We’re a competitive squad. We’re only as good as our last swim. When I stand on the starting block at every meet, I know I can lose it all before I reach the opposite wall. The starting gun fires, and I rebuild my life in twenty-four seconds. I swim fifty metres freestyle, hit the wall, punch the air, and in return life’s good to me. That’s how it’s always worked.
And we planned for it to keep working. Me on the Aussie team, a medal at the Games and a bad pun on the back page of the paper like, RY-NAMITE! When we spoke about our futures, they were knotted. I’d get a sponsorship deal – multivitamins, probably. Isaac wanted more for me though. He said I had a ‘selling watches’ kind of face. ‘They pay the big bucks. You can afford to support my lifestyle then,’ he would joke, but in a way that was also completely serious.
Tumble turn. Another lap. Another two.
Isaac aspired to the groupie life. And I didn’t mind. Whatever I was given, I wanted to share with him. Like everything. He was the only person who knew, the only person I told. We didn’t keep secrets. We didn’t hide money for people without telling each other.
And what even was that? How does a guy like Miles get hold of so much money? Working weekends? No, it’s valuable study time. Besides, nobody hides their working-weekends money in a bag in someone else’s locker. This is bigger than that, dirtier. And Isaac didn’t just hide stuff, he got involved. Whatever went down, they were in on it together.
I collide with the wall. I grip the groove in the tiles with one hand and wipe the water off my face with the other.
‘What were you up to, Isaac?’ I whisper.
Csssh.
‘People don’t keep cash in bags.’ My eyes sting. I blink hard. ‘Were you guys in trouble?’
Csssh.
‘And you can’t just bail like this. We made plans.’ I’m not whispering any more; it’s a growl. It starts in my chest then I spit it out. ‘You’re supposed to be here, so wherever you are, come back. This isn’t over.’
I blink into the almost-darkness. Nothing. Well, not nothing: csssh.
My face crumbles and I sob.
I’m talking to an empty room. The absence of a reply shouldn’t upset me but it does. I can talk to Isaac as much as I like, but he’s never going to talk back. Mrs Evans tore a hole in my life this morning, and now that everything’s still, I can finally see it. And it’s getting bigger the longer I look at it.
The pendant lights hanging from the ceiling start to buzz and flicker. Someone’s here. I inhale in bursts and submerge. From under the lane rope, I watch the unnatural white light intensify. Is a PE teacher doing the rounds? A group of kids using the pool during lunch? The last thing I want is an audience.
There’s only so long I can stay under water. I edge up against the wall and rise slowly. If I break the surface quietly and sneak a breath, I might be able to –
Mum’s sitting on the starting block, carved from stone. ‘You can’t be down here without a teacher.’
‘Like I’m gonna drown.’
‘There are rules.’
‘What’s Kathy going to do? Expel me?’
‘Mrs Evans,’ she corrects. ‘And where are your goggles?’
‘My eyes are fine.’
I pull myself out of the pool and sit on the edge. I blow my nose between two fingers and flick it away. Mum’s quiet. I look back at her and she smiles slightly.
Enough to remind me she’s an army.
‘You okay, kid?’ she asks.
I shake my head.
Mum cancels my afternoon in the time it takes me to shower. No double Geography, no after-school laps, straight home. Driving out of the car park, Mum switches off the radio. It’s as sure a sign as any that she’s about to parent.
‘So,’ she begins, ‘how are we going to play this?’
I’m leaning against the passenger window, feeling the vibrations of the car against my head.
‘Would you rather we talk about it, or I distract you?’
‘Distract,’ I croak. I clear my throat and try again. ‘Distract.’
‘Right.’ Mum taps the steering wheel as she conjures up a distraction. ‘Don refuses to admit he hit my car. I don’t understand how. I have the security footage. He backs into the front, steps out of the car, inspects the damage, checks for witnesses, then pisses off.’
I can feel an ache spreading from my chest, so I focus on the distraction. ‘The school won’t do anything?’
