Elsewhere Girls

by Emily Gale

  I think he secretly hates working in the mini-mart. Maybe that’s the real reason I ate the potato scallops last night, so that he wouldn’t look at them and think I’ve lost my job, my home, my car…and nobody wants my potato scallops.

  Dad stoops to look at the sky through the windscreen. ‘That’s your mum’s plane coming in to land,’ he says.

  I feel lighter at the thought of hugging Mum after school. Then I get a tight sensation in my chest as I imagine telling her what I’ve been thinking lately: that I’m bored of squad and wish I’d never won a scholarship. Mum and Dad won’t ever want to hear that.

  The junior squad—twenty of us—stands in front of the whiteboard studying the drills Coach O’Call has written on the board. First the warm-up, followed by 4 x 100m at race pace. Then 6 x 50m with a kickboard, 5 x 100m of different strokes, 5 x 100 pull (which means no kicking), and a final drill of 10 x 50m sprints. One and a half hours of hard swimming that doesn’t get you anywhere except back where you started.

  The bananas I ate haven’t gone down yet. I need to do a massive burp but nothing’s coming out, which is a shame because I’d love to see the look on Rebecca Jeffers’ face. She’s in squad and we aren’t exactly friends. Though we swim roughly the same times in training, in races I beat her nine times out of ten. And we’re both on the relay team but I swim the final leg, the position always given to the fastest swimmer. Last week at training, my time slipped. I knew it from Coach O’Call’s expression as she looked at her stopwatch. Then she wrote the times on the board. Rebecca made a huge deal out of it and said in her slimy way, ‘Maybe Cat and I should swap places for this Saturday’s relay, Coach.’ I managed to convince Coach to leave us where we are, but Rebecca will try again. She’s a coldwater crocodile snapping at my heels.

  ‘Okay, sleepyheads, get in the water before I chuck you in!’ shouts Coach O’Call. She can be a real gorgon and some of the girls are scared of her. She’s old and tanned with a wrinkled face like one of those adorable dogs. I’ve never seen her wear anything other than a white tracksuit. She has a prosthetic leg. She takes it off to swim. Some days she gets around in a wheelchair. She’s won three Paralympic gold medals and six silver in freestyle. None of us has ever beaten her in a freestyle race.

  After the warm-up, I dive in for the set of timed laps. As usual I’m the pacesetter for my lane, which consists of the six elite swimmers of junior squad.

  My first lap always feels amazing, no matter what. I’m a marine mammal, I breathe better when I’m in the water. But as I tumble turn and push off for the second lap, a feeling creeps over me: the numbness I’ve started to dread. Stroke-stroke, breathe, stroke-stroke, breathe—it’s like I’m watching myself do it and wondering, what’s the point?

  Over the warbly sounds of the water rushing into my ears I can hear Coach yelling. I imagine her pressing that button on the stopwatch—either one hundredth of a second too slow, or one hundredth of a second better than last time—I don’t want to think about the numbers. I’m mesmerised by the strands of light on the bottom of the pool that come from the skylight. They twist and turn, making pictures: shimmery seaweed and coral reef. I’ve never swum in the ocean. Open water. Freedom. No walls or ticking watch. A world away from Victoria Grammar. I pretend I’m there now and that the water is salty instead of so heavily chlorinated that it could dissolve the bodies of the entire squad.

  Dolphins swimming beside me. Nodding at me, trying to tell me something. Cat! Cat! What is it, Flipper?

  ‘CAT! CATH-ER-INE!’

  That’s not a dolphin, that’s Coach and she sounds cranky. I reach the side and lift my goggles over one eye to see what’s happening. Coach and all the elites are at the other end. I’ve stuffed up the drill. If the pacesetter loses focus it destroys the whole set.

  Swimming back to them is a lap of shame.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I say innocently.

  ‘You were off pace,’ says Rebecca. She looks hungry for blood.

  ‘We haven’t got time for daydreaming, Cat,’ says Coach.

  Great, she can literally read my mind underwater.

  ‘Do I need to remind you that the heats for State Championships begin this afternoon? Start the drills again. I’ll have your heat groupings on the board by the end of the session.’

  As she walks away, Rebecca yells after her, ‘Shall I set the pace, Coach?’

  ‘Sure,’ Coach replies, waving her arm as if she doesn’t care as long as someone sets it.

