DT 2023: Hidden Smile

She came back again today, like usual.
The brown-haired “swim coach” Coach Roxanne called Andra. She never said anything, always sitting or standing three steps behind Coach Roxanne while she taught us to lift our stomachs and spread out our arms to float.
No one called her Coach Andra or talked to her. She never acted like one.
Coach Roxanne would do the that thing where she would demonstrate a move and then look at the other girl for a few seconds. You could never tell what Roxanne was thinking because she always gave a weird laugh after those looks. Like it was an inside joke or something else.
Andra was weird too. She wouldn’t say anything but she showed up every afternoon with Roxanne at the same time in the swimsuit uniform. She would get in the water with Roxanne and all the kids but she still stayed away.
Some of the more sensitive kids always felt awkward talking to Coach Roxanne too because Andra would always stand close by in earshot.
“Coach Roxanne, how is my backstroke?”
“You’re doing great Keera! Remember to kick at the water’s surface and keep your stomach up together.”
“Does… uh, the Coach… She have anything more I need to…?”
Coach Roxanne looked at Andra, “What do you think, Coach Andra? Keera’s a great swimmer, right?”
Andra nodded with a stiff stare, and then looked at the sky like she hadn’t been staring at her fellow coach and the swimmer the entire time.
“See, she thinks you’re doing great!” Roxanne grinned, wrapping her arm around Keera’s shoulder, and leading her to her parent who came to pick her up.
“Okay…”
Today was open-swim day, one of the last tests before we could swim in the Pacific Ocean for real. After three weeks under Roxanne, we went from blowing bubbles under water to swimming laps in a public swim pool. I agree with everyone after learning from her, I get why the scary grownups at Colonial Security chose high schoolers from the Inner Colonies to teach us. Adults are mean and scary, especially Earther adults.
Well, it was good to have one young coach who could smile and talk. It’s still weird they sent a water-proof robot.
Coach Roxanne waved at the class as we reached the public pool from school on North Island by tram. Andra was there too, arms crossed and looking like a crystal-eyed bull. Sometimes it felt like she was staring right at me and then through me and through everyone else. Like she might kill us with laser vision all at once.
I pointed out to one of my friends, Bradley. “She’s always here. Do you think she’s a robot or something?”
“Most likely. Have you ever seen her teeth? Probably a bunch of metal inside.”
“That’s not nice,” Keera mumbled.
“But it’s true.” I pointed out with no argument from the shy girl.
“She hates us, doesn’t she?” Paula whispered.
“Yep.” Bradley replied.
Coach Roxanne led us through the beginning stretches like normal and Andra did them too like normal. Everyone undressed into their swimsuits, including the coaches, and entered the water with the usual complaining of “freezing” at twenty-six degrees Celsius.
“Alright everyone, I want to see you swim freestyle with flip turns for five hundred meters. I’ll make sure to count for all of you, just make sure to pay attention.”
“Five hundred!”
“But Coach Roxanne…”
The blonde coach put up her hand to silence us. “You can do multiple sets of fifties and one hundreds. You can do flip turns, and you can do a total of five hundred and more. This is to show you: you can do it. So, let’s do it!”
Coach Roxanne made us push off the wall and swim her five hundred meters warm-up, spreading us out five seconds apart to prevent swimmers from crashing into each other. I was four laps into mine, getting bored of staring at the pale-blue pool bottom when I noticed the slight burn of kicking began to grow more intense and crawl up my leg.
Cramp! I tried reaching for a lane rope but I missed and twisted the leg causing it to explode. I’m not really sure what happened because everything looked and turned white-hot like alien plasma bolts. I tried to breathe but my mouth filled with water and I couldn’t shout, I could hear multiple shouts from the surface but I was still sinking too fast and on fire to notice.
A shadowy torpedo raced towards me from beneath the dark water; I wanted to warn about the shark but I couldn’t yell. I tried to kick it but the move only burned me more as many stingy tentacles around my face and arms, grabbing me in a death grip. The underwater monster pulled me towards the surface, exploding back into the brisk air of the day.
There was no monster as I found myself coughing water into someone’s chest. The powerful person, my savior I couldn’t see through clogged half-lid eyes, spoke to me in a soft voice.
“Alright, I’m putting you down… Straighten your leg, which one is it?”
I managed to mumble through my coughing fit, “The—left one—”
My savior set me down on the permacrete poolside and clasped my burning leg to my chest. “I’m going to stretch it out, this will hurt for a moment.”
She, I managed to identify after a few seconds after rubbing my eyes free of water, was a girl in a coach’s one-piece with ratty brown hair hiding her eyes. The coach forced my leg to extend but lifted it the whole way through the motion causing the limb to burn but not the same intensity.
She kept her arms pressed to my leg to the ground, “Alright Liam, stay still for a bit, where is the cramp?”
I mumbled out again to Coach Andra, “The foot…”
She set it down and then stretched it firmly towards me causing me to wince, but it was starting to hurt less.
“Thanks, Coach…” I tried, uncertain what to call her. I was still processing the mix of pain, and the wonder that she could talk.
She looked me over, our eyes properly meeting for the first time. Coach Andra wasn’t frowning at me, she had this wide-eyed look, something like concern.
“You’re not a robot?” I asked dumbly.
Her face scrunched up strangely but her lips curled up and open, revealing a hint of teeth. Coach Andra shook briefly closing her eyes and looking away. She turned back to me as quick, the upturn of her cheeks still in place.
“No. Or… I don’t think so... How you feeling now, Liam?”
“A little tired but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Coach Andra pulled her arms away and climbed up to a kneeling position on the pool deck. “Alright, I’m glad. You can rest for now, let Coach Roxanne—tell her when you feel good to go back.”
The brown-haired coach looked back to the pool where everyone returned to their laps at Coach Roxanne’s beratement. She continued, looking back at me. “Come get me too, I’ll check to make sure.”
Coach Andra left my side quickly after that but her eyes were on me the entire practice afterward. She didn’t wave or say goodbye to me when practice ended but she gave me a stern nod.
“So did you get to see if she was a robot?” Keera asked on the way home.
Bradley added, “Metal insides?”
“Nah,” I replied simply. “But she has a smile.”
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories