We swam for about an hour. Dad and Mom came home while we were in the pool. They both came out and said hello and told Tanner to stay in the pool, that they’d be more formal introducing themselves when we were out and dressed.
I couldn’t get over looking at Tanner. He had the sort of body you’d see if you looked at porn featuring young guys. I guessed that would be true; I was too young to look at that stuff.
But if I did, I’m sure he’d have fit right in. I don’t mean in the downstairs department. I hadn’t seen that. Maybe there was a ‘yet’ on the horizon; he had looked interested when we’d spoken about losing the suits. I’d be embarrassed but curious enough to put up with that.
But what I could see was splendid. He didn’t have much body hair at all, but his broad chest showed some muscle definition. He did have a sparse nest of hair in his pits. It was just as black there as on his head, but it was a small copse as opposed to a jungle.
His shoulders were wide, his chest broad, and it narrowed to a more slender waist. Above that was an innie navel. His hips swelled out and carried muscular legs without much hair at all. He was a gorgeous hunk, looking like he was ready to burst into manhood. I could still see the boy in him, but it didn’t appear it would last much longer.
He swam all right. He was no fish, that was sure, but he could swim. We fooled around a little like kids do. Then he challenged me to a race.
“You sure you want to do that? You’ve complained about your pseudo-friends being too competitive. What if I beat you? You’re competitive. You’d have to be to be to play all those sports. I’m nothing; could you handle it if I win?”
“I do sports mainly to get out of the house,” he said. “But, okay, I do enjoy the competition. I’ll win. Don’t worry.”
“I only worry about how you’ll handle the agony of defeat!” I said, maybe a bit too smugly. I wasn’t sure I could beat him, but I wanted him to try. And to try his best. No better way to assure that than to challenge him.
“Oh, yeah? I’m taller, have longer arms, stronger legs, and I’ve seen you swimming now. It isn’t a question of me winning, only by how much.”
“What I’m getting here,” I said with good dose of bravado, “is lots of talking and not much doing. The pool is fifty meters long. Up and back is one hundred. What length do you want this race to be?” I was grinning at him. That had to add to the challenge, showing I wasn’t expecting to lose.
“How far can you go?” he asked. “I don’t want to exhaust you. I’m sure I’m in much better shape than you are.”
“You decide. I’ll worry about me. You worry about you.”
He grinned. “You’re really into this, aren’t you? Your face is redder than usual, and your voice is higher. You really think you’ll beat me.”
“Uh, Tanner, enough of the mind games. It’s beginning to sound like delaying tactics to me. You about ready to do this? Or are you looking for a graceful way out?”
That made him laugh. “Two lengths. Up and back. You call the start.”
“Okay. We’ll start in the shallow end—get a push off the wall there. Finish in the shallow end. I’ll count one, two, three. Wait for when ‘go’ would follow rhythmically, then take off.”
We moved to the shallow end. I got on the right side of him; I breathed with my face out of the water looking left. On the right, I could see where he was.
I braced my feet against the shallow end wall, counted down to three, and shot off from the wall on the anticipated ‘go.’
My burst off the wall moved me out beyond him, and I started stroking like I’d trained. Two strokes, breath, two strokes, breath. Each breath, I looked at him. Halfway to the end of the pool, I expected to be in front; how much, I didn’t know, but certainly in front.
I wasn’t. I caught glimpses of him swimming. He was awkward, he had to pull his entire face out of the water and stop stroking to breathe, and his strokes looked more like splashes. And yet, despite his floundering, he was dead even with me.
I hadn’t thought his being stronger, having a stronger kick than mine, or having longer arms would make that much difference. But it did. I had to hope making a racing turn at the deep-end wall and my overall swimming fitness would pay me a dividend. His swimming looked like struggling. Could he do that effectively over a hundred meters?
I guessed we’d find out. But one thing I knew: I wasn’t planning on losing.
We made it to the deep-end wall still neck and neck. I made a racing turn, flipping over just short of the wall, then kicking off it and taking off for the other end. Halfway through. I couldn’t watch, but I was sure he’d swim up to the wall, stop, touch it, turn around a push off. I had to gain two, three seconds. It had to be enough.
I realized immediately I’d made a mistake. Going back, I was still breathing with my face turned to the left, but he was no longer on my left side. Going in the opposite direction, he was on my right. I couldn’t see him! I should have started with him on my right so I could see where he was on the final lap.
I couldn’t worry about it now. All I could do was swim as fast as I could, and I did. Probably faster than I ever had. I could hear splashes next to me but couldn’t tell where they were in the brief moments my ears were out of the water.
