Flip Turn

Chapter Seventeen: The Real World

Vic didn't know if it was going to be good enough. But it would have to be. And anyway, it was too late now.

"Wha'cha doing?"

"Trying to see the results," Vic said, not really paying attention to the eager voice at his side—so much that he almost didn't realize that it was Gar.

Gar poked him in the elbow. "Results of what?"

He squinted his eyes at the bulletin board, but it didn't work; the thing was too far away, there were too many people around it to get closer, and Vic wasn't about to go pushing people out of the way. "Results of the meet so far. They post people's times and ranks up here, so you can see how you did compared to everyone else."

"What's a rank?"

"It means who was faster," Vic said absently, still trying to pick out his name on the rows of paper lined up horizontally, but he couldn't even find the event he wanted. He really hoped he wasn't going to need glasses. "I just can't see it from here."

Gar raised both eyebrows, the side of his mouth curling into a grin. "I can see it!"

Staring at him, Vic started to say something, except he didn't have enough time, because Gar had ducked between two older girls before Vic had time to stop him—and then, judging by the glares and protests from the crowd, was shoving his way to the front.

"What'd you want me to tell you, again?" Gar's voice yelled, though his face was lost in a mass of taller people. Most people were taller than Gar.

The simple, unqualified confidence nearly made Vic forget what he'd wanted in the first place, but then he made himself say, "Umm, find my name under the IM and tell me what the number is beside it. Please." It felt weird being polite when what Gar just did was the opposite of polite, but he didn't think leaving off the courtesy would make it any better.

It took a long, long time for Gar to reply, and Vic was starting to worry that he was just standing there, feeling bad that he couldn't find it, but then Gar's face poked out from behind Kara.

"Got it! You're five!" he said triumphantly. After a pause, he shook his head and added, "Well, you're not five like five years old, but that was what it said."

"Thanks," Vic murmured, not really sure if he should be happy or not. He'd wanted better than five. He probably needed better than five, to be safe. He had to be number forty or higher, against everybody, and there were five other divisions, some of them a lot bigger. Maybe it just wasn't good enough. Maybe he just wasn't good enough.

"Hey, you. Five's good," said Kara. She wasn't on Vic's team, and she was a little bit taller than he was—which wasn't too weird because she also looked a little bit older. Her bright red ribbon stood out against her pale hair. "This place still look the same after two years?"

"Yeah," said Vic, looking at the ground. He really didn't want to talk about two years ago. Or one year ago, actually.

"Hi! I'm Gar and I'm six, and I've never been to 'Visionals before, but I love it."

Kara grinned, extending her hand to him. "I'm Kara, and I like it, too. This is a pretty good pool; ours doesn't have a diving board."

Gar looked scandalized. "How do you survive?" He didn't wait for an answer, just continued after a hasty breath, "And you'll never guess what was in my mailbox this morning!"

"What?" Kara kind of smiled with her eyes, a quiet secret that Vic definitely knew about.

"Candy!" Gar halfway-yelled, breaking into a smile that was somehow a lot brighter than the sun in Vic's eyes. He paused for a moment, sobering. "Well, Coach Bruce said we're not allowed to eat it till after the swim meet, which is kinda mean, but somebody brought us candy—and I think the same somebody wrote on my driveway this morning, 'cos that was there when I woke up, too."

"That's awesome, and I know you won't eat it until you're supposed to; you look way too responsible for that," said Kara, looking over Gar's head to give Vic that secret smile again. She knew what was going on just as well as he did, but neither of them would tell.

Vic knew Kara from school: she used to be two grades ahead…except now she was three ahead, because of the accident, and they hadn't talked much lately because she'd gone to middle school last year. She was really fast, especially in breaststroke—she was the fastest in the whole state, actually. Coach Clark was her cousin, and she swam with him a lot, and though she went to a lot of meets unattached, she didn't swim for a team during the winter. Vic had asked her why once, before the accident, in the school cafeteria when they were both in line for milk; she'd said it was boring.

Several times, she'd come to visit Vic at the hospital, bringing math books and pencils, and they'd talk about fractions and long division until the nurse said that she couldn't stay any longer. It wasn't because they were best friends, or anything (Wally was Vic's best friend). Kara just helped people.

Gar nodded fervently. "Yeah, I'm super responsible." His serious face immediately switched into another grin as he waved at somebody behind Vic. "Terra! I found the coolest anthill underneath the fence, and you've gotta see it!"

Terra wrinkled her nose, letting go of Raven's hand from where she'd been dragging the other girl. "Eww, bugs are so icky. But we're gonna play Go Fish, and I'll even let you play with us—if you promise not to be a boy."

"But…I am a boy."

"I know that, but you just can't be one, okay! Then you can play with us." She looked at the girls at her side, and Kitten quickly nodded in agreement, with Raven looking really confused but slowly mimicking the gesture.

It didn't take long for Gar to decide that being a boy didn't matter as much as playing Go Fish. "'Kay, I won't; I promise!"

"Good," said Terra, linking arms with Raven again as Kitten indicated importantly that he could follow them.

Vic silently watched them slip through the fence, Terra shrieking when an official sprayed her with cold water, and Kitten yelling that that was only for the people coming into the pool, not going out.

