Flip Turn

Chapter Nine: Get it Yourself

"Look! I have rings on my ears like Komand'r!"

Well, he didn't think they really looked like the purple stones that Komand'r always had in her ears, but they looked pretty cool, anyway. Starfire had hung two of her ribbons from her ears, the purple ones, looping them around by the little, gold string. And she was showing everybody.

Wally nodded. "Neat! What are they for?"

Starfire's grin faded into confusion. "I really do not—don't know, because Koma wo—wouldn't let me go to the store with her when she did hers—all I know is that when she came back, she had shiny, purple rocks in her ears—"

"Nooo, your ribbons," he said, laughing. "What events are the purple ones for?"

"Oh! Events!" Her forehead wrinkled thoughtfully, eyes scrunched up in concentration. "I…hmm…" She brightened. "Do not care! But they make very good rings for your ears."

A long, thin hand plucked one of the ribbons right off Starfire's left ear, snatching it away and out of reach. "Maybe if you learned to care, you'd stop finishing last," Komand'r drawled, eyes scanning the back of the ribbon as a smirk crawled up her face.

Starfire tilted her head way up, arms held out as she tried to get the ribbon back, but she was a lot shorter than Komand'r and it didn't really work. At all. "Koma, give it back!"

Komand'r looked from the ribbon to Starfire and back again. "How about I don't and say I did?"

Starfire didn't look like her big sister at all. Where she had red hair and green eyes that were always excited about something, Komand'r's hair was dark, to go with her eyes—and her eyes were usually excited about something, except it was never a good kind of something. She didn't really talk to them much because she was in the older practice, but on Fridays they didn't really practice, and the team always got ribbons together. As long as Starfire didn't talk to her, get anywhere near her, or breathe the same air as she did, she'd be fine. Komand'r was loud and talked to everyone and might have been a lot like Wally if she weren't so mean; he would never take somebody's ribbon, especially not Starfire's. A lot of the big kids liked to talk to her because she could tell them stories about Africa and about how stupid her sister was.

Wally kind of hated her a little bit.

"How about you do and say you didn't, or I'm gonna tell Coach Bruce," he challenged, glaring into the black eyes.

Komand'r laughed—it was the same voice that Starfire had and yet it was completely different, and Wally liked Starfire's way better. "Right. Uh huh, shrimp. How old are you, like, four?"

Starfire bit her fingernails, taking a step away from her sister.

"I'm eight and you'd better give it back to her, or I'll tell, and then you'll have to do pushups."

Sighing extravagantly, Komand'r held the ribbon between two fingertips as if it were a dead mouse. "Here you go, sister dear. Only a baby seven year old would want a sixth place ribbon anyway." She let it flutter to the pool deck, spun around and walked off to talk to three of the older boys.

Starfire stooped hurriedly to pick it up, holding it close to her chest, eyes still wide. "Thank you."

"I didn't do anything," said Wally. "Hey, let's go see if we're allowed to have more juice, 'kay?"

Her eyes shifted back to normal, rounding out into the happiness that Wally was used to seeing there. He hadn't realized how weird she'd looked without it until it suddenly came back. She nodded, looping the ribbon back over her ear with defiance as they walked.

Wally was thinking that it would maybe be a good idea to throw his cup in the trash can instead of on the ground when a quarter sunk to the bottom of the last step near the lifeguard's stand distracted him and made him forget all about trash cans.

"Cool! Money!" He splashed down the steps to get it, but a pale hand shot out and stopped him.

"It's mine, though; I dropped it," said Raven, and when he turned to look at her, she kind of scooted away from him with her eyes down as if she'd just said something she wasn't supposed to say.

Wally sighed. "I never find anything good," he muttered, starting up the steps backwards without even holding onto the rail. And he really didn't—he'd only found a penny once and it wasn't even on heads. Robin was really good at finding things except he never wanted them.

"Wait!" Raven edged a little closer to the lowest step, though she didn't put her feet in. "I…I can't get it."

"Why not?"

She went back to looking at the ground. "I…I don't want to swim."

Wally rolled his eyes. "If you wanted to get it that bad, it wouldn't matter if you didn't want to swim. It would take like two seconds, maybe, and that's if you didn't want to be fast."

"Can you get it for me, maybe?" she asked slowly, voice becoming quieter and quieter with each word.

"You know how to swim, and it's your quarter, like you said. You get it." Maybe she just didn't want to get wet. A lot of the girls hated getting in the water in the morning; they said it was cold and they'd scream if you splashed them (which was kind of funny, especially the big girls). Except it wasn't that early in the morning, since they never practiced early on Fridays, and the water wasn't even cold today.

Raven gripped the metal rail that ran from the bottom of the steps to just in front of the edge of the pool, knuckles white. "But I'd have to…to…"

"Who has a quarter?" Gar's voice was really loud, right in Wally's ear.

He pointed at Raven. "She does, but she doesn't want to get it."

"Ooo, can I have it, then?"

"Naw," said Wally. "I think Raven will get it in a sec. Now what were you saying?"

"I'd have to go underwater and I don't want to!" she pronounced in a single breath, eyes snapping shut and hands tightening on the rail. If she held it any tighter, she'd snap it in half like Starfire had accidentally snapped her goggles in half last week.

He just looked at her for a minute because he wasn't really sure what to say. But Gar thought of something to say, so that was good. "Sometimes I don't want to go underwater, either, 'cos it's hard to come back up, 'specially if you're tired. Did I tell you about this one time when I almost drowned?"

"I saw it," Raven said. "But I'm still not going underwater."

