Invisibly Breathing

by Eileen Merriman

  Sasha, on her back now, stretches her arms above her head and laughs up at me.

  ‘So that’s how you distract your opponents — by flattering them?’

  I smile and hold out my hand. ‘I reckon it’s true, though,’ I say, pulling her back onto her feet, just like I did to Felix last week.

  I wonder what he’s doing today. If only I’d asked for his phone number last night.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, but we’re meant to be changing partners,’ Ethan says behind me.

  Sasha lets go of my hand. ‘He’s all yours. Nice to meet you, Bailey.’

  Once we’re wrestling on the mat, Ethan says, ‘You’re a bit of a flirt, aren’t you, Hunter?’ He’s got one arm around my neck, the other holding my arm locked between his legs. I arch up on my legs and flip him onto his back.

  ‘Just b-being friendly,’ I say.

  ‘Whatever,’ he sing-songs, and I roll my eyes at him.

  OK, so maybe I was flirting, a bit. I’m not immune to girls. Sometimes I like girls quite a lot.

  But sometimes I like guys more.

  I bike home slowly, the warm wind swirling around me. I’m thinking about asking Rick to waive my judo fees in exchange for helping with teaching the juniors, like I did at my old club. I’m thinking about how much easier life would be if I just stuck to girls, like Sasha and Olivia.

  I’m thinking about Felix, and how I can’t get him out of my head for even an hour. Maybe I can find him on Facebook and message him that way.

  I approach a park with a rusty-looking slide and a couple of limp swings. A chubby toddler is being pushed on the swings by a bored-looking teenager smoking a cigarette, but otherwise it’s deserted. I mount the pavement and leave my bike lying on its side in the grass, then sit under a tree and take my phone out of my pocket.

  I haven’t checked my Facebook account for ages. Ignoring the notifications, which are mostly crap like people wanting to poke me, I type Felix Catalan into the search bar. A few profile pictures come up, including a tattooed guy in his twenties, and an overweight middle-aged guy. None of them even remotely resembles Felix, let alone lives in New Zealand.

  Sighing, I turn my attention to the notifications. None from either Dog or Olivia, as expected. I’ve got a feeling they both unfriended me after last year. There’s a message from Joe, though: hey how’s it hanging down in the hood? Usually that would make me smile, but thinking about the whole business with Dog and Olivia has deflated my happy balloon.

  I lie back in the grass and close my eyes. Trying not to think, to remember, but it’s all coming back to me now — every last, painful, detail.

  Olivia and I were practically inseparable for three months; my first real relationship. But I had to go and ruin it, just three days before we left for Wellington.

  I should have just kept my mouth shut.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  Why did I wait until after Olivia and I had finished making out before announcing that? I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to convince myself that I was still attracted to girls.

  I am, I am.

  ‘Like what?’ Olivia was lying on her side in the grass, facing me. Her bracelets shimmered in the sunlight when she raised her arm to push the hair out of my eyes. On the beach below, waves thundered into shore, sea spray crackling through the hazy air.

  I turned my head, trying to think of a good way to tell her I’d cheated on her. Yeah, right.

  ‘Um, so I kind of messed around with someone else,’ I blurted. Maybe some guys can cheat on their girlfriends and never tell them — hell, I know plenty who would. But it felt like something rotten inside me that needed to be expunged.

  Olivia sat bolt upright. ‘What do you mean, messed around?’

  I sat up, too, so fast my head started spinning. ‘As in, I hooked up with someone,’ I mumbled.

  Olivia sucked in a mouthful of air. I could practically feel the pressure drop around me.

  ‘So what, did you kiss her?’ And when I didn’t say anything, ‘What, you had sex?’

  I held up my hands. ‘No, it wasn’t — no, we d-d-didn’t have sex. God!’

  ‘If you’d wanted to do it,’ Olivia said, her voice rising, ‘you could have just told me. I never said I didn’t want to, did I? You’re the one who said we should wait.’

  ‘It was nothing to do with that.’ I felt hot and clammy, as though I was about to faint. ‘Look, it wasn’t another girl, OK?’ As if that would make it any better. A stupid part of me thought it might.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her mouth fell open. ‘Oh my God, you’re gay?’

