by Ann Bryant
“Excellent, Grace. Knees bent a little more…” And just as Mrs. Mellor said that I distinctly heard a giggle from behind me, but I deliberately didn’t turn round. I felt a bit stupid standing in this position, but there was nothing I could do because Mrs. Mellor was carrying on. “Now, this next bit is when you fling your arms and body forwards in order to enter the water as far down the pool as possible.”
I wasn’t sure whether Mrs. Mellor meant me to actually do the dive, so I just bent my knees slightly more, which meant sticking my bottom out a bit to make myself perfectly ready, and this time the giggle was so loud that I straightened back up instantly and turned round. The Elmhurst girls had gone a bit pink and were trying to keep their faces straight. I glanced at the girls waiting at the next-door block. It was Felissia and her friend Cassie and they were both smirking.
“What’s amusing you, girls?” Mrs. Mellor asked impatiently.
Felissia’s mouth instantly stopped grinning but you could still see a mocking amusement in her eyes. At least, I could. Cassie was looking down. The girls from Elmhurst looked embarrassed now and everyone else just looked puzzled, even Bibi and Hannah.
I demonstrated again and this time I had to actually dive in, but it wasn’t my best because I definitely heard someone snigger and it put me off. Mrs. Mellor said my dive was absolutely fine, though, which made me feel a bit better. Still, I couldn’t work out why people had been giggling. Did I look funny with my bottom sticking out? Surely we all looked the same in that position, but when the others tried it I noticed there wasn’t any laughter. I tried to forget about it for the rest of the session, but didn’t really succeed until the end when we were each given a pair of small flippers. It felt brilliant going so much faster than usual and, as Mrs. Mellor said, it really did help us with our strokes.
In the changing room Evie was a bit hyper telling me about the presents she’d received at Chinese New Year, but she suddenly stopped her excited flow and I wondered what was the matter. “Look, Grace! There’s a hole in the back of your swimsuit. I’ve just spotted it in the mirror.”
I craned my neck round to look in the mirror and saw with horror that she was right. There in the middle of the bottom of my swimsuit was a definite hole. I moved to the far end of the changing room, quickly wrapped my towel around me, and pulled the costume off to have a proper look. My stomach turned over as I realized it wasn’t just worn out, it had been cut with a pair of scissors.
“Let’s see,” said Evie, coming over a moment later, but I’d already wrapped my costume up in my towel by then.
“Oh, it’s nothing much,” I said as lightly as I could. “I caught it on the corner of my drawer and pulled it a bit violently!” I tried to force out a giggle. “My own stupid fault. Thank goodness Katy’s good at sewing!”
Evie was only just smiling. “You seem pretty relaxed about it, Grace! I’d be going mad if that was me.”
I hoped my loud heartbeat wasn’t giving away how I felt. “Well, I’ve had this swimsuit for ages, and I’ve got another one, so…”
She nodded and carried on rubbing her hair while I glanced across at Bibi, who was keeping herself to herself and not taking any notice of anything going on around her. I looked at the girls from Elmhurst who had giggled when I was demonstrating the diving technique. I could hear them talking to two other girls from their house about entering the programme design competition. My eyes moved round to Felissia, who was carefully folding her clothes, and I thought back to how she and Cassie had smirked at me. I was shivering by then.
Jess came to meet me after the squad session, and we walked towards Hazeldean with Evie. I found myself tensing up, worrying that Evie might mention the hole in my costume. I knew Jess would want to see it. And then she’d be sure to insist on marching me to Miss Carol to explain about the messages and everything.
At first it was easy to keep the conversation away from swimming squad because Jess wasn’t in the mood for talking. She’d linked her arm through mine and was strolling along, staring at the sky.
“It looks like marble with veins of steel in it, doesn’t it?” she said in her soft voice.
“Why don’t you get your camera and take a picture, Jess?” I asked on a burst of inspiration.
“I don’t think it’d work. The light’s not good enough.” She suddenly seemed to snap out of her dreamy mood. “Anyway, how was swimming squad?”
