Chapter 15

Sunday morning, I went out to the gym and worked legs. Actually, I did box jumps and then dumbbell-release box jumps until I couldn’t continue. I banged up my shins pretty good on the last effort and decided that was all I was going to get out of them. Embarrassing starts, my ass.

After a big healthy breakfast of eggs and more eggs, I settled down to knock out my paper. I wrote about how the sacrifice necessary to build the Panama Canal was worth it. I’m not sure it was, but I know it must have seemed that way at the time. Twenty-five thousand people died building it. I bet their families wouldn’t think it was worth it.

That afternoon, Dane and I hooked up his boat and drove over to the abandoned Food Giant parking lot. “Put your hands on the bottom of the steering wheel,” he said. When I did that, backing a trailer was pretty easy. What wasn’t easy was seeing behind his big boat. I could have run over all kinds of stuff and never known it. The mirrors were good, but you had to look where you were going, long before you ever started backing up. Once I could back it into a parking spot, we drove over to the Wappoo Cut.

I pulled around the big circle, taking a close look at who and what was near the launch. Fortunately, the ramp was empty. The lot was full of empty trailers but I was the only one using the launch. I managed to back the boat down the launch twice successfully before I turned too sharp on the third try. I had to pull forward to straighten it out, but then it went straight in. Lesson learned. I thought it was pretty easy and wondered about some of the people I’d seen struggling with it. Maybe they didn’t know to put their hands on the bottom of the steering wheel.

I drove back to the house and parked the boat. I thanked Dane for the lesson, and trusting me with his boat. That left me with a couple of hours and no plans. It had been a while since I’d had a big gap in my schedule like that. I tried to think of what I should have been doing but came up empty. Then, I realized I hadn’t journaled in weeks. I grabbed my notebook and started to write down lessons learned.

I’d been at it for thirty minutes or so when something hit me. I picked up my journal from before Sally and started reading. I flipped through page after page but the difference was stark and unmistakable. Before Sally, my journal entries had been all about how to do this or that, or things I’d learned about some process. Since Sally, almost all of my entries had been about people and relationships. I’d been surprised to discover I had a Scottish heritage. That was different. I wasn’t in charge of my heritage. I was in charge of what and how I learned and that had changed without me realizing it. I went for a walk so I could process it all.

I didn’t have any place in mind. I just started walking. I couldn’t figure out the change. Less than a year ago, I’d finished reading through the encyclopedia. I remembered a lot of it. A lot of my journal included tidbits from that. And then, Franklin had taught me how to do all kinds of things and my journal was all about that. I wrote notes on how to shingle a roof, or drive a Bobcat. It was all good stuff. So, how did I go from that to writing three pages about trying to figure Marci out? How did that even happen?

I thought about what Mrs. Middleton said. She said we learn Shakespeare not to understand Shakespeare but ourselves. And then the words of Polonius came to mind when he was giving advice to his son, Laertes. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

How in the world was I supposed to be true to myself if I didn’t even understand how I thought? I hadn’t even realized where I’d been walking, but there I was, stopped on the sidewalk across the street from Sally’s old house. There was a little kid riding his Big Wheel in the driveway while his dad mowed the lawn. Same house. Different people. The shell was the same but the insides were different. Was the house being true to itself?

I kept walking. I was different. I knew that. You change all the time. But there’s something fundamental that stays the same, isn’t there? How much had I changed since I’d been dating Kim and did she notice? Maybe she noticed changes in me before I did. How much had she changed? Mrs. McTighe said she was a lot more confident. I didn’t know how that was even possible. Kim was about the most confident person I’d ever met.

‘To thine own self be true.’ The crazy thing, was Polonius wasn’t true to himself. He was the world’s biggest hypocrite. Did he even know it? How could he give such good advice when he was blind to his own problems? Why in the world was I concerned about whether or not I was following his advice? Because it was good advice, even if it did come from a disreputable, empty vessel. ‘To thine own self be true.’ Don’t violate your own standards? Don’t shortchange yourself? Or, maybe, don’t do what you do to please other people. That’s it. That’s exactly what it meant.

