Finally found time to get a new chapter up...
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Enjoy!
"Hello, Madsen's residence."
"I'm looking for Maggie Madsen."
"Who is this?"
"Secretary of Defense."
"Haha, very funny. I'll see if she's around. MAGGIE! MAGGIE?... Sorry, she's not here. You might want to try her friend Glen's place. Do you want the number?"
"No, no, I'll get it."
"No doubt your FBI agents have it in their list of unlisted phone numbers."
"Have a good day."
"You, too. Keep an eye out for giant alien robots!"
Chapter Four
Sam was waiting impatiently, hand clutching the doorknob. "I was about to leave without you," he joked, opening the door.
Katrina shot him a glare and threw him his towel. "Don't joke like that."
"Why?" he asked, confused. His voice was slightly muffled - the towel had landed on his head. "I wasn't actually going to..."
"Just don't." Katrina marched down the flagstone path with Sam following. He wondered what he had said wrong. From the way the kid was acting, everything.
"What do you want me to do with the extra towels?" she asked.
Sam opened the passenger door. "Doesn't matter. Sit on them, put them on the floor. We'll cover the seats when we go back."
"Acknowledged," said Katrina, getting in, the towels dumped on the floor by her feet.
"What?"
"Sorry. Okay." She fidgeted, not looking him in the eye. "When I was with the Government, 'acknowledged' was the word they used, not 'okay'."
"Were you with the Government a long time?" asked Sam, trying to sound casually curious.
"Mm." Katrina looked down at her feet. She was wearing sneakers without any socks.
"Mom could have lent you a pair of sandals," remarked Sam as he started down the road.
"Her feet are two sizes larger than mine," replied Katrina, shaking her head and fiddling with the edge of her shirt. "Or maybe three."
"How'd you know?"
"I've had plenty of experience with shoe sizes."
"Huh?"
"With them it was 'look at the floor, don't make eye contact, don't speak unless you are spoken to...'" She shrugged, holding back a sigh. "I could tell you the shoe size of some of the top officials in the Government."
"Must've been a pretty tough life."
"You don't know anything." Katrina's glare was so harsh Sam winced, and he fell silent. The girl looked out the window at the houses passing by.
There was a long pause of embarrassing silence, then the radio turned on.
"Can you turn that off?" asked Katrina, grimacing. "I don't like the radio."
The radio immediately fell silent.
"What's going on?" asked Katrina, turning from the window. She frowned at Sam.
"What'd I do now?" Geez, this kid was touchy. "I turned off the radio!"
"No, it turned itself off, unless you have some special button on the steering wheel. I can see your reflection in the window; you didn't move at all."
"Got me," he said, forcing a laugh. "There's a secret button, right here, under my thumb. I can turn it on again, if you want."
"No." Katrina's brow furrowed. "I believe you." She turned back to the window and was quiet the rest of the trip.
"Here we are," said Sam at last, pulling into the parking lot. "Let's go." He locked the car, then led the way into the YMCA building.
"Hey, Sam," said the bored man standing behind the desk. "The usual pool is empty. Are you baby-sitting? Who's this?"
"No, I'm not. This is Katrina. She's visiting."
"Nice to meet you, Katrina." He waved them on. "Well, don't let me keep you, onward ho and all that."
"Come on," said Sam. "We have about three quarters of an hour to swim."
"Judy said to leave by eleven fifteen," said Katrina. "Is it ten thirty?"
"Yes," said Sam, glancing at his watch again, in case he'd misread it. "Let's go."
There was a swimmer in the pool when they reached it, but only one.
"How good a swimmer are you?" Sam asked, not looking at the girl. He was trying to see who the other swimmer was.
Katrina shrugged. "Good enough."
"Right. Don't drown, okay?" Sam jumped in, splashing water everywhere. The other swimmer was Mikaela. She waved and swam over to the side of the pool.
"Hello, Katrina," she said. "Do you like to swim?"
"Sometimes," replied Katrina. "Not if the water is freezing. Or too warm." She sat on the edge and dangled her feet in the water. Her green shirt had turned almost black after being soaked by Sam's careless entry. "I haven't gone for a few months."
"That's not bad. Come on in, the water's nice." Mikaela turned and swam away, powerstrokes swiftly taking her to the other side of the pool.
Katrina sighed, and rested her chin in her hands, her elbows on her legs. She wasn't sure she wanted to swim, but finally she pulled off the shirt and dove in.
"Hey, you aren't supposed to do that!" called Sam from the other end of the room. "No diving!"
"Sorry." She flushed, and ducked under again, opening her eyes. The chlorine stung for a bit, then stopped. Smiling, she swam underwater from one end of the pool to the other, then came up for air before going down again. Swimming was one of the few things she liked to do, and swimming underwater was her favorite part.
"Where'd you learn to swim like that?" asked Mikaela, watching the younger girl's antics. "I've seen Olympic swimmers who aren't as good."
"Swimming was how I exercised," replied Katrina, treading water. "I wasn't allowed to leave the base, and I didn't like the exercise room. The instructor there wasn't very kind. She always told me I was doing it wrong." She blinked and went under again, reappearing on the far side of the pool.
"A Government base, right?" asked Mikaela. "Was it exciting, living there?"
"No." Katrina went under and didn't reappear.
Half a minute passed, and Sam swam over to Mikaela. "Where's Katrina? She hasn't come up yet." He had missed the conversation while practicing his own underwater swimming.
"She went down about thirty, no, forty seconds ago."
Sam muttered something. "Not good. We better find her. I hope she isn't drowning or something. Mom'll kill me if anything happens... Where'd she go down?"
"Over there, across the pool." Mikaela swam over and looked around. "I don't see her, though."
"This is bad, bad, bad. Mom's going to freak if she drowns." Sam looked around, then got out of the pool and walked around on the wall. "Keep looking!"
"One minute and counting," murmured Mikaela, glancing at the clock. "She can't stay down there much longer."
Katrina was on the other side of the pool, at the deepest end, sitting on the bottom. Her eyes were closed and she was concentrating, not thinking about breathing. She imagined looking at the sun, watched the yellow globe until at last her lungs began to hurt, then the girl pushed up from the floor and burst through the surface.
"Katrina!" cried two voices, and Mikaela came swimming over, her face relieved. Sam ran along the wall.
"What were you doing?" he demanded. "We thought you were drowning."
"I was meditating," replied Katrina, hauling herself out of the water. She pulled on her shirt, then wrapped the pink towel around herself and stood. "About the difference between..." She stopped, and looked at the two, who were looking at her with open mouths.
"What happened to your arms?" asked Mikaela.
Katrina grimaced, looking at the small brown spots that covered her arms. They hardly showed at all unless her skin was covered with goosebumps, which they currently were, since the pool wasn't heated.
"Nothing," she said, looking at the floor. "I think I'll wait outside. I'm done swimming for today."
"It's time to head back, anyway. See you, Mikaela."
"See you." Mikaela waved as the two left. She waited until they were gone, then got out of the pool. "Time to do some research," she said to herself. "I think I'll see what I can find out about spots like that. They weren't freckles the way she was acting. So what are they?"