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Although Bayleigh was not tall, and was of slight build, she looked older than her nine years as she stood anxiously at the poolside in her new black swimsuit.
Tendrils of golden hair escaped from under the white swimming cap. She was very nervous. This was her very first competition and she so wanted to win a medal. She knew that she wasn’t as good a swimmer as some of the other girls, but she had practiced really hard.
She wanted the medal for her little brother, not for herself. Ethan loved shiny, glittery things. They made him laugh out loud. And he probably wouldn’t be able to win a medal for himself for a long time, because his legs didn’t work very well and he would need to do lots and lots of exercises to make them strong enough. His birthday was tomorrow and she thought he would love to have a medal to hang around his neck at his birthday party.
She shook her arms to keep the blood running through them; and she jumped up and down so that her legs would be wide-awake and ready for action. Daddy had told her that this was a good thing to do. He had brought her to the pool nearly every day for the past four weeks and watched as she swam up and down, up and down, trying to get strong enough to go faster and faster.
The ten young girls were called to attention and Bayleigh curled her toes around the edge of the pool and raised her hands into diving position, fingers pointing down towards the shimmering water. Crack! The starting pistol sounded and ten lithe bodies dived into the water. Bayleigh’s toes hardly caused a ripple as they followed her slight frame down under the green translucence.
She opened her eyes and they smarted from the chlorine but she could see the distorted shapes of the other girls on her left and on her right. They were ever so slightly ahead already as they surfaced a quarter way down the length of the pool. She kicked her feet as fast as she could in an effort to catch up - and then a strange thing happened. She felt her two legs getting closer and closer together until they merged into one big tail that stretched behind her, her toes forming a kind of fringe, that with one swish propelled her past the girl nearest her. Swish, swish – she surged past the next few girls and, tipping the edge of the pool with her fingertips, she flipped around for the swim back down the pool. She could see that there was only one girl still ahead of her. Taking a deep breath, her arms feeling as if they would not be able to do even one more stroke, Bayleigh swished her tail again and again until she was in the lead, with the end wall of the pool within reach. She touched it with the whole flat of her hand, and then sank momentarily beneath the water as the cheers rang in her ears.
Her chest was hurting and she found it hard to breathe, but gradually her lungs adjusted to their normal capacity and the pain eased. Bayleigh knew that she had won. She threw herself backwards into the water again, looking up at the Balcony where she knew that Mammy and Daddy were smiling proudly down at her. Ethan was jumping up and down with excitement and clapping his little hands. She tried to swish her tail at him, to make him laugh, but all that surfaced were ten white little toes, all wrinkly from the water.
A few minutes later she stood on the high step that had “1st Place” on a card beside it and the man slipped the shiny gold medal on a green and yellow striped ribbon over her head. She grasped it in her small hands and thought how much Ethan would enjoy having it around his own neck.
Bayleigh’s friends knew how much she had wanted to win and how hard she had trained, and she was such a nice and popular girl that they were delighted for her. Even the girl who had come second swallowed her own disappointment and congratulated her. “You swam really fast today,” she said. “You were like a mermaid.”
“Yes”, said Bayleigh, smiling. “I was, wasn’t I?”
Joan O’Flynn
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