Flip Turn

Chapter Thirteen: People You Look At

This meet was a lot better than the last one—it was at Starfire's pool, so she could look for butterflies when she wasn't supposed to be doing something else, and plus, the starting blocks were white. Last week, they'd been black. She hadn't liked that.

The other team's coach hadn't been very nice, either. When Kitten told her about Coach Slade, she'd kind of thought that he was only pretending to be mean and that maybe he just needed some friends. But Coach Slade wasn't pretending. At all. His real eye had glared at her when she glanced over at him for just a second before she jumped off the blocks, and it made her feel like he knew things, things that weren't very nice, even though she couldn't think of anything bad enough for him to actually know. It had almost made her start the race too early so she wouldn't have to keep looking at him, but she had managed to stay still with her hands clutching the ugly, black starting block, at least until she'd heard the beep.

But tonight wouldn't be like that. Because Coach Slade wasn't here, and he wasn't allowed to be here, and he could go and be mean somewhere else.

It wouldn't be like that, but Komand'r was allowed to be here, and she'd definitely taken Starfire's goggles.

"Koma! Give it!"

Komand'r leaned forward with her hands behind her back, holding the goggles firmly away as Starfire tried to reach behind her. "Give what? I didn't take anything. Maybe you just lost them. 'Cos you're stupid."

"I am not stupid; you are mean!"

"Still too stupid to figure out contractions, though," she sighed, as if she was very sorry that Starfire couldn't figure them out—except she wasn't. Komand'r straightened up, taking the goggles with her. "Nah, think I'm gonna keep these safe for awhile. I don't want stupid babies to mess them up."

"But th—they are—they're mine, and I won't mess them up!" Starfire hiccupped, wishing she could get the talking right, because she made it even worse when she was mad, and she could feel the invisible elephant sitting on her chest like it always did when Komand'r was mean. There had been elephants before the summer, across the ocean, but this wasn't the good kind.

Komand'r stared down at her with an awful kind of grin. "I think somebody's just mad that I'm the better swimmer and I always will be. I'm the best everything, Koriand'r." She lowered her voice to a whisper, black eyes narrow and excited. "And there's nothing you can do about it. Because that's all you are: you're not a winner, just a nothing. Just plain, old Kori."

That wasn't why she was mad because Starfire never worried about being the best swimmer, at least she didn't except when her sister said it in that mean voice and wouldn't give her goggles back, dangling them over her head just too high. Everything changed when Komand'r was around, like that time last week when she'd shoved her into the wall because Starfire said that she wouldn't pretend to be her cat. Or like that time across the ocean, when she'd told Starfire that if she could find an oasis, she'd get a wish, and Starfire had walked all over the place in the sun, just looking, until it had gotten too hot, and she'd fallen down in the sand and went to sleep for a long time.

Things changed because Komand'r made them change. Starfire just…let her change them. And the elephant was making it too hard to breathe, and was she really just a nothing?

She was starting to wonder if she'd ever be able to fill up her lungs again when a quick hand snatched the goggles away from Komand'r. A hand that wasn't Starfire's.

She spun around to look, and saw that the hand belonged to an arm that was attached to an older girl that she'd never seen before. She looked a lot like Terra, except a ton bigger, and her skin was slightly darker, like she spent a lot of time outside. Her blonde hair was a lot shorter, too, pulled away from her face with a black headband. The bright blue suit (which she wore under a pair of red shorts) meant that she was on the other team, though that was pretty obvious anyway, since Starfire knew everyone on her own team, and she didn't know this girl.

"I think these are yours," said the girl, handing the goggles to Starfire.

"I think you're a moron with a stupid uniform," Komand'r sneered, completely ignoring Starfire now, focusing on the girl with her eyes full of fire—the bad kind of fire.

The girl blinked but didn't move. "I think you shouldn't be mean to eight and unders." She looked away from Komand'r, but not because she was afraid—her casual expression meant that she just didn't feel like talking to her. "I'm Kara," she said, addressing Starfire. "Did you say your name was Kori—Kori—something with 'Kori,' anyway."

