I dial his number.
The world is still. There’s a dial tone in the dark. He picks up. ‘Hello?’
I swallow hard. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘No, I just got home.’ His voice is flat. ‘You’re up late.’
‘You didn’t reply.’
He’s quiet and I know what’s coming. I clench my free hand. I’m ready.
‘I want to wait for you. I tell myself it doesn’t matter how long, that I’ll be happy so long as I’m with you,’ Todd’s voice shakes, ‘and then I wonder what you’re waiting for. To suddenly like girls? To meet a better guy? The truth is, I’m not enough to make you sure.’
‘That’s . . .’ I want to tell him that he’s wrong, but he isn’t.
‘I think you need to find someone who’s as . . . not ready as you are.’
My eyes begin to water. I blink, as if that will stop them. ‘Todd.’
‘I really love you, Italy.’ It crashes over me and I can’t say anything back. The call ends.
The Squad has this mantra: TITF. Take it too far. It’s for when we catch ourselves slacking or getting distracted. When we TITF, we eat, sleep and breathe swimming. There’s nothing else. We live for the pool, for the victory.
It’s all I have left. After Isaac, after Todd. The life I built in twenty-four seconds is gone, but I can build a better one in twenty-three.
I’m first to Squad, and last to leave. I swim more laps than the week before. I eat more, push harder, race faster. And when I tell Mum I’m going for a jog, there’s nothing else. I TITF.
The remainder of term disappears behind toppling goals. I keep it up through Easter break. Come second term, the Squad splinters. Only the guys with the best times in their age groups have to prep for the All Schools comp, the others join rugby and football teams for the winter.
I get my own lane. There’s nothing else. First period is always half over by the time I get there. I apologise. ‘Squad went long.’ I set myself up in a spare seat, rest my head on my hand and blink at the whiteboard, my eyelids heavy, until the xylophone.
Every day.
Every –
‘Ryan!’ Mr Butler’s voice wrenches me out of my nap. There’s a tiny kid with a parachute for a shirt standing at the door. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but Ms Thomson would like to see you in her office.’
I cock my head to one side. That’s weird. Mum’s never sent a kid on office duty to pull me out of class before. It’s just asking for –
‘Ooo, Mummy’s boy.’
That. It’s asking for that.
‘Shut up, Omar.’ On his way to the front of the class, Mr Butler tells me to take my things.
As soon as I’m out, I check my phone. There’s no message from Mum. I walk faster. The messenger scurries to keep up. Elise is leaving the staffroom as we get there. I catch the door, slip inside and cross the room. Mum’s at her desk. Someone’s in there with her. He turns to me. Miles. I didn’t even notice he wasn’t in Modern.
Mum tells me to close the door. I dump my bag against it and take the vacant seat beside Miles. I ask, ‘What’s up?’
There’s a quiet moment before Mum snaps, ‘Are you fucking stupid?’
I almost fall off my chair. Miles doesn’t flinch.
Mum glances into the adjoining staffroom and lowers her voice. ‘I am the Head of fucking English. Do you have any idea how bad it looks if . . .?’ She scrunches her face and balls her left hand into a trembling fist.
‘What’s happening?’ I ask. Miles’s expression is blank. There are no answers there. I look back to Mum.
‘Oh, all right. That’s how you’re playing it?’
I’m worried an honest answer will unleash the Kraken. ‘Yes?’
No Kraken. Mum raises both eyebrows, adjusts her bangles and prepares a narration. ‘I’m inputting marks last night, and something strikes me as really strange. You’re familiar with Michael Wilson?’
I nod. I’m familiar with Mike. I know he has loaded parents and will never have to lift a finger in his life. His dad works in textiles. No clue what that means, but the Wilsons have yachts. Plural.
