Chapter 8 Bruno
brUNO
“What are the rules?” Bruno quizzed Gil as he came around the car to intercept the boy.
“DON’T SHIFT.”
“What else?” Bruno had to repeat the question, because Gil stopped and stooped to pick up an acorn from on top of a snowbank. “Please don’t put that in your nose,” he added with a sigh.
“It would fit,” Gil said, looking quizzically up at Bruno as if that was a sensible reason to do it. He dropped it anyway. “Be NICE to the teacher.”
“She’s doing this as a huge favor,” Bruno reminded him. “Don’t make her regret it.”
The YMCA was technically closed, but the side door was unlocked, as Vivian had promised. Bruno and Gil slipped in with a swirl of the cold outdoor air that turned visible in the warm moisture of the activity center.
“Hang on!” Bruno said; Gil was already stripping out of his clothing. “We do that in the locker room.”
“The LOCKED room?”
“Locker room!” Bruno found the marked door and led Gil in. There was a gawky teenaged boy putting a toddler into a swim diaper who looked up in alarm at their entrance.
“HI JACKSON!” Gil said cheerily. “It’s JACKSON. And DELIRIOUS!”
“Darius,” the boy said with a groan. “It’s Darius.” He frowned at Bruno. “Hi.” Bruno had heard a fair amount about Darius, but had only met him in a few times in passing; Jackson attended Tiny Paws, and Theo, their dad, was one of his clients.
Bruno picked a locker and stuffed the swim bag into it, then remembered that he needed the swimsuits from the bottom. He hung up the towels while he was unpacking the bag, and handed Gil his trunks.
It had been a long time since he’d been to a pool, and Bruno dressed awkwardly, while Gil gleefully shed his clothing all over the wet floor and pulled on his swim shorts. “Could we do this without making a giant mess for me to pick up?” Bruno asked in exasperation.
“YES,” Gil said unhelpfully.
They all rinsed off in the shower room, Jackson shrieking in glee and clapping.
“No running,” Darius said, holding the little boy’s hand firmly when he would have toddled to the pool door at full speed. He had a good grip on the boy and Jackson protested being held back shrilly.
“Jackson wants to go SWIMMING!” Gil observed, bolting for the door himself.
“No running!” Bruno said. “Do I have to hold your hand, too?”
“I’m not a BABY!” Gil snorted, but it didn’t slow him down any, and Bruno had to sprint to catch him and take him by the hand after all.
The poolside was already busy and Bruno recognized most of them.
Lucy was as far away from the water as she could get, her stepmother, Olivia, trying in vain to coax her closer.
Tara and Franzi were sitting together at the edge of the pool with their feet dangling in, whispering together.
A Black woman that Bruno didn’t know was there with Gabby.
She was one of only a few who didn’t have a distinctive shifter tingle and she was clearly trying not to stare at everyone.
A big blond man was bouncing a struggling penguin in his arms.
A woman in a racing suit with no child of her own was standing at the edge of the pool.
“Hi. I’m Betsy. I hope that you have all gone over the facility rules that we’re breaking here.
I’m going to go around and get a quick assessment of everyone’s skill level and shift form before we get started. Can you tell me your name, sweetheart?”
Lucy only glared, clearly not cooperative.
“This is Lucy,” Olivia said for her. “She’s a squirrel, and she’s never been swimming. She’s a little scared.”
“I’M NOT SCARED,” Lucy shouted.
Not to be left out, Gil volunteered, “I’M NOT SCARED, EITHER.”
“It’s not our turn yet,” Bruno reminded him.
“I was scared,” Betsy said kindly, ignoring Gil. “The first time I went swimming, I thought water was very scary.”
“WATER ISN’T SCARY!” Gil shouted.
“I’m not scared,” Lucy said, near tears.
Gil wiggled his hand out of Bruno’s and went to hug her. “I’m not, either,” he stage-whispered to her.
“We’ll start very slow,” Betsy promised. “How about you?”
“I’M AN ARMADILLO!” Gil said eagerly. “I DON’T have lespersy.”
“Oh, that’s good, I guess,” Betsy said, baffled. “What’s your name?”
“GIL! Armadillos are GOOD at SWIMMING!”
“Are they?” Betsy met Bruno’s eyes curiously.
