The summer we turned thirteen (Published)

Chapter three: Masking the hurt

Harlee

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According to many, time is supposed to be a great healer.

Perhaps, because with time, you learn to become accustomed to certain circumstances. Or possibly because, as you grow, things that once seemed like the end of the world don't affect you as much anymore.

As I headed into my swim team practice that Monday afternoon, I wondered to myself if time could heal what was happening between James and me.

A few years from now, will losing him as a best friend still feel like a knife through my heart?

Or will I have moved forward?

"Only time will tell," I thought aloud ironically, pulling my swimsuit from my bag in the girls' locker room.

Swimming was one of the few activities I participated in without James.

He had never conquered his aquaphobia as a kid. I was able to get him to visit water parks with huge water slides with me, and eventually, he began loving them almost as much as I did. But pools and oceans were a different story making it a definite no from him when I asked him to try out for the swim team with me. At first, I was a little upset, but by now, it wasn't as much of a bother to me. We were best friends (or used to be anyway), but that didn't mean we had to do everything together.

"Not even in the mood to swim," I said sadly to the empty locker room.

I was running late, so no one was around to hear my woes. This honestly felt like a streak of luck for me though; that moment in the locker room was the first private moment I'd had all day if you excluded the fifteen minutes I'd spent moping in my room that morning.

Farrah had been trying all day to hype me up for our summer vacation. Luckily, Amy had been absent from school, so I hadn't been forced to deal with her too.

I stood to my feet and looked at my new summer bathing suit inside the wall mirror. It was a white one-piece with gold and black stars sprinkled all over it, and even though I wasn't a girly girl, I really liked it.

I gave myself a satisfactory nod, then wrapped my hair underneath a swimmer's cap and headed out for practice. A familiar head of silky black hair I spotted let me know my streak of luck had just run out.

"Ugh, Amy," I muttered begrudgingly before making my way over to the diving boards. Upon seeing her, I normally would have walked the other way, but Farrah had spotted me and was waving me over.

The funny thing is, on the exterior, I had always found Amy Tristan to be very pretty. She had soft brown eyes and beautiful, jet black hair, and though she rarely wore it, a pearly white smile. She was Japanese-American from her mom's side and Peruvian from her father's side. I knew this because when she met my parents one day earlier that month (when they both picked me up from school) and discovered my mom was European and my dad Mexican, she told me about her family being interracial too. I remembered it so clearly because it was one of the very few times she was somewhat nice to me.

"Doubt there's a chance of her being nice today after what Farrah told me this morning," I muttered to myself just before I reached them.

Farrah and Amy were excitedly chatting about summer festivities. All the drama Farrah had been worked up about earlier seemed to be over.

Amy turned around to face me and gave me the same look she always did.

It was that look that's like some sort of female code for,