  ‘No. It was just something that happened, OK? It’s not g-going to happen again. It was just a mistake. I thought you should know, and now you’re over-react—’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Olivia yelled when I tried to take her hand. ‘I can’t believe you’ve been lying to me this whole time.’

  A hollow space opened up inside my chest.

  ‘No, Liv, God — I meant everything I said. We can move on f-from this, can’t we?’ But I could see from the expression on her face that wasn’t going to happen. She was looking at me like I was something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe.

  That’s when she said the words that have been festering inside me ever since.

  You are disgusting. People like you are disgusting and perverted.

  I guess I should count myself lucky Olivia only outed me as the guy who cheated on her. Perhaps she felt dirty by contamination, kissing a guy who’d made out with another guy. She never told anyone I cheated on her with someone of the same sex, and I wasn’t about to set them straight. It was all over Facebook, and I lost a few friends. But I know if everyone knew what really happened, my life wouldn’t be worth living.

  I’ve learnt my lesson. Next time, this time, has to be a secret.

  CHAPTER 7

  FELIX: CHAOS THEORY

  On Sunday morning, I have to wait until Mum and Alfie are out before I can let loose. After applying super-thick mascara and eyeliner, I blast Green Day through the speakers in the lounge and practise some moves with my guitar. I even knot a red tie over my black t-shirt and wear Coke’s brother’s black jeans, which I washed yesterday but haven’t returned yet. He’ll never know.

  When I look in the mirror, I look better than I thought I would. I take a selfie to look at later, once I’ve reverted back to my usual boring appearance. After that I have a long shower, watching the black make-up stream off the end of my chin. Then I start thinking about how Bailey put his hand on my arm the other night, and before I know it I’m having some freak fantasy with a Bailey-Batman amalgamation, and that’s enough said about that.

  Showers are a good place for fantasies like that.

  On Sunday afternoon, Coke calls around to drop off the stuff I left at his house on Friday night. It’s grey and windy outside, drizzle clinging to the windows, so we sit in my room eating salt and vinegar chips.

  ‘So, are you and Krusty together now?’ I’m sitting on the floor, leaning against my closed door, while Coke sits cross-legged on my bed, cradling his trademark bottle of Coke.

  ‘I dunno.’ Coke twists off the bottle cap, letting out a hiss of gas that reminds me of Friday night. Ugh, I don’t know if I’m going to drink Coke again in a hurry, let alone rum. ‘She let me kiss her, so maybe.’

  ‘Huh.’ I want to ask him what it was like, since I’m a kissing virgin and all, but I don’t want to remind him of that fact. ‘At the party?’

  ‘No, when we were at the movies last night.’ He lets out a long, sinuous burp. ‘Where did you take off to on Friday night, anyway?’

  I glower at him. ‘I came home. Duh.’

  ‘Saw you walking off with Bailey Hunter.’ Coke picks a Homer Simpson minifigure off my windowsill and fiddles with its arms.

  ‘So? He was walking home too.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that sounds boring,’ Coke says, as if he was expecting to hear that Bailey and I got up to something c
razy on the way home. I wonder what he’d say if I told him the truth, which is that it wasn’t boring because we talked about the infinitude of siblings, and it wasn’t boring because every time his arm touched mine it felt like all my atoms were spinning away from each other. But I know that would be social death for someone who already has one foot in the grave, so I don’t.

  I turn my head, watching Coke fiddle with his phone. He taps on the screen and laughs.

  ‘Oh man, you have to watch this.’ He passes me the phone. It’s a YouTube clip of a black guy doing the moonwalk at Walmart, his feet gliding backwards over the floor like he’s walking on air. He’s pulling a shopping trolley and everything. For some reason, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. We watch it over and over, all eight seconds of it.

  After we’ve watched it twenty times, we decide to moonwalk in the hallway. We’re killing ourselves laughing when Alfie and Alex spill in the front door. They’ve obviously come straight from water polo practice, because their hair is wet and they stink of chlorine.