Wally brightened, finally thinking of something to say, because Gar's drowning story reminded him of what else had happened that day, when Raven had cried a whole lot and didn't come back. "Is it because you're scared?"

"No!"

"Yeah, but it sort of looks like it's because you're scared."

"I just don't want to," said Raven.

"Okay, you don't have to." Wally nodded. "…But then you won't get the quarter."

Raven leaned over the steps, staring at the quarter as if she wanted to melt all the water away with her eyes. "You don't get it. I can't. It's…bad."

"Money is so not bad," said Gar. He narrowed his eyes in thought for a moment. "Unless you meant going underwater, because that is kinda bad sometimes, especially when you choke and then you can't breathe and you really hope that you can get back to the wall because—"

"Not helping," Wally muttered under his breath, seeing the way Raven's eyes flickered with something that wasn't good at all and should never be in anyone's eyes, not ever. And then he knew that he had to help her, even though he wasn't sure why she needed help, exactly, because nobody should have to look that way. Wally didn't like that look and didn't ever want to see it again. Ever. So he stepped back into the water, up to his waist, turned so he was facing Raven and smiled up at her. "Seriously. It's fine. I'll go in with you."

"Me, too!" Gar jumped into the water from the side. "And I'm really glad this is the shallow end," he added once he'd surfaced.

"Why can't you just get it for me?" she begged, hands still wrapped tight around the rail.

"Because what about the next time you drop something in the pool—who's gonna help you then? Are you gonna pick it up with your brain or something?"

"I wish I could," said Raven miserably. Whatever had happened that day when Gar had almost drowned, it had to have been bad, because he hadn't seen anyone so scared of going underwater in his whole life.

"Oh, c'mon, this is the shallow end, like I said." Gar shrugged. "Who's afraid of the shallow end? You can touch the bottom and stuff!"

Raven put one foot on the first step, then the other. She was wearing shorts over her suit but didn't seem to care that she was about to get them wet. "You won't…you won't push me, will you?"

"No way, Kitten tries to push me in all the time, and I hate it," said Gar.

"But what if you're lying?"

Wally laughed. "If we're lying, you can tell coach, and we'll have to do twenty pushups for lying and twenty more for pushing you and probably about fifty more for not having our toes pointed the right way or something."

"Your toes are supposed to be out if you're doing breaststroke," Raven said as she moved down another step, the water lapping around her knees. Wally backed away from her as she walked, letting her follow him down to the last step. "And I'm not going any farther down."

"Okay, you don't have to, it's right there, see?" He pointed at the shiny circle in the middle of the last step. "Sometimes it's hard to get all the way to the bottom of the pool, but this is on the steps, so it'll be easy. You can just reach down and get it, but you have to go under a little bit 'cos your arms aren't long enough."

"Yeah, I see it," she murmured, biting her lip. She didn't look like she had any intention of doing anything but seeing it.

"Now we'll count to three and you go under and get it!" said Gar, leaning against the side of the pool and tracing his name along the deck with his finger.

She lowered herself to her knees, looking down into the water. "Do I have to?"

"Nope," said Wally. He sighed loudly, letting his eyes fall back to the money on the stairs. "You just won't get the quarter, and that will be sad."

Raven didn't say anything for a few seconds, long enough for Wally to look up at her to try and find out why, and the next thing she said sounded like she was saying it from inside…from inside something bad. Like a grave. Or a haunted house (the bad kind, not the ones in carnivals). "You won't…hurt me?"

"It will be wet," said Wally. "And kind of squishy. But it doesn't hurt or nothing."

As she reached down to the bottom of the step as far as her arms would go, her eyes went from terrified to hopeful to the haunted-house look and then finally, by some miracle, snapped back to normal. "You'd better not be lying, Wally West," she proclaimed. And the second she finished saying it, she squeezed her eyes shut, took in a huge breath, and plunged her face into the water, having to grab at the quarter twice before she got her fingers around it. Her head was back up an instant later, half of her hair dry and the other half dripping as she breathed in and out, staring hard down into her hand.

Gar was saying something about how didn't she see that it hadn't really hurt after all, but she was too lost in some spell to hear him. Finally, finally, her breathing returned to normal and her eyes shifted away from her hand to focus on Wally. "Did I just do that?"

"Pretty much!" Wally stepped quickly around Raven and climbed out of the pool, two steps at a time. "Coach Bruce, Coach Bruce, come see what Raven did!"

Coach Bruce was talking to Robin about something but Wally grabbed his hand and dragged him over to the steps. He tried to explain on the way. "She dropped some money at the bottom of the pool—well, it wasn't really the very bottom, but it was just as good as if it had been, 'cos she wanted me to get it but I told her that she should get it herself and so then Gar jumped in the pool and—"

The look on Raven's face when they got to the steps made Wally stop talking. She was standing there, a few feet away from the steps, baggy, green shorts trying to float off of her—and she had a knowing kind of smirk on her face that looked like it belonged on somebody a lot bigger than seven.

"Hi, coach." She grinned and went all the way under the water, popping up a few seconds later to wave at him.

Coach Bruce didn't say anything. And didn't say anything. And then he still didn't say anything, just pulled Raven out of the pool and into his arms, and Wally didn't think he'd ever seen him smile like that. His shirt was soaked but he didn't seem to care. At all. The quarter fell out of Raven's hands, bouncing onto the pool deck and languidly rolling back into the water. Except it was okay, because this time she could get it herself.

Later, though, because Raven really didn't look like she wanted Coach Bruce to let her go.