“Oh, that sucks,” he says.
I sit beside him. I don’t tell him that his amazing girlfriend watched the whole thing and didn’t do anything about it. I don’t even care, because there’s only one thing on my mind.
“I’m going to be a freediver,” I whisper.
He looks up and stares as though I’ve just told him I’m going to the moon.
“I’m going to fail,” he says.
I glance at his notepad. In his writing it says:
FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL
Each “FAIL” on the page is underscored heavily in red and black and more red. I grab the pad, rip the page from it, and screw it up. With the black pen I write on the next page, “I am Dillon. I am brilliant at everything.”
He tears off the part of the page I wrote on, scrunches it up, and puts it in his pocket. The detention supervisor tells me to sit in the corner.
After school, Dillon is himself again. His exam must have gone well, or perhaps it’s the relief of the first one being over. I’m glad mine haven’t started yet.
“What are you going to do about Ailsa?” he asks. “You should’ve done the same back to her.”
“I would’ve done, but I didn’t have any chewing gum. Anyway, I thought you were friends with her.”
“Not really. She just follows me about,” he says, then scratches his head. “Hmm. I might have a plan.”
He disappears into his room and comes back with a bag of something really rotten.
“Fruit,” he explains. “I forgot about it until there was a funny smell.”
“Thanks.” I step back and turn my nose from the stench. “But what do I do with it?”
I follow Dillon into the kitchen, and he wraps the almost-liquid fruit in several layers of foil and then puts the bundle into a plastic sandwich bag.
“Here you are. When you get near her, unwrap it and chuck it in her bag.”
“Okay, thanks, Dil. I didn’t know you were such a rebel.”
“Never underestimate the Dilmeister.” He winks at me, and I catch the sparkle in his eye, something I haven’t seen for a while.
I place the parcel on the table and my stomach growls.
“I wonder if Mum’ll let us get takeaway.”
“She called to say she’d be late.”
In the fridge I find only sausages and a half-full tin of ravioli. I can’t be bothered to cook the sausages, so I eat the ravioli cold, standing over the sink in case it drips.
“Want some?”
“No. You really are gross.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” I say.
As I put the empty can in the bin, Dillon comes up behind me.
“This new hobby of yours, it hasn’t got anything to do with that boy, has it? The one you were with at the party?”
“No,” I lie. I’m worried he’ll tell Dad and that Dad will ground me for the rest of my life.
I feel a slight rush at keeping something from Dillon. It’s like I have power. If he can have secrets, then so can I.
Later, while I’m in the bath, I hear Dillon grunting through pushups in one room, and my parents arguing in another.
“What should I do, Celia? Leave you in bed to rot?” The floor creaks as he paces up and down.
“It’s hard for me, Colin. You don’t understand how hard.” Her words are slurred.
“Bullshit. How hard is it to pick up the dry cleaning from two streets away? And how hard is it to buy a carton of milk?”
“I thought you’d get milk on your way home,” she replies.
I feel bad about drinking it all, but there was nothing else.
“I need that fucking jacket for tomorrow!”
I wince when my father swears. It doesn’t suit him. I reach up and turn on the cold tap. The water thunders down by the side of my head and I start to shiver. When the whole bath is freezing cold, I roll onto my stomach, take a deep breath, and plunge my head down. My chest spasms, but I fight it and fight it, keeping myself under by pressing my hands into the side of the tub. After thirty seconds, the pain subsides. There are no groans or grunts, no arguments. I’m only thinking about one thing—soaring along the seabed in a silver wetsuit.
12
TAY DIVES DOWN INTO THE CLEAR WATER, AND I WATCH HIM glide with his arms locked together out front. He looks beautiful and elegant. I feel like a cumbersome whale in the water. We are at a place called Sandwich Cove, up the coast past Rosemarkie beach, where no one will find us. To get here, you either take a boat from Rosemarkie pier or you trek across fields and through brambles. The seabed here is made of rocks, not sand, which is why the water looks so clear. It has a reddish tint when you look into it.
“You make it look so easy,” I say when he resurfaces.
“That’s because it is easy.”
I put my mask on and try again. I struggle against the current for a few seconds, then bob back to the surface.
“Stop fighting the water and just go with it. You’ve got to let it take you.”
“But I can’t go down.”