I tried to put on a burst of speed for the final ten meters, but I didn’t have any more speed in me. I reached the end, touched the wall, and turned my head, very afraid he’d be standing their grinning at me.
I ended up doing the grinning. He was two strokes from the end still, and I could see from his face he was giving it all he had.
I’d beaten Tanner Booth! At a physical event! Oh, did I want to crow about that. Whoop and yell and carry on. But by the time he touched the wall, all that desire was gone. Yeah, I’d beaten Tanner Booth. And he was a great athlete. A competitive one. He wouldn’t be happy about what had happened. I wasn’t sure how much it would hurt, but it had to be some little bit at least, and it might be more. He wasn’t used to losing.
So, I didn’t even grin much. Instead I leaned over and shook his hand. He looked exhausted. Wiped out. “It wasn’t really fair,” I said. “I’ve been training for races for years. And you still almost beat me. If you want, I can show you things, and by the time we have swimming team tryouts, you can easily be the best swimmer out there.”
He smiled at me, a tired smile. “Thanks,” was all he said. If he was hurt by losing to a guy like me, he didn’t show it.
≈ ≈ ≈
He was quieter after that. I didn’t press him. I realized I didn’t know him very well. It was being with him, seeing how he reacted to things, hearing his opinions, that would allow me to understand him. Right then, I suggested maybe it was time to look at the assignment, and he seemed to like the idea of getting out of the pool.
He showered and got dressed in the pool house. I did the same in my bedroom after telling him to come on up when he was ready. On the way up to my room, I grabbed a couple of cans of Coke. I was usually thirsty after swimming and figured he would be, too.
I was at my computer when he came up. He thanked me for the Coke and drank it down without pausing for a breath. Yeah, he was thirsty, too.
While he was gulping, my printer was running, and when he was done, so was it. I handed him one of the sheets of paper that had just been spit out and took the other myself.
“This is a list of the European countries,” I told him and handed him a copy. “I thought we should say there are forty-eight of them.”
He grinned at me. I was so pleased to see that grin. It told me he wasn’t upset, at least not at me, about the race. Whew!
“You remember I told you I’d done some work independently of you?” he said. “I made the same list you did! I also listed the capitals and some of the populations. I also read about why people have different opinions about how many European countries there are and made a note of a good website that explains that. We can find justification for our forty-eight countries there.”
“Great,” I said. “I saw the arguments for listing more or fewer countries. Some kids will choose forty-four, the UN number, because they have less work to do that way. If we use forty-eight, we’ll at least get noticed for not being lazy.” I grinned at him. He returned it.
“I was also thinking,” I continued, “we could split the list in half, but you’ve already done much of the work. We don’t have to do that now. What do you think? Put what you have on the maps? Is that next?”
“Maybe. We have to memorize all this stuff, but all the names and capitals in their right place might get us started on that. I’d say use one of the large maps you made. Maybe call up a map of Europe on the computer and have that for a reference.”
That’s what we did. A lot of the countries were easy. We already knew the locations of many of the countries and even what their capitals were, countries like France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Portugal. We did have to check the computer to find where their capitals were located for some of them.
The UK was just one of the examples of why the total number of European countries was disputed. Should the UK be called one country, or should England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland be listed separately? We were calling the UK one country. There were places in the UK where saying that out loud could get you punched in the nose.
We began finding the countries where we weren’t sure of their location on the internet map, then on our map. It was a lot more work than we’d expected and took a lot more time.
“If we want to get further into this today, we’ll have to work after dinner. Can you stay for that?”
He nodded and appeared happy. “Any reason I can find to be out of that house is good for me. And this is a very legitimate one. She might fuss, but if she does, I’ll just tell her I need to get this done. That I’ll be home late. She really can’t stop me; she can’t punish me over something like this, either. She doesn’t want me complaining to my dad. I don’t want to do that, either, but she doesn’t know that.”
I went down and told Mom that Tanner would be eating with us and that he was a hungry teen, meaning he’d probably eat twice as much as I would.
“As if you eat like a bird,” she said, laughing. “Okay, I’ll make extra rations. We’ll call you when it’s ready. Probably another hour.”
So, I went back up and got back to work. Tanner called home and told her he’d be back late. It wasn’t a long call, so evidently he didn’t get much flak. Or, if he did, he didn’t let on to me.
It wasn’t easy work locating the likes of Belarus or San Marino or Kosovo and several others, finding out what their capitals were and where they were located. We found them and others on the computer map. We’d have to learn the populations later.
We both sighed at the same time then grinned at each other when we were called for dinner.