I kept walking as I thought about that. Don’t do what you do to please other people. My mind wandered as I walked and I found myself standing across the street from Kim’s house at the same time as the thought came full circle. It’s exactly what I’d told Kim the first time we talked. I’d asked her why she was doing something for someone else’s approval. I’d essentially told her to be true to herself. Holy crap. I walked across the street and knocked on the door.

When Mrs. McTighe answered the door, I blurted out, “To thine own self be true.” It was the weirdest thing. It just came out.

She looked at my startled face for a second, and gently said, “And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man,” finishing the monologue.

“I’m sorry. I’m such a dufus. I was thinking and it just came out.”

“Not a bad thing to be thinking. Come in.”

I followed her back to the sunroom, where Kim was reading and her dad was working on the New York Times crossword puzzle.

“Nine letter word for fat,” Mr. McTighe said. “Fourth letter is P.”

I knew that. I thought about it a minute as Mrs. McTighe and I sat. “Corpulent.”

He checked it, then said, “Yup. Corpulent. That’s not an encyclopedia word.” He wanted to know how I knew that.

“Spelling bee preparation. I’m especially good with words that start with ‘psy’.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. What brings you around these parts, save the obvious?”

We started by telling them about our last week, then our conversation about death and life and the future. Then I told them about my recent revelation about myself and wondering about how one can be true to themselves. Kim had been chipping in with the story up to that point but this last part was new.

It was quiet for a minute or two and Mr. McTighe said, “Son, I don’t know anyone who has to worry about that less than you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, that you’re just about the most transparent person that’s ever lived. You’re decisive and innocent at the same time. I don’t think you could be untrue to yourself if you tried.”

“I’m not sure if I’ve just been complimented or insulted,” I said, laughing.

“Oh, it’s a compliment, Honey,” Mrs. McTighe said.

“Pat means you’ve got no hidden agenda. You don’t try to bamboozle anyone, especially not yourself.”

“When you spend time with people who fancy themselves sophisticated or wise in the ways of the world for very long, you develop a certain cynicism.”

I must have looked puzzled. “Hang on to that, Sweetheart. Hang on to that for as long as you can.”

I had no idea how to respond to that. The three of them waited to see what I’d say but I was stuck for a few minutes. “I’m not sure I wanted to know that,” I said at last and they laughed.

“Polonius said it and he wasn’t true to himself. He was a vacuous bore but Shakespeare used him to share a truth he didn’t really believe. Or perhaps it was an unattainable ideal,” Mrs. McTighe said. “You’re guileless, Honey. It’s charming.”

Mr. McTighe mercifully changed the subject and asked me about swimming. It felt weird that they seemed to know me so well. At least they liked what they knew. Obviously, Kim did, but it was surprising to me how important it was to me that they liked me as well. After talking about swimming, we switched to talking about cheer competition. This was the first year they were having multiple cheer categories compete in the same location on the same day. Lucky for us, it was going to be nearby at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center.

Our conversation came full circle and I decided to walk home. Kim and I smooched on the front porch for a while. She said I was guileless, then smacked my butt as I started walking. Guileless is good, right?

Monday seemed like a pretty ordinary day. I turned in a paper for history, took a test in math and biology, and enjoyed my oversized lunch. Allen and I knocked out our lab in chemistry in no time, because we’d planned it in advance. We asked if we could do a few experiments of our own and Mr. Trent said we could.

That’s when we became everyone’s best friend. We had done two easy experiments and had just started goofing around. We made ammonium sulfide knowing it was going to stink. If you make enough of it, it’s really going to stink. We made enough. Allen and I looked at each other in amazement as our concoction slowly filled the room. I sniffed, then looked at Allen. He sniffed and grinned from ear to ear. I stepped back a second time but it followed me. Other lab teams started to notice. I held my nose and pointed at Allen. He just laughed.

I was halfway across the room and could still smell it. Oh, it was powerful. Allen cried from laughing so hard. When the odor got to Mr. Trent, he knew exactly what had happened. He frowned and walked across to the windows and started opening them. I joined in. We had both top and bottom windows open and it wasn’t doing much good.

“Just sulfur and ammonia, right?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” I said. I had to answer because Allen couldn’t speak. He was doubled up in laughter. I thought he was going to fall on the floor.

“Go next door to shop class and grab two fans from Mr. Alscott’s back room. Let’s get some circulation. It’s not toxic, so everyone just relax.”