  ‘Are you drunk again?’ My brother asks, elbowing Alex in the side.

  I glare at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  Alex smirks. ‘My brother said you were off your face on Friday night.’

  ‘Your brother?’ I ask.

  ‘Joe.’ Alex takes a stupid fidget-spinner out of his pocket and gives it a twirl. ‘Everyone calls him Zero.’

  My stomach drops. Zero is Alex’s brother? How come I never knew that?

  ‘Who cares?’ Coke says behind me. ‘Everyone gets drunk once in a while. I think it was your brother I saw throwing up over Joel’s balcony on Friday night.’

  Alex looks delighted at this piece of information.

  ‘Seriously? He didn’t tell me that,’ he says. Now I look closer, I can see the resemblance between Alex and Zero. They’ve got the same ash-blond hair, the same lizard-green eyes.

  ‘Chur,’ Coke drawls, and we head back to my room to escape the little parasites.

  I take Homer off the bed, where Coke has so carelessly tossed him, and place him back on the windowsill.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, trying to sound casual. ‘I need to message someone, but I don’t have their number. What do you reckon I should do?’

  Coke picks up the now half-empty soft-drink bottle.

  ‘Message who?’

  ‘Um, Bailey. I need to get my physics notes back off him.’ Which is crap, but suddenly I don’t want to wait until tomorrow, when we might or might not get a chance to pass more notes to each other.

  Coke shrugs. ‘You can look him up on Fakebook, message him that way.’

  I snort. ‘Fakebook, you got that right. You know I hate that shit.’

  There’s a knock on the door and Mum peers in. ‘Oh, hello, Coke. Do you want to stay for dinner?’

  Coke picks up his bag. ‘Thanks Denise, but I’ve got an essay to write. See you.’

  I walk outside with him, closing the door behind me.

  ‘Hey Coke,’ I say, watching him lace up his shoes. ‘How do you know if—’

  Coke straightens up. ‘If what?’

  ‘Um, if a girl wants to kiss you?’

  Coke grins. ‘She keeps touching you, like this.’ He strokes my arm. ‘And she puts her face really close to you, like this.’ His salt and vinegar breath is hot on my cheek. ‘And then—’

  The door flies open. ‘You forgot this.’ Mum holds out Coke’s phone.

  ‘Thanks,’ Coke says, taking it. ‘See you tomorrow, Catalan.’

  Back inside, Mum says, ‘Felix … is there something you want to tell me?’

  I hesitate. Did she hear our hallway conversation about getting drunk before? Deciding denial is the best policy, I say, ‘There is nothing I want to tell you.’

  Which is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  I go back to my room and shift all the minifigures Coke has touched back to their original positions. He’s always messing with me like that.

  Monday starts well. I count one thousand steps to school exactly, and I’m not late. But Bailey doesn’t arrive in physics class before the bell rings. Ten minutes pass, then fifteen, and I realise he’s not coming to class at all.

  A leaden disappointment settles in my gut. I’d been hoping we could pass notes back and forth like in detention last Friday. Even getting my mark back on last week’s test doesn’t cheer me up much.

  Beside me, Bindi grimaces. ‘What did you get?’

  I sigh. ‘Ninety-three. How about you?’

  ‘About half that.’ Bindi snaps, like it’s my fault she failed her test.

  ‘I can help you,’ I say. ‘Before the next test.’

  Bindi groans and rests her head in her arms. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have taken physics.’

  I don’t say anything, but I can’t understand how she got it so wrong. The test was basically the same problems we did in class, with different numbers inserted.

  ‘Well,’ I say, thinking back to my conversation with Zero the other night, ‘it’s better than zero, right?’

  That’s when the girl in front of me turns around and says, ‘Oh, I heard all about you last Friday night.’

  My tongue plasters itself to the roof of my mouth. It’s Molly Riordan — how come I didn’t spot her before? Probably because she’s put pink streaks through her blonde hair and now it looks like someone puked on her head.

  Bindi raises her head. ‘What did you hear?’

  Molly pushes a vomity strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Zero posted a video of Felix on Facebook. It was hilarious.’

