Part Five: Swimming Lessons

Fin's teacher, Mrs. Jones, had just taught the class the meaning of the word "irony" last Monday. But as she stood on the wide white porch of Thomas Chickering's house, Fin couldn't quite remember what it meant.
She stared at the door, but couldn't make herself move. They had a big brass knocker in the shape of a smiling sun. The longer she looked at its smiling face, the creepier it seemed. But she still didn't budge. Instead, she thought of her first meeting with Thomas. She remember the strange warmth of the February air, the powerful new watch on her wrist, the shock of blond hair dripping and heavy from river water. She remembered telling him he shouldn't play in the water unsupervised. She remembered him ignoring her advice. And now, as she lifted the heavy knocker and banged on the door three times, she remembered that if you ever found yourself smack in the middle of irony, it usually meant you'd feel pretty silly afterwards.

Thomas opened the door with a tennis racket in one hand and a bag of marshmallows in the other. They stared at each other without speaking. Fin felt the eyes of the smiling sun boring into her over Thomas' right shoulder. Finally, when she couldn't stand it any longer, she spoke.

"You've got to teach me how to swim." She said breaking her own advice. She wasn't sure what the protocol was for making up with a friend after a fight as she'd never had a fight with anyone other than her mother and she'd never had a friend at all. She didn't know if Thomas would yell at her or slam the door in her face and she wasn't really sure who should say they were sorry in the first place.

"Awesome." Thomas said and stepped back so she could move into a big hallway where white spiral stairs rose up and disappeared into the ceiling above.

She followed him past the stairs and into a huge kitchen at the back of the house. All the surfaces from the floors to the counter-tops to the silver ceiling lights shone. It was so clean that it took Fin a minute to realize that the entire back of the house was windows. She had thought it was missing a wall and would have walked straight into the glass if Thomas hadn't caught her by the back of the shirt. Fin walked very carefully after that.

The more and more Fin looked around, the more amazed she became. All the floors were wooden and covered in big soft rugs with crazy zigzag prints on them and all the walls were so white, Fin was afraid to touch them for fear of leaving a fingerprint. She couldn't believe people actually lived here. Her whole apartment would fit in the kitchen. It was the kind of house that made you feel you ought to tiptoe.

She followed Thomas up the winding stairs until she got dizzy. At the very top was a narrow door and through this door was Thomas' room. It was the only room that wasn't white. It was a brilliant blue like the summer sky. Fin recognized it at once. It was the same color as her room.

"Did my mom...?"

"Yeah." Thomas said.

Fin tried not to get jealous. It was strange seeing traces of Miss Maggie in somebody else's house.

Thomas dropped the tennis racket and marshmallows next to the bed. Fin noticed bits of sticky white marshmallow goo stuck to the strings and wondered what exactly he had been doing before she knocked.

Just at that moment, Fin heard what sounded like shouts from some other part of the house. As she listened more carefully, two voices rose and rose to a pitch that sounded almost like a scream. She was about to asked Thomas, but he had grabbed another bag from underneath the bed and was pulling her through the door and down the stairs so fast that she was afraid she might fall. The voices were so loud when they reached the main floor, that she was sure Thomas would stop to investigate, but he just marched back to the kitchen and through another door that Fin had not noticed before. This door led to a set of stone steps reaching down into a lower part of the house.

They slowed down once Thomas had shut the door behind them and the voices began to fade. Despite herself, Fin began to get scared. It was cooler as they traveled deeper underground and the light was dim. When they reached the bottom of the steps, Thomas flipped a switch on the wall and all at once the room began to glow. Light flickered off the ceiling and the walls and Fin smiled and gasped at the same time. She was standing at the edge of an emerald pool. She could see the lights under the water and bright blue tiles that formed a big "C" in the middle of the pool.

"You have a pool in your house?!" It wasn't really a question or a statement. Even when she said it, Fin couldn't believe that it was true. She marveled at the sound of her voice echoing off the walls and water. Thomas broke into a huge grin and began pulling goggles and floaties and flippers out of his bag. In all the excitement, Fin had actually forgotten that she was going to have swim. She felt a solid pit of ice in the center of her stomach as Thomas rolled up his jeans and walked down the first two steps into the water.

Fin knew most kids her age already knew how to swim, but somehow eight summers had passed and she had never gone to the YMCA with the other kids or even waded in the river with her mother on warm evenings when she met her after work. She didn't like the idea of not being able to reach the bottom or hold on to something solid. She had dreams of falling under and not being able to reach the top again.

Thomas held out a hand and suddenly she couldn't swallow. "Ellar said I have to choose to sink or swim. He said we can't go on adventures with him if I don't." Part of her wanted Thomas to say that it didn't matter--that there would be other talking animals with other adventures that didn't require such scary tactics. But she knew deep down that the only adventure worth taking is the scary kind. So she took off her t-shirt and jeans to reveal a bright yellow swimsuit with ladybugs and she took a deep breath, grabbed a floaty and stepped in the water.

It was warmer than she had imagined. And the green glow of the underwater light was soothing. She held Thomas' hand and moved down another step so that she was even with him and the water reached her knees.

"I don't think I can do this."

"Of course you can."

"I don't like water."

"I don't usually like girls, but you turned out alright." Thomas said. He laughed and moved down another step.

"Well, I don't usually like the people my mom works for, but your parents must be okay if they've got such a cool house." Fin said, stepping down so that the water was up to her shoulders and her arms rose to the top because of the plastic floaties around her wrists. This was the deepest she had ever been.

"Yeah, well houses aren't everything." Thomas said, releasing her hand so quickly that Fin lost her balance and slipped off the last step. Her head went under and everything was dark. Water went up her nose and down her throat and she couldn't feel anything but water all around her until a hand reached down and jerked her upwards. She crawled up the steps and lay coughing and spitting on the concrete edge of the pool.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'd didn't mean to move so fast!" Thomas lay on his stomach next to her. His face just inches from hers. His brown eyes were so close that Fin could see little yellow flecks around the pupils. She didn't move. She didn't even blink. She could only think about the solid ground beneath her.

"Fin," Thomas said after a long while, "are you okay?"

She closed her eyes and nodded, her chin scraping the concrete. With her ear to the ground she could hear the water lapping against the edge of the pool. "I've got to remember to close me eyes and hold my nose next time." She said and smiled and opened her eyes. Thomas still looked worried.

"Sink or swim? Right?" She said and got slowly to her feet. Thomas followed.

"Sink or swim." He repeated.