He didn't notice me as his head was still in his arms, so I couldn't tell whether he was still asleep or not. At my obvious stare, Ryder glanced at me, tilting his head towards the redhead and then shaking it aggressively. Hm. Maybe Ryder didn't like who this guy was. Well, the only reason I was paying any attention to this guy was because I felt kind of insulted by the fact that he'd bumped into me without apologising, but it wasn't something I needed to think about too hard. Heck, if I held a grudge against everyone who looked at me sideways, I'd have zero friends.

As Mrs Grimmette went through the attendance, she paused at: "Nick Hill?" adjusting her glasses on her nose. Many eyes subtly drifted over towards the boy behind me, a motion which gave the redhead a name in my mind: Nick. Even though Nick still didn't lift his head, I heard our calculus teacher murmur to herself: present. I was vaguely confused on why Nick got a pass on being awake when the others were rudely awakened by the slap of her ruler on their desk.

Otherwise, the lesson passed pretty smoothly. I was good at math, as it was straightforward and didn't require me to think about myself.

But as we got out of the classroom, I tilted my head in thought, trying to resolve Ryder's weird behaviour in my mind.

"What was that?"I asked, referencing earlier in class when Ryder had shook his head in Nick's direction. "You hate Nick or something?" 

"No," Ryder crossed his arms. "I just think you should be...careful around him. He has some pretty bad rumours circulating around him."

"Rumours? what kind of rumours?" I wondered. 

"Nothing you need to worry about, aha, ha..." responded Ryder. I frowned but didn't say anything more. Nick didn't seem like the type of guy to be a bad boy, but I had only been in this school for one and a half hours at most.

As we walked the hallway to our next class, I took note of the club bulletin board, where they were advertising a bunch of the different clubs at school. Ryder followed my gaze towards one specific sheet. "You can't join the swim team!" hissed Ryder. I raised my eyebrows in surprise. It was just a swim team.

"What?" I answered, already taking the ballpoint pen hanging by the sign up sheet. Swimming was my favourite sport and the swim team was a huge memory at my old school, it was a great way to make friends. I loved the feeling of the water, of the smooth glide as I dove into it and the way I would just forget everything as I raced towards the other end of the pool, breathing in a rhythm which would always soothe the stress in my body.

There. I had written my name down. Ryder got an eraser out of his bag, a gesture which made me laugh as I had clearly signed up with a pen. When he scrubbed furiously at my name, I simply laughed harder at his failure.

"Why are you so obsessed with this?"

"Because Nick is the captain of the swim team!"

"So?" while that was information I didn't know, I was still really confused on why Ryder was so insistently cautious around Nick. If only he would tell me what these rumours were; I hated being left in the dark.

"I just...he's really not a good guy okay? I'm not supposed to tell you about this, but he's pretty violent. There's this beef going on between the east and west side of this town, and people have died because of it."

"Has Nick..." I whispered. "I mean, killed anyone?"

"I'm not sure," Ryder returned the low volume of my voice, indicating to me that it was likely he didn't want to get on Nick's bad side.

"The gangs, you know. What are they called?"

"Ghosts and Angels." I laughed.

"What the fuck? Those names are so stupid!" Ryder's eyes widened. 

"Shut up, oh my god! You can't be saying these kind of things out loud!" he glanced around him hesitantly, watching the people walk by. I guess they were giving me strange looks, but maybe they just thought that I was weird. They would be correct.

"So which side is our side of town?" 

"Well Nick is the leader of the ghosts."

"Well," I crossed my arms defensively. "Just let me join the swim team, okay? It's not like he's gonna hurt me in public." 

Ryder shrugged. "I don't know about that."

Once Ryder was done being ominous, he showed me to the rest of my classes. Unfortunately we were only in two classes together, but I guess that was more than I could have hoped for. The school was pretty big, after all.

The next day after school, I made my way to the swim area. We would swim from 3:30 to 5:00, since school ended at 3:15. If I got in. 

For try-outs were today.

As Ryder had told me, I did see Nick. He squinted at me briefly before turning his head away. Perhaps he remembered our little interaction. But I didn't think that that was likely for a gang member. Then again, you had to be attentive to be a leader. 

I didn't know why I was thinking about this so much. He was just some guy.

After I changed into my trunks, I went out to the main area, where others were already waiting. The coach was a big, burly man with a moustache and a no-nonsense demeanour. His hair was a darkened blonde, and he had a whistle hanging around his neck, and a clipboard in his hands. I guessed that that was the sign up sheet from the bulletin board. Nick was standing next to him, staring us all down with a fierce glint in his eyes. Now that I was face to face with him, I could see that his eyes were a deep forest green, with hints of yellow around his pupils. It was quite beautiful to be honest. Or it would be, if he wasn't a guy. As I looked around me, I realised I wasn't the only one looking at Nick. There were about five guys who smiled at him, a smile that Nick returned, something which shocked me. He didn't seem like the type of guy who would smile so easily, but what did I know?

We all warmed up with 50m freestyle, which was simple enough, and then it was time for the heats. The real try-outs.

I was in the first heat, as my last name ended with an A: Allen. (Yeah it was a boring white boy name, but I couldn't do anything about that.) We did 200m lengths of the IM (individual medley). In my heat, which consisted of 6 people, I was the second to finish. I bit my lip. That was good enough, right?

I sat down on the bench for the rest of the try-outs, watching the other heats. I always hated the sticky wet feeling of my trunks sticking to my ass while the bench was soaked from other swimmers sitting there. But this was swimming.

The results would be posted on the bulletin board. Great, more waiting. But as I was leaving to go to the changeroom, Nick glanced my way, revealing the words I was desperate to hear after trying out.

"Welcome to the team."