Goldfish

by Nat Luurtsema

  “You can check his wallet when he goes to the bathroom,” Lav suggests.

  “Though if he takes it with him, he’s possibly not coming back,” I finish.

  Mom gives out three death stares and returns to her book.

  Yeah, date. So it’s a little odd in this house.

  Mom and Dad divorced when I was little but are the nicest divorced couple. They never fight and they get along really well. I’m not sure why they divorced, but I don’t want to ask in case the answer involves sex and I’ll never stop being sick.

  Dad lost his job last year and he had to move in with us until he finds a new one. It’s taking a lot longer than he thought it would. Sometimes when he leaves his email open, I see all the rejections in his in-box.

  It’s not ideal. Lav and I have to share a room, but we don’t say anything because we don’t want to hurt his feelings. I worry about him. He gets up early every morning, like he’s still got a job, and dresses in a suit and then just … I don’t know … waits for the day to pass until we come home.

  It’s like having a professionally dressed but depressed dog.

  Between me and him, this house hasn’t been much fun this summer. No wonder Lav and Mom are dating like men are off to war.

  We call goodbye to Mom and trudge out to the car. Lav forces me into the back, which is not easy. Three-door cars are such a lie; you can’t call it three doors unless you see the trunk as an acceptable way to enter a car.

  Laverne fiddles with the radio until she finds a pirate station. It sounds like people shouting in a cramped space. As if she doesn’t get enough of that at home.

  “Oh, Lav, you’re so alternative. I cannot get my head around how nonmainstream you are.” I sigh from behind my knees. “Move your seat forward.”

  Lav squeezes the lever and slowly pushes her seat back as far as it goes, crushing me into an even tighter S shape.

  “It’s garage, idiot.”

  “Is that the name of the music or just where they are? Come on, Lav, seat forward!”

  “Laverne!” says Dad. “Move the seat forward or you can walk the rest of the way. Do you want to walk in those shoes? Can you walk in those shoes?”

  I peer around to see what Dad’s talking about. She’s wearing black, studded, chunky boots—it looks like she’s got weapons on her feet.

  “Yes, I can! Not very far, or fast, or…”

  “I don’t know why you do that to your feet,” Dad sighs.

  “You don’t get me, Mark,” she sighs back dramatically.

  “Dad!” he corrects her.

  “No, Lav, everyone gets you,” I say, defending him. “You’re so instantly gettable that if you were an exam question, everyone would be happy to see you. And that’s the only time they would be happy to see you, ha ha ha—ow! Legs legs legs!”

  As Dad approaches the school gates, I can see a tall boy with long hair loitering. Lav slumps in the seat.

  “Drive, drive, drive!” she hisses at Dad.

  “What?” he asks, but drives past the school gates.

  “Ah…” Lav sighs.

  “Was that Beau Michaels waiting for you?” I say.

  “Yes, and shut up. Dad, can you drop us at the back entrance, please?”

  “Wait.” Dad is puzzled. “Someone named their son Beau and that was allowed to happen?”

  “Daaa-aad.” Lav rolls her eyes.

  “Like, no one was arrested? They were just allowed to do that to an innocent child?” he asks.

  “You’re not funny,” Lav tells him firmly.

  Dad circles a mini traffic circle and heads back to the school entrance.

  “No, no, no!” Lav slumps down in her seat again. “I mean you’re hilarious, Dad! Really, very witty!”

  “I thought so,” he agrees serenely, and we sail past the entrance again, poor Beau Michaels watching us with the dawning realization that all is not well in his love life.

  Dad pulls up at the back entrance to school. Lav hops out and flips her seat forward, and I unfold myself into a normal shape. Well, normal for me.

  “Come on, LouLou,” says Dad.

  I pick at some dry skin on my lip and look down. Maybe Dad will get bored of waiting and just let me sit quietly in the back of the car for a few years. Eventually I’ll be old enough to shuffle forward and share the driving.

  Lav leans down at my window.

  “I swear,” she says, “this isn’t a big deal unless you make it a big deal. You nearly got to the Olympics. That’s the closest anyone I know in this crappy little town has ever got to achieving anything! No offense, Dad.”

