The Art of Not Breathing

by Sarah Alexander

  Mum is the last to appear. She always wears the same outfit on this day: white jeans and a tight white T-shirt with nothing over the top, as though it were the middle of summer. She moves like a ghost through the hallway to the front door. In one fluid movement she takes the car keys from the hall table, passes them to my father, opens the front door, and drapes her blue raincoat over her shoulders. We all walk in single file to the car, the glass in the front door rattling as we close it behind us. We drive in deafening silence to Chanonry Point. The drive is only five minutes—we could walk, but we never do. I think it’s so we can make a quick getaway.

  No one says “Happy birthday, Elsie.” I say it to myself instead and picture a future birthday when I get cards, presents, and a cake made of donuts.

  5

  The Black Isle isn’t really an island—it’s a peninsula that sticks out from Inverness into the North Sea. It’s called the Black Isle because when the rest of Scotland is coated in snow, it remains uncovered, someone once told me. We seem to have our own weather system, which mostly involves bitterly cold winds, rain, and fog. We do have the occasional blizzard, though. Chanonry Point is a spit of land on the east of the Isle that extends even farther out into the choppy water. Sometimes it feels as though we’re on the edge of the world.

  We park and tumble out of the car like lemmings going over a cliff. The sky is a hazy white now, and the cold wind pushes the clouds out over the North Sea. As we navigate our way around the lighthouse and along the shingle beach, patches of pale blue sky appear for a few seconds at a time before disappearing again. Mum’s faded blue jacket clashes with my father’s brown woolly sweater as they walk side by side, stepping in unison, having forgiven each other for the biscuit episode. Mum leans into my father as though she couldn’t walk without him.

  Dillon and I walk a few paces behind them, Dillon’s arm around my shoulders. I feel him shivering beside me and think about squeezing his hand or wrapping an arm around him, but I don’t. I have to take three steps for every two of Dillon’s and we collide awkwardly against each other, but neither of us does anything about it. His head is turned to the shore, toward the dolphins splashing about in the froth. They leap high into the air and glide back down into the water effortlessly. Watching them makes my heart expand in my chest.

  Eddie loved the dolphins. He called them “fins,” and even though I could say the word properly, I used to call them fins too. I don’t mind dolphins, but I prefer otters because they’re not as common. They’re secretive creatures, and I read that even though the males and females have their own territories in the water, those territories sometimes overlap. Dillon and I are like otters. We have our own spaces—I like to think of them as sandy coves—but on the edge of mine and on the edge of his there’s a little patch where we can be together and everything is okay. It’s a place where we don’t fight or pretend not to know each other. I worry that our patch is getting smaller, though, like the tide is coming in, or maybe there are more rocks now taking over the sandy bits. I suppose otters need rocks to hide among.

  We head up from the beach, onto the grassy bank. Halfway up the slope, there’s a wooden cross in the ground. My father ties a white ribbon around the wood—yanking the ends to make sure it’s secure. There should be five, one for every year that’s passed, but one must have flown off, because I only count four. My father runs his hand over the cross and brushes sand and dirt from the engraving. I read it, even though I know what it says. My nose is streaming from the bitter wind. It’s weird reading a memorial with my own birthday on it.

  EDWARD MAIN

  11 April 2000–11 April 2011

  Today we are sixteen. Happy birthday, Eddie.

  It still doesn’t feel real. To me, he’s not gone. My twin lives inside my head and is part of me. The other day when I wondered whether I should have a second helping of potatoes, he popped up and said, “You can never have too many potatoes. Finish the bowl!” Sometimes, my hands and feet get extremely cold and I know it’s not me feeling cold, it’s Eddie, so I wrap myself up in a blanket to make sure he’s okay. I give him cocoa before bed and toast with Marmite, even though I can’t stand Marmite. I suppose I eat for two.

  Last week, after I’d wrapped us up together on the sofa, Mum looked worried and took my temperature.

  “You’re burning up,” she said, frowning.

  “He’s cold,” I said by mistake.

