[b]Aery Thomas[/b]
Aery rolled her eyes. "I was supposed to be tutoring. Fifth time in a row the kid has vanished." she wrote. "They tend to do that when they realize their tutor is me. I was giving him five more minutes to show up and then I was going to go to band practice if he wasn’t here. But… What Mr. Jordan doesn’t know won’t kill him." She flipped the board up with a wry smile, erasing the other side with the sleeve of her dark blue shirt. She always wore dark clothes so that she wouldn’t have terribly apparent ink stains all over everything.
As he read the message she scribbled on the other side. “Undefeated? So are most of the other kids.” She grinned at him as she wrote. “The meeting is at four-thirty in the Commons.” She flipped the board over so that he could see that message, erasing the first one. She was totally oblivious to him ever wanting to hold her hand.
[hr]
[b]Miranda Jensen[/b]
Miranda hadn’t even looked at her book. She did so now, reading the cover flaps, and quickly shut the cover, blushing crimson. “I just… Randomly grabbed one. Twilight, it’s called. Apparently it’s about apples?” she indicated the cover, the two white arms holding a red apple. It actually looked rather intriguing, but she wouldn’t admit that. Certainly wouldn’t admit that in front of a boy.
[hr]
[b]Lilly Johnson[/b]
Lilly felt a blush warm her cheeks as Teddy smiled at her, very nearly missing hearing the coach explaining what they were going to be doing. And then she froze as the coach announced, completely unexpectedly, “Today will be a fun day. We will be doing water polo for all of practice.”
Most of the kids started screaming in glee, grabbing for each other as teams. It took the coach’s whistle to get them to calm down. “Lilly and Rachel will be team captains.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “You get first pick, Lilly.”
Lilly raised an eyebrow. “Alright…?” She would have picked one of Rachel’s best friends just to spite her, but the last time she’d done that half her team had turncoated. And it would be perfect to spite Rachel if she picked Teddy and their team won. “Teddy, Megan, and Richard.” She picked two of the fastest kids, the ones who were always on the “A” relays with her. Teddy was quite the unknown quantity, given that this was his first year swimming with them and they’d not yet had a meet.
Rachel made no comment, just smiled thinly and selected three people, all popular and utterly clueless about swimming.
“Anna, Jeni, and Seth.”  Seth being on the A relay and Anna and Jeni being the fastest on the B relay.
Finally the teams were settled, most of the fast kids being on Lilly’s team and most of the popular ones on Rachel’s team. They went to opposite sides of the pool and huddled up, deciding who got what role. “Richard, you’re goalie. Seth and Jared, you stay and cover him. Megan, Anna, Jeni, Tyler, Jordan, and Taylor, you all go midpool and spread out. Three of you, so, Tyler, Jordan, Taylor, stay on their side of the pool once the game starts. And Teddy?” She grinned at him. “You and me are headed for the goal. As soon as one of us gets the ball, we’re headed--” She yelped, teetering, and swung her arms around and fell off the bulkhead into the water, backflopping and coming up spluttering. “Oof.” She muttered, flushing crimson. She’d taken a step backwards only to realize that there was no bulkhead behind her. “Okay. Well. Positions, everyone. Since I don’t want to get back out of the water. It’s cold out there.”