Flip Turn

Chapter Ten: Cooperation

"I heard he was in the army. Like a general or something. Or maybe a king."

"My brother said that one time, a few years ago, his team hung a dead cat up in the girls' bathroom."

"Eww!" Terra cried, hand flying to her mouth. "But where'd they find a dead cat?"

"Well, I guess they had to, like, kill it first."

"Roy!"

"What?" He held up his hands indignantly. "How else would they get a dead cat?"

Raven was good at listening, but she wasn't so great at talking. It usually didn't matter, because as long as she was quiet enough and didn't stare too much, nobody ever tried to get her to talk, so they wouldn't know. She didn't even really want to be over here, on the ground with her back leaned against the fence, looking up at the other kids with what she hoped was polite interest—but she had to, because she was waiting for Coach Bruce. She had to have a swim lesson, and her mom had said that if she didn't cooperate, she wouldn't get any dessert tonight…and Raven wasn't quite sure if dessert was worth a swim lesson, but she figured she'd at least give it a chance in case it was.

It seemed like everybody was over here, except Robin, who was sitting at a table all by himself doing homework. Well, actually, he looked more like he was just tapping his pencil irritably against the umbrella stand. Not even Raven did homework in the summer.

Robin had been acting really weird lately. He was even quieter than usual, except now he'd stopped swimming everything perfectly and started swimming like Wally—skipping every lap he could possibly skip without getting caught…only, it wasn't exactly like Wally, because he didn't smile when he did it, and it was almost like he wanted to get caught. Which he usually did. Robin wasn't very good at cheating. It didn't fit him, like a shirt that was three sizes too small.

"Be quiet, everybody, I know something even better." Kitten's triumphant voice pulled Raven out of her thoughts. The blonde girl paused for a moment, smirking as Gar and Terra edged a little closer to her chair so they could hear her, mouths slightly open. "He only has one eye," she stated at last, squeezing her right eye shut.

Jade sighed heavily. "You're so lying. You always lie."

"I do not, and it's true: if you don't believe me, you can ask my daddy," Kitten returned, crossing her arms and looking down her nose at Jade. "He's a stroke and turn judge, been one for ages, so he knows all the coaches. And Coach Slade…" She paused, a wicked little smile curving up her face. "Has…one…eye."

Terra shivered. "That's really creepy. I wouldn't want him to stare at me."

"The other one's glass, or something else fake," said Kitten. "I can't remember which one's the real one, but we raced him last year and if you look at him you can definitely see it. And yeah, Terra, it's way creepy. It might scare six-year-olds like you."

"I still don't believe you," muttered Jade.

"Believe her," said Roy. "I saw it, too, and it's not the right color. The real one's blue, but this one is kinda a goldish brown."

Jade glared. "Do you want me to kick you again?"

"No, god, you're insane!" Roy switched places on the lounge chair so Wally was between him and Jade.

Raven would never have believed Kitten if Roy hadn't said it was true—she was always making up stories about how much money she had and what her daddy would buy for her (Raven would be perfectly happy to never see her daddy ever again). Terra liked to follow Kitten around, probably because she liked to make up stories, too. Most people didn't realize she was doing it, but Raven was good at finding liars, and Terra's eyes shifted to the side a little bit when she did it. Finding the lies was like a game.

But Raven didn't think she'd like Coach Slade's fake eye, either. It would be a lot worse than swim lessons, she was positive.

She didn't have time to think about it anymore, though, because Coach Bruce had almost finished putting the lane ropes up—Karen and Vic were helping but even with both of them put together, they couldn't push the gigantic spool that was so tall Raven couldn't touch the top of it even if she jumped. But Coach Bruce just got behind them and rolled the big spool into the corner like it was made of tissue paper or something.

Jade raised her voice as she noticed him, yelling over the other kids and pulling a brush through her hair. "Hey, coach, does the other team's coach really only have one eye? And was he really in the army?"

"And does he really kill cats?" Terra added fearfully.

"I don't think you need to worry about any of that," he said, smiling. "Ready to go, Raven?" He was looking down at her expectantly before she'd really prepared herself for it.