  “No, that’s fine,” he murmurs.

  “So please, just don’t even mention it. Now the school day begins, and you do not know me.”

  She wobbles away on her monstrous shoes. She looks like a baby gazelle. I can’t imagine how dumb I look when I clump along behind her. Gazelle and the mammoth, off on their adventures.

  That thought makes me even sadder, so I push it aside and give Dad a brave smile. My dry lip splits and bleeds.

  “It’s going to be a good day,” he promises.

  “OK,” I mumble through blood and a semiclean tissue I found in the door handle. I clamber out of the car and follow Lav at the agreed-upon distance of six feet.

  chapter 2

  Weez!! I can’t believe I’ve been here a week, time is flying! People are nice, but I haven’t scoped out any real friends yet (you have no grounds for jel). I’m learning so much, I thought everyone would be terrifyingly good, but I’m OK, you know? Not saying I’m the best but I think I’ve got a chance. I MISS YOU.

  Hxxxxxx

  Lav and I don’t hang out at school—she’s in the grade above, and we’re so different I’m not sure people know we’re related. She’s pretty popular but seems to get in endless long-running fights with other girls. She thinks they’re intimidated by her maturity.

  I think it’s because she flirts with their boyfriends. We agree to disagree.

  I used to head into school with Hannah, exhausted and damp from swimming, do some work, chat with some people (well, she would; I’d hang out in her shadow—happily, thanks, Mom), then head back to the pool. Hannah and I always treated school like a chore, a little like the Queen snipping a ribbon on a hospital wing.

  I don’t think we missed much; our school is very ordinary. A horse walked onto the soccer field six years ago and people still talk about it.

  But despite my whining, I have resolved to make an effort. Today I’m launching Operation: Make Friends. I’m an idiot for having only one friend. I needed a spare!

  I’m so used to having Hannah’s arm slung round me as she makes me laugh with nine years’ worth of stupid private jokes. I’ve got all my halves of those jokes and nothing to do with them.

  I feel shy as I enter my homeroom, so I check my bag to make me look busy, not lonely. Classic move. I delve through it, looking at my books and pencils. Yup, all there. Hi, guys.

  I get so carried away with my acting that I trip, my backpack swings around with surprising force, and eight small objects fall out. What eight small objects, you ask?

  Eight tampons.

  ARGH!

  What is wrong with tampons? Seems like every time I open my bag, they leap out in a group suicide bid. I haven’t even started my period yet; they’re just in case. My face burns with a blush as I crouch and start shoveling them back into my bag, desperate for this moment to end. It couldn’t get worse.

  Yes, it could. I feel a light tap on my head—someone is “helping” by throwing an escaped tampon at me.

  And then Mr. Peters races in late. Perfect—the nicest teacher in school (and not bad-looking, actually, if you like cardigans) begins his morning by falling over me as I scrabble on the floor, chasing tampons and trying not to cry.

  The class falls silent as he comes over and helps me to my feet. I like Mr. Peters; he’s one of the few people in school taller than me, and not in a stooped, have-to-get-my-shoes-specia
lly-made sort of way.

  I give him a “thank you and that never happened” smile and weave through to our desk at the back. My desk, now. Teachers always knew they could sit Hannah and me there. We weren’t particularly good students, but we were quiet. You don’t need to pass notes to someone you’ve known that long.

  I sit down, face still burning, and hope everyone develops amnesia by lunch. I don’t want to be Tampon Brown all semester.

  “Did you see that video I posted on your wall?” The two boys in front of me chat, and I lean forward to join in. After a bad start, Operation: Make Friends begins right now.

  “Yeah! That guy looked so much like Hatsy it blew my mind.”

  “That’s why I put it up there!”

  “Oh, right! But everyone looks like Hatsy.”

  They collapse into quiet hysterics. For some reason.

  I’m watching the conversation go back and forth, feeling the smile die on my face.

  Who is Hatsy? Is it funny that everyone looks like him? Apparently. And what was that video? This conversation is like code; there’s no way I can join in.