Comments about farts and air freshener worked their way around the room. People alternated between complaining and laughing. Appropriately, Kim gave me the stink eye. She tried to keep a serious face. She just couldn’t do it. I smiled. I was without guile, after all.

“If you have a burner on, turn it off. Cap any loose compounds, then push everything to the middle of your station, away from the edge. Then grab your personal effects and wait outside. IF, and that’s a very big if, you can tolerate the smell, you can help Mr. Pierce and Mr. Conrad restore order to their little social experiment.”

All the fans were doing was pushing fart odor around the room in a big circle. Allen and I started cleaning up the mess. There were fourteen different lab stations but most of them were set up about the same so it was pretty easy. We finished just as the bell rang.

“Three years,” Mr. Trent said. “It’s been three years since some boneheads forced an evacuation of my lab. It took those two clowns most of the semester to figure out how to do that. You two managed it on our first real lab. Congratulation. That’s just awful. I have two parent-teacher conferences this afternoon and they’re going to think I shit myself,” he complained.

“I could write you a note,” Allen said with a straight face. Mr. Trent couldn’t hold it back and started laughing.

“Out. Don’t mess up my lab again. Couple of clowns. Out.” We left, laughing. What else could anyone do?

I timed myself in keyboarding and then did it again, just to be sure. I was up to forty-five words a minute. I thought that was pretty good. Of course, Miss Durand could type over eighty and there was a girl in the class that could already type over sixty-five but I was pretty happy with forty-five.

At swim practice that afternoon, Coach Miller took us one at a time to review the video from the week before. Gil was first, and then Bobby, because they were both ahead of me, grade-wise. I thought he’d take me next but he didn’t. He worked with Ryan, then Allen, and then Aaron. Finally, he got to me.

“Grab a seat,” he said as he switched the tape. “Ammonium sulfide? Really?” He asked. Dang. Word got around fast. “What were you two thinking?”

“That it wouldn’t be that bad? I don’t know, Coach.” He looked at me like he was really mad at me and I lost it. I couldn’t help it. I just started laughing. “Coach, it was so bad. Oh, my gosh, it was bad. And the faces everyone made. Sorry. Sorry. I can’t help it. It was just so funny. Man, it was bad. And then, Mr. Trent said he had conferences this afternoon and they would think he’d shit his pants. Sorry.”

He looked down and bit his lip and I know he wanted to laugh but he hung on. “Pierce,” he said, looking up, and then he lost it. “Trent really said that? About conferences? He’s never going to hear the end of that. You know that, right? I think Franklin did something about that bad. It wasn’t Trent though. Before his time. Franklin didn’t tell you to do that, did he?”

“No, sir. That’s all on us.”

“Good answer. Alright, let’s look at your film.”

It didn’t take long. He gave me two things to work on for each stroke. Then he really detailed my transitions from one stroke to the next for IM. It took about five minutes and I had ten, distinct things to work on. Individually, they weren’t much. But together, fixing all of them might save an entire second on my IM time. That was huge. I hadn’t even thought about saving time in transitions but there it was. I thanked him and jumped back in the water.

We swam until the period was over. Then, we kept on swimming. Everyone had a purpose. It reminded me of the day the cheerleaders decided to ditch their nicknames because they wanted to be serious. A couple of freshmen left but the rest were all in.

After practice, Bobby dropped me off at my house. Kim and Mom were lifting. My lifting schedule was all messed up because of two-a-day swim practices. I jumped in and did a few sets at a moderate weight. I didn’t have the energy to do anything more. By the time I was done with that, my shoulders were on fire. I’d put in some hard miles that day. I figured I could lift on Tuesday and see how it went. I watched as Mom and Kim finished up.

Kim had on a sports top that showed off her stomach. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before but Kim was solid. There was definition where she used to be soft. It was sexy.

“You have abs,” I said. Mom and Kim looked at me. “When did you get those?” I asked, without guile.

“Yesterday. They came in the mail. When do you think I got them? I’ve been working on these for eight months,” she said, and she was a little ticked.

“I know that. I guess ... well, they’re sexy.”

“Eight months and you just now notice?”

Oh, oh. Think fast, Aquaman. “The rest of you is so beautiful, I guess I didn’t notice. I like it, though.”