“Brill!” said Evie. “We got to wear flippers. Not those great big things – little ones that feel like an extension of your legs. It was cool, wasn’t it, Grace?”
“Yeah…great! What did you do in art, Jess?”
“I worked on my entry for the swimming gala programme, but I don’t want to say what it is till it’s finished.” Jess grinned at Evie and changed the conversation back to swimming squad. “Flippers? You lucky things. Why don’t we get to wear flippers in ordinary swimming lessons?”
“You ought to ask,” said Evie.
I urgently wanted to get away from this swimming talk. “Can’t I see your competition entry, Jess? I bet it’s brill.”
“You can when it’s finished,” said Jess. Then she stopped and smiled into the distance and I thought she’d be thinking about her design, but it turned out she was picturing us all in our flippers. “I bet you were like a shoal of little fishes gliding up and down!”
“Yes, and one fish had a hole in its swimsuit!” said Evie, pointing to the top of my head dramatically.
My heart sank as the smile dropped off Jess’s face and she turned to me. “Oh no! How did that happen?”
I rolled my eyes as though I was cross with myself. “I think it was when I yanked it out of my drawer…”
“An actual hole, though?”
I nodded and shrugged. “Never mind, I’ve got my other costume.”
“Gotta go, folks!” said Evie, turning off down the little lane that led to Oakley House. “See you later!”
As soon as she’d gone, Jess wanted to see my swimming costume and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I knew something was making you anxious, Grace,” she said, as she poked her finger through the hole. “I could feel you all tense as we were walking. And no wonder.” Her frown deepened. “Look, it’s right in the very middle. Are you sure this happened when you pulled it out of your drawer? It looks to me like it’s been cut with scissors.” Her eyes softened as she turned to me. “Did everyone see it?”
I gave up trying to pretend I wasn’t bothered and started explaining about the girls from Elmhurst giggling, and Felissia and Cassie smirking when I’d had to demonstrate the racing dive. “It doesn’t mean it was them who did it,” I quickly added. “They might have just been laughing because the hole looked funny.”
Jess looked furious. “Laughing’s bad enough, but I can’t believe that anyone could be so nasty that they’d actually ruin someone’s costume,” she said in a hiss. “You’ve absolutely got to tell Mrs. Mellor or Miss Carol now, Grace.”
“I don’t want to,” I blurted out. “I can’t prove anything…”
“But it’s not just a couple of messages any more…”
A horrible guilt swept over me. Jess would have been even more shocked if she’d known about my sweatshirt and the other messages that I’d seen in secret. My guilt mingled with big alarm. It worried me so much when there was talk of telling teachers. “But the messages might not have anything to do with this,” I pointed out.
Jess wasn’t listening. “I’ve just thought of something,” she said in a breathless voice. “Someone’s actually been in our dorm. How else could they have got hold of your swimsuit? Do you think it was during Chinese weekend?”
I shivered, hating the conversation. The more we talked about messages and holes, the worse it all seemed. But Jess was determined to get to the bottom of it.
“Come on. Let’s see what the others think.”
She started to walk off, but I grabbed her arm and spoke really urgently. “No, Jess. I don’t w
ant the others to know.”
“Why not?” She was looking at me as though I was mad.
“Because they might tell…someone, thinking it’s the best thing to do, even if I told them not to…”
Jess was silent, her whole expression set in a question mark, so I gabbled on, trying to convince her that it was best to keep it to ourselves. “There’s no proof of who’s been messaging and who’s done this hole and whether it’s the same person, and there’s no way to find out. I don’t want big announcements in assembly or anything like that. I’d feel stupid after the stuff about my stopwatch going missing. If I just ignore it all, maybe it’ll just go away. Promise me you won’t say anything, Jess.”
A look of major alarm had come over Jess’s face as I’d been talking and I had to wait for ages before she eventually nodded and sighed. “Well, if you’re sure…”
“Yes, I’m certain.”
