The Art of Not Breathing(7)

“Thanks for the card, Dil.”

I try to sound chipper, even though it made me feel really sad and I spent the whole night pressing the knot in my stomach.

He shrugs. “Hurry up. We’ll be late.”

He’s always grumpy in the morning.

“You can go ahead without me,” I say.

Dillon thinks life is a race, but I don’t see the need for getting anywhere on time. It just means spending more time in places you don’t want to be. If life does turn out to be a race, I’m way behind, especially when it comes to school.

He waits anyway, looking at his watch anxiously. When I’m at the top of the stairs, I turn around and catch him frowning in the hall mirror. He pulls his shoulders back and sucks in his nonexistent stomach. He is so vain about his looks. He gets it from Mum.

Mum hands us each our packed lunch as we leave.

“Be good,” she says.

I wonder whether I should stay home with her, but my feet are carrying me out the door.

When we’re out of sight, Dillon takes his foil-wrapped sandwich and chucks it in the hedge.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because they’re disgusting,” he says, and pretends to heave. “I hate tomatoes.”

“Why do you lie so much? Don’t you feel bad about throwing them away?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?”

Dillon never answers my questions: I don’t expect him to anymore.

“Want one?” I say, holding out my packet of cigarettes while I scrabble in my pocket for a lighter.

“Where’d you get those? Dad’ll kill you if he finds out.”

“Screw Dad! He’d be more annoyed about you wasting food when there are so many starving children.”

Dillon doesn’t reply, but he helps himself to a cigarette and waits for the lighter.

“Where do you think he goes?” Dillon asks. “You know, when he leaves the house and doesn’t come back for ages. There’s no way that he could run for four or five hours.”

“I know exactly where he goes.” I take Dillon’s cigarette from him and light mine and his at the same time, like I’ve been doing it for years, then pass his back. Smoking is my new hobby.

Dillon turns to me, holding his burning cigarette away from himself. “Where does he go, then?”

I notice a snag in my trousers, and it turns into a hole when I inspect it, revealing my pale knee underneath.

“Nowhere. He just sits on a bench near the woods—by the duck pond.”

“Do you spy on everyone?”

“Aye.”

Dillon chokes on the smoke and pretends that he needed to cough anyway.

“You shouldn’t provoke him,” he says.

“Why do you always stick up for him? Are you scared of him or something?”

Dillon is quiet for a moment, pretending to suck on his cigarette. “No. I just think you could cut him some slack.”

“He could cut me some slack, especially on my birthday. Moping isn’t going to help Eddie, is it?”

Dillon flinches. We talk about most things, but we never talk about Eddie in public.

“Did you think about it yesterday?” I ask quietly.

“Think about what?”

“You know. That day.”

Dillon is quiet again, and I use the pause to smoke as much as I can.

“I thought about the day he chased after that dog,” he says eventually.

The memory makes me smile. The dog bolting out of the hedge with Eddie still hanging on to the leash and the owner going nuts.

“See? That’s a happy memory. You should’ve told that story yesterday. That’s what we should do from now on. We should tell funny Eddie stories. Like that time he got a pea stuck up each nostril.”

“That was your fault. He was copying you.”

“I know. But it was a hoot, though. At least until we had to go to hospital.”

We both giggle, but the image of Eddie with peas up his nose suddenly becomes too sad to bear.

“Dil, can I ask you a serious question?”

“Okay. But I might not answer. Especially if you’re going to ask me if I’m sad, because I’m fine.”

Dillon never admits when he feels sad. He always says he’s “fine.”

“No, a different question.” I lower my voice in case anyone is listening. “Have you ever had a flashback?”

“A what?”

“A flashback,” I repeat, louder. A bunch of S1s knock us out of the way to get past.

Dillon’s mouth hangs open for a second, the same way Mum’s does when she doesn’t want to answer.

“I don’t know what you—”

“Hey, knobhead!”

Dillon’s friends are across the road waving like lunatics. Even though Dillon’s a brainbox, he’s still in with the popular crowd. He has tons of friends at school. I don’t even know most of their names because they call each other by weird nicknames, or insults like bender or knobhead.

The boy calling him is very tall with spiked-up black hair. He always wears white Adidas trainers, even though no one is supposed to wear trainers to school.

“Dilmeister! Come on!” the boy shouts.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” Dillon says to me.