Invisibly Breathing

by Eileen Merriman

  ‘Do you like ice cream?’ Lucy whispers, and I smile for the second time that evening.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She shrugs and nods towards the back door. ‘I’ll go if you will.’

  That’s how Lucy and I end up playing truant, sitting side-by-side on the swings in the park across the road from the cinema. The star-encrusted sky looms large above us, and for once there’s not a breath of wind.

  Lucy runs her tongue around the base of her ice cream. ‘I can’t believe we paid for that crap.’

  ‘Yeah, Coke owes me eleven dollars.’ I push off with my foot, counting each time I swing forward. One. Two. Three. Four.

  ‘Do you think they’ve noticed we’re gone?’ Lucy bites into her cone, the dry crunch splintering into my ears. I don’t know why I’m so sensitive to noise tonight. Correction, more sensitive to noise. There’s a cicada in the bushes to my left, going for it like it’s still summer.

  It’s March, you stupid insect.

  ‘Nah,’ I say, trying to focus back on the conversation. ‘They’re probably getting into each other.’

  She snorts. ‘Guess it’s cheaper than renting a room.’

  ‘They could make out in the car.’

  ‘If we weren’t there.’ Lucy finishes the rest of her ice cream in three bites, and starts pumping her legs on the swing. After gulping mine down, too, I join her in swinging higher and higher, opposing pendulums cutting through the autumn air.

  ‘Do you play anything else?’ Lucy asks.

  ‘Like what?’ I lean back as my swing reaches the top of the ascent, and feel a jolt as gravity pulls me back.

  There’s no gravity when I’m with you.

  Must stop thinking about Bailey.

  Can’t stop thinking about Bailey.

  ‘As in another instrument,’ she says.

  ‘Nope. Do you?’

  Lucy’s leaning back, too, her hair billowing behind her. ‘The drums.’

  ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘Like I said,’ she says, skidding to a stop, ‘you should come jam with me sometime. What music are you into?’

  So I tell her about Green Day, and she tells me about all the bands she’s into, which is a lot. I haven’t even heard of half of them.

  Lucy takes her phone out of her pocket. ‘There’s still half an hour to go. What do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I stand up, and wander towards the bushes. The deranged cicada is still chirping, although less frantically now. In the distance I can hear the Velcro-swish of cars going by, faint music.

  ‘I didn’t think you were going to be very interesting,’ Lucy says behind me.

  I turn around. ‘Me neither.’ She’s swirling her feet through the grass as if it’s water, her head bent. She moves closer, so close I can smell the vanilla-chocolate on her breath.

  ‘Do you want to make out?’

  I step back, my heart racing. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sighs, and sinks into the grass. ‘That’s good.’

  What the? Frowning, I sit down, too, but not too close, in case she’s messing with me and wants to make out after all.

  Lucy starts pulling out handfuls of grass. ‘I bet that’s what they think we’re doing.’

  ‘Probably.’ I pull out a single blade of grass and run it between my teeth.

  ‘Have you kissed a girl before?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. Have you?’ Before I can amend that to have you kissed a guy, which is what I actually meant, Lucy says, ‘Yeah.’ She puts her hand on my arm. ‘Don’t tell anyone, OK? God, I hardly even know you.’

  I look at her hand on my arm. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Good.’ Lucy withdraws her hand. ‘God,’ she says again, and lies back, her hands behind her head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘Actually, I just turned you down,’ I say, and she laughs. ‘Well,’ I add, ‘if you were a guy, then maybe I wouldn’t have. Turned you down, I mean.’ I lie back, too, running my hands over my flaming cheeks.

  ‘Hey, that’s hilarious. Lesbian Lucy, meet Faggy Felix.’

  ‘Huh,’ I say, and then I start laughing too. And the more I laugh, the more she laughs, until we’re both rolling around in the grass. I feel drunk, even though I haven’t touched alcohol since Joel’s party.

  ‘So,’ she says, once we’ve settled down to intermittent snorts, ‘have you got a boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, my heart clenching like a fist. ‘But some people kind of found out, or they think they have, and it’s — not great. You know?’

  Lucy sits up. ‘Are they making fun of you?’

