Chapter 15
fifteen
“So I hear that my brother’s been driving you home every day.”
That was how Penny greeted me on Monday morning: no “hello.” No “how are you?”’ Nothing.
“You just found out?” I asked as I hung my bag up on a hook.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Charlie wouldn’t have told his siblings about what we were doing.
He didn’t need to give Penny rides home because she always went out with her boyfriend afterward, but I figured that it would have come up at some point.
Was he hiding it from her for some reason?
“Yes,” Penny said. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “I had to hear it from Flo. Flo, Madison.”
I laughed. “Why’s that so bad?”
“Because my kid sister should not know more gossip than me.”
“I don’t know if it counts as gossip. He’s just giving me a ride since he’s driving anyway, and I don’t have a car.”
“Sure,” Penny said, dragging the word out. I just shook my head and started toward the pool deck. Luckily, she seemed to catch my hint and changed the subject as we walked out. “What classes do you have this week?”
“Nothing too terrible,” I said. It was all within the levels that I’d requested, so I couldn’t complain. “All mid-levels and all private, except for a pair of twins. Gosh, I hope they’re not the kind of twins who distract each other for the entire class.”
“Siblings are always either the best or the worst,” she said with a nod.
“What classes do you have?” I asked.
“Mostly levels nine and ten,” she said. She turned the laminated paper towards me a little so I could see it. “I’ll probably barely even have to get in the water.”
“Don’t say that to Courtney,” I said. “If she knows what you want to do, she’ll make sure you have to do the opposite. Remember last summer when she forced Leah to be in the pool for her whole class?”
Last summer, Leah was teaching a class that was essentially for kids who had finished all the swimming levels, but who wanted to keep taking lessons.
Since there were no new skills to teach them, she worked on getting them to swim faster.
Obviously, it wasn’t ideal for her to be in the water while the two kids she was teaching were basically trying to race each other, so she would often stand at the end of the lane or beside the pool to give them directions.
When Courtney realized this, she instituted a rule that instructors had to be fully in the water for at least ninety percent of each lesson, which was ridiculous in that case.
I could only imagine how little progress the kids made after that when they had to start dodging Leah as they swam by.
“Honestly,” Penny said. She shook her head. “Can you imagine competitive swimming that involves dodging obstacles?”
“It could make a new fun sport,” I said. “Granted, there would probably be a lot of bad injuries, but hey, isn’t that part of the fun?”
Penny laughed. “My boyfriend is a football player and always insists that getting concussions is a part of the sport. I’m not sure I agree, but…” She shrugged. “Guess there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Ladies, let’s start setting up the pool!” Courtney snapped. “Or did I not make myself clear earlier when I said I wanted everything done quickly?”
Penny looked at me with wide eyes. “She is really in a mood today.”
I nodded. “Better get on it before she crucifies us.”
“Hey, McKinnon!” I looked to the end of the pool where the yell seemed to come from and found Charlie standing there, waving an arm. “Come on, help me put the lane ropes in!”
I put my schedule down on the table and walked over to help him take the lane ropes off the hooks on the wall.
There were five of them in total since there were six lanes, and they were super heavy, so it was a pain to have to put them in and take them out every day.
Charlie and I each started taking them down from one end and moved towards the middle to get them all on the floor.
“Sorry, Courtney’s being so annoying today,” Charlie muttered to me as we got to the middle.
“Is there some reason for it I don’t know about?” I asked. He glanced over his shoulder to check where she was, then turned to me again.
“Actually, I was thinking I should tell you about this,” Charlie said.
“That makes me nervous.”
“Yeah, well…” He sighed deeply. “She came by my place this morning insisting that I give her a ride to work and stuff. I tried to say no, but she kept moving in the way, so I couldn’t leave unless I brought her with me or, I don’t know, ran her over.
For the whole car ride, she put her hands on my arms and tried to kiss me at red lights and stuff. ”
I grimaced. Why was she so insistent on regaining Charlie’s affections?
It was a little pathetic to watch, actually.
I wasn’t sure how long they had dated before this, but it wasn’t long enough to warrant her feeling like she should win him back—especially when he was with me.
Well, not with me so much as fooling around with me for the summer while keeping it a secret from everyone.
