Dad lost his job last year and he’s 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 inbox.
It’s not ideal, Lav and I having 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 smartly dressed but depressed dog.
Between me and him, this house hasn’t been much fun this summer. No wonder Lav is taking bottles for walks and Mum is dating like the men are off to war.
It’s awkward, actually, as Mum is really enjoying her job, she teaches creative writing to grown-ups. Which sounds like an easy job to me, but she says I haven’t read enough bad sexy poetry to judge. (And no, she won’t let me see it.)
We call goodbye to Mum 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 boot as an acceptable way to get in.
Lavender 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 non-mainstream 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, divvy.”
“Is that the name of the music or just where they are? Come on, Lav, seat forward!”
“Lavender!” 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 round to see what Dad’s talking about. Lav is wearing studded black 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’d be happy to— Ow! Legs, legs, legs!”
As Dad approaches the school gates I can see a tall boy with long hair, loitering. Lav slumps down in her seat.
“Drive, drive, drive!” she hisses.
“What?” Dad asks, but he continues past the school gates.
“Uh…”
“Was that Beau Michaels waiting for you?” I ask.
“Yes, and shut up. Dad, can you drop us at the back entrance, please?”
“Wait.” Dad is puzzled. “Someone called their son Beau and that was allowed to happen?”
“Daa-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-roundabout and heads back to the main school entrance.
“No, no, no!” Lav slumps down in her seat again. “I mean, you’re hilarious, Dad! Properly witty!”
“I think 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 avoid his gaze. 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 offence, Dad.”
(“No, that’s fine.”)
“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 gazelle, I can’t imagine how daft I look when I clump along behind her. The 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 the semi-clean tissue I find in the door handle. I clamber out of the car and follow Lav at the agreed distance of six feet.
2
Weez!! I can’t believe I’ve been here a week. Time’s flying! People are nice but I haven’t scoped out any proper 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 year above, and we’re so different, I’m not sure people know we’re related. She’s popular but seems to get in endless rows with other girls. She reckons they’re intimidated by her maturity.
I think it’s because she gets off with their boyfriends.
I used to head into school with Hannah, exhausted and damp from swimming, do a bit of work, have a couple of chats with people (well, she would, I’d hang out in her shadow – happily, thanks Mum) then head back to the pool. Hannah and I always treated school like a chore, 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 into the playing field six years ago and people still talk about it.
But despite my whingeing, I have resolved to make an effort. Today I’m launching Operation: Make Friends. I’m an idiot for only having one friend. I need a spare!
I’m so used to having Hannah’s arm slung around me as we laugh at nine years’ worth of stupid private jokes. I’ve got all my halves of those jokes and nothing to do with them.
I feel a bit shy as I enter my form room, so I check my bag to make me look busy, not lonely. Classic move. I look through my books and pencils. Yup, all there. Hi, guys.
I get so carried away with my acting that I trip over, my rucksack 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 burning, I crouch and start shovelling 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. Brilliant. The nicest teacher in school (and not bad looking, actually, if you like cardigans) begins his morning by falling over me as I scrabble around 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-specially-made-in-America 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 hot, and hope everyone d
evelops amnesia by lunch. I don’t want to be Tampon Brown all term.
“Did you see that video I posted on your wall?” one of the two boys in front of me says to his friend, 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 chemistry next, nightmare!” I say to the back of their heads in a matey, eye-rolly sort of way. But too quietly, so they don’t realize I’m talking to them. I look out of 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 at 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 could use my head as a radiator and cut their heating bills.
Then I’d have to be home-schooled, right?
My phone vibrates up my sleeve and I slide it out for a peek. It’s a text from Mum, 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 photo 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 inbox.
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, although I sat at the front of the minibus instead of at the back with Hannah because I suddenly developed carsickness.
I kept staring up at the ceiling because the fake carsickness was also making my eyes water. “Anyone else got 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 so 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 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 people 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 register. Right.
The morning begins with 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 me and Han 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 edu-boring-cation.
It’s amazing how little I know in 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 lunch. I follow the smell of cabbage until I’m at the canteen. (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 rucksack 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 having no one to talk to. I take out my phone. I’m tempted to call Hannah, but then we’d 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 back 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!”
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 about 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’ 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. Last year my team trained before school, after school, sometimes at lunchtimes and weekends, and we’d all been working towards these time trials. Now I’d flunked, there didn’t seem to be much point in carrying on. 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 last again?
I tell Hannah this on our last sleepover of the summer. It’s sti
ll warm out, so we’re camping – our last chance before she’s off to Dorset. As I babble on about my worries, she looks uncomfortable. She’s my best friend, of course she’s not going to say, “Yeah, train for another year! I’m sure you won’t choke again!” but she can’t say, “Give up, pal, you’re clearly rubbish,” either.
We sit, chewing in silence. I’m eating cereal out of the packet and Hannah’s eating a block of concentrated jelly, which is disgusting, but she reckons it stops her nails splitting from all the chlorine in the pool. Plus side, she always smells fruity.
Thankfully for her, she’s saved from giving me careers advice.
“SLUG!”
There’s a huge one shuffling its disgusting belly up the inside of our tent. Our screams bring Hannah’s mum down to the bottom of the garden. (Because yes, of course we’re camping in the back garden; we’re not heroes.)
Barbra’s just got in from a shift at the hospital and she isn’t in the best of moods. When you work in A&E, two girls shrieking over a slug can seem a bit small-fry. She flicks 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 pops her head back into the tent and stares at me for a moment with a concerned look on her face.
“Lou, have you done something to your hair?”
She looks horrified. Classic Babs. She’s got all the tact of a brick, as Mum said when she thought I wasn’t listening.
“No,” I say honestly, trying to flatten it.
“Bye, Mum!” says Hannah pointedly. Babs makes a “What have I done now?” face and goes back to the house.
It’s not a competition, but I win the mums.
After a quick debate about the chances of that slug sliming to the top of the tent and falling into one of our sleeping mouths – which we have to end because Hannah’s laughing and dry-retching so hard I think she might choke – we return to the all-important subject of me.
Girl Out of Water Page 2
