming stroke do you guys want to do?” Keith asked.

Claire smiled. “I’m fine with any. You guys can choose, and I’ll just take the last one.”

If I remembered correctly, Claire was on the school team, so she was definitely great at swimming. I didn’t remember if Keith was good at it or not.

“I’m pretty okay with freestyle,” I said. “It’s my best swimming stroke.”

“I don’t really care which one I do,” Nolan said.

“Then I’ll do breaststroke,” Keith said.

“Backstroke for me, then,” Nolan said.

Claire nodded. “I guess that leaves me with the butterfly stroke.”

After leading us through some warmup exercises, Mr. Robinson blew his whistle again. He made us line up at the different pool lanes. The ones who were doing the butterfly stroke had to get into the diving position.

“Make sure you don’t cheat by diving in before your teammate touches the wall or you’ll be disqualified,” Mr. Robinson said. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on all of you.”

As expected, when the race started, Claire showed off her swimming capabilities the moment she dove into the pool. Her confidence shone through as she made her way across the length of the pool at a faster speed than most of the other butterfly swimmers.

“She’s really good at this,” I said.

“Yeah, Claire’s great,” Keith said, beaming at her swimming figure.

“Mm,” Nolan hummed.

I noticed that he wasn’t just watching her. His half-lidded gaze swept around all the other competitors.

“Think we can win?” I said, grinning up at him.

His laughter sounded so refreshing. “I’m not that good at swimming. Don’t expect too much from me.”

“I knew that was why you didn’t want to come,” I said.

Keith stared at us with his mouth slightly agape, but he quickly looked away when he caught us looking back at him. I couldn’t blame him. He’d probably never even seen Nolan smile, let alone laugh.

As Claire swam back towards us, Nolan got into position at the edge of the pool. He dove in the moment her hand touched the wall.

The way he moved his limbs was with an air of confidence, but he wasn’t particularly fast. He was definitely a few notches slower than the more capable participants in the pool, but he was still a lot faster than those who looked like they barely knew what they were doing as they flail-splashed across the pool length.

“You swim pretty well for someone who never attends gym,” I said. “Do you practice here secretly when no one’s watching?”

He shot me an unimpressed look.

“What?” I said.

We watched Keith reach the other end of the pool.

“I was on the competitive swimming team in my previous school,” he said finally.

He was actually talking about his past. For some reason, my heart started thumping hard against my ribcage.

“Wow, really?” I turned to look at him, but his attention was fixed on the pool. “Why didn’t you join our swimming club? I heard it’s pretty good.”

Nolan shifted his gaze to me. His expression was unreadable.

“It’s going to be your turn soon,” he said abruptly. “You should get into position.”

“Are—” you avoiding the question? was what I was about to say when Claire called me.

“Chelsea, Keith’s getting back soon!”

“Alright!” I called back and went to the edge of the pool.

Nolan yawned and looked away, as if we hadn’t just been having a conversation a couple of seconds ago. As Keith touched the wall, I dove in.

Of course, our group didn’t win in the end. I did put in my best effort, but ultimately it just wasn’t enough. Except for when we had gym classes in the pool, I almost never swam.

We left the pool with the lane lines for the regular one, which was a lot larger. When I rejoined Derek and Melissa with Ashley, they were squabbling over who was the one who dragged down their team even more. Mr. Robinson had us swimming laps across the width of the pool, and he went around to see if anyone needed help or correction on their posture.

We paused after swimming a few laps alongside each other.

“I love swimming,” Melissa gushed, adjusting her goggles. “It feels so cool and refreshing.”

“You love any physical activity,” Ashley said.

“You’re right,” Melissa said.

“I still can’t believe you managed to get Nolan to come,” Derek said to me. “What exactly did you say to him?”

“Mr. Robinson is in such a good mood today,” Melissa said. “I feel like today’s full attendance might have something to do with that.”

“Nothing in particular. I just pestered him until he gave in,” I said, smiling at the memory.

“It’s more shocking that he didn’t just ignore you,” Derek said.

“Apparently, he doesn’t ignore Chelsea,” Melissa said, nodding approvingly at me. “I’m impressed, Chels. I’ve been wanting to ask you something, actually.”

“Hmm?” I looked at her quizzically.

“Aren’t you two friends?” Melissa said, looking over my shoulder. “Why is he all the way over there alone?”

He was at the other side of the pool where barely anyone else was, swimming laps by himself.

“Good question,” I said.

“Yeah,” Derek said. “I thought he would be hanging out with you. You are the only one he ever talks to.”

“He kind of doesn’t like people,” I said, eyeing him.

“And we kind of know that.” Ashley snorted.

“I could go over, I guess … but I’m not sure he wants to hang out with us. We probably seem like a giant crowd to him.”

Maybe I should try anyway.

“But he’s all alone,” Ashley said, watching him.

“You should ask him,” Melissa said, snapping her fingers. “I’m dying to see him talk to you up close. He never speaks.”

“He’s not a museum exhibit,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Despite my words, I actually wanted to invite him over. Whether or not we were alone, I still enjoyed talking to him. Now that I looked forward to seeing him in class every day, it seemed crazy that I used to dread going to class because of him.

I wanted to try and ask him, despite already knowing the outcome deep down inside.

“Hey, Mr. Robinson’s headed this way,” Derek said. “We should continue swimming.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” I said.

“Bring him back with you,” Melissa said. “I want to see him talk.”

“He’s not some kind of talking dog!” I heard Ashley say as I began swimming towards Nolan.