She threw a gym towel at me. I smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Can I feel?” I asked.

“I think that ship sailed ... dufus.”

I walked over to her with my most guileless face and motioned with my hand that I wanted to rub her belly. ‘Please’ my face whispered. ‘Pretty, please?’ I inched closer.

“You’re impossible.”

“He’s a guy, Kim,” Mom said.

Kim relented and I rubbed her flat, and very toned belly. “Nice. I can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner. Very nice, Baby.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve noticed your butt seems really firm, too.”

“Knock it off,” Mom said and Kim laughed. “Are you done or are you going to lift some more?”

“¿Cómo se dice bonehead, en Espanol? Kim asked. How do you say ‘bonehead’ in Spanish?

“Genio,” I replied but I don’t think she bought it.

We wrapped it up, Kim went home to cook dinner and tackle civics and geology homework. Mom ‘tsk, tsked’ a bunch about my obliviousness. I vowed to change my ways.

Tuesday was a pretty easy day. The squad showed up for lunch, ate, then went to the gym to practice. Allen was credited for the lab disaster the previous day and got the nickname Fart King. I have no idea how he got the blame and I didn’t. Maybe everybody else knew something I’d missed. Whatever the case, he didn’t seem to mind. It was pretty funny when he sat for lunch and everyone held their noses and scooted away.

At swim practice, I zeroed in on my ten opportunities for improvement. A couple of them were pretty easy to correct. I knew that backstroke would be my biggest challenge. When I did everything right, I was slow, probably because I was concentrating on doing everything right instead of being fast.

Coach saw what was going on. “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Just get your mechanics. Speed will come.” It was a strange kind of logic but I knew what he meant. I worked on being smooth.

Practice was officially over and I’d been working on breaststroke for a while when I had a revelation. Birch had told me the key to breaststroke was fluidity. That seemed like a synonym for smooth. I tried to translate that to backstroke. It was a mindset more than a mechanics thing. It worked. Somehow, I processed it differently when I thought of it that way. I cranked out a few laps of backstroke and thought I’d really picked it up. One way to find out.

“Bobby, race,” I hollered.

“IM?”

“No. Maybe later. Backstroke.” He looked at me like I’d offered him a winning lotto ticket with no strings attached.

We went to the blocks and I saw Coach watching. He volunteered to start us. It was taking work for Bobby to keep from laughing but he managed. I’d never come close to beating him before and this race seemed random to him. Not to me.

“Swimmers, take your marks,” Coach said. I coiled up. I planned to make the most of every box jump I’d done since the season started. The whistle blew and we were off.

I had a great start and focused on the things I knew would make the difference. I got great rotation, kept my head steady and straight, and swam with a Birchlike fluidity. At the turn, I was ahead. I worked my legs like crazy and forgot about Bobby. Just what I could control. I swam my race. When we touched, it was close.

“Holy crap, Jack. Where did that come from,” Bobby asked. He’d caught up and then beaten me but it was really close.

“It just clicked.”

“Not your best race, Claire,” Coach said. “You took it for granted that you’d beat him and he almost got you.”

“No kidding.”

“Better, Pierce. Better. If Claire had taken it seriously, he wouldn’t have had to work so hard on the last fifty. Nice start, too, by the way. What clicked?”

“I translated my breaststroke mindset to backstroke,” I said.

“Whatever works. Take a breather and let’s see what you’ve got for IM.”

We relaxed for a minute or two and got ready to go again. Bobby promised no mercy. Ha. I got a great start and led at the end of butterfly. He came charging back on backstroke and passed me. I hadn’t expected that but he did. Bobby’s breaststroke had improved and I needed a great breaststroke to catch back up. When we switched to freestyle, I had him, finishing a half body length in front.

“Nice time for both of you. Very nice. Good job, gentlemen.” That’s about as much praise as Coach Miller ever dished out.

We were quiet on the drive back to my house. I could always tell when Bobby wanted quiet to think. That was most of the time. Both of us had been sort of thrust into more social interaction than either of us preferred that year but that was the price for dating cheerleaders, I guessed.