“But what’s going to happen next?”
“Nothing. I’ll wear my spare costume and act normal. I don’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of thinking they’re upsetting me. I just want to find out for definite who it is who hates me so much…”
Jess suddenly looked at me with dark eyes. “It’s their problem if they hate you, you know. And I think it’s cool how sensible and strong you’re being, Grace! And actually, thinking about it, sooner or later, the bully is sure to give themselves away. We just have to wait.”
We walked the rest of the way to Hazeldean in silence, each in our own little worlds. Torpedo Gal and Huggy Bear were on a mission to humiliate me and stop me from swimming. Jess thought I was sensible and strong, but right now I felt sick. How could I carry on pretending I wasn’t bothered when inside I was hurting so much?
When it came to the swimming lesson on Friday, Katy and Naomi both asked why I wasn’t wearing my other swimming costume and I just said I felt like a change. Then Katy said the turquoise colour really suited me, which was nice of her.
Going through to the pool I noticed Hannah was sitting in the spectators’ area, talking to Mrs. Mellor, so she’d obviously been given permission not to swim. Katy and Naomi hardly gave her a second glance, just slithered into the water, doing over-the-top gasps about how cold it was. They seemed to have completely forgotten about the “skinny loser” message that Georgie had seen. I was glad. It helped me to kid myself that everything was normal. But as I swam to the deep end, I started to feel even more uncomfortable with Hannah watching me than when she was swimming too.
The whole lesson was devoted to backstroke. I wasn’t very good at it, because I kept on going off course like Evie had done in swimming squad. At one point I actually swung my arm back and hit someone by mistake.
“Oh sorry!” I said, before I’d seen who it was. “Are you all right?”
I got a shock to find it was Bibi, but surprisingly she didn’t look cross. “It’s okay. You only hit my shoulder.” I was on the point of carrying on swimming again when she said, “Grace…?”
“Yes.” I kept my face completely straight even though I was dreading her saying something horrible.
“Nothing…”
I couldn’t stop thinking about that for the rest of the lesson, wondering what Bibi had been going to say. Then, as we trooped out to the changing room at the end, I heard someone ask Bibi what was the matter with Hannah.
“She’s not feeling well,” Bibi replied.
I glanced at Hannah. She was sitting very still and just kind of staring into space. I’d never seen her looking like that before. Kind of…lost. Maybe my plan was working and she’d realized her nasty bullying was having no effect at all on me, so now she didn’t know what to do. I hoped I was right. It made me feel strong.
That evening I e-mailed my family and when I’d finished I tried to make myself simply leave the computer room, but my curiosity was just too great and before I knew it I’d gone into the chat room and typed in Georgie’s password. Just this once, I promised myself. Just this one last time.
Immediately I took a sharp breath at the sight of the name Torpedo Gal. She wrote: Hia babz. Missing you. Then Huggy Bear wrote: That’s the missing link. My heart turned over as I realized what was happening. First there were messages about holes and next thing a hole suddenly appeared in my swimsuit. Now there were messages about something missing. I felt myself trembling. That meant something was about to go missing. “Like what?” I asked the empty room.
I closed my eyes as I guessed the answer to that question. Then I opened them wide.
No, surely they wouldn’t actually steal my swimming costume?
Chapter Seven
A minute later I was racing downstairs to the drying room in the basement. My whole body was shaking, and I couldn’t help thinking about the time when my sweatshirt had gone missing. And now here I was again, but this time it felt worse. I was so sure I was going to find that my swimming costume had disappeared. We all hang our costumes in the drying room when we don’t actually want to put them into the laundry, and when I got there I rushed to the far corner where I’d left mine earlier. I nearly cried with relief to see that it was still there. It wasn’t quite dry but I didn’t want to take any risks, so I grabbed it quickly and went up to the dorm.