  “What?”

  “I’m cold.”

  I got away with it because she was distracted by something in the kitchen.

  I haven’t told anyone that Eddie is inside me.

  I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.

  Mum sinks slowly into the grass and hugs her knees to her chest, burying her head between them. I’m not sure if she’s shivering or crying. Dad strokes her back but looks at me, and his eyes are small and droopy. Dillon tries to light a candle, then gives up and pushes it down into the earth. I can barely feel my toes and have to jiggle to warm up. I run the ribbons through my fingers, feeling the smooth side and then the rough side, until my father tells me to stop.

  “Please don’t do that, Elsie. Stop fidgeting.”

  I stop and take a deep breath and look at the cross. Now for the words I practiced.

  “Hey, bro!” I say, loudly. “Let’s play chase. Bet you canny catch me!” I throw my arm out ready to high-five him. But even before I feel Eddie reach out to smack my hand, I know I have made an error. Mum pulls her head out from between her knees and stares at me open-mouthed. My father’s eyebrows move up and down as though they don’t know where on his face they should be. His arm shoots out toward me, but then he snaps it back. He was about to slap me—I’m sure of it.

  “What on earth are you doing?” he shouts.

  Dillon takes my hand, and I try to remember the words, but my mind is blank.

  “I thought he might like to play a game,” I stammer.

  My father leans toward me. “Are you not taking this seriously? Are you on drugs or something?”

  “I just thought we could be happy today,” I continue, even though I know I should stop now.

  I look to Mum for help. Mascara runs down her cheeks, little black snakes edging toward her lips. My father turns to Dillon.

  “Has she taken something?”

  Dillon shakes his head. I will him to defend me. But he says nothing.

  “I meant that we should celebrate his life. He doesn’t like it when we cry.”

  Another slip-up. I need to be more careful. It’s difficult because Eddie’s been with me a lot more recently, and he shows up without warning. Ever since Granny died a few months ago. I think he’s worried that I’m going to disappear too.

  “Elsie, that’s enough,” my father says, his eyebrows now settled in a frown.

  Mum remains silent. All vacant and starey. She’s been like this even more since Granny died. I try not to imagine what it would be like if my mum died.

  “I want to remember when he was . . .” I want to say “alive” but that’s not right, because to me, he still is. “When he was . . . Eddie.” The real Eddie. My twin brother.

  “I said that’s enough. You’re upsetting your mother. This is meant to be a quiet time, so we can take a few minutes and remember him. It’s about being respectful.”

  Mum rocks slowly back and forth, watching, observing, crying.

  “I am being respectful,” I say. “I don’t need to take a few minutes to remember him, because I haven’t forgotten him.”

  It’s out before I can stop myself. And worse than that, it might not be true. There are no pictures at home—they’re all in the loft. So there are things that I am forgetting, like which side of his head had the curl that went the wrong way, or whether he ate everything green on his plate first or everything red. The memories are slipping away. Eddie might be right—we’re sliding farther apart from each other. I’m sixteen now, nearly an adult, and Eddie will always be a small, eleven-year-old boy.


  “If you can’t be sensible, go to the car,” my father says.

  I fight the urge to run away, because I know that’s what they want. It would make today easier for everyone if I weren’t here. But I’m not going. Why should I make it easy for them when it’s so hard for me?

  “I’m staying,” I say, and now my tears come.

  We sit in silence, apart from a few loud sobs from me. Dillon watches the dolphins, and my father leans over the candle and manages to light it. The flame flickers a golden yellow for a few seconds, then dies. The smoke instantly vanishes in the wind.

  The ground below us vibrates, and I turn to the beach, where a digger rearranges the pebbles, pushing them back up away from the shoreline, creating a steep slope. Suddenly the scene in front of me jolts and blurs, the ground zooms up toward me, and I grab the grass for balance. There’s a roaring in my ears, and I get fragments of images: frothing white water, a bright orange jacket in the distance, Mum draped over the shoulder of a policeman, my father running toward me, his brown shoes slipping on the stones. Then he disappears, and I’m completely alone on the beach. More fragments. Dillon’s face—red and angry; Mum’s white top; my father holding something blue—a bit of material that flaps in the wind. The roar gets louder, like a gust of wind wrapping itself around my head; I choke as I try to get air into my lungs. Everything goes hazy and blue. I taste salt, and then my body runs out of oxygen.

  “Elsie.”

  My father’s voice filters through the roar.

  “Elsie, let’s go. It’s getting a bit gusty.”

  I open my eyes, gasping. I’m back on the grass and the images have gone. No one seems to have noticed the roaring or my choking. Dillon is already on his feet, moving toward my father.

  “Sleep tight, Edward,” my father says. Mum says it too, but I only hear the first word, and then her lips move silently. But Eddie is not asleep. He is stomping about on the grass, chasing after me, trying to slap my hands but missing. I let him have one for free, and he jumps into the air and squeals before tripping and falling over.

  It’s not that I can see him, exactly. I just feel him.

  Two dolphins glide past. I can’t see which ones they are from here, but I like to think they’re Mischief and Sundance—Eddie’s favorites because he got to stroke them once.

  “The fins are out today, Eddie,” I whisper.

  I try to get Dillon’s attention, but he’s looking at the water. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing as me: if only he hadn’t left me with Eddie. If only I had looked after Eddie like I was supposed to.

  Later, Mum comes into my room to wish me happy birthday.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t do a big thing with presents. I tried, but I don’t even know what he’s into anymore. He’s probably outgrown Legos by now.”

  “Really?” I ask. Maybe she felt him earlier too. Excitement bubbles up under my skin.

  “He still loves Legos,” I whisper, “especially boats.”

  Mum gasps and her arms twitch. I think she’s about to hug me, but then she stiffens and shakes her head.

  She strokes my hair instead and says, “We shouldn’t do this. We shouldn’t pretend he’s still here.”

  I shiver as she continues to stroke my hair. I’m not sure what she means by pretending. Just because we can’t see him doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about him or think about what he likes. We can’t simply forget he ever existed.

  “I forget sometimes,” she says quietly. “Like, first thing in the morning, or when I’m out food shopping. Then it really hurts when I remember.”

  “But do you feel him?” I ask.

  “Yes, of course,” she replies. “Sometimes.”

  She frowns and looks around the room, uncertain.

  “Elsie, you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

  “No.”

  She doesn’t seem to get what I mean about feeling him. It must be a twin thing. Something I’m not meant to share with anyone else.

  “Well, good,” she says. “Anyway, how about we celebrate your birthday next week? We could go out for a meal, the four of us. I saved some money especially.”

  “Sure,” I say, disappointed that she doesn’t want to talk about Eddie any longer.

  And I’m not holding out for the birthday meal. She says the same thing every year and it never happens.

  “I did get you something small, but don’t tell your dad. You know what he’s like.”

  She hands me a parcel wrapped in recycled Christmas paper. I can already tell it’s clothes.

  “I’ll leave you to open it,” she says. “And there’s a card from Dillon too.”

  She pulls an envelope from her back pocket. Dillon’s too scared to give it to me personally because he knows he should have stuck up for me when we were down at the Point. When Mum’s gone, I open the envelope first. On the front of the card is a chocolate cake with sixteen brightly colored candles. It’s signed from Dillon and Eddie. Dillon’s even tried to mimic Eddie’s straggly writing. Dillon does this pretending thing too. Sometimes I feel like we’re in a parallel world where Eddie is still here, but at the flick of a switch, we can be back in reality and he’s gone. Those days are the worst.

  The present from Mum is a teeny, lacy black crop top. I’d be lucky to get it over my head, and even if I could, I’d then struggle to fit my arms through the flimsy sleeves. I’m about to put it in the bin but then remember Mum will want to borrow it one day. Last year’s present was clip-on hair extensions—as if I needed any more hair. I got Dillon to give it to the sister of one of his friends.

  Eddie would have worn the crop top and the hair extensions just to make Mum laugh. My rib cage shudders. It feels like Eddie is trying to get out.

  6

  Eddie loved being buried almost as much as he loved the dolphins. The doctors told Mum and Dad that physical activity would help his development. They encouraged us to let him touch everything, show him all the different textures. He always wanted to dig holes or build things. Mum used to collect cardboard boxes and plastic tubs from deliveries at work and bring them home for him to play with.

  When we were about seven, Mum came home with a really big box and some red paint. Eddie actually wet himself when he saw the box. He wanted to get into it straightaway.

  Dad told us a story about the miners who live underground in the Australian outback.

  “It’s so hot there that you can cook sausages on the ground in just a few seconds. It’s too hot to live in normal houses, so you have to live underground. When it’s hot, you have to say, “It’s a real sizzler.”

  “Wow!” Eddie squealed. “I want to be underground in Straya.”

  We painted the box an earthy red, and while we waited for it to dry, Dillon taught Eddie how to do an Australian accent.

  “That’s a bonza steak you got on the barbie,” Dillon said as he flipped the plastic burgers from Eddie’s toy BBQ set.

  “Bonza,” Eddie said as he stamped on one of the burgers and split it open.

  Dad and I glued it back together with some old UHU glue we found in the kitchen drawer. Dad loved fixing all the small things—maybe it was his way of making up for not fixing our falling-apart house.

  When the box was dry, Eddie climbed underneath it, but even though there was room for me, too, he wouldn’t let me in.

  “You’re ’lowed to go to proper school,” he said. “All I have is my underground house in Straya.”

  I was mad with him and called him a selfish shellfish.

  “I hate you,” he whispered through the air hole that Dad had made on one side. He stayed under the box for hours. I think he must’ve fallen asleep, because later he yelled for me.

  “Ellie, let me out!” he cried. “Ellie, I can’t breathe.”

  I picture Eddie at sixteen, still calling me “Ellie,” still small, still clumsy. He’s at the school gate getting bullied. The younger boys, who are bigger than him, push him and steal his lunch money, and I rush to save him. I t
hump one of them in the face and give him a nosebleed, then take Eddie home as he cries.

  Shame washes over me. If he were here and that happened, would I really save him?

  7

  I meet Dillon on the stairs in the morning as we get ready for our first day back at school. His newly short blond hair is gelled at the front and spiked up—a style he’s been experimenting with since he got together with Lara, this girl in my year. I used to quite like Lara—she once shared all of her stationery with me when my school bag went missing (I found it later shoved behind the bike sheds). But this year she’s become friends with the handbag girls, and more importantly, she’s got particularly close to my nemesis—Ailsa Fitzgerald. Dillon knows all of this, but he doesn’t seem to care that I don’t approve of his choice. The spiked-up style doesn’t suit him. I liked it better when his hair was long and floppy and hung over his eyes a bit. He’s wearing a light blue collared shirt, even though the S6s don’t have to be nicely dressed. I feel slightly ashamed of the way I look. My trousers are too tight around my backside, my socks are always on show, the button across my chest is about to pop off. I don’t think my uniform will last another week, let alone another year—I wish S4s didn’t have to wear uniforms.

  “Thanks for the card, Dil.”

  I try to sound chipper, even though it made me feel really sad and I spent the whole night pressing the knot in my stomach.

  He shrugs. “Hurry up. We’ll be late.”

  He’s always grumpy in the morning.

  “You can go ahead without me,” I say.

  Dillon thinks life is a race, but I don’t see the need for getting anywhere on time. It just means spending more time in places you don’t want to be. If life does turn out to be a race, I’m way behind, especially when it comes to school.

  He waits anyway, looking at his watch anxiously. When I’m at the top of the stairs, I turn around and catch him frowning in the hall mirror. He pulls his shoulders back and sucks in his nonexistent stomach. He is so vain about his looks. He gets it from Mum.