"No, it is Starfire. I used to be Koriand'r, but that was before I moved across the big ocean." Starfire laughed, edging away from Komand'r, who looked like she wanted to shove Kara against the fence and give her a bloody nose—except, from the way Kara's arms looked, that probably wouldn't be such a good idea.

Except, she was maybe going to try it anyway. "Hey, blondie! You can't just take something from me and expect me to let you! We don't like people from the other team over here, anyway." She grinned wickedly. "Sometimes, they don't come out alive."

"Nice to meet you, Starfire—which ocean?"

Maybe Kara couldn't hear people very well. Or maybe she just couldn't hear Komand'r—because it wasn't possible to just ignore Komand'r. Starfire glanced over at her sister in disbelief before answering awkwardly, "Umm, I am not sure, but it is a big one between here and Africa, and we flew over it on a plane, and it took all day, and Komand'r kept kicking the back of my seat if I wouldn't give her my peanuts."

"That must have been frustrating," said Kara, still not looking back at Komand'r.

Komand'r reached out to shove Kara in the shoulder. "Hey—I asked you to do something: either start telling me what fashion disaster convinced you to wear something that clashes so horribly or go away and let me deal with my baby sister however I want to."

Looking down at the hand on her bathing suit strap, almost as if she was trying to make sure it was really there, Kara slowly looked back at Komand'r, light eyebrows arching up her forehead. "No," she stated, shrugging away from her. "I don't think I have time. 'Cos if your name's Komand'r, they're yelling it really loud over there." She pointed towards a man with a wad of blue index cards, who was indeed yelling Komand'r's name through a giant, white cone that made his voice a lot bigger. He was Gar's dad, and he didn't look happy when his eyes fell on the girl he was yelling for.

Komand'r turned and dropped to her knees, digging frantically through her bag to find her own goggles, finally snapping up, holding them delicately between two fingers. "I don't even have time for this. I'll be back to deal with you later, sister dear. But you can watch me get my name in the paper if you want."

Starfire wrinkled her nose at her sister's back. "She's lying—she's really bad at breaststroke, and she's not gonna win." Well, they were both kind of bad at breaststroke, but Kara didn't need to know that.

Kara sighed. "Speaking of that, my coach won't like it if I miss my event, so I have to go."

"My coach wouldn't like it, either," said Starfire. "At all. Because one time, Roy missed an event to see what would happen, and Coach Bruce made him do ten pushups in front of everybody." She made a face.

"Oh, mine wouldn't be mad," said Kara, twirling her goggles around her index finger. "He never gets mad. But I've been swimming for four years and I'm s'posed to know better." She fixed Starfire with a mischievous smile. "I usually know better. But sometimes I pretend that I forgot."

"You should go swim, though, or you'll be in trouble." Starfire didn't want Kara to get in trouble, and even though she didn't seem to think that she would, you always got in trouble for missing events. You just did.

"Guess so." She waved with the hand that was twirling her goggles, sending them flying off her finger, but she caught them before they got very far—and her hand moved so fast it was almost hard to see. That was probably how she'd been able to stop Komand'r from being mean. "See you later, and don't let your sister take your stuff. Tell your coach if she does."

"I will, and don't listen to what Koma said about the other team not being allowed to come over here—she was lying about that, too!"

"I know," said Kara, walking backwards to the benches and Gar's dad with the index cards, and not even tripping over anything. "Bye, Starfire!"

Starfire watched her the whole time the girl was sitting on the benches, in the middle of her row, far away from Komand'r, who wasn't even on the same bench as she was. She didn't know why she couldn't stop watching, but figured that Kara was one of those people that everybody else just stopped what they were doing to look at. Kind of like the other team's coach, actually. Starfire had only seen him a little bit at warm-up but something about the way his face looked was the same, even though he didn't look anything like Kara. It made her feel like everything would be alright. She wasn't sure why, but it did.

Before she'd even thought about it, Starfire was running across the grass to slip through the fence and watch Kara's race.

Coach Bruce did not look happy. Neither did Coach Clark.

"Please, please—just this once and we'll never ask again, we swear!" Gar was jumping up and down, eyes bright and earnest, his goggles resting crooked on his forehead.

"If you do it, I'll…" Roy paused, eyes scrunched up as he tried to think of something that would be a good trade. "I'll swim fifty laps of butterfly—no, sixty—no, for a whole practice without even stopping!"

