Jacinta Takes a Walk
Copyright© 2025 by BarBar
Chapter 16: Relentless
We’d been sitting around the picnic table wrapped or draped in towels and sipping cold water. Sensing a pause in the conversation, Jenny looked at the clock on her phone and said that the kids could go back in the pool now if they wanted to.
The towels got ditched and the two of them streaked over to the pool and jumped into the water with an appropriate amount of splashing and shrieking.
Jenny looked at me. “I want to take a nap,” she said, pointing upstairs.
“Are you okay hanging with them for a while?” she asked. “They’re probably old enough to be in the pool on their own but it’s better if someone older is with them.”
I spread out my hands. “No worries. To be honest, I’m kind of enjoying this. It’s like reliving my lost childhood, or something. I promise not to sell them off to the local circus while you’re sleeping.”
She grinned at me. “Good. That would definitely be something I’d want to be awake for. I’m sure that the two of us together would be able to get a better deal, than just you on your own.”
We both laughed and gave each other a fist bump for that.
She picked up her shirt and undies, walked inside, and slid the door closed.
I picked up the towels the two kids had abandoned and hung them up on the fence where they could dry off. I added my own towel to the fence and wandered around to the shelter. I’d noticed it had a few pool toys in there. I found a ball and tossed it out into the pool, then jumped in after it.
We spent a bit of time playing catch with the ball. The game eventually degenerated into the two kids ganging up to try and dunk me. I think I gave as good as I got. I wasn’t used to having to hold back my strength so that I didn’t hurt anyone. Then again, I hadn’t played this way since I was nine. Back then, I had about as much strength as a wet noodle.
Wrestling with wet naked bodies made slick with sunscreen provided its own challenges. Added to that was the obvious need to avoid grabbing in places that shouldn’t be grabbed, particularly with such young kids. If they’d been my age, or older, I probably wouldn’t have been quite as careful. The two kids were also being respectful about that, with varying degrees of success. I did get clouted in the tit several times by a stray arm or an accidental head but. Fortunately water tends to slow down movement, so it never actually hurt. If either of the kids got accidentally grabbed or touched in the wrong place, they never said anything.
Later, the inflated ring came out and that provided more entertainment. There was a second smaller ring, so that added to the fun. After some high energy playing, we had a quiet moment with the two kids draped across each other as they shared the bigger ring while I was laid out on the smaller ring. We floated quietly around the centre of the pool.
“What happened to Jenny?” asked Freddy.
“She went inside to have a nap,” I explained. “She’s still not feeling the best. It will take a while but a bit of a sleep will help.”
Nobody talked for a while, and we drifted lazily.
“Jacinta?” said Tabby in a quiet voice. “When we’re back at school, if I was being picked on, would you do for me what you did for Marcus?”
I used my hands to paddle the ring in a circle so that I could see Tabby. I smiled at her.
“Maybe,” I said, sounding casual. “But if you were being a brat, maybe I would join in and help whoever was picking on you. There’s nothing like a bit of teamwork to get the job done.”
Tabby gasped and acted shocked. She splashed a handful of water in my direction.
“That’s so mean,” she said with a pout. “Like I would ever be a brat.”
I laughed and used my fingers to flick a few drops of water back at her.
“I’m glad to hear that. Freddy, did you hear? Tabby says she would never be a brat.”
Freddy nodded solemnly. “I heard that. It’s like Tabs has a really short memory or something.”
Tabby gasped and splashed water at Freddy, which hit herself as much as Freddy since he was lying across her. The two then started wrestling with each other, which quickly ended when the tube flipped and dropped them in the water. There was a lot of giggling to go with the wrestling, which turned into shrieks as the tube flipped. There was more giggling as they competed to climb back onto the ring. I tried to paddle myself away from the chaos but my steering was off so I ended up turning in circles and then bumping into the side of the pool.
The competition for the other ring developed into a splash war that raged fiercely before suddenly stopping when Freddy got a face full of water just as he was breathing in. He choked and spluttered and coughed then swam to the side of the pool and hung on as he coughed and coughed, trying to clear his lungs. Tabby was quickly by his side. I arrived a second later, having ditched the ring and swam hard to get to him.