  ‘It’s all over Facebook.’ Jesus, I’ve barely known her for three hours and I’m telling her my life story.

  ‘That sucks. How does your boyfriend feel about that?’

  I sit up too. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know about us.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I run my hands down the side of my face. ‘How about you? Have you got a girlfriend?’

  ‘Sort of. We’re trying to stay under the radar too. The girls at my school are total bitches about that kind of thing.’ She regards me for a moment. ‘Maybe we could cover for each other.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Lucy drapes her hair over one shoulder, like a rope.

  ‘Like, we could pretend to be a couple, so no one has any reason to think we’re anything but straight. And in the meantime we could make out with whomever we want.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I consider that for a moment. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Think about it,’ she says just as my phone starts beeping, a message from Coke: Are you having sex?

  No just rolling around in the grass, I text back. When I show Lucy, she starts laughing again.

  ‘I’m glad I met you, Felix,’ she says, standing up and holding out her hand to me. ‘I think we should hang out some more — what do you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, shaking her hand. ‘Yes, I’d like to.’

  CHAPTER 18

  BAILEY: THE MELTING OF DREAMS

  When I arrive home on Saturday afternoon, there’s an empty space where the caravan used to be. Even though I knew it was going to happen, it still feels as though someone’s punched me in the stomach. After dropping my pack on the ground, I lean against the side of the house for a couple of minutes and concentrate on my breathing. I’ve done that ever since I was little when I want to cry.

  ‘Bailey!’ Libby runs up to me and flings her arms around my legs. ‘Where did you go? I missed you so much.’

  I pick her up and hug her tight. ‘I missed you, too, Libs.’

  All I want to do right now is turn around and go straight back. Except I had my last can of food last night, and I’m absolutely famished. Also, I need to charge my phone and send Felix my message ASAP. He must be wondering if I dropped off the face of the earth.

  I nearly did, Five.

  ‘Bailey John Hunter.’

  I lower my little sister to the ground. Libby takes one look at Mum’s face and darts away, into the back yard. Mum crosses her arms.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Her voice is low and furious. I run a hand through my hair, thick with sweat and fragments of twigs and pine needles.

  ‘I needed some time out.’ I cast my eyes around. No sign of him yet. When I look back at Mum, she looks so angry I wonder if she’s going to slap me. Instead she points a finger at me, like she wants to jab a hole into the centre of my chest.

  ‘You are suspended, sonny, not on holiday. I’ve been telling your father you’re on camp, but you’re on your own now. You put one more foot wrong, and I’m telling him everything.’

  I grit my teeth. ‘I never asked you to lie for me.’

  Mum shakes her head and holds out her hand. ‘Phone, please.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. I’m confiscating your phone for the next week. And if you keep talking back, I’ll keep it for good.’ As I hand my phone over, s
he adds, ‘And don’t think you’re going anywhere until Monday.’

  ‘I d-don’t have a room anymore,’ I say. ‘In case you didn’t notice.’

  ‘You’re back with Jack and Harley,’ my mother says. ‘Now get inside and have a shower.’

  Fuming, I stomp inside and walk to Jack and Harley’s bedroom. Their bunk beds are stacked on top of each other once more, and my bed is pushed against the opposite wall. Everything I own, which isn’t much, is piled on top of my duvet — books, clothes, my manky school shoes, my crushed posters. I grip the doorframe, concentrating on my breathing again.

  Fuck.

  ‘Hey Bailey.’ Jack is standing behind me, tossing a tennis ball from one hand to the other. ‘How was camp?’

  ‘It was fine.’ One hundred times better than here. No, infinitely better. I push aside a pile of crap and sink onto my bed. Jack climbs up to the top bunk, using the windowsill for leverage because there’s no ladder.

  ‘Did you stay in a tent?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Actually, I slept beneath the stars. Last night it got really cold, and I kept waking up, shivering.

  But it was still better than here. In-fin-ite-ly.

  ‘I hung your calendar up,’ Jack says, pointing at the wall behind me.

  I turn, looking at Rangitoto Island and the fiery sky behind it, and sigh. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Will you take me with you one day, when you go bush?’

  ‘I didn’t go bush,’ I say, facing him again.