‘He’s in one of our mid-range classes. For the latest take-home, he scores nineteen out of twenty. That’s better than most of our top kids. I check the spreadsheet. In the exam last term, he scored twelve. Even accounting for nerves, that’s a huge increase in performance. It doesn’t seem right. At first, I think he’s been marked too easily in the latest task. I look over it. Nope, it’s definitely a top-tier response.’ Mum shifts in her seat. ‘There are two things I need to deal with as a Head. One, is he in the right class? Are there adjustments that need to be made? Two, what’s causing his weaker performance under exam conditions? Is it anxiety? Does he need the text in front of him in order to do well? How can we best support him? So I call him in first thing this morning, and you know what he tells me? He doesn’t get anxious, no, he just doesn’t do the take-homes. He pays for them.’
‘Oh?’ I still don’t know what any of this has to do with me.
Mum’s staring. ‘He pays you, Ryan, you dipshit.’
‘What?’
‘You’re going to make me walk you through it? Really?’
‘Really. I am so lost right now.’
‘Don’t even,’ she barks. ‘Not much gets past me. There’s an address he emails his tasks to. He waits a week. He’s told to come to the aquatic centre change room before school. Under your bag, there’s an envelope with his completed essay inside. He takes it, and leaves you a fifty.’
‘This makes no sense,’ I try.
‘I know,’ Mum says. ‘I can spot your writing a mile off, and what he’s submitted isn’t yours.’
Ouch.
‘And then Michael says he’s only done the change room exchange three times. Two bits of homework and the assessment task. Before that, he used to meet up with Isaac. I look at Isaac’s marks and they’re even worse, so I think, who do you both have in common?’
She smiles at Miles and the penny drops. The red pouch of fifties. That’s what Miles and Isaac were doing. They were selling essays. That’s what Miles was so desperate to hide.
Wait, why isn’t he freaking out? He’s sitting there, cool as.
‘I got a hold of Miles’s take-home.’ Mum taps the two essays out on the table between us. ‘As you can see, whole sentences appear to have jumped from Miles’s work to Michael’s. I’ve highlighted these photocopies.’
‘I see that.’
He sold his own work to other kids. Isaac was his front man. That’s why he kept the money in his locker. And when Isaac died, Miles needed a new cover. Me. He’s taking me down with him.
‘Mum, I –’
‘Don’t, “Mum,” me, Ryan. It’s clear as day what you and Miles have done.’ She starts up again. ‘Are you an idiot? Do you understand how bad this is? My son and his friends are selling black-market essays under my nose.’
I wait for Miles to jump in with, ‘Oh, we are not actually friends.’ He doesn’t.
‘This little business stops right now,’ she says.
Miles speaks up. ‘It is over.’
‘I’m between a rock and a hard place. I have marks that I know are compromised, but my hands are tied. I can’t get anyone who purchased essays in trouble without implicating you both, and diminishing my standing in the process, so thanks for lobbing this shitful ethical Molotov cocktail at me. They could sack me, you know that?’
‘Sorry, miss,’ Miles says.
‘You’re both lucky the marker has shit for brains and didn’t notice,’ she says. ‘But if another mark irregularity comes out of the woodwork and I’m not the one who catches it, so help you God.’ She clears her throat and scrunches the photocopies into a giant paper ball. ‘Go back to class.’
I’ve had my arse handed to me and I haven’t done anything wrong. ‘Mum –’
Her eyes flare, like she’s trying to tell me more than, ‘Look how wide I can open my eyes!’
‘I truly –’
‘Class, Ryan.’
I don’t need to be told a third time. I flee Mum’s office and the staffroom. The door clicks shut and Miles doubles over, laughing.
‘Dude, what the hell?’ I ask.
He laughs right through it. I should feel mad. I’m trying to. He sold me out.
He leans back and inhales deeply. He’s close to tears. ‘That was so . . .’ He loses it again. He wheezes through an impression of Mum, expletives and all.
‘This isn’t funny.’ I harden my jaw to keep from cracking up.
‘Well, if you took yourself out of it and looked at it objectively, you would see it was hilarious.’ Miles exhales deeply. ‘If it did not involve you –’
‘Getting into shit,’ I finish for him, but I crack up halfway through so I say it like ‘shi-ha-ha-ha-hat’.
‘Why am I laughing?’ I’m asking myself more than him. It makes no sense. He sold me out. But it feels good to laugh. It’s been so long since . . .