  My heart starts beating so fast I worry I’m going to go into cardiac arrest. A video? Was that what Zero was doing when he asked me to walk the line the other night?

  ‘What sort of video?’ Bindi’s voice is icy.

  ‘Zero gave Felix a four out of ten on the Dare Difficulty Scale, because it only took four sips to get him drunk,’ Molly says, and the mousy girl beside her starts laughing out loud.

  Mr Campell’s Scottish burr rumbles through the air.

  ‘Quiet over there.’ He’s standing beside the whiteboard, his watery eyes on us. But I can’t be quiet, not when there’s a supernova exploding behind my eyelids.

  ‘That asshole!’ I leap to my feet, swiping my pens and folder off the bench. ‘That fucking turd, I’ll kill him!’ My voice reverberates around the room. For a moment there’s silence. All I can hear is the frantic beating of my heart.

  It starts with a whisper, then a giggle. Gradually the noise expands to fill the room, their words clanging in my head like cymbals.

  Freak-out Felix. Crazy Catalan.

  I want to yell back at them, but I know it won’t do any good. It’s what they want, and I won’t give them the pleasure.

  I scoop my things off the floor, pick up my bag and walk out.

  When I get home, I head straight for my bedroom. There I turn circles, faster and faster, until I tumble onto the floor, my head spinning. Lying back, I stare at the rotating ceiling, wondering how I let this happen.

  What’s the dumbest bet you’ve ever made?

  Just put one foot in front of the other, heel to toe. Go on, I dare you.

  I should have known he was up to something.

  Freak-out Felix. Four out of ten.

  I spring to my feet and yank open my desk drawer. The note is there, the note I’ve folded and unfolded so many times the creases are starting to wear thin.

  What were you doing by the river?

  Trying to find the perfect rock.

  If only I could send Bailey a note. But I don’t know where he lives, only that it’s through the subway somewhere.

  So, even though it’s against all my principles, I open up the internet on my phone and search for Facebook. I set up a basic account, putting in the bare minimum of details. For the profile picture, I select a photo of Batman (the Christian Bale version of course). Then I click on the message icon and search for Bailey Hunter.

  His
picture comes up straight away. It’s obvious it’s him, because the guy in the picture is wearing a white judo suit with a brown belt tied around the middle. But now that I’ve found him, I have no idea what kind of message to send him.

  After several long minutes, I type: Amazing fact #1: We are all made of stardust. Less amazing fact #2: Two is the first prime number. Are you sick? FC.

  I want to delete the message. I don’t want to delete the message.

  I send the message. Then my phone starts ringing, and it’s Mum.

  I’m in deep shit.

  It’s an hour before Mum arrives home, an hour that I spend alternately freaking out that the vice principal called my mother to say I was AWOL, and worrying what Bailey’s going to think when he sees my message. And in between all of that, the words Freak-out Felix and Crazy Catalan hurtle around my head like dodgems.

  Chaos theory is my brain, complete with feedback loops and repetition. When Mum arrives home, I’m sitting in the gap between the end of my bed and my wardrobe, reciting triangular numbers. I don’t even see her until she’s standing right beside me, a series of lines carved into her forehead.

  Mum sits beside me, her shoulder touching mine.

  ‘It’s been quite a week, huh?’

  I don’t know what to say. I’m worried that if I open my mouth, all that will come out is a bunch of numbers. I press my lips together and nod my head.

  Mum sighs. ‘Yeah, me too.’ We sit there for another couple of minutes as the morning sun falls through the window.

  ‘Vivien told me there was an … argument.’ It sounds weird, Mum referring to the deputy principal by her first name. Everyone else calls her Coitus, because her surname is Curtis.

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’ If we were elephants, we’d be touching trunks right now. It’d be easier than trying to put into words what I wish Mum could just know, without me having to go through the pain of telling her.

  I kind of hate you right now but I wish we could go back to the way we were — before you and Dad broke up, when we were friends. Everyone at school thinks I’m crazy when all I wanted was to fit in for once in my life. But I’m starting to think that’s impossible.