Doggy-paddling (Nory)

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie sat at the edge of the pool, legs dangling in the water, in the hopes that adjusting to the temperature limb by limb would be easier than jumping in and being hit with the full force of the cold all at once. A pair of foam kickboards sat nearby, for when she and Nory eventually made their way to the deep end. Thanksfully the place was unoccupied, but for a couple of underclassmen doing laps in the opposite lanes; after the fiasco of a canoe trip the two managed to survive during the retreat, no way was Marnie going in without a life jacket, but she wasn't thrilld about being seen in it. It was either one step above or one step below arm floaties - she couldn't decide which.

"You first or me?" she asked Nory. The way the puffy vest limited her neck movement, she had to rotate her entire torso to look at her classmate. "Or we could rock-paper-scissors for it, I guess." She'd managed to sound casual so far, but inside Marnie's nerves were jangling. The shallow end was no big deal, but what if they got to the deep end and she froze up and her life jacket came loose and she slipped out of it? Surely that wasn't a thing that happened, rationally, but she was nervous all the same.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nory had more positive feelings about the life jacket. It at least covered up the bikini top she had felt obligated to buy from Target a year and a half ago. She was seventeen now, after all. A pair of bicycle shorts covered the bottoms, a sporty California look that conveniently also concealed her thighs.

"I'll go first," the young woman announced. She was, theoretically, the more capable of the two of them. She was the one who had tried to formulate progressively more hysterical plans to get them back into the canoe, anyway. Thankfully they had been rescued before Plan K: Let's Make a Raft Out of Our Life Jackets and Use It To Jump Into the Boat, was implemented. She could swim. Just not very well.

Nory gritted her teeth and scooted herself off the slick tile and into the hip-deep water. She landed with a splash and a suppressed gasp at the chill. "Woo! Well, it's not nearly as cold as the lake!" she chattered. One to get things over with, she squatted and pulled her knees up to her chest so she bobbed with her neck just above the water. Goosebumps covered her arms and legs, but she could already feel the initial shock of the water wearing off. It was too shallow to really swim, but she floundered back over to the edge anyway. "Okay, you ready?" she asked her friend.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Far more than the temperature of the pool, Marnie was grateful that it lacked the seaweed and the murky opacity of the lake. She didn't mind swapping the fish poop for chlorine, either. Come to think of it, what had ever possessed them to venture onto a lake in the late northeastern autumn in the first place?

Oh, right. It had been Nory's idea.

"Ready," Marnie answered with a determined nod. This wouldn't be so bad, she told herself; it was shallow enough to walk in. "One... two..."

She took a deep breath and pinched her nose with one hand, then boosted herself off the edge. Eyes screwed shut, Marnie plunged under the water, curled into a ball like she'd seen Nory do. After only a second, though, the life jacket brought her bobbing up to the surface, rendering her preparatory breath pretty much useless.

"No problem! Piece of cake!" Marnie exclaimed with bravado, although it was watered down somewhat by her teeth rattling from the cold. She should've tied her hair back before going in, she realized; now totally soaks, it hung over her face and shoulders in dark, ropey strands that she was now trying to pull out of her eyes. "What's next?"

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Marnie's entrance didn't splash much, but the roll of water did make Nory bob around in her life jacket and snort water out of her nose. "Piece of cake," she agreed. She swished her arms around a few times under the water to position herself, then cautiously unfurled her legs and knelt on the rough concrete bottom of the pool. Standing on her knees, her shoulders, life jacket and barely visible bikini straps cleared the top of the water. She followed Marnie's example and pushed her hair out of her face, though hers was shorter and thinner and the water had turned it the color of three week-old slush rather than glossy black.

"Hm..." Nory rotated at the waist to look first down to the deep end of the pool, then the other way towards the remaining four feet of the shallow end. "Well, you're supposed to do warm-ups, right? So maybe we could just swim from one end of the pool and back, in our life jackets."

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie considered her suggestion, uncertain. During track practice warmups tended to involve things like stretching, not just taking off... but on the other hand, she could use a literal warmup. Anything that would help her get used to the cold water.

"Okay, how about to there?" Marnie pointed across the shallow end, the shorter of the pool's dimensions. This way they wouldn't have to cross the lanes and bother the other swimmers. It didn't look that far from here - only a tiny fraction of the distance she ran almost everyday. No big deal, right?

"I'll go first," she declared, feeling suddenly brave. Just look how close the other side was! No way could she drown just going that far. Mimicking Nory's knee stride, Marnie scooted to the back to the edge and grasped the time lip of the pool with both hands. She tucked her knees up to her chest and pressed the soles of her feet to the pool wall. She'd seen professionals do this - or something like it anyway - at the start of races during the summer Olympics, seen how far a powerful kickoff could take a swimmer. It wouldn't be like that, she knew, since those people trained for years. But maybe it would be fun to try.

"One... two... three!"