  Rebecca flashes her eyes at me before she lowers her goggles and dives in.

  Fan

  4

  Jitters

  I wake to the sound of Milk-O being called in the street under my window and the crunching sound of the wheels of the cart on the gravel, and there is no way I’m going back to sleep. Not this morning. Even with Dewey curled up nice and warm against me. I push her feet off mine and she groans as I roll her over.

  ‘Dewey, it’s Sunday,’ I whisper, not wanting to wake Kathleen or Mary.

  ‘It’s not even light,’ she whispers back.

  My legs start fidgeting under the blankets, and I imagine they are kicking their way down the baths. Knowing I’ll annoy Dewey, but also knowing she won’t really mind, I lean across and rip the blankets off us.

  ‘Fan!’ she hisses. There’s a loud shush from the other bed. So, they are awake. They know me well enough to know I can’t sleep in on race day. As soon as the birds are up so am I. My body is ready to swim.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ says Kathleen.

  ‘It’s our day off,’ adds Mary.

  ‘Please,’ says Dewey, trying to pull the blankets back.

  ‘Bet the bread’s been delivered, come on, Dewey!’

  ‘I get the sole,’ she tells me sternly. Dewey and I are always racing for the crusty end piece of the loaf.

  I lean across and kiss her softly on the cheek. ‘You can even have my jam.’

  She smiles and rubs her eyes like she’s only a baby. ‘Let me guess, Fan, you’re excited?’

  Laughing, I get out of bed because I can’t stand it any longer and lean down to find my slippers. I pull hers out too and pass them over. ‘I’m so excited, I fear I’ll burst,’ I say.

  We leave Kathleen and Mary in bed and head out, wrapped in morning gowns and slippers and sharing Ma’s favourite blanket around our shoulders, to start the fire for breakfast.

  I like morning chores on a swimming carnival day because they settle my nerves. I carry as much wood as I can, even more than Da does when he brings in a load, and I stack it inside near the oven. Dewey has pulled the blanket up so she’s just a face peeping out.

  ‘Do you think if I win today I’ll make the State team? Do you think I can win the 100 yards and the 150 yards? Or should I just focus on one? Do you think there will be a crowd watching? Do you think Ma will come? Do you—’

  ‘Draw breath, Fanny, before you expire and can’t swim at all!’

  ‘Apologies, I’m just—’

  ‘Excited, yes I know.’

  ‘Today’s the day, Dewey. I’m going to beat Mina. I can feel it.’

  ‘There’s also Gladys and Dorothy and Doris,’ says Dewey.

  ‘I know. I’m going to beat them all!’

  It’s not like I haven’t won before. I have. Although not as many times as I’d like.

  ‘A cup of tea this century would be nice, Fanny,’ says Dewey.

  I remember that I’m supposed to be on fire duty and not daydreaming about swimming. I try to concentrate on building the fire, leaving air pockets for the flames to catch.

  ‘Fanny, stop shuffling!’ Dewey says from the table.

  ‘Am I?’ I say. I need to be in the water. It’s the only thing that calms me down.

  Ma walks into the kitchen with the milk. She looks tired. I really hope she comes today to watch me, but I don’t feel that I should ask her. If only Da could come and my brothers. They don’t have to work today. Sunday is their day off. If only the associat
ion would allow men to see us in our bathing suits, then they could come too. Da would cheer louder than anyone in the stands. Even Dewey.

  ‘You’re up early, girls,’ says Ma. ‘Nerves I expect, Fanny. Wake everyone, did we?’

  ‘Yes, Ma, she did!’ says Dewey.

  I smile and kiss Ma on the cheek, before she ducks away busying herself.

  ‘I have a good feeling about today’s race, Fanny,’ says Ma. ‘I think it might be your turn.’

  The smile cracks large across my face before I can stop it. ‘I feel it too!’ I say.

  Ma goes about fixing the fire that I built. It’s fry-up day. Our only hot breakfast for the week and Ma likes it just so.

  ‘Cut the bread, Fanny. Dewey, you start on the tea. Bread and dripping all round,’ she says. Then she pulls one of her stern Ma faces and growls. ‘That blanket’s too good to be in here, Dewey Durack!’

  ‘Sorry, Ma,’ says Dewey half tripping as she runs out. I smile to myself as I take down the chopping board and the large cutting knife and start on the loaf, feeling the charge of the coming day running through me.

