Filler Bits: Alf learns to swim
"What do you mean you don't know how to swim?" Rock declared, utterly bemused.
They were discussing possible places to go and things to do over their summer break. As the heat wave continued and only barbeques of the illegal (or magical) kind were possible, there came the natural urge to cool down. And the fastest way to cool down was of course by diving into some water. Since there were no local pools and the Alduses had neglected to add one to their house, the beach was their best option as it took just as long to get to the beach as it did to get to a public swimming pool.
Alf shrugged. "I just don't."
"How can you call yourself and Australian, mate?" Rock stressed. "That's it. I've decided that what we're going to do on our next day off is teach Alf here to swim. Then we can follow through with my beach plan. Objections?" Rock asked sternly, glancing at the other teens just daring them to say that they had a problem with what he was saying. After there were no visible signs of movement from any of the teenagers Rock nodded, satisfied. "Good. When's your next day off work, Sprout?"
"Monday," Alf informed meekly.
"Right," Rock stood and began speaking to them like a general speaking to his troops. "Everyone will meet on the Aldus family back porch at 0900 hours. For the purposes of this trip we will make use of the Aldus family pond. Jessica Aldus, Damien Reid and myself will instruct the subject, Alfonso Struthers, in the arts of doggy paddle, freestyle and backstroke. At 1200 hours we will commune for lunch. Lunch will take the form of a picnic. In exchange for our teaching services the subject, Alfonso Struthers, will provide said midday meal. At 1330 hours we will instruct the subject, Alfonso Struthers, in the arts of breaststroke and butterfly. Am I clear?"
An over-enthusiastic chorus of "Sir, yes sir!" came from Damien, Alf and Jessica followed by a genuinely amused round of giggles.
"ANd guys," Jessica added. "Don't bring your best board shorts. They'll probably end up covered in gunk. If not moss or algae it will be mud."
"Understood," Alf stated, adding a neat salute which had Damien rolling in laughter as Alf looked so serious.
-=-=-=-=-=-That Monday, Alf gathered n old towel, his almost grown out of board shorts that he'd had since he was eleven, a pair of thongs that weer the cheap blue and white rubber kind that you could hardly buy these days and a t-shirt that had seen better days. He had a much neater change of clothes and though it was incredibly hot, bright and sunny, no sunscreen. The magic seemed to take care of sun protection. So, at nine o'clock in the morning he wasn't looking his best. He hadn't even showered though he usually did in the mornings because it would have been useless. And of course when someone is not looking their best, someone's law states that they have to run into whoever the current object of their affections is, or their worst enemy. Since Alf didn't have a worst enemy at the moment, he ran into Alyssa Marx while walking toward the Aldus house.
"Hi Alf," she greeted him with a smile and a wave, while he was doing his best to be unnoticed. He'd spotted her long before she saw him, something everyone who's ever had a crush would know. He was always hyper aware of her presence.
"Er, hi Alyssa," he greeted her looking around nervously and wishing she hadn't seen his bed head the first time they'd seen each other since school let out for the summer.
"Going swimming?" she inquired politely.
"Uh, yeah," Alf nodded, shifting in his slightly too small thongs. "Er, what are you going?" Real smooth, Struthers, Alf reprimanded himself. Make it seem like you're a creepy stalker.
Alyssa didn't seem to think that there was anything odd about the question, though and she answered normally enough. "I'm just going to Deborah's place. Then her brother's going to drive us to the West Hills Shopping Centre."
"Oh, cool," Alf commented dumbly. "we're going swimming at the pond at the Alduses' place."
"Oh," she said and Alf immediately realised what that must have sounded like. I like to jump into dirty ponds for fun because I can't afford to go to a swimming pool. He looked down and noticed that her toenails had been painted a fetching shade of pink.
"I like your toenails," he said, then mentally smacked himself. "Your nail polish," he amended.
"Thanks," she replied, then looked him up and down as though searching for something to compliment him on genuinely. "I like your hair," she said.
"Really?" Alf smiled at her. "Because this is the way it looks when I get up and it would save me so much time in the mornings if I just left it. Not that I'm obsessive about it or anything, it just... it's really difficult to just get it to sit flat. But I bet you never have any problems with that since your hair's always so pretty," he finished lamely, finally realising that he was babbling and rambling on like a demented idiot.
"Thanks," she said again. "But my hairs' not perfect. And your hair really is nice." She then looked at him as though unsure about what to say next. Thinking she wanted to go, but didn't want to say it out of politeness, Alf started to say his goodbye.
"I guess you want to get going now. So I'll be seeing you." He started to walk away without waiting for her goodbye.
"Wait Alf," she said.
He stopped and turned to see what she had to say.
"I'm having a pool party on Saturday. Did you want to come?"
"Uh..." Alf was unsure how to answer. He did want to go, but he was meant to work on Saturday. "I have work on Saturday," he informed her, seeing if she would make his decision for him.