  ‘But when you do,’ he says, his eyes not leaving mine, as if he knows exactly where I’ve been. ‘Will you take me?’

  ‘Sure.’ I squint at him. ‘How’d you get that bruise?’

  Jack fingers his left cheekbone, averts his eyes. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Like hell it was.’ After shutting the door, I climb up beside him, my fatigued quads screaming for mercy. ‘When did he do that?’

  My brother’s eyes fill with tears.

  ‘I was fighting with Harley,’ he whispers. ‘On Thursday night.’

  ‘But Harley didn’t do that, right?’

  Jack shakes his head, the movement so slight it’s amazing I see it at all.

  ‘Asshole,’ I say. ‘That asshole.’

  ‘Don’t be angry.’ Jack is trembling all over. Jesus, I hate how he does this to us. Did Dad hit Jack because his usual punching bag, AKA me, wasn’t here? But I don’t want to scare Jack, so I choke it back, hot coals of anger searing the back of my throat.

  ‘I won’t let him hit you again,’ I say. It might be a rash promise, but it’s one I intend to keep.

  But this is the thing about hating my father. I can hate him for days on end, but then he does something nice, just one thing, and I start to wonder if I’ve got it all wrong.

  When I get out of the shower later that afternoon, Dad is sitting at the kitchen table, his hands cupped around a steaming mug of coffee.

  ‘How was camp, bud?’ His limbs are loose, his face relaxed. The fist inside my chest unclenches a little.

  ‘It was good.’ If I didn’t have the image of Jack’s bruised cheekbone in my head, I might have elaborated with something like we went kayaking, but I don’t have the energy. I head for the bedroom — it’ll never be my bedroom — but his voice catches me.

  ‘Interested in a job?’

  I turn, running a hand through my wet hair. This must be some kind of trick. What does he want me to do, weed the garden? Clear the gutters? And for what?

  ‘Got a mate who could do with some help at his service station,’ he says. I lean against the bench, noticing how Dad’s eyes rake over me.

  ‘Christ, I could swear you’ve grown an inch in the last few weeks,’ he says, smiling. I almost smile back. Almost.

  ‘When do I start?’ I ask.

  Dad gulps on his coffee. ‘Said I’d take you in at eight tomorrow morning. Murray wants someone to work all day on Sundays, free him up for some family stuff. You might be able to pick up more hours eventually, who knows?’

  ‘That’s awesome.’ I smile, then hate myself for smiling; hate myself for giving in so easily to Dad’s charms.

  Oh, but I do want this job, I do, I do.

  ‘Thanks,’ I add, suddenly worried I don’t sound grateful enough, that Dad will see a reason to take away the carrot he’s dangling in front of me.

  ‘Knew you’d like that.’ He wrestles his wallet out of his back pocket and hands me a pair of fifty-dollar notes. ‘Here. That’s for some new shoes. Can’t have you looking scrappy on the job, can we?’ He holds up a finger. ‘But I want the change, OK?’

  ‘Sure. Thanks.’ The fist in my chest clenches again. I know where that money came from. I wonder how much he got for the caravan, my caravan. Of course, it was never really mine. Nothing I own is really mine. But if I earn my own money, maybe that will change someday soon.

  Dad dumps his coffee in the sink, squeezing my shoulder as he walks past.

  Maybe he notices me flinch and maybe he doesn’t, I don’t know. But when he says, ‘I’m sorry about the caravan, bud,’ his voice sounds really odd, the same way it did when Harley got really sick with meningitis a couple of years ago.

  I nearly say, ‘It’s OK.’ If I said that, then maybe we could reverse some of the poison that’s sprung up between us these past few months.

  But it’s not OK, and I can’t say it.

  So I don’t.

  I’m not sure what to expect when I go to school on Monday. I don’t have my phone and our ancient laptop won’t connect to the internet, so I haven’t been able to message Felix to ask what’s happened with Zero.

  I think I know what I — we — need to do, though. I don’t like it, but I figure it’ll take the heat off us if we stay away from each other. At school, anyway.

  If only it were that easy.

