The Art of Not Breathing(61)

I suck the stale air in as fast as I can, and then I pull myself out of the water and onto the rock. My headlamp shines down on my feet. They’re covered in blood from brushing against jagged rocks.

Oxygen gradually flows back through me as I climb the steps and edge my way across the narrow ledge to the throne. I reach in and feel the cool stones against my fingers. At first I pick them up slowly, feeling the weight of each one before dropping it into the water below. Then I grab the stones by the handful and fling them down, the popping echoing all around the cavern. There are so many stones, way more than I remember, and I have to balance on the side of the wall to reach into the bottom of the bowl. Finally I feel material in my fingers.

The T-shirt is hard and damp. In the darkness it looks gray, and for a second I think I’ve got it wrong and I’m relieved. But then I notice the lion. There’s no mistaking that this is Eddie’s T-shirt. I feel sick to think that I touched it back in June and thought it was just a piece of sea junk. I shudder as I remember Danny’s face the last time I was here in the cave. White, like he’d seen a ghost, right at the moment when I was up here looking at the stones. He must have something to do with this. Now I get why Danny was behaving so oddly that day: not wanting to go into the cave at the last minute, telling me to stay close to him. I was right; he was afraid—but not of the cave, of me finding something.

The words of Tay’s note roll around in my head. D, I need to talk to you about what happened that day. Tay.

D. D for Danny. Was this note meant for Danny, not Dillon? No, that doesn’t make sense.

With a spinning head and a pounding heart, I clutch the T-shirt and pencil jump off the ledge, praying that I don’t get lost on the way out. The water crashes around my head.

I’m back there again, the day Eddie died.

The wheels spin as Mum’s car screeches to a halt in the beach car park, sending stones and grit into the air. I run to the driver’s door and open it and hug her before she even has her seat belt off. She smells of salt and seaweed. Her white top is covered in chocolate cake mix.

“I came as soon as I got the call. Where is he?” she asks. “Have they found him?”

She fumbles with the seat belt, and as she swings her legs around, a piece of dried seaweed flies from her shoe and lands on the policeman behind me. He shakes his leg to get rid of it and then offers his hand to help her out of the car.

“Mrs. Main?” he asks. “We’re still searching for your son.”

She sounds like a dying cat in a faraway alleyway. The policeman leads her down to the beach. Her bare arms are pale and goose bumpy and I want to run to her and throw my coat around her. I follow them, silently, wondering if they see me or if I am missing too.

We stand on the tip of the Point, watching the coast guard launch the lifeboat. My father wanders along the beach behind the lighthouse, asking everyone who’s there if they saw anything. Then he stops and picks something up—a piece of clothing, or perhaps it’s just a bit of rubbish. He holds it up and inspects it. What is he doing? Why isn’t he in the water looking for Eddie? I point again in the direction of where Eddie was paddling, but no one is paying any attention. People are wading in the white froth, looking down, looking for little lost Eddie.

“Over there,” I say. Still no one listens. I make my way to the edge of the water but fall down onto the pebbles. Shaking, murmuring, I try to work out if I’m looking at the sea or the sky. There’s a loud crack of thunder and it keeps on going, vibrating through my head, and then I see my father’s feet moving across the pebbles, toward me. In his hand he has my mother’s blue coat. He throws it over me.

“Help, someone! I need help,” he cries. “She’s fainted.”





There’s the overhang. My legs, strong and powerful, propel me through the arch and out into the open water. Then I follow the moon’s reflection to get back to the surface. When I break through, I’m out farther than I thought, at least a hundred meters from the rocks, and the water out here is choppy. Rain stings my face as I swim back to shore, Eddie’s T-shirt clenched tightly in my fist.

Mum wasn’t wearing her coat when she arrived at the beach. And yet my father had it in his hands. Dillon was right. She must have been there on the beach earlier that day, and she’d left her coat behind.





5



THE WET GROUND SOOTHES THE CUTS ON MY FEET AS I WALK through the deserted high street, toward the harbor. It’s nearly nine p.m. when I get there.

Inside the boathouse, I find Tay leaning against the wall, his head shrouded in smoke.

“Shit, what happened?” His eyes are wide, and he holds out a blanket toward me. It’s like he’s moving in slow motion. Or maybe it’s me moving slowly.

I hold up Eddie’s T-shirt. It takes a few seconds, and then Tay groans.

“Where did you get this?” he asks, reaching out to touch it.

I don’t answer, because it’s a rhetorical question.

“I found your note,” I say. “Who is D? Danny? Dillon?”

“Your brother. I’m so sorry, El. I wanted to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” My voice is deep and shaky. “Please, I’m so confused.”

Tay grabs my hand, possibly to stop me reaching out and smacking him. He’s trembling.