“I can’t beat you,” Bobby said, at last. “We’re close in free and I’m pretty happy about that. You’re better in fly. I’ve always been better in back but you crushed it today.” He wasn’t done. This was his groundwork. We got to my house and stopped but we didn’t get out. “How do I beat you?”

He was serious. I could have joked but that wasn’t right. “You just said it,” I said. “Breaststroke.”

“Breaststroke. You’re just going to get better at back. You’ve cracked the code or something. We’re both really close in free. Even if I get faster, so will you. And you’ll go to regionals for fly. Breaststroke.”

“Yeah. Breaststroke. You’ve got room,” I said, meaning there was opportunity for him to improve there. “The odds of you and me both qualifying for IM, taking first and second and going on to State is pretty small. Possible. Just not likely. I don’t know. Maybe that’s defeatist. Maybe we could.”

“If we want to do that, I have to pick up my pace. You have to see me as your toughest competition. Do you?”

“I don’t know, Bobby. I don’t know what anyone else has done this year. For all I know, we could have the two fastest times in the state or both be so far out of contention it’s laughable.”

“Coach hangs on to that until he thinks the time is right,” Bobby said.

“Tomorrow, I’ll ask. I’ll ask what kind of a time we need for regionals. He’ll know.”

“Ask him to give us something to shoot for?”

“Yeah. Listen, you can pick up time on breaststroke. The way we’re swimming right now, I take a lead in fly, right?” He nodded. “I’m still improving on that. You can get faster but I’m sure not going to make it easy for you to beat me at it. You catch me on back.”

“I used to catch and pass you on back. Now, I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, you’re sure not going to give me anything on it. I take some back on breaststroke and then we’re close on free. You’re actually really fast on free. Your best opportunity is breaststroke.”

“Yeah. Makes sense. I hate breaststroke. It just seems like I work and work and work and don’t see much improvement.”

“Let’s go in,” I said.

“Okay. Why?”

“I want to make a phone call.”

Ten minutes later, I handed Bobby the phone. I’d called Birch and got lucky. I let the two of them talk and I went out to the kitchen. Birch would probably be doing most of the talking. I made a couple of sandwiches, poured a couple of drinks, and took some to Bobby. He took the sandwich and drink without looking up. I went back to the kitchen and ate mine.

Fifteen minutes later, Bobby walked in and sat down. “Thanks. That was really good.”

“Care to share or just want to kick my ass in the pool?” I said with the straightest face I could imagine. He pretty much ignored it.

“How many different skills do we need to be good at to win at Individual Medley?”

“Four,” I said.

“Twelve.”

“What? Where did that come from?” I asked.

“That’s what I thought but he’s right. Four strokes, right? If that’s all we work at, we’re not going to get to State. Maybe regionals, but not State. The start. That’s five. We have to really work at it. The turn in butterfly. The turn is six. Then, turn from fly to back. It’s different. It’s not the same turn. None of the turns are the same. Each one is a separate and distinct skill and we have to treat it that way. Did you see on the video what you need to improve on your turns?”

I thought about it for a minute. “Barely. I didn’t even think about it really. They happen so fast I didn’t see it as an opportunity.”

“They do at UC Santa Barbara. They spend time on it. Think about it. If you could save a tenth of a second for each turn...”

“That’s a full second.”

“Yup,” he said and sat back.

“Seems pretty obvious now,” I said. “How could we not see that?” Coach had shown us but it didn’t register for either one of us.

We talked for a couple of minutes and decided we’d ask coach to film just our turns again. Mom and Kim came in from their workout and I realized I’d been so tracked on Bobby that I hadn’t even gone out to say ‘hey’.

Bobby left and I brought them up to speed, explaining Bobby’s conversation with Birch and our revelation about turns. They both knew enough to realize it was a pretty big deal. Bobby had been mystified by Coach Miller’s blind spot. Coach Miller didn’t have a blind spot. We did.

I drilled Kim on her Spanish vocabulary for a while. Then she tested my French, which was a lot more fun. She had some chores to catch up on and I needed to do a little homework before kung fu.

That night Sifu Chen showed us a couple of different stances and explained the tradeoff between the mobility of a narrow stance and the power and stability of a wide stance. The ability to transition quickly was key. Then, he showed us how to move without bobbing our heads up and down and telegraphing our intentions. These were things I’d never thought about for boxing.