  “Double history next, nightmare!” I say to the back of their heads in a friendly, eye-rolly sort of way. But too quietly, so they don’t realize I’m talking to them. I look out the window and bite my nail. I’m not embarrassed, I’m busy! Busy biting this nail.

  “Sorry, did you say something?” One of the boys turns around.

  I nod, suddenly choking on a piece of nail. Now I’m coughing right in his face. Right in his face.

  “No talking in the back!” Mr. Peters calls over. The boys turn back, one of them frowning and wiping his face.

  I sit, stunned by my own social idiocy, and wonder if I will ever stop blushing or if my family can use my head as a radiator and cut their heating bills.

  Then I’ll have to be homeschooled, right?

  My phone vibrates (it’s up my sleeve) and I slide it out for a peek. It’s a text from Mom, a picture of a badly stuffed otter. She may be grumpy in the mornings (and some afternoons and evenings), but she gets me—bad taxidermy always makes me laugh.

  There’s a picture of an annoyed-looking stuffed fox holding a handbag that never stops being funny, no matter how many times I look at it (and I needed to look at that fox a lot this summer). I scroll around my phone and then tap my in-box.

  I really should reply to Hannah’s last message. We’ve been chatting every day, but she starts all the conversations and I feel like everything I write is fake—things like I’m sooooooo happy for yoooooo! Xxxxx.

  I’m a very bad liar.

  After the time trials, I did my best to seem OK. I sat at the front of the minibus instead of at the back with Hannah, because I had suddenly developed “car sickness.”

  I kept staring up at the ceiling, because the fake car sickness was also making my eyes water. “Anyone else have wet eyes? I think it’s the air-conditioning. Look, my eyes are so wet they’re actually leaking!” (Sniff.)

  Hannah had always been good, but I never realized she was much better than me. I think she swam one of her fastest times ever that day. I don’t know my time; officials don’t chase after the girls who come in last.

  Hannah was so excited and I didn’t want to spoil it. That night I texted her loads, things like: I’m so proud of you my fish!!! Xxxxxxx. Which is a bit fake and gushy, but You stole my dreams is not a cool thing to text your best friend, even if it’s true.

  And I am happy for her! I’m just sad for me.

  “Louise?” I look up. Mr. Peters is staring, and the kids in the class are starting to turn and roll their eyes. What have I done now?

  “Yee-urp?” I say stupidly, and he smiles at me, a little exasperated, and says, “Sasha Burrows?”

  Oh. The attendance. Right.

  * * *

  The morning begins with a double block of history, where I learn a lot of really cool things, like how I know nothing about history and I am basically as educated as a piece of toast.

  See, this is the problem with planning to be a professional swimmer for the rest of your life; you don’t think that you might need an education. Basically, the moment I could read, I felt educated enough. After that I used school time to relax in. Can’t believe I hadn’t noticed how behind I’d got. Clearly, Han and I were oblivious in our bubble of idiot.

  My history teacher corners me after class to say, “How exciting about Hannah. You must be so proud!”

  “Yes, yes, I am, I really am!” I say back at her, nodding hard with big, fake eyes.

  History is followed by chemistry, because this school believes in putting the boring in educa-boring-tion.

  It’s amazing how little I know on this subject too. I listen hard and take lots of notes. Maybe I’m an academic genius; perhaps that’s my actual Thing, not swimming after all.

  “Any ideas? Anyone?”

  I shoot my hand in the air.

  “Louise!”

  “Potassium!”

  “No. Pota … what? I haven’t mentioned potassium once this lesson.”

  “Oh, OK.”

  People snigger. The teacher stares at me, baffled. “Did you mean phosphorus?”

  “Uh. Yeah?”

  “That’s still wrong.”

  Finally the morning’s over and it’s lunchtime. I follow the smell of cabbage until I’m at the cafeteria. (We hardly ever have cabbage; there’s just this lingering smell. Mysterious.)

  I look around. I knew this would happen. There’s no one to sit with, and every table “belongs” to a friendship group, so I wouldn’t just be eating there—I’d look like I was trying to join their group. I don’t want to be ignored or, worse, told to get lost.