‘It’s not technically their car park or whatever; they won’t go near it with a ten-foot pole. And then, insult to injury, I have to sit through assembly today and watch him win some Teacher of the fucking Year shit. He fucking hit my car. I want my money.’ Mum’s expression sours. ‘Teacher of the Year. He probably nominated himself.’
I wouldn’t put that past him. Don is Mr Butler, my Modern teacher. That fact crosses Mum’s mind. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.’
She’s said that more times than I can remember.
She conjures a distraction from the distraction. ‘I was speaking to Beverly from St Michael’s this morning.’ Effortless segue. ‘There are big dramas over there trying to get the Model UN Conference off the ground.’
The Model UN is Mum’s co-curricular. When the school hired her, she was given a choice between that and Chess Club, and well, one was slightly less sad than the other. Last year, Barton hosted the conference, and Mum was entrusted with making sure it went off without a hitch. Thanks to months (read: one late night the previous term with a bottle of red) of careful planning, it mostly did. Mostly because even carefully (read: drunkenly) planned conferences can unravel if people don’t show up on the day.
On the morning of the conference, the teacher from Buckley’s called to say the delegate for Italy had gastro. Mum needed an Italy for the day or else, calamity. I was her first port of call. She pitched it as a day out of class. I resisted. Isaac said it was like the Sex Olympics for nerds. And what can I say? I was swayed.
‘Are you doing it again this year?’ she asks.
I shake my head.
‘What was that, a shake or a nod? I’m driving.’ She glances my way, not long enough for me to repeat the movement though.
‘It was a no.’
One hundred students sat at desks facing a lectern, listening to each other’s speeches. Some delegates dressed up – Japan came in a kimono and it was a bit much – but most of us were content in our uniforms. The other Barton kids wore their blazers, I wore my tracksuit. They sat up straight, my face collapsed into the palm of one hand. My eyelids drooped. I was slipping slowly into –
‘Oi.’ Israel was holding out a folded piece of paper between two fingers. ‘Incoming diplomacy.’
In neat cursive on the front: To Italy.
I unfolded the note.
The state of Norway hath noted your presence from across the room, and requests that, should the appropriate opportunity present itself, Italy accompany Norway on an exploratory mission to the movies and perhaps share a large popcorn, if Italy is so inclined, it read.
The nations sat in alphabetical order. I turned around and the girl behind me smiled.
‘Oh, don’t act like it was so bad.’ Mum checks over her shoulder before changing lanes. ‘I’m sure it was such an imposition to miss out on class.’
‘I didn’t really miss out,’ I say. ‘Mr Rowland made me catch up on all the Maths.’
‘You just copied the answers out of the back anyway. And don’t think Mr Rowland never caught on.’
‘As if he did.’
‘I have lunch with these people every day, Ryan. We talk. You’re seventeen, not subtle.’
At the Model UN, the girl behind me smiled. I went to say hello when I noticed the tiny flag taped to the corner of her desk. Lebanon. Norway sat one row further back. He was smirking. He.
I felt it like a spotlight. I’d been seen.
I snapped back to the front, hand trembling. I caught myself and pressed my fingertips into the
desk. It was difficult to breathe, not that anyone would have noticed. I’m good at hiding. My face barely creased.
It was a nagging thought before it became a quiet certainty. And I had kept it secret and built the rest of me around it. I had expected Norway to be a she, expected to force a smile back, ask for her number, see a movie, pash her, lose her number, boast about it. It would seem off if I didn’t.
I can’t remember not considering how people see me. I’m careful, always careful, maintaining a wall to hide behind, and he’d seen right through it.
Something had given me away. Sitting there, I combed over my recent past and tried to pinpoint the moment. Had there been a look that lingered too long? Had I said something? Could he just tell?
I was shit-scared. And something else. Underneath all that panic and fear, a faint, hopeful excitement scratched at my ribs.
The state of Norway hath noted your presence from across the room.
I was wanted. By someone I wanted to want back.
