“The dog,” I explained. “Pal, stop leaving!”
“I’ve got it,” Luke said. “Charlie, attention! Dress right dress!”
“What does that mean?” Charlie asked excitedly.
“It means we’re going to walk together. Forward, march! A left, a left, a left, right, left,” Luke ordered.
I trailed after them with the lawn chairs, marching to my own drummer.
“Holy shit,” Luke muttered, staring at the quantity of people milling, sitting, swimming, and queuing up. “Charlie, halt! Mark time. That means march in place.”
“It’s like a swap meet, right?” I asked, gesturing to the crowd. The Mid-Michigan Invitational was even bigger than I had expected but while my first meet had been totally overwhelming, now I felt like an old pro.
“A what?” Luke asked blankly.
“Never mind. We have to get Charlie signed in,” I told him, and gripped the back of Charlie’s sweatshirt. “Lead the way, sweet pea.”
Charlie checked in at the desk for his races so he would be seeded in the heats, then we went to find the Shark parent area so we could drop our stuff and Charlie could go find his team’s lane in the pool to warm up before the meet began. “Luke!” I heard a voice call as we went into the gym.
It was a solid mass of parents planted in lawn and camping chairs, with bags and coolers, kids running around, and piles of gear. We wended our way through the crowd toward Annie, who was standing on her tiptoes and waving at us.
“You made it!” she said cheerfully, as Luke kissed her cheek. “How was the drive?”
“Easy,” he said. “Where are you sitting?” He put down the bag and took the chairs from me. “This place is a madhouse.”
“I’m going to walk him over to find the warm-up lane. I have to keep an eye on the prize at these meets,” I said, gesturing at Charlie, who was already wandering away. “He’s in the fourth event so we need to be ready. I’ll check to see if they’ve posted anything yet,” I told Annie, who nodded. Luke looked blank. “After the kids check in, the computer puts them in heats. Then the volunteers print out the heat sheets, and hang them around the pool and the swimmers can see what heat and lane they’ll be in for their events. Be right back.”
Luke was still looking lost as I walked away. Good, I gave him something else to think about. “Warm up’s in lane four,” Annie called, and I directed Charlie to the pool. We found Coach Sean at the end of the lane and he fist bumped Charlie. “Let’s get some dives in and do the warm-up we talked about, C Money. You ready to rock?”
“Yeah!” Charlie told him.
“Hit it then,” Sean said, and Charlie hurried to the line at the block to practice his dives.
“Emily, he’s in the medley relay, ok?” Sean mentioned, checking some scribbled writing on his clipboard.
“Um, will it be a problem for the relay if we aren’t staying forthe finals?” This meet had trials and finals: the top sixteen swimmers in each preliminary event in the morning (and two alternates) were supposed to come for a second mini-meet in the late afternoon (the finals). The top relays competed in the finals also. The winners of the finals got medals, which the kids loved.
Sean stared at me. “You’re not going to stay? You know he’ll probably be finaling in all his events, right?”
“I know, but we have to get home after preliminaries. I’m sorry.”
Coach Sean shook his head. “Ok, that’s fine. I’ll take him out of the relay.”
“Ok. Sorry,” I offered again. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, and it was Tara. She was over at my house and said that Cassie was “her usual sunshine self.” She planned to stay to help get her some lunch, and asked me to send pictures of Darby swimming because her husband Diego was “useless.” Diego, in fact, was awesome. He left huge tips for me at Roy’s, which I interpreted as payoffs to keep his trips to the tavern on the downlow.
Macdara was swimming in the first event, so Luke came back over to the pool with Annie while Charlie darted to the gym to get his forgotten towel after the warm-up. “Come right back,” I warned him. “RIGHT BACK.” I loaned Annie one of the Sharpies in my pocket so she could write the heat and lane on Macdara’s hand.
Once the anthem had been sung, the meet started moving fast. It was a huge pool, with eight lanes running on one end, and eight on the other. I was busy watching Charlie, forcing him to eat bananas, and screaming my head off for him when he swam. He was such a skinny little thing up on the block. Heclapped his hands and slapped his chest, just like Michael Phelps in the videos we had watched on YouTube. All Charlie’s events were for boys aged ten and younger, but I swore that some of the ten-year-olds could have come into Roy’s and I never would have carded them.
“That kid in lane eight has a five o’clock shadow!” I hissed at Luke, who started laughing. “What the heck?! Is there any kind of age verification here?”
“I’ve never knew people cheered so much at swim meets,” he told me. “Can he really hear you underwater?”
“He can if I yell loud enough. GO CHARLIE!!!”
“Wow,” Annie said to me back at our campsite in the gym in a break between events. “My friend was voted ‘Loudest Girl’ in high school, but I think you could take her.”
“Too much?” I asked Luke, who laughed again. I unzipped the cooler. The only time I ever got so animated when was Charlie was swimming. I hadn’t known it was in me.