Offering to do things sounded like a fun game, so Starfire took a deep breath and announced, "And I will do eight hundred pushups. In front of everybody!" She paused for a moment. "Psst," she whispered, poking Terra in the shoulder. "What do we want him to do?" She'd just finished swimming butterfly and hadn't heard whatever they were talking about. It seemed like everyone was here, or at least all the kids her age—except for Robin, who'd been acting really strange ever since the meet with Coach Slade, and Starfire was pretty sure that he'd gotten in a lot of trouble. He didn't talk to Coach Bruce much now, except to say "Yes, sir" or "No, sir." He mostly didn't even look at him.

Terra spun to face her, blue lips stretched up in a grin. "We want the coaches to race!"

She felt her mouth drop open. "Can they?" Swim team had so many rules that it seemed like there would be one against this.

"Sure they can," said Roy. "It just doesn't count. Not like it counted anyway, but this really doesn't count. You're allowed to swim in any heat as long as there's enough lanes, and it's called an ex—an exuh—"

"Exhibition, and it's also known as I'm-not-doing-it," Coach Bruce said gently.

Gar leaned his elbows against the back of Coach Bruce's chair. "But please, can you maybe just do it a little bit?"

He sighed. "You either race or you don't race, Gar, and I'm not going to race."

Starfire felt a grin creeping up her face to match Terra's, because she could tell from his face that he really did want to, and just wanted them to convince him. "But we have never seen you really swim—only in practice—and you see us swim all the time, so it is really not fair." It was hard to remember about talking right when you were excited.

"Starfire, Coach Clark has yet to agree to this, and I'm reasonably sure that he's not going to." His glare at the other coach as he said the last three words had a hint of warning in it, which probably meant he was daring him to race to try to get him to. But what he was saying meant that he'd already agreed himself. He just didn't know it yet.

Everybody turned expectantly to Coach Clark, including several kids in blue suits from the other team. He shifted in his seat, like he wasn't really sure what to say and didn't want to disappoint anyone. So Starfire decided that she would make sure that he knew what to say. "Will you, please?" she asked, taking a deep breath and crossing her fingers.

He looked a little bit like somebody had dragged him to the dentist as he glanced past Starfire to the kids on his team, as if they'd explain everything. "Guys, you know that I don't—"

"C'mon, coach." A smaller hand fell on his shoulder, Kara grinning at him. "It's just for fun."

Coach Clark sighed heavily, closing his eyes, and then opened them to raise an eyebrow at Coach Bruce. "I think I'm going to regret this," he stated, except Starfire thought that it might have been a little bit like a lie.

She giggled. They had him now.

Spinning back around to face Coach Bruce, who had a really funny expression on his face, like he'd bit into a lemon, Starfire pointed to make sure he'd seen what had just happened. "He said he would do it, he said, now will you, please?"

Coach Bruce groaned, but then smirked at Roy. "How many laps of butterfly were you offering, again?"

"Umm…I don't remember?"

Starfire still didn't know everything about swimming yet, but she did know that there were definitely supposed to be four people on a relay team.

She tapped Karen on the knee. "They both need three more swimmers." Somebody really should tell them that, and Starfire could do it if no one else would—

Karen shook her head, ponytail shaking with her. "It's exhibition. They can do whatever they want. It's not going to matter anyway, 'cos they're too old to place or anything." She squinted at the starting blocks. "So I guess they're just gonna swim the whole thing. So it would be…eight laps. That's a long way."

They'd only done eight laps at a time once, and Starfire had taken a break after number six. It was a really long way. "But is this not against the rules?"

"Nope." Karen shrugged. "It's the last meet of the season, anyway, and nobody cares because the big kids always mess up the free relay. It's practically a law. One time, this one girl went off the blocks with a box of crackers on her head. Luckily, it was empty."

"Crackers?" Terra squeaked. "Like, crumbs in her hair?"

"Hey, I said it was empty," said Karen. "And this other time, they swam it backwards, and once they swam the whole thing underwater—the people who did that got DQ'd for not surfacing before fifteen meters." She giggled. "I wish I was fifteen so I could act stupid."