I was soaring, but still seated, and it felt like nothing else. And I wanted to turn and smile back and . . . Mum was hovering two rows ahead in full teacher mode and I plummeted. My world felt a little bit smaller.
‘Besides,’ Mum adds after a sec, ‘I’m sure you made new friends last year.’
I rest my head back on the glass. ‘Not really.’
That’s the thing about subtlety: do it well and no one notices.
I folded a note and wrote, To Norway.
His name was Todd, I found out. We saw a movie on a Sunday. I had never been so consciously aware of how close my body was to someone else’s, but I kept to my side of the armrest and he kept to his. The credits rolled and I didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to either, but when the cleaner tried to get at the popcorn under our seats, we got the hint. We bounced nervously off each other as we climbed the steps to the exit. I was halfway out the door when he grabbed my hand and pulled me back into the theatre. The kiss was soft and explosive.
I didn’t lose his number.
I pull my phone out of my pocket. Keeping it low, in the space between my seat and the passenger door, I check the screen. I have an unread message. Todd wants to know about my day. I say it’s fine. His reply is instant. He’s bored. It’s the closest I’ve come to a normal conversation in hours. He asks what I’m up to. I can’t lie. I tell him Mum’s driving me home. He’ll ask why I’ve left so early and I’ll have to tell him.
I click back to the list of my latest conversations. My finger hovers over Isaac’s name. I’m tempted to tap on it, revisit everything we’ve ever said. A new message from Todd stops me.
He asks why I’ve left so early.
It takes us half an hour to get home. We’ve almost been here a year, but I can’t get used to calling it that – home. It will always be my grandparents’. They built it in the early nineties with two decades’ milk-bar money, and it was intended as a statement: ‘Started from the bottom, now look how high our ceilings are!’ The tiled floors, the bulky intercom system in every room, the accents of black and gold, it looked luxurious once. I grew up dreaming I’d have a house like it when I hit the big time, but now that we’ve inherited it, I miss our old place. Sure, it was cramped, and it smelt damp for days after it rained, but it was home. I had a space that was my own, and short of her bursting in with a megaphone, there was no way for Mum to broadcast announcements into it.
There’s a click, the hum of background noise, and then Mum’s voice. ‘Dinner’s ready, Ryan.’ Another click.
I glare at the intercom. A day doesn’t go by without me fantasising about ripping it off the wall and dismantling it.
I close my eyes, adjust myself and sink deeper into the mattress.
Click. ‘Now, darling.’ Click.
My plate is waiting on the kitchen counter. I hop onto the nearest stool. Mum insists she’s not eating but she’s overloaded my plate so she can pick from it whenever. I’ve barely made a dent before she reaches for the broccoli.
Mum leans back against the kitchen counter. ‘You can take tomorrow off,’ she says.
‘I’m fine.’
‘It’s not your call.’
I cut hard into a piece of chicken breast.
‘Seriously, I’m fine.’
‘I’m not fine, Ryan, so there’s no way you are.’ Her voice wavers.
She doesn’t get it.
Tomorrow I have Squad. Waking up will be a pain, it always is. Mr Watkins will write the sets of laps on the board, he always does. I’ll swim them, because I always do, faster than he expects, because I always can. I’ll be wrecked afterwards, and it’ll feel like always . . . for a while. And then it won’t. I’ll head upstairs and Isaac won’t be there.
I’m not ‘fine’ with any of it. But it’s like, if my arm stroke needs improving, Mr Watkins doesn’t give me a couple of rest days and hope it all gets better. No, he makes me dive back in and swim until I get it right. I have to train. Same principle here. I can’t just sit on the lounge. I need to dive back in. I need to train myself to be fine with this.
Mum says, ‘If you’re adamant, you can go in.’
So long as . . .
‘So long as . . .’
There we go.
‘ . . . you sit down with Tony.’
She means Mr Ford. ‘No.’
‘He can decide whether you’re fine or not.’
‘No.’
‘Or you can take the day off.’
‘Or . . .’ I don’t have an alternative, I’m buying some time before it smashes into me. ‘Or I can go to Squad, do that, then come up to the English staffroom for my free first period, and we can hang.’