‘The Molotov cocktail bit was beyond,’ Miles says.
I picture Mum blowing up and rediscover my indignation. ‘You could have sold the essays anonymously, but you made it seem like I did it. You threw me under the bus.’
‘Relax. I knew she would not do anything if she knew you were in on it,’ Miles says. ‘So I threw you in front of the bus knowing full well that the bus would stop when it saw you.’ He shrugs. ‘That is different.’
The xylophone goes off over the PA.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘I have class.’
He starts in the opposite direction.
‘What? No.’
He turns back.
‘You don’t get to use me as a lifeline and then just . . .’
Miles reaches into his back pocket. His wallet. ‘What do you want then?’ he asks. ‘A cut?’
‘No, it’s . . .’ It’s not about the money. I don’t know. Isaac’s gone. Todd’s gone. All I do is swim, all I have is my own lane. I want more. I want to talk to someone. ‘Tell me what you do at lunch.’
No one uses the computer lab any more, not since Barton let us bring our own laptops. Back in Year Seven, we’d be lucky to get a seat at lunch. Now the room’s a cemetery.
Miles is at a computer in the corner. I say, ‘Hey.’
He swivels around. ‘Hello.’
I really should’ve prepared talking points. I look around. ‘I remember this room feeling so much bigger.’
He nods slowly. ‘I know, right?’
I sneak a look past him, at his computer. He has an article open.
‘Is that what you do all lunch?’ I ask. ‘Read the news?’
‘No.’ He points a remote up at the projector hanging from the ceiling. It shines a blue square onto the wall. ‘It takes awhile to boot up.’
‘I remember.’
Miles minimises the browser and starts navigating through folders. I sit down on the chair beside his and wait for the blue square on the wall to fill. Miles counts down from five. He points instead of, ‘Zero,’ and on cue, the blue square is replaced by Isaac from the shoulders up, projected against the wall. He scratches his cheek with his thumbnail and asks, ‘Are we good to go?’ His voice fills the room, amplified by the speakers mounted in its corners.
In two months, he’s faded to an outline of vague features, a crooked smile and a mess of ginger hair. But this is so . . . vivid. I breathe in chunks.
‘The projector allows for the cinema experience,’ Miles says.
He made a short film for English last year. He asked Isaac to help, and Isaac asked us. He must have a ton of unused footage.
‘What am I supposed to say?’ Isaac asks.
Miles’s recorded voice answers, ‘Whatever. I will mute the audio and split the screen and show what you are supposed to be describing.’
‘Okay, so anything?’ There’s mischief in his eyes. ‘Boobs, tits, bum, wee, fart.’
‘People will figure out what you are saying.’
‘But you said, “Whatever.”’
‘Within reason.’
‘You didn’t say that.’
‘Isaac.’
He cackles and I feel a chill. ‘Shit, I’m getting goosebumps.’ I point to the raised spots on my arm. ‘It’s like he’s here.’
‘Yeah,’ Miles mutters.
‘How much footage is there?’ I ask.
‘All up? Twenty-one hours.’
‘How much is Isaac?’
‘Eight, nine maybe.’
‘That’s a lot.’
Miles points to the wall. On cue, Isaac asks, ‘Can you turn the screen thingy around so I can see how I look?’
Miles knows it by heart.
‘You look fine,’ his disembodied voice replies.
‘But I wanna see,’ Isaac pleads.
Behind the camera, Miles sighs. Beside me, Miles rolls his eyes.
The camera rocks slightly. ‘I have turned the viewfinder to face Isaac,’ the Miles beside me explains.
‘No, I get it.’
Isaac stares a little to one side. ‘Damn I’m pretty,’ he says. ‘I feel genuinely bad for people who have to try to look this good.’ He squints. ‘Wait, does my hair look grey or is that just my shitty eyes?’
I laugh. He was always banging on about his shitty eyes.
Miles mouths, ‘You done?’ in time with his recorded voice.
‘Don’t pressure me,’ Isaac says. ‘I can’t work under these conditions, I’m colourblind.’
