Beep.
He’s in the water with the other swimmers. Lo and Ryke exhale, and we all start cheering. He stays beneath the water for a while before surfacing and kicking.
“He’s in the lead!” Jane shouts. Her next exclamation is in French. Lily beams, reminded that Moffy understands the foreign language like the Cobalts.
Moffy slows down during the backstroke, falling behind.
Jane still cheers like he’s number one.
Lane three tags the edge.
Moffy is lane five, and when he reaches the finish, he pulls up his goggles and checks his time.
2:46.12 – 2nd “Is he upset?” Lily asks Lo.
It’s all we care about at these meets, not whether they win or lose but just how they are. Happy or sad. Angry or distraught.
Lo shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
Moffy climbs out of the pool, wiping water off his face, and he hears Jane whistle loudly by putting her fingers in her mouth. She asked me to teach her last year. I join in and Moffy waves big at us, his smile returning.
“Good job, Mof!” Lo shouts.
He gives a thumbs-up to his dad and then to Lily who claps with such vigor, her pride overwhelming her round face. She wipes the corners of her eyes, tearing up.
“There’s Sulli,” Ryke tells me.
I spot her waiting at the back of a long line. Moffy does too. Towel in hand, he approaches his cousin, and they start talking.
Jane places her pompoms aside, her posture straight, ankles crossed. I notice how she stares off towards the pool, and then she quickly swings her head to Lo and Lily. “Did he mention it to you? He was desperately upset last night. I, for one, told him that he should tell you.” She takes a short pause. “Did he tell you?”
Uh-oh.
We all tense. Our pasts are riddled with some bad, just plain mortifying and never speak of it again! events. Unfortunately for us, Google can surface 88% of these. Parental-blockers help, but kids gossip at school.
Rose and Connor warned us about this. They said that there’d be a time where all of our children stop opening up to us, and we won’t know how much they really know. We’ve been in big arguments with the resident geniuses. The four of us are firmly against them for once.
Wait until they’re older, we say.
Tell them everything now, Rose and Connor rebut.
Once we unleash every bad event, the kids will talk to each other, so Rose and Connor aren’t telling their children without a unanimous agreement between us all. They’re still trying to convince us, but now maybe this’ll bite us in the ass.
Lo planned to give his son the “no alcohol” talk when he turned ten. (Lo started drinking hard liquor by eleven.) Ryke wants to give Sulli a similar talk around that age too, but all of our kids are still really young.
Lily is wide-eyed, a dozen ohmygods written along her eyes.
With sharp cheekbones, Lo asks, “What happened?”
Jane’s shoulders drop. “So he didn’t tell you.” Her worried blue eyes flit across the bleachers. I rub my legs, up and down, totally confused. I need way more puzzle pieces to fit together this picture.
And I’m not the only one.
Lo turns more towards his niece. “No, he didn’t say a thing.”
“He might not speak to me for the rest of the week, but I’m willing to undergo best friend silence for this.” Jane prepares herself with a deep inhale and then she softens her voice so no outsiders can hear. “He has a rash on his penis.”
Half of us sort of relax. We just dodged a bigger catastrophe.
Lo leans toward her, his face twisting in a series of emotions. “Did he show you?”
“No,” she says quickly, eyes popping. “No. He described the malady. I searched Web M.D., and I concluded, off very little knowledge mind you, that it’s irritant dermatitis.” She checks over her shoulder for eavesdroppers, then back to us. “From chlorine in the pool.”
Now the other half—Lo and Lily—begin to relax.
Jane rises to her feet. “I should tell him that I betrayed our friendship for the benefit of his health.” She’s so verbose, but so are the rest of the Cobalts. I still have this theory that Connor reads them the dictionary every night.
Lily agrees with me.
None of us have a chance to respond to Jane. She’s already stepping over people to leave the bleachers.
“I almost puked.” Lily touches her clammy cheeks. “Why’d she have to start off with desperately upset?”
“Because she’s Rose’s spawn.” Lo rotates his taut shoulders, eyes narrowed towards Moffy and Sulli. His son pats my daughter’s shoulders in a good luck fashion and then heads towards Jane. “Why wouldn’t he tell me that?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to worry you,” I say.
Ryke adds, “Or he thought it’d go away before he fucking had to.”
“Or the nerd stars are right,” Lily says softly.
We all look at her, knowing she means Connor and Rose.
“Fuck that,” Ryke snaps.
“They’re not little anymore,” Lily whispers. “It’s happening. They’re keeping things from us, and one day, they’ll find out…”
About her sex addiction.
Lo glances at Kinney, wrapped to his chest. I look to little Winona who tries to pick her nose. None of us want to rip away their innocence before we should. I grew up too fast. So did Lily, and both of our husbands watched it happen.
“Come on, let’s fucking wait,” Ryke says. “It’s too early. My kid is just a kid.” He motions to Sulli who’s in line for the next heat.
We all quietly contemplate our decision to shelter these events and facts. Then Lo’s phone buzzes. All the older kids share one cellphone when we go out, just to promote the buddy system. So I notice Moffy with his phone, Jane close by.
Friendship intact.
Lo eases even more. “Moffy just texted. He said that he planned to tell me if it didn’t go away tomorrow.”
“See,” Ryke says. “You three, stay fucking strong.” He gestures to us. Ryke is the same age as Rose, and nearly the same age as Connor. The rest of us are younger, and it’s easier to back down against them. But we won’t today.
“She’s up.” I cheer and clap as she reaches the platform. “Go, Sulli!” Since Jane is missing, I wave the pompoms.
“Take your mark.”
Beep.
Sulli is in the water, staying under for longer than the other girls. She breaches the surface, good technique on her butterfly stroke, which pushes her ahead.
“GO, SULLI!” Ryke shouts.
She laps the other girls by the time she reaches the breaststroke. When she wins, it’s no surprise, but she quickly takes off her goggles and checks her time, fingers to her lips in contemplation.
It’s today, of all days, that I see how much my daughter races against herself.
2:40.13 – 1st and she beat the boys from the same event, but I remember all her records. 2:40 flat is her lowest, and if I peer close enough, I detect the gears in her brain rewinding. Trying to figure out where she gained extra time. Where she should’ve shaved more off.
This race might as well be a “what can I do better?”
Ryke kicks my ankles off the bleacher. No longer stationary, my legs now swing.
I smile, loving him.
He reminds me, “I’d be the same fucking way at her age.” He said that he stopped fixating on his record-breaking times for climbing when he grew older. He just enjoyed the experience.
And her diligence and persistence—it’s good. She might not celebrate a competition win, but I have to remember that she’ll celebrate her own personal victories.
The referee calls out the winner. Lane four.
Loudly, a man grumbles behind us, “They let Bigfoot go against a bunch of little girls, of course she won.” I tense, and his disdain immediately turns Lo and Ryke around.
“What?” the man snaps. His glare can’t match Lo’s.
“You want to talk Bigfoot?” Lo starts. “I can talk Bigfoot all goddamn day, and it’s not that girl.” His eyes flash hot.
The man crosses his arms, his snooty wife examining us with an upturned nose. “She beat the boys because she’s taller than all of them.”
She’s the same height as Moffy right now, but he’s older.
“She’s seven fucking years old,” Ryke sneers.