Gil wiggled his hand out of Bruno’s and went to hug her. “I’m not, either,” he stage-whispered to her.
“We’ll start very slow,” Betsy promised. “How about you?”
“I’M AN ARMADILLO!” Gil said eagerly. “I DON’T have lespersy.”
“Oh, that’s good, I guess,” Betsy said, baffled. “What’s your name?”
“GIL! Armadillos are GOOD at SWIMMING!”
“Are they?” Betsy met Bruno’s eyes curiously.
“Armadillos can hold their breath for six minutes,” Bruno said with a modest shrug. “We can either suck in air and float like a bobber or blow it all out and walk along the bottom. But Gil needs to learn to swim as a kid.”
“We can do that,” Betsy agreed cheerfully. She went through the rest of the kids.
Only Darius had been swimming before. “I’m not here for lessons,” he protested, when she asked him his shift form. “I’m just here with Jackson.”
Betsy went over some of the basic rules and sat them all at the edge of the pool wearing flotation devices. Lucy put on her arm floaties and sat down at the edge of the bleachers, refusing to move closer. Gil pushed Bruno away. “I’m a BIG KID. Only the BABIES need PARENTS.”
Bruno went to sit with Franzi’s uncle, Logan. “Welcome to the ‘I’m too big to need you’ bench,” Logan said wryly. Bruno knew him just a little; Franzi, Tara, and Gil all went to the same kindergarten and he often saw Logan in the pickup line and again at Tiny Paws. “Armadillo, huh? Nine or seven banded?” Logan had a Texas cowboy accent.
“Three,” Bruno said shortly. Could Logan have been the source of Gil’s teasing? He could feel his defenses prickle and had to take a step back to examine his own impressions. It wasn’t instinct, just his own baggage.
“Not familiar with that one,” Logan admitted.
“No leprosy,” Bruno said firmly. He could have been more friendly about it and explain that it was a South American variety, but the moment passed and they sat in silence to watch the rest of the swim lesson.
Betsy had clearly wrangled plenty of human kids, if not shifters, and she was able to get all of them holding the wall and kicking, talking about the parts of swimming, but not asking any of them to push off yet.
The man with the stubborn penguin loosened his grip as he sat down to get his kid started and the bird gave a squawk of triumph and kicked off of him into the water with a splash. “I got him,” the man said with a sigh, and then there was a tremendoussplooshthat soaked everyone at the side of the pool as a massive polar bear jumped after the penguin streaking away across the pool.
Betsy continued to show the kids how to kick and hold their breath while the polar bear came up with a happily warbling penguin, tossing it and wrapping it up in big, gentle paws as it rolled. They played for a time and then the bear floated back with the penguin on his belly.
“I’M SWIMMING!” Gil garbled, nearly drowning himself at the announcement. He coughed and clung to the wall.
“Everyone needs to keep holding onto the edge until it’s your turn to swim,” Betsy scolded him, returning to the wall with Tara clinging to a kickboard. The polar bear had turned back into a man and was trying to coax the penguin to be human again, too.
“It’s NEVER my turn!” Gil complained.
“Good job, Tara,” Vivian praised her. She was in the water bouncing Shane in her arms at the far end of the class.
Gil did get his turn, and at the end of the chaotic class, Betsy let them all shift into animals and splash around in the baby pool. She was an otter herself, twisting and diving like a fish. It was the first time that Bruno had seen Tara as a kirin, deer-like and surprisingly daring for her usual shyness, and Franzi was a filly. Jackson was a winged ballof fluff with a snapping beak, a lashing lion’s tail, and a tendency to bob sideways. A puppy romped with him, dog-paddling and panting. The penguin, perversely, turned into a chortling boy at last and Bruno recognized him as a younger kid from Tiny Paws named Ryan that he’d only ever seen with his mom, Chloe. Darius played gently with the youngest kids in his human form and kept Jackson’s beak from going under.
Lucy remained on the sidelines. She’d been coaxed by Olivia to sit at the edge and dangle her legs in, but refused to do more. When Franzi splashed her, the water steamed off. Betsy chattered and whistled, then shifted back to human form to blow a real whistle. “Everyone out!” she called.
Gil paddled desperately for the far side, and was scooped back towards the stairs by the polar bear shifter with the penguin.
“Thanks,” Bruno said, meeting a reluctant Gil at the stairs and taking his hand.
“I know an escape risk when I see one,” the man said with a smile in return, bouncing the fussing penguin in his arms.
“I can GO BY MYSELF!”
Bruno figured that he was fairly safe once Gil was completely out of the water and let go of his hand. “No running,” he had to remind him three times. “No running! NO RUNNING!”
Gil walked two steps after each reminder and ran the rest of the time.
9
