She lowered her goggles and leaped in. The water was warm, much warmer than the rain outside, and the crash of thunder outside sounded harmless and far away when she ducked her head underwater.
She pushed off and began a slow warm-up crawl stroke.
Her body quickly loosened up, and a few laps later, Luce increased her speed and began the butterfly. She could feel the burn in her limbs, and she pushed through it. This was exactly the feeling she was after.
Totally in the zone.
If she could just talk to Daniel. Really talk, without him interrupting or telling her to transfer schools or ducking out before she could get to her point. That might help. It also might require tying him up and taping his mouth shut just so he'd listen to her.
But what would she even say? All she had to go on was this feeling she got around him, which, if she thought about it, had nothing to do with any of their inter actions. What if she could get him back to the lake? He was the one who'd implied it had become their place. This time, she could lead him there, and she'd be super-careful not to
bring up anything that seemed to freak him out -
It wasn't working.
Crap. She was doing it again. She was supposed to be swimming. Just swimming. She'd swim until she was too tired to think about anything else, especially Daniel. She'd swim until -
"Luce!"
Until she was interrupted. By Penn, who was standing at the side of the pool.
"What are you doing here?" Luce asked, spitting water.
"What are you doing here?" Penn returned. "Since when do you exercise willingly? I don't like this new side of you."
"How did you find me?" Luce didn't realize until she'd said it that her words might have sounded rude, like she was trying to avoid Penn.
"Cam told me," Penn said. "We had a whole conversation. It was weird. He wanted to know if you were all right."
"That is weird," Luce agreed.
"No," Penn said, "what was weird was that he approached me and we had a whole conversation. Mr.
Popularity ... and me. Need I spell out my surprise any further? Thing is, he was actually really nice."
"Well, he is nice." Luce pulled her goggles off her head.
"To you," Penn said. "He's so nice to you that he snuck out of school to buy you that necklace - which you never wear."
"I wore it once," Luce said. Which was true. Five nights before, after the second time Daniel left her stranded at the lake, alone with his path lit up in the forest. She hadn't been able to shake the image of it and hadn't been able to sleep. So she'd tried on the necklace. She'd fallen asleep clutching it near her collarbone, and woken up with it hot in her hand.
Penn was waving three fingers at Luce, as if to say, Hello? And your point is .7
"My point is," Luce said finally, "I'm not so superficial that all I'm looking for is a guy who buys me things."
"Not so superficial, eh?" Penn asked. "Then I dare you to make a non-superficial list of why you're so into Daniel. Which means no He's got the loveliest little gray eyes or Ooh, the way his muscles ripple in the sunlight."
Luce had to crack up at Penn's high falsetto and the way she held her hands clasped to her heart. "He just gets me," she said, avoiding Penn's eyes. "I can't explain it."
"He gets that you deserve to be ignored?" Penn shook her head.
Luce had never told Penn about the times she'd spent alone with Daniel, the times when she'd seen a flash that he cared about her, too. So Penn couldn't really understand her feelings. And they were far too private and too complicated to explain.
Penn crouched down in front of Luce. "Look, the reason I came to find you in the first place was to drag you to the library for a Daniel-related mission."
"You found the book?"
"Not exactly," Penn said, extending a hand to help Luce out of the pool. "Mr. Grigori's masterpiece is still mysteriously missing, but I kind of sort of maybe hacked Miss Sophia's subscribers-only literary search engine, and a couple of things turned up. I thought you might find them interesting."
"Thanks," Luce said, hoisting herself out with Penn's help. "I'll try not to be too annoyingly gushy over Daniel."
"Whatever," Penn said. "Just hurry up and dry off. We're in a brief