“Armadillos can hold their breath for six minutes,” Bruno said with a modest shrug. “We can either suck in air and float like a bobber or blow it all out and walk along the bottom. But Gil needs to learn to swim as a kid.”
“We can do that,” Betsy agreed cheerfully. She went through the rest of the kids.
Only Darius had been swimming before. “I’m not here for lessons,” he protested, when she asked him his shift form. “I’m just here with Jackson.”
Betsy went over some of the basic rules and sat them all at the edge of the pool wearing flotation devices. Lucy put on her arm floaties and sat down at the edge of the bleachers, refusing to move closer. Gil pushed Bruno away. “I’m a BIG KID. Only the BABIES need PARENTS.”
Bruno went to sit with Franzi’s uncle, Logan.
“Welcome to the ‘I’m too big to need you’ bench,” Logan said wryly.
Bruno knew him just a little; Franzi, Tara, and Gil all went to the same kindergarten and he often saw Logan in the pickup line and again at Tiny Paws.
“Armadillo, huh? Nine or seven banded?” Logan had a Texas cowboy accent.
“Three,” Bruno said shortly. Could Logan have been the source of Gil’s teasing? He could feel his defenses prickle and had to take a step back to examine his own impressions. It wasn’t instinct, just his own baggage.
“Not familiar with that one,” Logan admitted.
“No leprosy,” Bruno said firmly. He could have been more friendly about it and explain that it was a South American variety, but the moment passed and they sat in silence to watch the rest of the swim lesson.
Betsy had clearly wrangled plenty of human kids, if not shifters, and she was able to get all of them holding the wall and kicking, talking about the parts of swimming, but not asking any of them to push off yet.
The man with the stubborn penguin loosened his grip as he sat down to get his kid started and the bird gave a squawk of triumph and kicked off of him into the water with a splash.
“I got him,” the man said with a sigh, and then there was a tremendous sploosh that soaked everyone at the side of the pool as a massive polar bear jumped after the penguin streaking away across the pool.
Betsy continued to show the kids how to kick and hold their breath while the polar bear came up with a happily warbling penguin, tossing it and wrapping it up in big, gentle paws as it rolled. They played for a time and then the bear floated back with the penguin on his belly.
“I’M SWIMMING!” Gil garbled, nearly drowning himself at the announcement. He coughed and clung to the wall.
“Everyone needs to keep holding onto the edge until it’s your turn to swim,” Betsy scolded him, returning to the wall with Tara clinging to a kickboard. The polar bear had turned back into a man and was trying to coax the penguin to be human again, too.
“It’s NEVER my turn!” Gil complained.
“Good job, Tara,” Vivian praised her. She was in the water bouncing Shane in her arms at the far end of the class.
Gil did get his turn, and at the end of the chaotic class, Betsy let them all shift into animals and splash around in the baby pool.
She was an otter herself, twisting and diving like a fish.
It was the first time that Bruno had seen Tara as a kirin, deer-like and surprisingly daring for her usual shyness, and Franzi was a filly.
Jackson was a winged ball of fluff with a snapping beak, a lashing lion’s tail, and a tendency to bob sideways.
A puppy romped with him, dog-paddling and panting.
The penguin, perversely, turned into a chortling boy at last and Bruno recognized him as a younger kid from Tiny Paws named Ryan that he’d only ever seen with his mom, Chloe.
Darius played gently with the youngest kids in his human form and kept Jackson’s beak from going under.
Lucy remained on the sidelines. She’d been coaxed by Olivia to sit at the edge and dangle her legs in, but refused to do more. When Franzi splashed her, the water steamed off. Betsy chattered and whistled, then shifted back to human form to blow a real whistle. “Everyone out!” she called.
Gil paddled desperately for the far side, and was scooped back towards the stairs by the polar bear shifter with the penguin.
“Thanks,” Bruno said, meeting a reluctant Gil at the stairs and taking his hand.
“I know an escape risk when I see one,” the man said with a smile in return, bouncing the fussing penguin in his arms.
“I can GO BY MYSELF!”
Bruno figured that he was fairly safe once Gil was completely out of the water and let go of his hand. “No running,” he had to remind him three times. “No running! NO RUNNING!”
Gil walked two steps after each reminder and ran the rest of the time.