  Cat

  5

  Gum

  After training, I walk across the sports field with Maisy. All the lucky girls—the ones who don’t have to get up at five—are walking in through the main gates. My old friends would die if they saw our straw hats and blazers. What century are you from? they’d say.

  Maisy scuffs the ground with her shoe. She’s the moody one for a change.

  I nudge her. ‘What’s up with you?’

  She shrugs. ‘We’re in the same heat this afternoon.’

  ‘So?’

  Maisy glares at me.

  ‘What, Maisy?’

  ‘We’re sisters and we’ll be racing against each other.’

  I don’t get it so I do the mature thing and ignore her. This is the perfect time to squeeze in some text messages to my friends back in Orange. After a while I realise that Maisy isn’t walking beside me anymore.

  At the front of the main building there are huge pillars wrapped in ivy. Grey stone gargoyles look down on us. The huge door makes me feel like I’m walking into a museum. I miss the ramshackle portables of my old school, where I didn’t feel anxious about breaking something or talking too loudly.

  Maisy and I didn’t have much to do with each other back in Orange. Our bedrooms were at opposite ends of the house, and she was still at primary school when I started high school. Now it’s same school, same bedroom, same swimming regime. She’s always there.

  Except for right now, obviously. Maybe a gargoyle carried her off.

  Suddenly the face I look forward to seeing at school is right in front of me. Lucy: my only Sydney friend.

  ‘Did you bring it?’ she says anxiously.

  ‘Bring what?’ I fake confusion. Lucy and I are paired for a science assignment and she messaged me twice last night to remember my part.

  Here comes the explosion.

  ‘The science homework! It’s due today, Cat!’

  I smile.

  ‘You total fungus, Cat! I just lost all feeling in my legs.’ She punctuates her words with a few light hits to my shoulder.

  ‘You seriously cannot punch, Luce,’ I say.

  ‘Shush, I’m a thinker. It’s all up here.’ Lucy taps her temple and walks briskly to our lockers. She never wastes time, she’s always focused on schoolwork. Lucy is a scholarship girl like me. They tested her brain instead of how fast she can swim and the results came in: super brainy. But she isn’t boring, she’s funny and down-to-earth and messy: I love her wild hair and untucked shirt, like she hasn’t got time for the uniform rules. Her hair takes more than three hair elastics to contain it. I have a pixie cut. I got sick of tangled chlorine-hair. Lucy’s skin is a warm brown colour, whereas I’ve got Dad’s Irish skin and get sunburnt under a bedside lamp.

  ‘Isn’t it the State heats this week, Cat?’

  ‘First one’s this afternoon.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Dunno. My times have been a bit off. It’s like I’ve forgotten the point of swimming.’

  Lucy frowns as she puts her locker key around her neck. ‘I thought the point was to win. Though you also said the point was to beat Rebecca.’

  ‘Did I?’ I probably did, but I don’t feel it in every muscle the way I used to.

  ‘Here, take this.’ Lucy hands me a piece of chewing gum.

  ‘Does my breath smell?’

  ‘No, but gum has been scientifically proven to improve memory. It’ll help you remember the point of swimming.’

  I laugh. ‘You’re a tragic nerd.’

  ‘I’m your friend,’ she says, solemnly. ‘I want you to win.’

  ‘Okay, stop. You’re freaking me out.’

  Lucy giggles and goes cross-eyed. She works harder than anyone I know. It’s partly because she has to get good marks, just like I have to keep winning races, but I think that’s who she is, scholarship or not. Her dream is microbiology. I’ve don’t know anyone who fantasises about identifying cells like Lucy.

  ‘See you in science,’ she says, hurrying off.

  I call out, ‘We have science today?’

  She shakes her head without looking back, but I bet she’s smiling.

  The first-round heats are a cinch. I feel like the old me again. Maybe my lazy phase is over. Maybe the chewing gum worked! All I know is that I can’t wait to get home and tell Mum that I’m through to the next heat for the State Championships. It’s only been a couple of days but it feels like ages since I saw her.

  I’m on a high on the bus home, up the back with a window seat. I put in my earbuds and choose a playlist. Maisy’s next to me, reading a book. She hasn’t said a word. She came third so maybe she’s sulking, but third is good for Maisy, it means she’s still in with a shot at State. I’ll try to remember to tell her that later. I prefer it if people just leave me alone when I’m in a bad mood.