Mia was reading on the bed. I was about to put my costume in the drawer where I always keep it when I realized I had to be more careful now, so when I was sure Mia was definitely absorbed in her book, I stuffed the costume in one of my big dressing-gown pockets. I was quite pleased with that hiding place. No one could ever think of looking for it there. Then I wondered whether it might be easier to just keep it in my school bag and walk round with it all through the day, but that wouldn’t work because we have to leave our bags outside the dining hall when we go for meals.
The next day I nipped back to Hazeldean whenever I could get away from the others without drawing attention to myself. I would stick my hand inside my dressing-gown pocket with a racing heart, and breathe a huge sigh of relief as my fingers touched the costume. Then on Sunday morning I decided to go swimming before breakfast. I chose that time because I was pretty sure there’d be hardly anyone there.
Jess was still half asleep in bed. “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked me in her sleep-mumble, as I call it.
“No, it’s okay,” I whispered. “See you at breakfast.”
One thumb appeared over the duvet, so I took that as a yes.
I was right about the swimming pool being practically empty. When I first got in, there were just four Year Nine girls swimming up and down. They’d spread right out and I felt like a bit of an intruder when I started swimming. They didn’t say anything, just all shifted up a bit to give me most of a lane to myself. I really wanted to practise backstroke but I didn’t dare in case I crashed into one of them, so I kept to front crawl and tried to breathe exactly how Mrs. Mellor had shown me. After a few lengths I felt myself get into a rhythm. There’s something brilliant about swimming before breakfast. My dad and I used to do it all the time, and I always remember him saying, “Sets you up for the day, Grace, doesn’t it? And the breakfast tastes ten times better afterwards!”
I think I’d done about ten lengths when Bibi got into the pool and Hannah went to sit in the spectator area again, looking fed up. My spirits instantly sank and I wished I hadn’t bothered to come. I’d been just starting to enjoy my training and now it was all spoiled. Surprisingly they both gave me a half smile, but I didn’t give one back because I couldn’t trust that the smiles were genuine. Bibi got in the same lane as one of the Year Nines and started doing perfect backstroke without ever straying out of the lane. I so wished I could do that.
After a few minutes one of the Year Nines stopped swimming, then as soon as the other three finished their next length all four of them got out, breathing heavily and quietly saying, “Well done,” to each other. Which just left me and Bibi. I could feel her eyes on me as I carried on with my front crawl. I really wanted to change to backstroke, because it was the
perfect time to practise it now the pool was so deserted, but I wasn’t confident enough to do that in front of Bibi.
“Grace?” I turned to see her standing up at the shallow end, her shoulders rounded as though she was cold. My heart was beating faster than usual as I looked at her and waited. “I don’t suppose you could show me how to do a tumble turn, could you? I can’t seem to get the hang of it and I think Mrs. Mellor’s fed up with explaining it to me.”
My first thought was that this was a trick, but I saw that she was sucking her lips in and looking really worried. “Er…yes…I suppose…”
I glanced at Hannah as I swam towards Bibi. She was looking down at her hands in her lap.
“You…you have to try not to break the rhythm of the stroke…”
Bibi nodded. I shot another quick look at Hannah, half expecting her to be smirking to herself, but she was leaning forwards now with an interested look on her face.
“So you work out which is your best arm to push yourself down into the somersault,” I carried on hesitantly, “and…” Bibi kept nodding and frowning. I couldn’t believe she was listening to me so intently. “…and be ready with that arm when you’re nearly at the side, but make sure you leave yourself enough turning time.”
“Shall I try it?” said Bibi.
“Yes. I’ll watch you from the side.”
So I got out and sat with my knees drawn up. Bibi used her left arm to push down, but I noticed she held her nose with the other hand, and I realized instantly that that was the problem.
“You see, I’m rubbish,” she said, coming back to the surface and treading water.
“You’re not,” I quickly said, forgetting all about messages and holes for a moment. “It’s just that you’ve got to try to do it without holding your nose.”
She looked a bit shamefaced. “I know. Mrs. Mellor keeps telling me that. I tried it once, only the water went up my nose and really hurt, then afterwards I was spluttering so much I decided never to try it again.”
