The pool was across town, far enough away that it was no use to bother going home just to turn around and go back again. Sara let Mikey off and watched him run up the walk to the athletic center, duffle banging against his legs. Then she drove on to the Automart to pick up groceries.
And then back again to the pool, into the familiar heated, chlorine-scented atmosphere of the observation balcony above the pool deck, a blessing for mothers with wandering toddlers. There were usually a dozen little kids that made up an informal playgroup while their siblings practiced. Sara pulled Holly onto her lap, trying at the same time to pick out Mikey down in the pool, but after a few minutes Holly wiggled down to join the others.
Freed, Sara stood up for a better look. The little boys in the water always looked so much alike. Finally she identified her own, down in the fifth lane. They were doing the butterfly, outflung arms arching the upper body up out of the water like a school of dolphins, all in a row. Mikey hit the wall with both hands, gasping, glanced up at the time clock and pushed off again with barely a pause. A few seconds later, Rick Lorenz reached the end of the lane, hung on the gutter for several seconds before he started his next lap. Then the next kid, and the next, until Mikey came in again, last in the lane, with Pete right on his heels.
"Pick it up, Mike!" the coach yelled, "Watch your interval!
Pete, on the thirty--go!"
Sara frowned. Two seats down Marcia Lorenz sat with a reader resting against her right knee, words scrolling down the screen.
She always had a book, and yet she never seemed to miss a stroke of what was happening down in the pool.
Mikey and Rick had been swimming together on the team since they were five years old. A year ago they'd gone one-two in the six-and-under age group at the state meet. Now ... Sara wasn't sure if it was Mikey falling behind or Rick pulling so far ahead.
Sara moved down to the seat next to Marcia. "Did Rick make the A-cut in the 50 fly in the meet last weekend?"
"He went 31.14," Marcia replied, putting her reader on "pause." "Just a tenth short of AA."
Sara bit her lip. Double-A. And Mikey was almost three seconds short of the A time. "I don't know," she admitted, glancing down to where her son struggled to keep from falling behind the rest of the pack. "It just seems like lately Mikey can't keep up. With school, with swimming--anything."
Marcia raised a carefully-shaped eyebrow. "You don't bring him to practice every day, I don't think?"
"Not until soccer's over. His team has a game every Tuesday. I'd hate for him to have to give it up. He really does love soccer. But--Rick plays, too, doesn't he? How can he swim here every day in the soccer season?"
"Oh, when he has a game I bring him to the seven o'clock practice afterward."
"But..." The seven o'clock practice was for the older kids. It lasted until ten at night. "Doesn't he have homework? Doesn't he..."
Doesn't he sleep?
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