  Can I bring my own little table into school every day?

  I buy a sandwich, stick it in my backpack, and head outside, daydreaming about my new (unlikely) future as a chemistry genius. My first breakthrough would be to disprove its credibility as a subject, forcing thousands of unemployed chemistry teachers to rethink their snotty attitudes.

  I walk in a circle around school, eating my sandwich. It’s boring to have no one to talk to. I take out my phone. I’m tempted to call Hannah, but then we’ll have to talk about training camp, and the thought of that makes my food stick in my throat.

  As I’m choking and spluttering, eyes watering, phone in hand, Mr. Peters appears next to me. He raises his eyebrows at the phone, which I’m not allowed to have out during the school day. I wave it weakly and whisper, “Ambulance.” He gives a snort of laughter and keeps walking.

  He stops and turns back.

  “Lou, you are joking?”

  I nod, putting my phone away. He makes a “phew!” gesture and keeps walking.

  Great, I’ve found someone I can chat to—and they’re paid to talk to me.

  As I’m putting my phone away in my bag, I realize I’ve stopped in front of the one place that can help me.

  The library.

  Home of the introverted and people too quiet to say, “No, Lou, I don’t want to be your friend. Leave me alone to read. Get that friendship bracelet off me. No, you shush!”

  chapter 3

  I settle down in one of the booths and feel myself relaxing for the first time all day. I quietly finish the last of my sandwich, eyes darting around for the librarian. She’s a small, nervy, hissing woman, and if that makes her sound like a terrifying animal, then good.

  I’m in the sports section. It’s only about a shelf long, but there’s a tattered old book there called Swimming for Women and the Infirm. Brilliant! I pull it down and start reading. It smells musty and is adorably nuts, focusing on “making elegant, ladylike shapes” rather than actually going anywhere. I’d love to see the look on Debs’s face if I tried this. “Personal best? No, I’m making a star shape, wheee!”

  I haven’t seen Debs in weeks. After the time trials she suggested I “take a break” from swimming, which was a pretty unsubtle dumping. My team had been training before school, after scho
ol, sometimes during lunchtime and on weekends, and we’d all been working toward these time trials. Now that I’d flunked, there didn’t seem to be much point in carrying on training—I clearly wasn’t good enough. I’d just get in everyone’s way, being slow, crying, trailing ribbons of snot behind me.… I thought of asking for another chance. I could always try out next year, but what if I came in last again?

  I told Hannah this on our last sleepover of the summer. It was still warm out, so we were camping—our last chance before she’d be off to Dorset. As I babbled on about my worries, she looked uncomfortable. Of course, she’s my best friend; she wasn’t going to say, “Yeah, train for another year! I’m sure you won’t choke this time!” But she also couldn’t say, “Give up, pal, you’re clearly awful.”

  We sat, chewing in silence. I was eating cereal out of the box. Hannah was eating concentrated Jell-O, which is disgusting, but she thinks it stops her nails from splitting from all the chlorine in the pool. Plus side, she always smells fruity.

  Thankfully for her, she was saved from giving me career advice.

  “SLUG!”

  There was a huge one shuffling its disgusting belly up the inside of our tent. Our screams brought Hannah’s mom out to the yard. (Because, yes, of course we were camping in the backyard—we’re not heroes.)

  Barbra’d just got in from a shift at the hospital and she wasn’t in the best of moods. When you work in the ER, two girls crying over a slug can seem dumb. She flicked it mercilessly into the hedge, ignoring our pleas to (a) be gentle and (b) escort it to a leaf ten or twenty miles away, please.

  Babs (as I have never dared call her) then popped her head back into the tent and stared at me for a moment with a concerned look on her face.

  “Lou, have you done something to your hair?”

  She looked horrified. Classic Babs. She’s got all the tact of a brick, as Mom said when she thought I wasn’t listening.

  “No,” I said honestly, trying to flatten it.

  “Bye, Mom!” said Hannah pointedly. Babs made a face like “What have I done now?” and went back to the house.

  It’s not a competition, but I definitely win the moms.