"Five's good, you know." The voice pulled him back to the bulletin board and the girl standing in front of him. "And your time was good; I saw it. It'll be fine."

He shrugged. "I don't know. But it'll have to be."

Kara stared at him with one hand on her hip, head tilted to one side like he was a puzzle she was trying to figure out. "I'm still gonna do math homework with you whether you get fifth place or fiftieth. And long division is a little more important than Divsionals."

"But I already know how to do—"

"I'll tell Clarkie that we should go out to eat at the same place your team's going," Kara interrupted, blue eyes alive with an amused kind of sparkle. "I've gotta go swim, but good luck on the backstroke!"

"How'd you know that I was—"

"I'm a genius," she said solemnly.

Why did Grant have to be swimming backstroke?

He wished he could close his eyes and make the older boy swim something else, and even if it didn't work that way, Vic still wanted it to. A lot. Grant was thirteen, so he was several age groups back, but he was really close to Kara because she was thirteen, too, and she was in the last heat of girls because that was where the fast people were supposed to go. Vic tried not to focus on it, because his heat was next and he couldn't get distracted, but it was hard; he could hear them no matter how far away they were, and it kept reminding him of the locker room, with Robin looking even smaller than he normally looked, trapped between Grant's huge hands.

"She's not talking to me because she's shy. And I was gonna ask her out, too." Grant poked Kara in the neck. "How about if I win the heat, you kiss me?"

Kara didn't say anything to him, not even pausing in whatever she was saying to the girl next to her on the bench.

"Well, fine; you don't have to kiss me if that's how you work. You could always—"

Vic almost got out of his chair to do something, because the smirk on Grant's face meant that the end of that sentence wouldn't be very good, and it made him really angry, really worried, or both… but Kara turned around casually and said something to the boys behind her that was too quiet for him to hear. Whatever it was, though, it made Grant stop talking and everyone else nearby stare at him. Kara caught Vic's attention and rolled her eyes.

Maybe he shouldn't have worried. Bothering Kara wasn't a very good idea. Vic hadseen the way that she'd dragged the waterlogged, gigantic lane rope spool two weeks ago, like it was made of air.

"Heat three, step in."

Vic liked backstroke because he didn't have to dive, and diving hurt his legs. A lot. He did it anyway, but he wasn't very good at it and always started out just a little bit behind. He stepped into the water like he'd accidentally walked off the edge of the pool, then surfaced and reached up to wrap his hands around the metal handles underneath the blocks. A lot of the kids weren't tall enough to use them yet, but Vic was. He made sure his feet were under the water all the way, because you could get DQ'd if they weren't.

"Place your feet." The starter's voice, woven through the crackly microphone, pausing for a moment to wait for everybody to do it. He had no idea why they waited; most people didn't know what that meant, and the ones who did had already done it. "Gentlemen, one length of the pool backstroke. Take your mark."

Pulling himself closer to the handles, head down, Vic stared at the lip of the pool until his eyes couldn't focus any harder, feeling every muscle in his body tense.

The sound of the beep threw him into a different world. Up, back, down, ignoring the way the water stung his shoulders, underneath the water and back up again—and then he was swimming, chin up and head still, and the sunlight was blinding, even more blinding than the smile on Gar's face when he'd told them what was in his mailbox. The screams from the deck were muffled by the water rushing in his ears, but he pushed those out of his mind and focused on grabbing the water and pulling his body past it. He'd never been very good at making his hands point the right way in backstroke, and if he didn't concentrate on it, he'd do it wrong.

He prayed that he wasn't doing it wrong.

Vic didn't look around. Didn't look to either side of him to see how close the others were, just stared hard into the sun as it bleached his vision as he thought about where every part of his arm was supposed to go—and elbows bent, head still, keep kicking even though it hurts…

The second set of flags over his head brought a surge of complicated emotions, both relief that it was almost over and horror that he'd mess up the most important part, but he shoved those away and counted, counted every time one of his arms went into the water, until he got to number eight and held his hand where it was, kicking until he felt the wall underneath his fingertips.

Vic let his feet drift to the bottom of the pool, leaning his head against the wall for a few seconds, letting its solidity bring him back to the real world, the world that didn't race (unless the race was the real world, and this was the fake one; he'd never been able to figure that out).

But he remembered what world he was in when he stayed to watch Kara's race, to watch her swim like she was flying, like she was swimming in her sleep, like the others in her heat were standing still, turning over onto her stomach at the wall and flipping herself over with a splash that caught one of the judges in the face. And after she'd finished, winning the race by at least five yards, she waved at Vic as she somehow managed to heave herself out of the pool with one hand—and being good enough didn't matter to Kara, it never did and it never would. Maybe that was because it didn't have to matter, not for somebody like her, but he didn't think so.

"Woah…" A familiar voice behind him began, then cut itself off.

Vic turned around to see Wally. To see Wally without anything to say, for the first time that he could remember.

"I agree," Vic said cheerfully.

Wally spent a few more seconds staring at the empty lane where Kara had been, mouth slightly open, then finally blinked, shook his head rapidly, and looked back at Vic as if he'd just been woken up from a dream.

"Okay, Garth is the only one allowed to have those gill things!"