You Are the Shell to My Tortoise | ✓

64

On Sunday, Nolan led me to the school's indoor heated pool.

An hour before we were supposed to meet, he texted me to bring my swimsuit. That should've given away his intended location, but it just didn't click in my head until we got here. That might have something to do with the fact that I hardly ever came here on my own free time.

Now, we were standing near the edge of the pool, scanning the area for a less crowded spot. The warmth felt so good in this cold weather.

"There are more people here than I thought there would be," he said, glancing around.

I nodded. It wasn't exactly packed, but it still had a sizable number of students who were already inside the pool.

"Oh, yeah," I said, turning to him. "You were on the swimming team in your previous school!"

"Yup."

No wonder he wanted to come here—he probably really enjoyed swimming.

"Do you come here often?"

"No," he said. "This is the second time I've been here since that time you got me to come for gym class."

Well, color me impressed!

"Really? But you looked pretty confident when you swam during that little race we had. You didn't seem rusty at all. I totally thought you practiced a lot!"

Giving me a faint smile, he said, "Yeah, I was pretty surprised myself, too."

I frowned in confusion. "You were surprised?"

He began walking past me, and I hastily followed. We went down into the water, and he pointed to another corner of the pool that looked unoccupied.

"Let's go there," he said. "We can talk more once we're in there."

"Okay."

When we made our way there, I parked myself against the smooth pool wall and lowered myself so that my chin was touching the water.

I loved the feeling of floating that being in the water gave me.

"Back to what we were talking about," I said. "You haven't been swimming for the past two years? Wait, you have been here for two years, right?"

He leaned against the wall next to me. "Yeah, I transferred here about then. I thought I would have gotten a lot worse with the lack of practice, but I didn't."

"That's weird."

"I figured out what was happening, though. I'll tell you a secret," he said, lowering himself too until he was at eye level.

"Okay," I said, swallowing my nervousness at being so close to his face. "Tell me."

"Because of my 'condition', I can somehow do some things that I couldn't in the past." His voice became quieter than usual. "I remember you were kind of incredulous that I could jump down from my room to the ground floor without needing a rope. I couldn't do that before."

"Actually, that pales in comparison to the time you hoisted me up into the tree like I was as light as a feather," I said, and he grinned, "but yes, I was really shocked by your strength. So, that's why you can do all these things?"

Nolan nodded. "That's the only explanation I can think of. Like I said, I was perfectly normal before ... you know. Stuff that used to be physically challenging is just so easy for me now."

"Wow." As I digested that information, I happened to look up and make eye contact with a girl looking in our direction from several feet away.

Swiftly recognizing her as Claire, I smiled at her to be polite. She returned my smile, but when she turned to Nolan, she did a double take.