Please read and review the fanfic. I'll be posting it in short sections (at least at the start) because I like to make my readers wonder.

Chapter One: A Buried Secret

"Hey Matt, pool party at my place Saturday!" That was my classmate Joe Cobb as our science class came out at the end of the period. He grinned from under his black bowl haircut. "You there?"
Matt, my best friend, grinned back and nodded. "You bet!" he yelled over the noise of a high-school hallway.
"Cool," Joe hollered back. "Ask Jer if he wants to come."
It wasn't that Joe couldn't have asked me. I was standing right there next to Matt, juggling the competing tasks of navigating a rush-hour hallway and reading Finding God in The Hobbit. I think Joe asked Matt to do it because Joe and I don't talk much in general, which probably has something to do with the fact that Joe is all about swimming. Captain of the school swim team (his dad is the coach and former captain), youngest kid in our town ever to take lifeguard training even if he didn't pass, and the kid everyone expects to feature someday in a Jaws sequel. I, on the other hand...
"Hey, Jeremy, you hear about the party?"I pretended to be distracted.
"Huh? Oh yeah, the pool party." Mentally, I ran through the list of things I'd been putting off. "Sorry, I've got to finish that extra-credit science project I've been working on." It was true that the project wasn't finished, but it was close. I was doing it on alternate theories to evolution, or in English, Creation Science. A lot of info came from my grandparents (who better to ask than someone who was there?).
Matt nodded and turned back to Joe. "He's busy."
Like I was saying, I don't swim. Ever.