‘That should not impact your ability to do a simple reading.’
Isaac’s eyes are wild. ‘Discrimination!’
I shake my head. ‘What a jackass.’
‘The biggest,’ Miles says.
The footage ends, frozen on the final frame. I watch Miles watch the screen, Isaac frozen in time and larger than life. We’ve never had much in common, but we have this.
‘It is like when a TV show is on for a while and the main actor leaves to pursue a movie career, the others have to fill the void and keep it going,’ he says eventually. ‘People tune in at first, out of curiosity, but it is never the same and definitely never as good. New episodes keep coming, but the viewership dwindles. People stop caring about it, they find something new, but while everyone else can change the channel, the actors cannot. They are contractually obliged to live out the season, stuck there even though they know their best episodes are behind them.’
He searches my face for any kind of confirmation that we’re on the same shitty TV show. Are we? Nothing feels like how it used to, I get that. But my show started before Isaac, and I have to believe it can work without him.
‘You must see yourself as more than a bit player in someone else’s story though.’
‘Must I?’ Miles asks. ‘You might, you have swimming and all that, but who would really watch a show about the kid with good grades?’
I slide onto the front edge of my seat and wait for words. ‘Miles, you’re smart, yeah, but you’re also devious and you don’t really consider how your choices affect other people. You’re either going to be one of those billionaire media moguls, or a very successful white-collar criminal.’
‘Thanks . . . I think?’
‘I would binge-watch the hell out of your show. Mostly because in small doses, you terrify and confuse me.’
He forces a laugh. ‘So funny.’
A heavy silence hangs between us. He sniffs.
‘If you’re unhappy with your show, let me in. Let me help make it better.’
‘Like as a guest star?’
‘With an eye to becoming a series regular if it feels right. What do you say?’
I hold out my hand. He leaves me hanging.
‘Shake my hand.’
‘I am not shaking your hand.’
‘Shake it.’
He shakes it. It’s brief but a big deal.
‘I am just impressed you know what a series regular is,’ he says.
‘Shut up.’
I drea
m of Isaac. He sits opposite me and asks, ‘What am I supposed to say?’
I try the passenger door, but at some point between home and school, Mum locked me in. Squad starts in five minutes, but she’s not fussed. She pulls the key from the ignition and twists her whole body to better face me. After almost a day of radio silence, here it comes. The parenting.
‘I understand why you did it,’ she tells me, sounding much calmer than she had in her office yesterday.
‘You do?’
‘Yes. Isaac helped Miles, and you just did what he would have done,’ she says. ‘It’s noble, but let’s face it, there were times when Isaac wasn’t exactly the greatest role model.’
I don’t say anything. It’s easier than having to explain that Miles is a Machiavellian nightmare.
‘Fill his absence, but do it on your terms,’ she continues. ‘Yes, you should be there for Miles, but you don’t have to be Isaac. Don’t compromise who you are. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re an idiot, but you have a good heart and I love you for it.’
The car doors unlock. I lunge for the handle, stop and look back. ‘I’m sorry.’
She furrows her brow. ‘Go swim.’
I climb out and swing my bags over my shoulders. There’s something post-zombie apocalypse about the underground car park this early in the morning. Of the two hundred spots, only two others are taken. There’s Mr Watkins’s depressing second-hand convertible and the beat-up van the Drama department uses to transport props.
I whistle four short bursts. The sound bounces around the empty space. I start rapping a verse –
‘No!’ Mum barks. The echoes concur.
When I get there, Mr Watkins’s already stalking the edge of the pool, shouting instructions at the guys doing laps. I duck into the change room.
Dave and Peanut are having a tiff. Back in, like, Years Seven and Eight, an argument was an event. It was exciting. We thought there was a chance someone might throw a punch. We know better now. They always fizzle out to nothing, just two guys not knowing it’s over, fatigued and tripping over their testosterone-fuelled words, but too proud to acknowledge they’ve stopped making sense.
I dump my stuff to one side and tune it out. I start peeling off my tracksuit top and –
The Sidekicks Page 6