  Close to the last stop, I feel my phone vibrate. Maisy gets her phone out too.

  Sorry, girls. Have to fill in for a colleague on a flight to Rome. I’d say no, but you know the situation. Won’t be back for a couple of days. Take care of Dad, and each other. I love you so much. Mum x

  I was so happy a second ago but now I feel like crying. Mum can’t turn work down—so many flights were cancelled because of the virus—but I hate it when she’s gone. I angle myself away from my sister and stare out the window.

  ‘Tuna alla Papa,’ Dad announces, putting a dish on the table.

  Maisy giggles. ‘We’re not Italian, Dad.’ She puts her nose into the steam rising from the plate.

  ‘All right, have it your way: tuna pasta bake. You serve, Maise, I’ll get the veg. You’re quiet tonight, Cat. Thought you’d be full of beans after winning today.’

  He puts a bowl piled high with green beans in front of me and makes a silly face.

  ‘Eh? Eh? Beans, get it?’

  ‘That’s hilarious, Dad,’ I say without twitching a single facial muscle.

  I let Maisy and Dad do the talking at dinner and quietly pick the sweetcorn out of the pasta bake. I wish Mum was here. I keep checking the clock on the wall, thinking that it’s only two hours until I’m supposed to be asleep so that I’m fresh for another round of squad. I’d like to snap the hands off that clock. Tick tick tick. There’s never time to do anything I want to do. Even worse, I’m not even sure what that is!

  After dinner I leave Maisy stacking the dishwasher, head to our bedroom and shut the door. I need space.

  My sister walks in before I’ve even kicked off my shoes. I groan and flop on the bed.

  After a while I hear her rummaging around in the boxes. ‘Don’t touch my things,’ I warn her.

  ‘I’m not, I’m having a look at Auntie Rachel’s eBay stuff. Look at this weird thing. It’s a glass slide like we use in Science and it’s got some short hairs on it.’

  ‘Let me see.’ There’s a label on brown card that says Hairs of a sea-
mouse. Mounted in carbolic acid, 1887. ‘What’s a sea-mouse? I bet Lucy knows, I’ll ask her.’

  Maisy looks through the box while I text Lucy. ‘Cat, look at this! An old stopwatch.’ She sits on my bed next to me and puts it to her ear. ‘Not ticking.’

  It looks solid and silver but it could use a polish. It’s stopped at three forty-five. The minute hand and the skinny timer hand are lined up together on the nine, and the shorter hour hand is nearly on the four.

  ‘It looks like someone diving off the block,’ says Maisy. ‘The two long hands are the legs and the hour hand is the body. I bet it was used to time races in the olden days.’

  ‘There are other things in life, you know. Can you get off my bed?’

  Maisy tuts but she gets up and stands in the middle of the room. She’s winding the top of the stopwatch. Then she gasps.

  ‘I think I’ve broken it.’

  ‘Maisy! Why’d you do that?’

  She spins to face me. ‘You don’t even care about it!’

  ‘Yes I do. Give it to me before you break it even more.’ I take it straight out of her hand. She looks too guilty to fight me for it, and leaves the room. I put the broken stopwatch next to my bed and check my phone to see if Lucy has replied. She’s sent me a photo of a fuzzy looking worm. Sea-mouse: a marine worm that lives on the bottom of the ocean. They’re cute!

  I knew Lucy would know.

  Dad calls out to ask if I want to watch something on TV with them, but I stay where I am.

  Later, after Maisy has gone to bed and turned her light out, I notice the stopwatch again. The thinnest hand—the timer—is ticking backwards, very fast. Whatever Maisy did has made the stopwatch go the wrong way. I get into bed, holding it. I can’t stop watching it spin around and around, anticlockwise. It’s making me dizzy. I try to blink the feeling away but it won’t stop. I feel a bit sick, or am I imagining it?

  I can’t look anymore. I drop the stopwatch onto a pile of clothes next to my bed, and turn out the light.

  Fan

  6

  Race

  The tram is so full; we girls have to fight for a spot. Ma’s with us too. All five of us cramped without a seat to share. I couldn’t sit down anyway. Now we’re heading to Lavender Bay, my heart has started to gallop like it does on a swim carnival day. I’m so glad Ma is here. She sometimes can’t spare the time to come and watch.