Another deep breath, and Marnie shoved off hard from the wall. But far from the smooth, torpedo-like takeoff she'd hoped for, her life jacket hit the water like she was caught in a net. The paltry few feet she'd traveled weren't as impressive as the wave she'd created, splashing Nory nearby.

Sputtering and flailing until her feet found the ground, Marnie wiped water from her eyes as her face burned. "Sorry!"

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nory had her eye on the longer dimension of the pool. If they were going to wear life jackets they might as well use them. But before she had a chance to make her point, Marnie was splashing over to the wall and curling into a determined, puffy-vested crouch. Nory was impressed. Why hadn't she thought of that? “Yeah, go for it!” She bobbed back a few feet to give her friend room for what was sure to be an impressive start to their swimming practice.

Marnie's distance-running legs indeed propelled her in a powerful launch away from the wall. But the power was more akin to snowplow than a sailing dolphin, and Marnie sank down into the water almost as far as she traveled forward. Nory couldn't help it – she laughed. She did so just as the swell of Marnie's wave broke, and her breath brought with it a lungful of water.

Chlorine seared in her sinuses, and water sprayed out of her mouth and nose in an explosion of coughing. The tile floor and walls only magnified the noise, and one of the lane swimmers paused and looked over at the girl wheezing in the shallow end. Nory slopped halfway to her feet and bent over with the force of the deep, barking coughs. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she'd be fine in a moment, but that was currently overruled by the panic of the water in her lungs. Clearly she was dying, and she did not understand why there was not a handsome lifeguard pulling her out of the water for mouth to mouth right now. 

[Marnie Sullivan]

"Nory! Oh my god!" Marnie yelped, eyes still blurry with pool water as her friend's racking coughs launched her heart into her throat. This was it, this was the disaster she'd been afraid of! Except not really, she hadn't even thought to be afraid of one of them swallowing enough water off the other's failed takeoff, honestly, what were the odds? But Nory was cleary about to drown even with her head above water and it was all her fault for not just learning how to swim when she was little like everyone else and oh god, the coughing was getting louder, she had to do something!

"Hold still!" In her panicked rush to reach Nory, Marnie's feet slipped on the slick pool bottom and she was flung forward, the chest of her life jacket slapping the water. She bobbed absurdly as she scrambled to get back upright, before sloshing over behind the other girl.

"Hold still!" she repeated. Marnie reached around Nory's front and grasped one hand over the other, hindered by their bulging life jackets. She started frantically jerking her clasped fists into Nory's stomach - this was how the heimlich worked, right? In and up, right? "Hang in there!"

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

When Nory was 14 she had taken a babysitting class, and at there had learned how to do both the Heimlich maneuver and CPR--more or less. However, the instructional videos of actors in solid-color turtlenecks moving slowly and calmly through the exercises (usually pulling a pair of gloves and a mask out of their handy medical fanny pack first) had not shown how the method should be altered if both participants were hip-deep in water and wearing life jackets.

To add to the complications, Nory was not tall and had the sort of build that she desperately hoped would fill out in college. When Marnie's fists punched under her rib cage, the force lifted her clean off her feet. She was flung backwards against Marnie, her life jacket shot up to her nose, and her arms were flung up like airplane wings. She made a sound like "HKCKBURGLE!" As Marnie pummeled her stomach, water sprayed out of the neck hole of Nory's life jacket. Her violent, now panicking gasps mingled with the riot of water around them and their rasping life vests, like two mating pieces of sandpaper.

"Put--hy-uuuuuh--me--kuh! kuh!--down!" Nory finally wheezed. Her head was spinning, her chin was slick with chlorine and slobber, and her stomach felt like she'd taken a baseball to the gut.

[Marnie Sullivan]

"It's okay, it's okay, don't panic!" Marnie wailed, although she might as well have said it for her own benefit rather than Nory's. Not only was she close to hyperventilating as she manhandled her friend, but with the ruckus their splashing was causing, she could barely hear Nory's gasping protests.

It wasn't enough to cover the sudden, shrill blast of a whistle, though. Marnie wheeled around - or as close to it as one can, dragging another person around in a couple feet of water - at the sound, which was shortly followed by the wet slaps of feet against the tile. The lifeguard she had failed to notice existing during the frenzy was speeding around the edge of the pool, trying not to slip along the way.

"Stop! Stop!" the lifeguard, a weedy upperclassman in red shorts, bellowed as he approached. On the other side of the pool, the lane swimmers were treading water and ogling at the spectacle. "Just hold her still, I'm coming!"

"Please hurry, she's dying!" Marnie cried, still oblivious to Nory's struggle to free herself.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

They hadn't covered this in training. And as a lifeguard for a meta-human school, they had covered a lot. Both girls were only hip-deep in water, upright, wearing life jackets, and one seemed to be strangling the other. The hysterical girl wailed and punched the other girl in the stomach, who he couldn't identify because her life jacket covered most of her face. Her arms, pinned to her ears by the vest, flailed wildly in the air above them.