  When I walk into physics first period, Felix is already there, sitting next to Bindi at the back of the room. It gives me a physical pain in my gut to look at him, with his hair all tousled and his mercury-grey eyes trying to catch mine. But I can’t let anyone see us trying to communicate, can’t let anyone sense what I’m really feeling inside.

  I really, really need to talk to you, and kiss you, and hold you, but we have to keep our heads down, Five. You have to understand. Invisibly breathing, remember?

  I walk up to the bench as slowly as I can and take my usual seat next to him.

  Don’t look at him. Don’t touch him. Don’t let him touch you.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  ‘Hey,’ I murmur, pulling my folder and pens out of my bag. ‘Hi, Bindi.’

  ‘Welcome back,’ Bindi says, and I lift my head to smile at her. Beside me, I can sense how Felix has tensed up, and it’s killing me.

  I’m sorry I haven’t messaged you but if you can just wait until we can be alone, then I can explain everything.

  I could write him a note. No, no, we can’t risk it. What if someone finds it?

  I swallow, and say to Bindi, ‘I hear Dallas has the lead in Macbeth.’ It’s old news, something I heard before I got suspended last week, but I can’t think of anything else to say. ‘He must be stoked.’

  Bindi rolls her eyes. ‘Oh yeah, he’s been quoting lines at me all weekend, talking about life being a walking shadow and all that.’

  ‘A tale told by an idiot,’ I say, mustering a smile.

  ‘I went to stay at my dad’s new flat this weekend,’ Felix says, but Mr Campbell saves me from replying by letting out a shrill whistle. The class falls silent. The clock above the door says it’s five minutes past nine, only five minutes past nine. How am I meant to get through the next fifty minutes?

  Ten excruciating minutes pass before Felix pushes a folded-over scrap of paper towards me. I slide it off the bench and push it deep into my pocket to read later, once I’m alone. Now I know why Felix counts, because I’m counting, too, every minute until the bell rings.

  At lunchtime I hang out with Wiremu and a couple of other gu
ys, shooting hoops and insulting the hell out of each other. It’s all going better than I thought, no sly comments or looks, until I walk into the guys’ loos at the end of the lunch break. Sam Birch is standing next to Henry Teoh at the urinal, talking loudly about how he scored some chick in the weekend. He breaks off once he sees me, and smirks at Henry.

  Jesus, I want to walk straight out again, but I know that’ll make things worse. Ignoring them, I walk to the far end, near the window, and try to pee.

  My bladder freezes. Great, just what I need.

  ‘Backs to the wall,’ Sam mutters, and Henry guffaws. I zip up and turn to face them.

  ‘What d-did you say?’

  Sam gives me a steely look back. ‘D-d-don’t know what you mean,’ he mocks, and I clench my fists.

  ‘Seen Zero lately?’ I ask, slowly, deliberately. Sam swallows, takes a step back.

  Yeah, you’re nervous now, dickhead.

  Not that I’m going to start a fight, not this time. But he doesn’t know that.

  ‘Hey, there’s the bell,’ Henry says, and they take off. Sighing, I face the urinal again, but at that moment the door swings open and Zero walks in. It’s like a B-grade movie, with me as the reluctant star. Zero doesn’t say a word, just walks into a stall and slams the door behind him.

  I shouldn’t say anything. But I can’t help myself.

  ‘Have a good shit, asshole,’ I say, and take my frozen bladder off to classics.

  Classical studies is my oasis in the middle of what’s shaping up to be a pretty crappy day. My teacher, Ms Dewbury, really likes me, probably because I’m the only student in the class who could quote a rhetorical question from ‘Aeneid’ in week one — quem non accusavi amens hominumque deorumque which means whom did I not accuse, both men and gods in my madness? My Latin teacher last year was big on Virgil, and that line stuck in my head. Also the one about the melting of a dream.

  I know all about the melting of dreams.

  We’re learning more Virgil today. The poetry’s so beautiful that it’s enough to distract me from thinking about Felix and what everyone’s saying about us behind our backs. By the end of the lesson, though, I’m busting for the pee I didn’t have earlier. I bolt to the loos and lock myself in a cubicle. When I’ve finished, I take Felix’s note out of my pocket, my stomach tumbling when I read his message.