"I guess," she said, rising and slowly unhooking her fingers from the fence.

"Ooo, Rae-Rae's in trouble!" sang Gar. "Only babies need swim lessons."

Raven felt her stomach do cartwheels inside of her as her face turned red. She kind of was in trouble, when she thought about it: none of the other kids were so bad that they had to have lessons, and she should have learned how to do all this stuff a long time ago, but she'd been too scared to do anything but sit on the side of the pool, except listening wasn't the same as doing, so now she couldn't keep up…

"She's not in trouble, but you will be if you don't apologize," Coach Bruce said, voice carrying the same stern undercurrent that he'd used that time when Roy had pulled Terra's hair and she'd cried. The one that said that he meant business, and reminded everyone of how big he was, in case they'd forgotten.

Gar rolled his eyes, but he said sorry, and after a sidelong glance at Coach Bruce he said sorry again, and meant it this time.

"It's okay," Raven said, making herself look up at Coach Bruce. "I'm ready now."

Starfire waved at her. "When you finish doing the lessons, we can try to find a four-leaf clover!"

Raven swallowed the lump in her throat as she followed Coach Bruce to the shallow end, wishing she had the four-leaf clover now.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, pulling off her goggles and dragging them through the water faster and faster, staring at them hard.

He reached out to stop her, took her goggles away until her hands stopped wanting to drag them underwater and hold them there. "I didn't see you do anything you need to be sorry for. Do you want to try again?"

Raven didn't really want to try again, not at all, but she'd looked at Coach Bruce's watch and saw that she had nineteen more minutes left of cooperating, so she nodded reluctantly, replacing her goggles over her eyes and staring hard at the sticks on the bottom of the pool. There were three of them, brightly colored and plastic and heavy enough so they would sink to the bottom really fast once you dropped them in—and she was supposed to go get them, but it wasn't working.

It was a long way down. Three whole feet, and it wasn't at all like the quarter on the bottom step, and Coach Bruce didn't look like Wally even a little bit, and Raven didn't know why that made it worse, but it did.

At least his eyes were okay. They were dark and calm and relaxed, and they didn't yank Raven back to sinks and faucets and being a bad girl. So she pictured his eyes in her head as she took a deep breath and lowered herself underwater, feeling her throat close up a little bit as she fought the urge to claw her way to the surface.

Her fingers stretched for just one of the sticks, she didn't even care what color it was, and Raven wanted to snap her eyes shut but she made them stay open so she could look, felt the tip of one of the sticks brush her palm and snatched it. She was running out of air, and that was bad, and she was almost scared enough to drop it but she held on tight, somehow making it back to air and safety.

Raven handed the stick to him. It was the green one. "One," she gasped. "Two more to go."

"That was perfect," he said, and the way he smiled at her made almost running out of air just a little bit okay. "Why don't you take a break before—"

But she dragged herself back under the water, feeling it close over her head as she reached for the other two sticks, because maybe if she was extra cooperative he would take some time off.

"Two and three." She held the blue and pink sticks up, one in each hand, looking from Coach Bruce to the bottom of the pool and having a lot of trouble believing that she'd actually gone all the way down there.

He looked a little surprised as he took the sticks from her and set them on the side of the pool, but it was a good kind of surprised. "Good job. You're going to do that again in a few minutes, okay?"

Her mouth went dry as she felt herself shaking her head, barely managing to stop once she realized that this probably didn't count as being cooperative. She'd just done it so she wouldn't have to do it again, and after all that, it didn't even matter… "But I already—"

"Raven." Coach Bruce lowered himself so he was at eye level with Raven, his voice gentle. "I know that some very bad things happened to you to make you afraid of being underwater. And that's not your fault. But the only way you can stop being afraid is to practice. Do you want to stop being afraid?"

Raven looked at a towel that somebody had dropped into the water. "I don't want to be scared anymore."

"Good," he said. "Then let's go to the steps and talk about breathing."

