anymore, and she had to go through several contortions to zip up her jeans. Most of her shirts no longer buttoned without leaving a gap, so she wore them open over a tank top. It wasn't so easy to hide her weight gain with jeans, though, and already the stitching was threatening to rip.
"I have an extra towel." Her grandmother's voice floated up the stairs again. "Don't take any of the ones from the bathroom. They're part of a set."
"I won't, Grandma," Courtney yelled back. She stripped off her pjs and stepped into the one-piece suit, pulling it up over her thighs. It fit, but just barely. Pride demanded that she not look in the mirror. The consolation was that she probably wouldn't see anyone her age at the pool this early in the morning. She donned sweatpants and a T-shirt, slipped her feet into flip-flops and trudged down the stairs.
Her grandmother was waiting by the door and handed Courtney a towel, purple cap and goggles. "They're old," she said, referring to the goggles, "but they'll be all right until we can buy you a new pair."
"You're really into this, aren't you?" Actually, Courtney was impressed. She hadn't known that people as old as her grandmother went swimming.
More surprises awaited her. The Olympic-length pool was in the high school. The adult lap swim session started at six and lasted until seven-thirty every morning. The lobby was filled with older people who all seemed to know each other.
Courtney walked in with her grandmother and, from the greetings she received, one would assume Vera had been gone for months. Her grandmother painstakingly introduced Courtney to her swimming buddies. A dozen names flew by so fast she had no hope of keeping track, but she did try. As much as possible, she attempted to blend into the wall. The sun might be up and shining but no reasonable person should be, in Courtney's opinion.
"So how do you like living in Seattle?" one of her grandmother's friends asked.
Courtney thought the woman's name was Leta. "Oh, it's great." She forced some enthusiasm into her voice. Well, it might be if she met someone younger than eighty. This whole knitting thing was a major disappointment, too. First, she'd had no idea the class would be so small. There were only two other women and both were way older. One was around her grandmother's age and a real biddy. She looked like she'd been sucking lemons half her life. The other woman was probably close to her mother's age - if her mother had been alive.
A sick sensation hit Courtney in the pit of her stomach as she thought about her mother. It shouldn't still hurt like this, but it did. Her brother and sister seemed to deal with the loss so much better than Courtney. No one wanted to talk about Mom anymore, and Courtney felt as if she was supposed to forget she'd ever had a mother. She couldn't and she wouldn't.
Julianna, her sister, hadn't gained thirty-five pounds the way Courtney had. In fact, her sister had lost weight. Jason thought weight was a nonissue. The one and only time Courtney had talked to her brother about her problem, he'd shrugged it off. His advice was to lose the weight if it bothered her so much. He said it like it was easy. If getting weight off was that simple, she would've done it long ago.
"We have rules here at the pool," Leta said, moving closer to Courtney. "No one's ever written them down, but it helps if you follow them."
"Okay."
"You should know the middle shower is mine. I've used it for eighteen years and if you get out of the pool first, I'd appreciate if you'd leave that shower for me."
"No problem." Courtney made an effort to remember this.
"Wet your hair before you get in the water," another of her grandmother's friends advised, joining Leta. "Drench it real good, otherwise the chlorine will ruin your hair."
"You've got a cap, don't you?" someone else asked. "I hate swimming and having my hands come up full of someone's hair."
Yuck. What a disgusting concept. "Grandma gave me a cap." She hadn't planned to use it, but Courtney could see that she was likely to get booted out if she didn't.
"How fast a swimmer are you?" Leta asked.
"Ah..."
"She should use the middle lane," Courtney's grandmother suggested. "Most of us swim in the first lane," she explained to Courtney. "The third lane is for the fast swimmers. Start in