"Come after work, then," she said. "It starts at five and goes until about nine. We're going to eat dinner at my place as well. You can bring you Damien and the rest of your friends too."
"Okay," Alf agreed. "But I finish work at five on Saturday, so I might be a bit late."
"That's fine," she said with a grin, seemingly genuinely pleased that he would be able to come to her party. "I'll ring you with more details later, then."
"Cool," Alf said, nodding at her. "Wait, do you have my number?" he asked, stopping his head.
"It's in the phone book, isn't it?" she asked.
"Yeah," Alf nodded with a smile.
"Oh wait," she said. "Mine isn't." She reached into her pink leather hand bag and pulled out a sparkly purple pen and a bus ticket. She wrote a phone number on the bus ticket then passed it to Alf. "Call me if you have any problems."
"Thanks," Alf said, not knowing what else to say.
"You're welcome," she smiled. "Bye!" she waved before turning her back and walking away.
"Bye!" Alf smiled, already knowing that he was going to be late to his appointment with Rock, Jessica and Damien the swimming instructors.
-=-=-=-=-=-"You'd better have a good excuse for being late," Rock stated with a frown.
Alf shrugged. "I ran into Alyssa on the way here."
"Oh, you sly dog," Rock said, giving Alf a hearty thump on the back.
"Who says that these days?" Jessica asked her cousin with a condescending look on her face.
"Me," Rock retorted.
"What did she say?" Damien asked, moving on to more important things as they began walking down to the pond.
"Not much," Alf said, unwilling to go into the details of his expressions of delight over her toenails and her pretty hair. "She invited us to her pool party on Saturday, though."
Damien stopped in his tracks. "No way!"
Alf frowned at him. "You say that like it's impossible."
"It is," Rock grinned. "You can't swim."
"She doesn't know that," Alf smirked. "And isn't today supposed to be about changing taht?" he asked.
"I like the way you think," Rock said with a smile. "But we were going to teach you have to swim properly."
"Oh really?" Alf asked.
"And that is going to take longer than a day," Jessica interjected.
"So I guess we have to cheat," Rock finished.
"Cheat?" Alf asked. "How do you do that?"
"Don't you know my dear boy?" Rock smiled.
"You've forgotten the one thing that we all have in common now," Jessica stated.
"Magic?" Alf asked.
"Magic," the other three chorused in confirmation.
"Why do I get the feeling you guys have been having conversations without me?" Alf asked.
"Because we have," Damien explained simply.
"Right," Alf said, feeling a bit neglected because he knew that he was the one who'd caused them all to be friends. What if they forgot about him?
They arrived at the pond which was a delightful murky green colour.
"That is attractive," Alf commented.
"Told you so," Jessica smirked.
They stripped down to their swimming costumes and wondered if they actually did want to get in.
"Okay," Rock said. "Sprouts first. In you get." And with that, he picked Alf up and chucked him into the pond more easily than Alf though fair.
Alf came up feeling half drowned and sputtering. He concentrated with his eyes and used a fire spell to singe the bottoms of Rock's feet. His startledness caused him to fall into the water. Rock then proceeded to finish his drowning of Alf by holding him underwater. Damien and Jessica dive bombed into the water after that, allowing Alf to use Rock's temporary distraction to his advantage.
They spent a fair amount of time splashing each other and trying to drown one another like that before they came too close to the deep part of the pond and Alf really did almost drown. He would have if it wasn't for his magic forcing him to the surface of the pond. And forcing the rest of them to remember why they were there in the first place instead of at the beach.
"Cheaters' swimming has two main rules," Rock began explaining. "Use levitation to get yourself moving, and use a little wind spell to breathe."
"A little wind spell, right," Alf said ruefully. He was awful at conjuring those. But as had just been evidenced earlier, Alf's magic would save him if he really did come too close to drowning.
He practiced cheaters' swimming until the others thought it looked like he was actually swimming well enough.
They had cold roast chicken and warm bread rolls for lunch, drinking fizzy drinks until their sugar highs brought them crashing back into the pond. They showered in a communally conjured rain storm (in which the other three insisted that Rock was not pulling his weight in) followed by a warm fire and wind blow dry before changing into their clean clothes. It was days like these that made Alf wonder how he'd ever managed to survive when he was only friends with Damien.
-=-=-=-=-=-Work that Saturday passed easily enough. Alf enjoyed it as always, and it gave Alf the idea to bring a pot of pansies as a present for Alyssa. Flowering ones, of course. Ones that would comfort her and be her friends. He added a few sweet peas in, too because he did love the small flowers. Rock would be picking them all up, stopping at Alf's work last so that they wouldn't be too late to the party. It had taken a lot of convincing before Jessica allowed herself to go with them, but in the end they were all there in the car, ready to party.
Alf would have to change at Alyssa's house, though. She had assured him that it would be okay when she rang during the week to confirm that he and his friends were coming. That phone call had been a little awkward as Alf's father had picked up. He'd teased Alf about the girl the rest of the week.