Somehow, Raven didn't think they would just be talking, but the steps sounded better than the middle of the shallow end, so she followed him cautiously.

They did talk for a little while, about all the things that Raven wasn't doing right, and now she wasn't supposed to even hold her breath underwater anymore, she was supposed to breathe out, even though she didn't think that would be good because it meant she'd have less air in her lungs and less time to stay awake when she was under…Raven shivered and kicked the thoughts away. The rough concrete under her palms did make it easier than she'd expected when she actually tried it, lying on top of the water with her face inches above the surface.

Raven tried to pretend that the water wasn't there, that letting her head slip under the surface again and again was how she'd been breathing her whole life, and after awhile she sort of began to see what Coach Bruce meant by relaxing as she realized that her elbows had unclenched. He was sitting on the side of the pool with his feet in the water, just watching her and talking while she breathed in and out over and over, for a whole minute. It wasn't bad.

Then, she stopped thinking so hard about it and messed up, choking on bitter pool water and wrenching her head up, feeling a sob catching in her throat as she coughed and coughed. Coach Bruce put two big hands on her shoulders, guiding her over to sit on the side of the pool, saying her name over and over and telling her to look at him and to breathe and that it was okay and she was fine.

"I'm fine," she repeated blankly, forcing air into her lungs, all the way into her stomach like her doctor had said.

"That's right," he said. "Are you going to swim next week?"

"With the coach who only has one eye?"

"He might be there," Coach Bruce agreed. "But I'll be there, too, and I'd like for you to swim."

Raven bit her lip, looking at her toes. "If he tries to do something to me, you won't let him, right?"

"I don't think anyone at the swim meet wants to do anything to you, Raven, least of all the other team's coach. But if we should have any problems, I'll be able to take care of it."

He was probably right, because she'd never seen him be wrong before, so Raven nodded uncertainly. "Can I think about it?"

"Don't worry, you can wait and tell me on Wednesday."

"I thought we had to tell you by today if we weren't swimming?"

"I'll make an exception," he said, stepping out into the shallow end. "Now, were you going to get those sticks for me again?"

Raven didn't think she was supposed to hear it.

It wasn't her fault—she'd just hung up the phone from calling her mom to ask her to come pick her up, promising that she'd cooperated and that, no, she didn't have to have her dessert taken away. And the brick column by the phone was a good place to lean against: she could read the bulletin board from here and try to figure out the words she didn't know. And it wasn't her fault that she had very good hearing (her other doctor—the kind that gave you shots—had said she'd done really well on her hearing test, even though it wasn't the kind of test you could make an 'A' on).

But Raven still didn't think she was supposed to hear what Coach Bruce said to Robin when he pulled him firmly behind one of the brick columns by the hand. One where maybe they didn't see her, but only because they weren't looking, since she saw them perfectly.

"You're not even letting me talk—I don't want to swim!"

"And you can choose a more appropriate time to have this conversation than when I'm working." Coach Bruce's voice was quiet, but not in the way he'd talked to Raven on the steps—more like the way he'd talked to Gar when he'd called Raven a baby. "I don't know what this is about, Robin, but if you have a problem you need to tell me with words, not through misbehavior."

Robin's forehead wrinkled and he looked away. "The problem is that you're not listening to me and I'm not going to swim on Thursday and you can't make me."

Coach Bruce turned Robin's face back to his with two fingers, then didn't let go of his chin as he gave him a look that made Raven want to hide, even when it wasn't meant for her. "Robin John Grayson, I am not tolerating this. Get yourself under control. Immediately."

Robin shuddered and closed his eyes. Probably because he didn't want to see that look and Bruce wasn't letting him move his head. "Yes, sir." The words didn't sound like Robin. They sounded like Terra the day she'd had to learn how to dive.

Releasing him, Coach Bruce sighed. "Robin, if this is—"

Robin mumbled something about homework, so quietly that Raven couldn't hear the exact words, and then he was walking back over to the table, not looking back. And the way he held his head somehow made Raven feel cold, even worse than when she thought about Coach Slade and his awful fake eye.