Brooke is flying.

Behind her eyelids, she can see trees and tiny people. The blurred houses and razor-edged sport fields. She can see rivers and lakes and the water glistens and glitters like nothing Brooke has ever seen before. They sky above her is a patchwork sunset and she can almost see the stars beyond, itching to scatter themselves across it, smiling and winking at her.

She's never felt so alive.

She's surrounded by water. It holds her gentle, cradles her and caresses her skin. She feels like she's hyper aware of everything. The flavour of the breeze and the colour of the heat. The way the sun beats down on her and how everything feels so... right.

Brooke is flying, but she's grounded at the same time. Grounded by a feeling. By a look. By a person.

By Sam.

Every day of her life, Brooke feels caged in some way. Under a constant watchful eye at school, be it by her peers or by people who are far too interested in her popularity status to be seriously considered a friend for life.

Sometimes she likes Nicole, when she pretends to be the greatest friend a person could ask for. Others, Brooke wonders if Nicole would kill her while she slept if she was promised private box seats in the stadium of life. She never likes the answer she comes up with.

Brooke feels caged by her father, by food, by a desperate need to be perfect and the utter lack of energy needed to accomplish that. She feels caged by feelings she can't give a voice to and she feels trapped because she wants to so badly.

And even when Sam is making things harder, she makes it easier. She doesn't judge Brooke by how popular she is, not anymore and Brooke doesn't feel pressured to be perfect around her. Not always, anyway. She feels like Sam likes her just because she's her. Not because she's been crowned Queen Popular or because Sam wants to be that herself. It's a title that Brooke never wanted, a position she tripped and fell into, but now she has it she can't seem to give it up. Maybe if she weren't so afraid, so terrified of what would happen if she did. Maybe if she didn't feel like she had some sort of twisted obligation to Nicole, to her father, to her absent mother and even part of herself.

If only.

She trails her fingers through the water, tries to contain it and then just enjoys the feeling of it slipping through them. She lifts her gaze to find Sam again. She's still standing at the edge of the pool, toes curling against the tile every few seconds. She tries to keep her gaze trained, but Sam's bikini is purple and utterly revealing and Brooke is only human. So she lets herself indulge a little, just for a minute.

Because Sam isn't looking at her. She's staring down at the water instead and Brooke watches as the tip of her tongue slips out to moisten her lips, then retreats to plant itself firmly into the side of her cheek.

And Brooke is flying again.

When Sam does finally look at her, Brooke finds herself naively wondering if time has stopped.

She can't feel the water moving around her anymore.

And the thing is, Brooke is afraid of heights. They make her jittery and seem to strip away her sense of control, taunt her with the idea that she could trip and plummet to her doom at any given moment. It's terrifying, but it's exhilarating. Sam kind of makes her feel like that. An internal loss of control that is both freeing and frightening in the same instant. It makes her feel like she could snap, like one more second will be one too many and she won't be able to take it any longer.

She wonders if that day will ever come.

"Come on in, Sammie. The water's cool."

She wonders if that day is today. Because Sam is looking at her with raw, undiluted fear, and Brooke thinks for one heart-stopping second that the girl might run. But if Sam keeps looking at Brooke that way, like she wants to touch every inch of Brooke's skin, Brooke is going to drag her into the pool and keep her there for a long, long while. Something she can't allow herself to do. So she concentrates very hard, tries not to stare too long, and begs her beating heart to slow a little.

If being ten feet away from Sam and having the girl just look at her can make Brooke feel this alive, like she's grown wings and taken to the sky, she wonders what Sam feels when she looks at her.