The Art of Not Breathing(27)
“Come on. We need to get you dry.”
“No. I want Dillon.”
“Well, Dillon’s over there. He’s probably with all the dolphins because he’s not splashing about making a racket. Get up.”
Eddie doesn’t move. I reach down and take his hand. It’s even colder than mine.
“I want fins!” he shouts at me.
Then everything goes blurry.
I toss the rock and bolt.
Tay is right behind me as I surface.
“Hey, you’re supposed to give me the signal,” he says, oblivious to my panic. “But nice one! How did it feel? You did pretty well.” He checks his watch. “Fifty seconds—nearly a whole minute.”
I’m not even listening to him. I’ve got to know what I just saw on the bottom. As soon as I’ve got my breath back, I’m swimming toward the boat attached to that anchor, toward the shoe.
“Elsie, wait! What’s wrong?”
He catches up with me, and even though I’ve only swum a few feet, I’m exhausted.
“There’s something down there,” I gasp.
“Like what?” He looks alarmed.
“I don’t know. It’s probably just some rubbish.”
Tay doesn’t laugh or say I’m crazy. He tells me to swim to the wall and wait by the ladder.
“Off to do my environmental bit,” he says, and dives down.
He takes forever to come back up. The rain has lessened a bit, but the sky is still thick and low. I keep telling myself that it wasn’t a shoe, and even if it was, it wouldn’t be Eddie’s. Why would Eddie’s shoe be in the harbor?
Tay bursts through the water.
“One moldy trainer.” He holds it up by the laces for me to see.
My eyes adjust. A white trainer.
But it isn’t Eddie’s. It’s far too big—I see that now. The leather tongue is green from the scum at the bottom. Some kind of shelled creature falls out, and I feel bad that we’ve destroyed its home.
I want to ask if he saw anything else down there, but my teeth are chattering and I just want to be warm. My arms feel weak as I climb the ladder, but Tay is behind me pushing me up, and I don’t even care that he’s touching my backside.
“Come on—in the boathouse. Let’s warm up.”
“I want to go home.”
My voice shakes with cold.
“You know, fifty seconds isn’t bad for your first attempt. Well, it’s kind of your second attempt.”
He slips an arm loosely around my shoulder and does a sort of ministroke of my arm before pulling away.
Only fifty seconds? Time is playing tricks on my mind again. Those memories of Eddie struggling against me seemed to last forever.
“Are you okay?” he asks, finally noticing that I might not be.
For one crazy moment I want to tell him everything. But if I do, he might not take me back in the water, and I can’t stop now. Even though the things I’m remembering about that day aren’t good, at least I’m remembering. Now I know that Eddie and I were arguing before he disappeared.
“I have to get to school,” I say.
“Skip school. Spend the day with me.” I love the way he says it, like it’s the most natural thing to suggest.
“Another time!” I shout back as I start for home, my thoughts racing. Tay wants to spend the day with me.
The house is empty when I get back. In the shower I lather myself in lime and tea tree oil shower gel, and let the cool water cleanse every inch of me. I shake the new memory from my head and instead concentrate on how good the water felt before I saw the shoe. I pretend I’m falling down a waterfall, imagining my hair fanning out the way Lila Sinclair’s does in that poster at the clubhouse. I imagine Tay’s arms around me as I lean back into him. I think about the water on his eyelashes, and the way he shakes his hair off his face. By the time I get out of the shower, my fingers are wrinkly but my skin is glowing and tingling.
9
IT’S NOT UNTIL I HEAR THE ENTIRE ENGLISH CLASS SNIGGERING that I realize I’ve been asked a question by Mrs. McIntyre. There’s no way I can fake the answer: I switched off as soon as we entered the classroom. I decide to be honest. I use my mother’s technique.
“Sorry, I was miles away. Can you say that again?” I wave my hand from side to side as an apology and give a little smile.
There’s more cackling, and someone to my left slides a piece of paper in front of me with something scribbled on it. I scrunch it up and shove it in my pocket. McIntyre isn’t amused. I get my second detention of the week for not listening.
As I leave the classroom, Lara taps me on the shoulder.
“Why didn’t you read my note? It had the answer on it.”
Before I can answer, she’s pulled away by a blond frizzy-haired girl, another one of Ailsa Fitzgerald’s sidekicks. “Don’t bother trying to help her,” whispers the sidekick. “She’s such a loser.” The girl steps toward me and I feel a sharp jab in my side. She flashes her geometry-class compass at me as she strides off, dragging Lara with her. Blood oozes through my white school shirt and makes a dark stain on the inside of my blazer. I press the wound with my thumb to stop the sting and the flow of blood. On the way home I’ll swing by the Co-op to get some stain remover, but I’ll have to wait until that busybody Mrs. Harys has finished her shift. She watches too closely, and she does the head-tilting thing and says my name loudly in front of all the customers, which results in more head tilting.