Mum reaches for more broccoli. ‘Year Ten has an assessment,’ she says. ‘I’ve told the staff I’ll duck in and check on each class, but that’s fifteen minutes, max.’
‘Then it works?’
She nods. ‘It works.’
‘Sorted.’
I continue eating with Mum still watching me. ‘You’re not wild on the idea of seeing Tony, are you?’
‘Nope.’
‘Not even if he comes here?’
‘Nope.’
When Mum has other work friends over for dinner or drinks by the pool, they’re not like they are at school. I mean, I’ve always seen behind the curtain, but after three margaritas, the curtain doesn’t exist. They’re proper people who live full, crazy lives. Not Mr Ford. He’s never not the school counsellor. I don’t even think he likes Mum first-naming him in front of me.
And he’s a landmine.
‘If the school says you boys have to go see him, do you want me to get you out of it?’
‘Please.’
It’s Mr Ford’s job to listen more than he speaks, to hear what’s said and to realise what isn’t. I have too much to hide from someone whose job it is to find out.
Who’s also friends with my mum.
Landmine.
‘All right, I’ll tell them we have a family counsellor,’ Mum says.
‘That makes us sound nuts.’
‘Ryan!’
‘What? It does.’
Mum doesn’t argue. ‘I’ll think of something.’ She crosses the room and hesitates. ‘I’m going to have a bath. Will you be right?’
I glance down at my overloaded plate. ‘I’m sure I’ll manage.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’m good.’ I smile a little, because Mum needs me to. ‘Thanks.’
I tell her I’m going for a jog. It’s not a lie, but not the full truth either. She says I should rest, I say I won’t go far. She wants to convince me to stay but she knows I’m already gone.
‘Take your phone,’ is all that’s left.
I start down the street. My mobile swings like a pendulum in the mesh pocket now drooping past the end of my running shorts. It’s a fantastic look.
I don’t like jogging. It aggravates my left knee in a way swimming never does. But it gets me where I need to be, and it
explains where I’ve been.
I’ve perfected the route. There’s one backstreet that almost takes me right from my house down to the water. Then I join the coastal track that snakes from Bondi Beach down south. There are stairs carved from stone. This is the portion of the jog where I question whether anyone is really worth it. Morale is at its lowest and the air starts to scratch at my lungs. But it’s all downhill from here, in a good way, as the path curves in line with the coast until: my omission.
Todd sits on the edge of the cliff rock, his feet dangling off. It’s not the actual edge – there’s a metre-or-so drop to the next bit of cliff and then a steeper drop to broken bones. That’s the real edge. This is edge lite.
He isn’t how I imagined my first boyfriend – a surfer with an on-the-nose name like Sandy, knotted blond hair and sun-kissed skin – but my heart beats differently around Todd. He knows it too. He’s studying Med this year, and I bought him a stethoscope for Christmas.
I sit beside him. The ocean marches from the horizon, tripping over itself under a purple sky.
Todd bounces against me softly. ‘Hey.’
We meet each other halfway. I live in Bellevue Hill, he lives in Coogee and this is roughly the middle. Usually, he brings his day, I bring mine, and we exchange them.
I’ve left my day at home. I just want this, us and an infinite sea.
There’s no one coming along the path so I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes. My hand falls onto his. His skin is warm. I start tracing swirls over his fingers, then trace the letters of the words I can’t bring myself to say.
I miss Isaac already.
And then, more swirls, as if I can bury my confession underneath them. I relax deeper into his shoulder. I hear him breathing through his nose, and feel his body expand and contract. I smile.
Laughter cuts through the air. I pull away. Two brisk walkers are coming down the path from Bondi, trading jokes. I worry I moved too abruptly, but Todd doesn’t react. The waves slap against the rocks below us and he doesn’t say a word.
Hank pulls open the staffroom door and catches a whiff of chlorine. ‘Come straight from the pool?’ he asks, retreating back to his workstation.
The Sidekicks Page 2