Two minutes after Rock arrived with the car, they were at Alyssa's house. She greeted them all with smiles, took Alf's present graciously, showed them where the drinks were, were the bathrooms were and where Alf could change, and where the pool was. Over all, she was a lovely host. Because he had the delay of having to change, the others had already managed to assimilate into the party, so Alf was feeling rather out of place and self conscious when he arrived outside with no friends. At that point he wished that he'd allowed his friends to wait for him.
Alf saw Damien with Chris and Mark and was about to walk over when Mark sent a malicious sneer in his direction. For some reason, he and Chris really did not like him. Jessica, in a floral bikini had managed to attract the attention of some of the other boys. Alf was momentarily surprised when he realised that she was showing that much skin. He'd never thought she'd be comfortable with that much skin showing, but apparently she was, though she did seem to be doing her best to minimise the amount of flesh showing. He guessed that if she was going to go to the party, she might as well go all the way.
Rock was harder to spot, and when Alf did spot him, he regretted it immediately. Rock was very comfortably with a girl he didn't recognise. The two of them were curled up together on a pool chair apparently locked at the lips.
Unsure about what to do, Alf decided that the only way to get rid of his apprehension was to dive straight into the pool and join the people rough housing. He didn't know who they were which increased his chances of success with them. Alf went for a run up and crashed into the pool spectacularly, disrupting the people in the pool and splashing the girls who'd been sitting beside the pool obviously trying not to get their bikinis wet.
"Hi!" he yelled over the music.
The kids in the pool smiled at him. The girls giving him second glances. He hadn't realised until just that moment that the fact that he had spent most of his summer doing manual labour had increased his muscleage somewhat. Not that he cared about what those girls thought.
"We were just about to start a game of volleyball," one boy said, spinning a beach ball on a finger tip. "Did you want to play?"
"Sure," Alf said with a grin.
"You can be on my team," one of the girls with dark red hair tied in a ponytail said to him. "We have less people."
Alf nodded and with that they decided on ends of the pool (luckily Alf's team ended up in the shallow half) before they swam and started tossing the ball around. Alf wasn't entirely certain what sort of scoring system was being used. After all, there was no net. And it seemed like whoever got the ball was the one who served it. But when Alyssa called them inside to get food, everyone else seemed in consensus that the other team had won.
As he pulled himself out of the water, his teammates began introducing themselves properly and congratulating him on a job well done. For once Alf felt accepted and he wondered why he'd never learnt to swim before. He was with Paula and Anabelle, cousins of Alyssa's grabbing plates and stacking them high with chicken wings and salad and pasta, when he managed to talk to Alyssa for the first time that night.
"Thanks for inviting me," he said to her. "The party's great."
Alyssa smiled at him in response. "No problem."
And that was about it. Alf knew that she would be too busy to really talk to him. It gave him a warm feeling inside just to know that he was invited. And getting friendly with her cousins seemed to help, even as he dried off and began to feel self conscious of his lack of clothing despite the fact that the girls beside him were wearing about as much as he was and they had more to cover.
As it grew later, it seemed as though the party wasn't going to stop, but eventually Alyssa's parents came home and managed to encourage the twenty-odd teens to leave the house. It was only then that Alf managed to be reunited with his friends at Rock's car.
"How was it?" Alf asked Damien.
"Pretty good," he smiled. "Check it out," he said, showing Alf his forearm. There were at least three different phone numbers scrawled on it in black ballpoint pen.
Alf nodded in response. "How was it, Jessica?"
She just looked at him with a frown. "Not particularly exciting," she said. "Most of the guys were dead boring."
"I got laid," Rock put in.
"Too much information," Alf stated and Jessica shared his sentiment.
"Way to go man," Damien said, slapping Rock on the back.
Then Rock grinned. "I didn't actually."
Alf, Jessica and Damien groaned in response.
"Man, and I was just about looking up to you as an older brother," Damien stated. "That's gone."
Alf laughed.
"What about you, Alf?" Jessica asked. "Did you enjoy yourself?"
"It was all right," he stated. "Alyssa's cousins were nice."
"Are those the chicks you were chatting up all night?" Damien asked.
Alf shot him a look. "I wasn't chatting them up."
"Oh really," Damien raised an eyebrow. "Then did you get their numbers?"
"Yeah," Alf nodded. "But I don't think I'll call them."
"Isn't that a bit rude?" Jessica said. "I mean sure, you don't want to go out with them or give them that impression. But you could at least be friends. I mean, you spent all night talking to each other."
"Well I guess I can call and say hi," he said. "Maybe get MSNs off them. Then they'd be friends."
"Well," Rock said, as he unlocked the car and they all clambered in. "I propose that we also go to the next party we're invited to."
"Here here," Damien said in agreement. Alf only nodded as he quietly nodded off to sleep. Swimming really did take a lot out of you.
posted by Cedric @ 3:18 pm
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