Page 68 of The Love Haters

I found a definitive cure for swimsuit phobia: sheer terror of something else.

On the morning that SWET training was finally happening, I found that I did not have my usual hitch of fear at the idea of putting on a swimsuit. I was too busy fearingdeath.

So much so that when Beanie FaceTimed and demanded something for my beauty list, I tried to give herfingernails.

“Unacceptable,” Beanie declared. “Do something real.”

I was too tired to fight her. I let out a long sigh while I thought about it.

And then my second try accidentally delighted her.

“Okay, then,” I said. “How about my sectoral heterochromia?”

“Your—what?”

“It’s that little pie piece of brown in my eye.”

“Do you have a pie piece of brown in your eye?”

“How has no one ever noticed this?”

No one except Hutch.

I held the phone up close to my eye. “See that brown patch? It’s very rare.” Then, proudly: “It’s agenetic anomaly. You can’t just buy gray-blue eyes with a pie piece of brown like this off the rack.”

Beanie squinted. “I thought your eyes were hazel.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you always say they’re hazel. And that’s what the song says.”

“Well, the song is wrong. And so was I.”

“Doesn’t it sayhazelon your driver’s license?”

“Fine,” I said. “We’ve all been wrong forever about the color of my eyes. Even me. But now we stand corrected.”

“Who corrected us?”

“What?”

“Who inspired us to suddenly notice your eye color in a new way?”

Why did this feel like a trap? I straightened a little bit. “Hutch looked it up.”

“I knew it!”

“Knew what?” I asked, with that feeling of suppressed hope you get when somebody else might think the thingyou also keep wanting to think.

“The Love Hater likes you!” Beanie shouted.

I gasped. “He doesn’t!” I said, my voice all scoldy. But I had to turn the phone camera away while I squinted an unbidden smile off my face.

“He noticed your pie piece, and heredefined the color of your eyes,” Beanie said. “I don’t think it’s up for debate.”

“I don’t have time to debate, anyway,” I said. “I’m late to go drown in a helicopter-crash simulation.”

“That’s today?” Beanie said.

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