Daughter of the Deep(5)

I suppose I should get this out of the way. Harding-Pencroft is a five-year high school. We’re divided into four houses, based on the results of our aptitude tests. We call the academy HP for short. And, yes, we’ve heard all the Harry Potter jokes. Thanks anyway.

When I get to my room, my room-mates are freaking out.

Nelinha is stuffing tools, extra outfits and cosmetics into her pack. Ester is frantically sorting index cards. She has, like, twelve stacks, all colour coded, labelled and highlighted. Her dog, Top, barks and jumps up and down like a furry pogo stick.

It’s the usual pandemonium, but I can’t help but smile. I love my crew. Thankfully, rooms aren’t assigned by house, or I would never feel like I could be off duty and relax with my besties.

‘Babe, don’t overpack,’ Nelinha tells Ester, while stuffing more socket wrenches and mascara into her own bag. (Nelinha calls everybody babe. It’s just her thing.)

‘I need my index cards,’ Ester says. ‘And treats for Top.’

Yap! Top barks in agreement, trying his best to touch his nose to the ceiling.

Nelinha shrugs at me. What can you do?

She’s rocking a sort of Rosie the Riveter look today. Her lush brown hair is tied back in a green bandanna. The tails of her short-sleeved denim work shirt are knotted over her dark midriff. Her calf-length khakis are permanently stained with machine grease, but her make-up, as usual, is perfect. I swear, Nelinha could be crawling through the aquarium’s pump system or fixing a boat engine and she’d still manage to look fashionable.

Her eyes widen when she sees the black pearl at the base of my throat. ‘Pretty! Where’d that come from?’

‘Early birthday present from Dev,’ I say. ‘It, uh … belonged to our mom.’

Her lips form an O. My room-mates have heard all the tragic stories about my family. Between Nelinha, Ester and me, our dorm room is one of the world’s largest producers of tragic stories.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’ve got the perfect skirt and blouse to go with that.’

Nelinha’s great for sharing clothes and make-up. We’re more or less the same size, and we have the same skin tone – she’s Brasileira parda; my ancestry is Bundeli Indian – so she can usually fix me up nicely for a school dance or a Saturday furlough in town. But today is not that kind of day.

‘Nelinha, we’re going to be living on a boat for the weekend,’ I remind her.

‘I know, I know,’ says the girl who’s made herself up just for the bus ride to the boat. ‘But when we get back. Maybe for the end-of-year party!’

Ester stuffs one last bag of dog biscuits into her duffel bag.

‘OKAY,’ she announces. She turns in a circle, examining the room to see if she’s forgotten anything. She’s wearing her blue HOUSE ORCA T-shirt and flower-patterned shorts over a one-piece swimsuit. Her face is flushed. Her frizzy blond hair has been blown in three different directions. I’ve seen pictures of her as a baby: pinchable plump cheeks, wide blue eyes, a startled expression, like What am I doing in this universe? She hasn’t really changed much.

‘I’M READY!’ she decides.

‘Volume, babe,’ Nelinha says.

‘Sorry,’ Ester says. ‘Let’s go! We’ll miss the bus!’

Ester hates being late. It’s one of the anxieties Top is supposed to help her manage. How Top could make anybody feel less anxious, I’ve never understood, but he’s the cutest emotional-support animal you’ll ever meet. Part Jack Russell, part Yorkie, part tornado.

He sniffs my hand as he follows Ester out. Maybe I didn’t clean all the squid juice from under my fingernails.

I grab the go bag I packed last night. I’m not taking much: change of clothes. Wetsuit. Dive knife. Dive watch. None of us knows what the weekend trials will be like. They’ll be mostly underwater (duh), but the upperclassmen won’t tell us anything specific. Even Dev. They take their vows of secrecy very seriously. It’s annoying.

I rush to catch up with my friends.

To get to the quad, we have to go downstairs and pass through the eighth-grade wing. For a long time, I thought this was an annoying interior-design flaw. Then I realized the dorms must have been arranged like this on purpose. It means the chum have to get out of our way several times a day, looking at us freshmen with expressions of fear and awe. For our part, every time we pass through, we can think As lowly as we are, at least we’re not these poor schmucks. They all seem so small, young and frightened. I wonder if we looked like that last year. Maybe we still look like that to the upperclassmen. I imagine Dev laughing.

Outside, the beautiful day is heating up. As we hurry across campus, I think about all the classes I’ll be missing because of our trip.

The gymnasium: six climbing walls; two rope courses; hot and cold yoga rooms; courts for basketball, racquetball, volleyball and bungee ball (my favourite). But Fridays are for martial arts. I’d be spending my morning getting thrown into a wall during malaa yuddha matches. I can’t say I’ll miss that.

The aquarium: the largest private research facility in the world, I’m told, with a better variety of marine life than Monterey Bay, Chimelong or Atlanta. We operate rescue-and-rehabilitation units for leatherback turtles, otters and sea lions (all of whom are my precious babies), but today would be my day to scrub the eel tanks, so see ya!