Starfire didn't really think that the coaches were acting stupid, though. Well, Coach Bruce looked completely serious, like he was doing a job, and not even a fun one. Coach Clark looked like he'd really rather keep talking to the little boy sitting in the plastic chair behind him, and he didn't seem to even notice that the big kids in the other lanes were gaping at him. He was the last one to step up, and he sort of jumped, skipping the tiny stair like it didn't even exist. He said something to Coach Bruce that Starfire couldn't hear, but didn't get an answer.

The starter looked kind of irritated and kind of excited, and Starfire figured he was expecting somebody to do something stupid, since Karen had said that's what always happened.

"Can I false start?" called one of the big kids on the other team.

Coach Clark smiled, shook his head, and went back to watching the starter. It was a nice smile, though, the same one from warm-up and the same one on Kara's face when she'd gotten Starfire's goggles back. Thinking about that made her wonder where Kara had gone, and she finally found her near one of the poles that held the flags up, a red towel around her shoulders, her headband having found its way back to her forehead

Starfire almost missed the start, but she didn't quite miss it, and it made her mouth fall open. She'd seen good divers before: Kitten and Robin and Wally. But this was completely different. She remembered when she'd first learned how, and she'd told Robin that he'd been flying, because that's what it had looked like to her, but now…now she really didn't see any difference, and if this wasn't flying, it was good enough, anyhow, and Starfire figured that even the birds had to be jealous.

The pool somehow looked shorter because the coaches were swimming—really swimming, not like when Coach Bruce would tell them all to watch when he showed them something. It was shorter and a little scary. They flipped at the wall, kicking it like they were angry at it for doing something wrong. Starfire definitely didn't want to race either one of them, though she kind of thought that she'd rather race Coach Clark if she had to pick.

Because he definitely wasn't going to win.

It wasn't because eight laps was too long: eight laps was clearly not too long for either of them, and Starfire didn't think that even eighty million would be too long, but he just didn't quite care like Coach Bruce did. Maybe he really couldn't beat him, or maybe he just focused too much on what was going on in the other lanes to really go fast enough, but he couldn't win this race. Maybe that was why Coach Bruce was on television, and he wasn't. Maybe you had to care to be on television, to care exactly like that, where nothing else existed except the final wall.

Starfire didn't know if that was exactly right, but she did know that Coach Bruce touched the wall four seconds faster—she'd counted—and that Gar was screaming in her ear…and it kind of hurt.

"I told ya, I told ya he would win, didn't I? Nobody can beat our coach—not even that one-eyed creep from last week!" He crawled over to poke Kara on the top of her foot, probably because she was the closest swimmer on the other team. "We won," he pronounced.

Kara smiled and shrugged. "He won't race." Raising her voice, she yelled at the starting blocks, "G'job, coach!"

Coach Clark reached over to shake Coach Bruce's hand. Starfire didn't do that after racing, but maybe she wasn't old enough for it to matter yet. The blond boy who'd been sitting in the chair tried to jump on Coach Clark even before he'd gotten out of the pool all the way. This didn't seem to work very well, and then Starfire realized what he'd really been trying to do—realized it when Coach Clark fell back into the pool with a huge splash, the boy giggling above him and pointing.

Starting to get an idea that was probably going to get her in a lot of trouble, and not sure that she cared at all, Starfire narrowed her eyes and looked around at the other kids. It seemed like she wasn't the only one who'd thought of it. Gar and Terra and Jade met her gaze solemnly, with Kitten jerking her thumb over at Coach Bruce and nodding.

"Anyone thinking what I'm thinking?" Kitten asked the circle, straightening her hair.

Jade rose to her feet, pulling Terra with her. "Way ahead of you." And they followed her to the starting blocks, stepping around the people who were already stacking chairs and putting away stopwatches.

Starfire wasn't sure if he suspected it or not. It was hard to tell with Coach Bruce. She hoped her grin was as innocent as she'd tried to make it, even though she really didn't think they could fool him. And really didn't care. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kara dragging the empty lane rope spool with one hand, wrench in the other, just staring at them with something like approval.

"You're not wet enough yet, coach," said Jade.

And then they pushed him in the pool.