I guess if I were being fair, I couldn’t be mad that she didn’t know because we hadn’t told anyone, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like her being around him.
“Eventually, I had to tell her to quit it,” Charlie continued, “because it was annoying me and distracting me from driving. But she just kept insisting that she knew I liked it and how she knew that I wanted to get back together. I turned her down... and now here we are.”
I didn’t want to seem weird and jealous over him—though, next to Courtney I was sure I looked great in every respect—so I tried to go for a joke instead. I shook my head and tsked. “Couldn’t have taken one for the team? Come on, Charlie.”
He laughed. “You try spending a full day with her and then tell me that would have been worth it.”
We spread out to the opposite side of the pool again and each grabbed the end of the lane rope.
“Let’s do the farthest one first,” Charlie called. I nodded and held up a thumbs up. Doing it in that order was really the only one that made sense since doing it any other way would mean having to actually lift the rope instead of just dragging it across the surface of the water.
“Wait,” I said, pausing before we actually got it in the water. “We are the worst people to do this!”
“Why?”
“Uh, because you have like twice my muscle mass,” I said. “When you try to pull it, you’re going to pull me straight into the pool!”
“Oh, come on,” Charlie said. “I will not.”
“I’m sure you won’t mean to, but you definitely will!” I said. “And I know I’m teaching swimming today, but I’m not looking to belly flop into the pool before my first class even gets here.”
“I promise I’ll save you if you fall in!”
“Do you really think that’s what I’m worried about?”
“Madison, just put the stupid lane ropes in!” Courtney yelled.
Ironically, she was just sitting on the bleachers.
Although she had a clipboard on her lap and was probably pretending to do some sort of work whenever Kelly looked at her, I could easily tell that she was actually just scrolling through something on her phone.
I could respect trying to get out of work as much as possible, but not while yelling at other people to do work themselves.
“Just let one of the other guys do it,” I said. I spotted Thomas coming out of the storage room, arms full of flutter boards and noodles. “Hey, Thomas! Switch with me!”
He nodded and dropped the stuff he was carrying by the supply room door. That would be easy for me to do—I just had to lay stuff out by every section of the pool where a class would be going on.
“No!” Courtney snapped. “Thomas, go back to what you were doing! And Madison, I want to see you do your job right now! Understand?”
“I’m not falling face-first into the water just because you refused to let Thomas do his job,” I said. I crossed my arms and stepped back. “If you’re so certain it’s fine, do it yourself.”
“Is there a problem here?” Kelly asked, stepping out of the manager’s office.
“I’m just trying to get Madison to do the work she is being paid to do,” Courtney said, pointing a finger at me like a toddler tattling on their sibling.
“I’m worried that Charlie will pull me into the pool if I put the lane ropes in with him,” I explained.
Kelly frowned. “So get somebody else to do it.”
“I tried,” I said. “But Courtney refused to let me and Thomas switch jobs, even though it makes no difference to anyone else.”
“All right,” Kelly said. Courtney smiled at me triumphantly. “Courtney, you do it then.”
The smile dropped right off Courtney’s face so quickly that I found it funny.
“What?” she snapped.
“If you don’t want Thomas to help Charlie, then you do it,” Kelly said calmly. “Unless there’s some reason you can’t?”
“I—Well—” Courtney’s face turned bright red as she tried to think of an excuse.
She couldn’t say that she was worried Charlie was too strong for her since she’d already decided that wasn’t enough of a reason for me, and I’d wager there weren’t any other good excuses she could use either. “I’m in the middle of some paperwork.”
“Oh, you can do that later,” Kelly said, waving a hand dismissively. “Come on. The kids will start arriving any second.”
“But I—Fine.” Courtney slammed her clipboard down on the bench beside her with a huff and stomped down to the ground.
When she reached the side of the pool I was on, she made sure to “accidentally” bump her shoulder into mine as she walked by.
I stumbled back a step out of surprise, but didn’t let it get to me.
As it was, I was looking forward to seeing this happen.
As Courtney bent down to grab the lane rope, I made eye contact with Charlie across the pool and he winked at me.
I smiled widely back, understanding perfectly what was about to happen—he may not have wanted to pull me into the pool, but he was definitely looking for an excuse to pull Courtney in.