I got out of the pool and lifted Freddy out so that he could sit on the edge. I sat down beside him and Tabby soon joined us, so we sat in a row with our legs dangling in the water as we waited for Freddy to get his breathing back under control. Tabby was hugging Freddy from the side and apologising over and over, until Freddy managed to gasp out that he was okay, and that it wasn’t her fault.
Freddy gave one last cough and then lay back so that his feet still dangled in the water but he was flat on his back on the tiles. I leaned back onto my elbows and glanced down at him. “Are you okay there, little buddy?”
“Yeah,” he said, breathing deeply. “I will be. Give me a minute.”
I was laid back and supported on my elbows, feeling the sun warming my body. I looked around the yard, taking note of the different bushes planted along the side fence and so on.
Tabby was still sitting up. She glanced over at me.
“You always look so confident,” she said. “Even lying out in the sun, completely naked, and you look like nothing worries you.”
I shrugged. “What’s there to be worried about?”
“I guess I’m not used to being out in the open like this when I’m naked. It’s better in the water, when we’re playing and stuff because I’m not thinking about it. But I feel weird to be sitting here like this. I know nobody is watching, but I feel like they could be, and they’d be judging the way I look.”
“Why?” asked Freddy. “I don’t get why you’d care so much what other people think. Besides, you’re really pretty, so nobody would think bad things about the way you look.”
Tabby smiled at the compliment, but she wasn’t convinced. “I don’t think I can explain it. I just feel weird about it.”
“It’s because her body has changed so much in such a short time,” I explained to Freddy.
“I’m betting she’s shot up like a sprout in the last year or two. Her arms and legs are suddenly longer and that can throw off your balance, which is really important for a dancer. Her hips have changed shape. That’s something to do with the pelvis tilting or something that I don’t fully understand. She used to have a chest as flat as yours and now her tits have started to grow. So now she has two bags of jelly on her chest that she has no control over. Hair starts to grow in her pits and on her legs and around her twat, places where only a little time ago she was as smooth as a baby’s bum. And her periods will start soon, so she has that hanging over her. It all seems to happen in such a quick time that it takes a while to get used to all the changes. And being exposed like this is probably exaggerating that feeling for her. It’s not surprising that she feels weird about the way she looks.”
“But Tabby,” I continued, “it’s perfectly normal. Every girl goes through that, and every girl feels weird for a while. The good thing is that you’re not a shy person. Imagine what it’s like for a girl who’s already really shy to be suddenly having those feelings. You’d never get a shy girl your age to do what you’ve been doing this morning.”
“Yeah, I get that,” she said. “You’re right, I’m not normally a shy person, but it still feels weird. I bet you never felt weird when you were twelve.”
I grinned at her. “You’d lose that bet. But I got over it, and you will too.”
My experience of puberty had been coloured by everything else that was going on in my life back then. But I still remember feeling weird about the way my body was changing. Most of what I was saying to Tabby was simply a repeat of what Maisie had said to me back then. Maisie is one of my neighbours and is Marcus’ mum. She did more to help me through that time than Jackie ever did.
I rolled over onto my side so I could look at the two of them without craning my neck.
“Hey look, when Freddy lies like this, it makes all his ribs stick out.” I ran a finger over his ribs.
Tabby looked down and giggled. She reached out a finger and traced a rib on the other side of his chest.
“That tickles,” said Freddy.
He grabbed our hands and held them still so that we’d stop.
Tabby shifted and lay down on her side to mirror my position and rested her hand on his chest. She leaned in and kissed Freddy on the cheek.
“I liked it when you said I’m pretty. I’m sorry for sometimes being mean to you, or being a brat, or whatever. I’ve been feeling so out of control. I didn’t know how to handle it, and I took it out on you. Jacinta helped me understand better. I promise I’ll be nicer to you.”
She rested her head on the tiles and sighed.
“I’ve been feeling out of control at school, too. I try to pretend I’m so mature and everything, but I don’t know what I’m doing. My friends are so sensible and I’m like this faker that’s trying so hard to fit in with them, but it’s sooo hard. Sometimes I want to jump up on a table in class and scream. And sometimes I want to run out of there and get away from everyone.”
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