AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hashtag winning,” Attina chirped.
“Hashtag regional champions is more like it,” said Alana.
“Yeah, we’ll help you clean this up later,” Kendall said. “I’m not the swim team captain for nothing! I’ll get the whole team to help. You’re not alone in this. We’re on your side.”
“Come on. Let’s get you changed. I have an extra hoodie in my locker,” Attina said.
“Thank you,” Shelly said. As she followed her friends to class, she felt grateful for their support. But a sinking feeling also pooled in her gut. She couldn’t let Judy beat her again. She couldn’t afford to let Kendall down. Not after Kendall had just come to her rescue and defended her. She had to win her race at all costs. Winning meant she could keep her friends and prove her worth. And it meant getting revenge on Judy for her putrid prank. Her eyes drifted back to her locker, where the rotting fish and pile of trash still sat in the hallway, stinking it up.
Her nightmare flashed through her head again. The coffee cup she had dropped in the ocean. The sea witch. The contract and the offer to grant her wish. But she blinked to clear her head. The prank had nothing to do with her nightmare. It was Judy Weisberg messing with her.
I’ll show her, Shelly thought. And once I do, everything will be okay.
Shelly dove off the block into the pool as the buzzer sounded.
Her pulse thudded with adrenaline as she hit the cool water. Her arms tore through it with her feet kicking in rhythm. The straps of her new competition suit dug into her shoulders. Vaguely, she was aware of cheering echoing through the indoor arena. She could just make out Judy Weisberg’s purple swim cap in the lane next to her. It bobbed into view every time she turned her head to breathe. Shelly counted her strokes in her head. One, two. Then breathe.
As Shelly’s arms propelled her through the chlorinated water, everything that was on the line rushed through her head—beating Judy, keeping her friends—and she kept seeing the dead fish and trash spilling out of her locker. Anger rose in her, making her swim harder. She heard Kendall’s voice in her head. We’re winning that trophy this year. You’re going to fly past her in your race. She had to win for Kendall and her teammates. She had to win for her school. And most important, she had to win for herself.
She couldn’t let Judy get away with that prank. And she couldn’t disappoint her friends—not after they’d come to her rescue when the other kids were taunting her in the school hall.
One, two. Then breathe.
Shelly swam as fast as she could, slicing through the water with her arms and legs in perfect rhythm. But after the first flip turn, she started to lose speed. She still had three more laps to go, but her arms were starting to feel like molasses. Her legs were wearing out, too.
Maybe it was from almost drowning in the ocean the day before? Terrible memories swirled through her head, making it hard to focus. The nightmare. The nautilus. The contract. Fighting with Dawson. The dead fish and gross trash in her locker. Despite her efforts, she couldn’t focus or keep pace with the others.
Especially Judy.
The purple swim cap kept getting farther and farther away, no matter how hard Shelly struggled in the pool. The water fought her every stroke, every breath, every lap.
Come on, you can do this! She turned her head to breathe but swallowed a mouthful of water instead, choking and almost losing her stroke altogether, which would disqualify her. This was nothing like swimming in the salty open ocean, where she felt at peace. This felt all wrong.
For three more miserable laps, Shelly struggled, trying to catch up with Judy but only falling farther behind. The purple swim cap was now half a pool length ahead. Shelly wasn’t just losing to Judy Weisberg, though that was bad enough, especially since she still suspected that Judy had something to do with the dead fish. No. Shelly slapped the edge off the pool and popped her head up but didn’t bother reading the scoreboard. She knew that Judy had won the race by a long shot. And like she’d feared, Shelly had come in last. Dead last.
Demoralized and exhausted, she hoisted herself out of the pool. She was freezing and reeked of chlorine. One lane over, Judy celebrated her win with her Little River teammates. Their jubilant cheers only made Shelly feel worse.
Judy shot her an icy smile. “Better luck next time. Hopefully you won’t stink like a fish.”
The rival swimmers all laughed.
Heat crept into Shelly’s cheeks. So it had been Judy who planted the dead fish.
Desperately, Shelly looked for her friends, hoping for moral support. Kendall, Attina, and Alana huddled on the bench with the rest of the team, with towels wrapped around them, wet hair, and swim cap lines on their foreheads. There was no jubilant cheering in the Triton Bay stands behind them. Just glum faces and glummer conversation. Shelly tentatively walked to the bench for a towel.
“This, like, majorly sucks,” Kendall said. “I hate it when we lose.”
“Yeah, it sucks worse than straws,” Attina chimed in.
“Hashtag straws suck,” Alana added, but no one laughed.
Shelly’s friends looked crestfallen and deflated. She felt terrible for letting them down. Like next level terrible. The kind of terrible that made her want to curl up into a ball and disappear. As team captain, Kendall took all their races personally, even when she wasn’t the one diving off the starting block. While it was true that Shelly had swum as hard as she could—she’d tried her best—she hadn’t swum well enough to win her race. Judy had sailed past her. Shelly realized that the locker
prank had worked; it had gotten in her head. She had lost focus, had lost rhythm, and had fallen precious seconds behind. She caught Judy eyeing her with a triumphant expression on her face, but quickly looked away, feeling humiliated.
“I especially hate losing the whole swim meet,” Kendall told her teammates. “Little River will never let us live this down.”
Shelly wrapped a towel around herself. “What do you mean? We lost the whole meet?”