On the way home, Franklin said, “I almost wish someone would pick a fight with me so I could kick his ass.”

I laughed. “It’s probably easier to get in a fight when you’re in high school. Allen and I made a stink bomb in chemistry the other day. Had to evacuate the lab.”

“Been there. Done that,” he said.

“That was before Mr. Trent came.”

“Yeah. Mr. Fagiolis was the chemistry teacher back then. He moved on shortly after that. I don’t think he liked teaching high school.”

“Probably because goofballs messed around in class and made stink bombs.”

“I don’t remember what we did first. My lab partner and I set some sort of record. We had to evacuate the lab three times, and once, they needed the fire department to come out.”

“Holy crap, Franklin. You lit the lab on fire?” I couldn’t believe it.

“No, no. The fire department has really big fans to clear out smoke. They came and set up fans. It was bad.”

“What did you do? What was the experiment that led to that?” I asked.

“I think it’s probably best if I don’t say. Figure out your own ways to get in trouble. Just be careful. If Mr. Trent has a chemical storeroom like when I was there, you can make some pretty nasty stuff. Don’t do that.” He looked at me, “Seriously. Don’t do stupid stuff in chemistry.”

“Party pooper. Okay. We’ll try to stay safe. Was your stink bomb bad?”

“Oh, it was terrible. Brought tears to everyone’s eyes. It was hilarious. Oh, it smelled bad. Foul.”

We laughed about that and took turns describing people’s reactions. He dropped me off and went home. Karen was planning on calling her mom that evening and he wanted to be there for her. I made lunch for the next day and hit the sack.

When Bobby and I walked out to the pool the next morning, Coach Miller was waiting for us. He motioned us over.

“Alright, you two. Nice work yesterday. Now, let’s get you competitive. Gil is getting the camera. We need to work on your turns.” Bobby and I looked at each other and laughed. “It’s not funny. You two have some work to do on your turns but you need to see it on film again to believe it. Lots of wasted motion.”

Bobby told him about his conversation with Birch. He was happy to hear it. He was happy to know that filming turns wasn’t something Coach Miller forgot about. He had. It’s that we weren’t ready for it until then. He told us each a couple of things we could fix, then set up the camera. Bobby went first.

I watched Bobby swim, looking for inefficiencies in his turns. They happened so fast it was hard for me to tell. Could the video machine play it back in slow motion? I hoped so. When Bobby finished, Coach popped a different tape in and I went. When I climbed out, I was feeling pessimistic. I couldn’t imagine finding any problems with my swim.

Twenty minutes later, we were both back in the water, working on the inefficiencies the video revealed. Talk about a humbling experience. Birch had been right. Coach had known all along that we would get to this point. Now that we were there, we could move to the next level. Self-correction is great but seeing for yourself on film just what your errors are takes it to the next level. Coach said he’d give us the afternoon session to work on it and film us again.

Bobby and I ate lunch together since our ladies were too busy with cheer prep. Huh. We talked about our inefficiencies. We shared a couple of them and figured they wouldn’t be too tough to fix. We weren’t so entrenched in our IM habits that we couldn’t fix them. Then we talked about our doubts about Coach Miller and how if we’d waited a day, we wouldn’t have needed the talk with Birch. On the other hand, it was kind of nice to have it all validated.

That afternoon, we both made big improvements in our technique. At the end of the period, we raced again. The results were the same but we had both shaved over a second off our times. We felt pretty good about that and exchanged high fives.

“Out. I know you’d both put in more miles. Not today. End on a good note. Pack it up.” We knew better than to second guess him. I raced to catch Kim. Her truck was there but she wasn’t. Cheer practice? I walked back toward the gym, then ducked inside.

Miss Beltz was explaining something to them using her hands and fingers as people. There were a couple of questions and they lined up. Annie stood facing the bleachers, then did two back handsprings in a row, then Kim and Mel caught her and threw her up over their heads. Jan and Lisa moved underneath her and Annie landed on their hands at shoulder height. Jan and Lisa lifted her straight over their heads, then Annie did the vertical splits and caught her foot with her hands over her head. Jan and Lisa bounced down once and then flipped her over their heads so that Kim and Mel could catch her. I hadn’t even noticed them change positions.