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#Post#: 37--------------------------------------------------
Fishes out of Water
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: December 10, 2019, 8:35 am
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The counselor -- They called her a Suite Advisor -- but she made
Corianne think of day camp counselors she had known woke all the
kids very early Sunday morning by pounding on their doors. The
roommate who had wept silently the previous afternoon, said
something in a foreign language and sat up. She glanced around.
Corianne saw her from the covers she pulled over her head. The
poor kid looked like a deer in the headlights.
"Ladies time to get up and dress. Bring your bathing suits,
we're going to get swim tested."
"Isn't it too early in the morning to swim?" thought Corianne.
Tikvah of the silent tears, the roommate, began digging through
her underwear drawer. Corianne rolled out of bed. Even though it
was summer, the bedroom's uncarpeted floor was cold beneath her
bare feet. She started pulling her bed together so she could lay
out her clothes. Tikvah, meanwhile, found a pair of white winter
tights and was sniffing them.
Corianne dug out flowered panties, an Indiana State fair t-shirt
that was two sizes too big. She did not need an undershirt, and
the jeans she wore yesterday were pretty clean. Sneakers and
socks might be a good idea, so she found navy colored socks. She
really preferred colored socks to white ones. She washed up in
the bathroom, combed out her wavy hair, dressed and grabbed her
bathing suit. Of eight girls, Corianne was the sixth one out.
Her roommate emerged last. "Did you remember your bathing suit
and towels?" asked Aunt Albina. Tikvah nodded.
Tikvah wore the same blue skirt as yesterday but with a white
polo shirt and tights today. She found a spot on the floor next
to Corianne and made her tights and skirt clad legs into blue
and white hills. Aunt Albina leveled the hills when she herded
all eight girls out of their suite and onto the elevator, then
down the paths to Rapinoe-McConolly-Brinker for the swim test.
Corianne thought it was weird to have to get dressed just to get
undressed again to put on a bathing suit to swim, but that was
the way boarding school worked. Corianne's bathing suit was red
with a design of orange flowers on it. She had tied a piece of
elastic to the shoulder straps to keep them from falling. She
pulled the suit over her butt cheeks and walked out onto the
pool deck. The swimming pool had wooden bleachers on one side of
it like in a stadium or football field. Corianne realized these
were for swim races. Corianne did not swim well enough to be on
a team. She always lost swimming races at camp.
The swim instructors were a man and woman. The man had a big,
hairy chest and a matching hairy beard, the kind that was just
waiting to absorb food crumbs or double as a brown, Brillo pad.
The woman had a big rear end and wore a blue bathing suit. Her
voice echoed throughout the steamy, chemical scented pool room.
There were close to thirty kids here for the swim test. Most sat
in the bleachers. Two boys chased each other until the male swim
instructor nearly grabbed one by the shoulders and sent him back
to his suite group. Boys were idiots.
"Alright, you are al here for the swim test. The test is simple.
Get in the water, and swim from one end of the pool to the long
way, any stroke, any speed. If you make it you pass. If you
don't, you take beginning swimming for PE." "PE must be gym,"
thought Corianne.
"Who here thinks they can pass the swim test?" asked the female
swim instructor. "Everybody who thinks they can pass line up two
by two." Corianne got up. She moved with an amorphous blob of
kids who slowly formed themselves into a double line at the deep
end of the pool. Corianne could swim in over her head water, but
her heart sank when the first two kids, a boy and a girl, dove
gracefully into twelve foot water. Corianne couldn't dive.
Meanwhile, Corianne noticed her roommate was not in the line.
Corianne looked around as much as she could without losing her
place which was near the end. She could never get to the front
of anything. She lacked killer instinct, and a year in a family
with many children, just let her get run over as the helpful
older sister told her.
Corianne found Tikvah still sitting in the bleachers. She had a
white towel spread over her lap and a yellow towel over her
shoulders, hiding most of her blue bathing suit. She sat next to
Aunt Albina and stared at her towel-covered lap.
The line inched toward the edge of the pool. "Confession time,"
Corianne told herself. She also told herself that when she got
done with the test, she could go to free swim on the other side
of the pool, where a lifeguard in a red bathing suit covered by
a gray t-shirt watched a pool full of happy kids.
Corianne stared down into the deep water. She knew what she had
to say. Her mouth was dry. Her throat was drier. "Excuse me,"
she called out. The swim instructor did not hear. The girl next
to her dove into the water splashing her with drops that felt
cold. "Go on," the swim instructor said.
"I can't dive," Corianne managed to get it out.
"Can you jump?"
Corianne felt stupid but she pushed off and made an tight cannon
ball that stung her knees and shins hard enough to make red
sparks fly behind her closed eyes. She bobbed in the turquoise
water and felt the chlorine sting from far away. She resurfaced
in reality.
"Now touch the end of the pool and swim to the other end," the
swim instructor ordered. Corianne reached out for the end of the
pool and pushed off in an easy breast stroke. She was near the
end of the line, and those other kids would just have to wait.
Corianne climbed out of the pool feeling embarrassed and stupid.
"You pass!" the male swim instructor told her. In the bleachers,
the towel wrapped Tikvah clapped. Corianne walked over to the
free swim side of the pool. She was run over again so she would
not get much swim time in, but she didn't care. She needed to
think...about what she was not sure. She should have known, a
swim test was not a diving test. A swim test was for falling
into the water not diving into it.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pool the second to last pair
of swimmers took the test. In the last pair, both girls went
down the steps and started from the shallow end. They were
dignified kids, who like Corianne could swim but could not dive.
"Canon balls are more fun in a twisted way," thought Corianne as
she swam lazy breast stroke past a group of dumb boys tossing a
beach ball.
"Well swim time is almost over," Corianne told herself and she
braced to hear a bell or whistle or Aunt Albina's loud voice,
but instead, Aunt Albina and several other Suite Advisors
climbed down into the water. Tikvah along with five or six
nonswimmers stood on the edge of the pool or edged their way in.
Corianne stopped midway through her lap and tread water.
The swim instructor and Suite Advisors coaxed all but one of the
children, a boy with coke bottle glasses and denim cut offs for
a bathing suit, into the water. They stood waist, chest, or
shoulder deep. Several bobbed under the surface. Tikvah grabbed
the side of the pool and lifted her feet off the bottom and then
pushed off into a float. She sputtered to her feet again. Some
of the children paddled awkwardly. One followed the male swim
instructor down the test lane.
Tikvah bobbed under the water again. There were ripples and then
she came up. She repeated this one more time and arched into a
back float. Corianne remembered learning to float on her back.
It was hard. From the other side of the pool, a girl laughed.
Corianne returned to swimming her laps.
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