He leaped into the pool with a splash and snatched the skinny girl from the hysterical one. He turned around, thumped her on the side of the pool, and jerked the life jacket back down onto her torso.

Nory's head popped free with a gasp. She bent forward over her knees and heaved, one hand on her stomach and the other grabbing the nearest form of support, which happened to be the lifeguard's face. Her coughs quickly died down to sputters, and she croaked, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” the lifeguard replied, though what he actually said was “Mnmf prbmf,” at least until Nory winced and removed her hand. He crossed his arms tightly over his thin chest and turned to the pair of them. “What do you think you're doing?”

[Marnie Sullivan]

Her arms free now that Nory had been yanked out of them, Marnie waded to the edge of the pool and clambered out to hover and wring her hands anxiously. He was a lifeguard, surely he would be able to help, he was a professional, except didn't you have to be paid to be a professional? But even volunteers get training, right? Maybe he had a license or something, a saving people license, no, CPR certification! He had to have that at least! Except Nory was conscious, you couldn't use CPR on conscious people, even if they are drowning -

"What do you think you're doing?"

Marnie froze, her arms outstretched; she'd meant to fling them around Nory's shoulders in relief, but instead she just stared at the lifeguard with eyes as round as saucers.

"I - we were - " she stammered. Now that the crisis was averted, realization began to creep in, embarrassment lining her stomach with lead. To a casual observer, Marnie might have appeared to be going pale; nope, just fading white as the tile floor. "We were swimming, and, and I thought she was d-drowning, and I'm sorry, I was just trying to help!"

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

“She wasn't drowning, she was coughing!” The lifeguard fumed. “You could have seriously hurt her, trying a stunt like that.” He pressed his face into his hands and took a breath. “Look, you two should take a break. I need to go get the paper work.” And with that he clambered out of the pool and slopped toward the tiny office.

Nory still sputtered a bit, which gave her a moment to collect herself. When Red Shorts first pulled her free, if she'd had any breath to spare she would have probably joined him in yelling at Marnie. Her stomach ached, her head spun, she was panicked. But hearing the words come out of someone else's mouth and seeing Marnie turn white as china drained her frightened frustration away, leaving mostly guilt and grudging shame. Marnie had just been trying to help.

Nory smiled weakly at her friend. “That guy,” she said, once he was out of earshot, “Is an asshole.”

[Marnie Sullivan]

It was all Marnie could do to nod along as the bemused lifeguard scolded her. Changing her skin tone back to normal would have to wait; right now, she could only concentrate on not embarrassing herself further by bursting into tears.

Never, in any of the time she'd spent fretting over what could go wrong when she eventually tried swimming, did Marnie imagine a trainwreck like this. Sure, there were plenty of ways to picture herself in distress - occasionally featuring a lifeguard or three looking on in concern as she blearily came to after receiving some very dramatic CPR - but this? They'd never even left the shallow end, and not only had she nearly put Nory in the infirmary, she'd made fools of them both.

When the lifeguard plodded away to retrieve his paperwork (paperwork? more evidence of this disaster was the last thing she needed), Marnie turned her pitiful blue eyes to Nory ...who, somehow, in spite of everything, was willing to throw the guy under the bus for her sake. Marnie returned a feeble grin; she suddenly felt quite drained.

"I'm really, really sorry, Nory," she told her, shoulders slumped. "If we ever take a first aid class after this I promise I'll beat up a mannequin instead."

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

Nory mirrored Marnie's weak grin. "Aw, it's okay. I know you were only trying to help." Nory patted her corpse-colored shoulder. "Heh, heh, heh - cough - ...ow." Could she have made her smile less watery and suppressed the grunt of pain to save Marnie a few degrees of remorse? Probably. But her stomach still did really hurt.

She glanced over her shoulder to the office, where Red Shorts was trying to negotiate paperwork that kept sticking to his wet hands. "I don't think it's that big of a deal, honestly. They probably have to fill something out every time they get in the water, in case they get sued or something." Her legs still dangled in the water, and she swished them around absently. "You know," she remarked, "If we don't get back in today we'll probably never try again."

[Marnie Sullivan]

She had to admit, Nory had a point. The way today had gone, it felt like if she ever came near a pool again, it would be too soon. And yet, for some unfathomable reason, Nory wanted to give it another shot. Marnie was tempted, so tempted, to refuse... but if either of them had reason to be afraid here, it was the girl who'd actually been hurt, and yet Nory wanted to give it a try anyway.

...Well, after all that, Marnie owed her at least that much, she figured.

"Okay," she agreed after a moment. Scooting to the edge of the pool, Marnie dipped her own legs in so that they could swirl the pool water with Nory's. She flashed the other a tentative smile. "One more shot. You better not try and drown me in revenge, though."