Breathing Underwater (17 page)

They were playing “Friends in Low Places” when the manager threw us out
.

“Everyone knew you were lying that day.”

Leo throws the accusation like a practice pitch in the Marlins game we’re watching. It’s the fourth Sunday in a row I’ve spent in Leo’s undecorated room, watching a sporting event I mostly don’t care about. I’m comfortable here, though. I’d always watched sports with Tom, but with Leo, there’s a bond Tom and I didn’t have. Leo and I both grew up in hell.

Still, I ignore his statement. On-screen, a runner slides home. The umpire calls him out.

“He was so safe!” I yell.

“Nah—he was out,” Leo says.

“You see as well as the umpire,” I say. “They need instant replays.”

“And that’s your expert opinion?” He laughs.

I point to my fist, but I laugh too, and we go back to watching the game. The next player strikes out. Finally, Leo says, “Did you hear me?”

“What day?” I ask too quickly.

“Earth to Nick.” Leo leans near my ear. “I mean that day Mario asked about your old man.” Leo’s eyes never leave the screen. Like Tom, Leo’s an athlete who considers watching the game homework. He told me he’s had college and even pro scouts at his baseball games. “You were so full of it, acting like you and your dad were buddies.”

I don’t answer, staring at the game and thinking about my poem for English class. Finally, I change the subject. “Where’s Neysa? She’s usually around.”

Leo’s dark eyes swerve toward me. “Some family event that doesn’t include me. Bitch.”

“You want to do stuff with her family?”

“’Course not. But why does she have to? I told her she’d better start thinking about what I want, not just people who try to break us up.”

I hear Mario’s voice in my ear, talking about controlling behavior. I shake it off. Leo’s not controlling. He’s like me. He’s just looking out for his relationship. On-screen, there’s the typical SUV ad, a red truck on muddy mountains. I wonder if Caitlin’s with Saint right now.

Leo interrupts my thoughts. “I’m not talking about Neysa. I’m talking about you. We’ve been hanging together a month now, and it bugs me.”

“Huh?”

“I spilled my guts in class, but your guts—” He makes a slicing motion across his stomach. “Your guts are intact. You got off easy.”

“Easy? I’m doing time every Saturday. How’d you manage that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Leo rubs thumb and fingers together in the classic “payoff” gesture. “Hector talked to Neysa’s parents, and they decided to come clean. Her cousin’s the one who roughed her up.”

“They dropped the charges?”

“No sense jeopardizing my future for a case of mistaken identity.”

He looks to me for confirmation, and I nod. But I’m thinking,
God, he paid them off
.

“So, answer my question.”

Cornered, I say, “The answer is, you know the answer. Sure, my dad and I don’t get along. No big story. He knocks me around sometimes, not as much lately.” Leo nods, not prodding me to go on, so I do. “I deal with him like you deal with Hector. I steer clear of him.”

Leo throws me a look then holds it, a dealer weighing cocaine with his eyes. I must pass inspection because he says, “Know how I deal with Hector?” When I shake my head, he walks to the closet and opens its white louvered door. Inside, there are baseball cleats, rows of hanging pants. A safe. Leo kneels, turns the knob. The door swings open. He reaches inside.

He takes out a gun.

He holds it toward me. It is small and gray. From the care Leo takes handling it, I understand it’s also loaded. I hesitate, then my fingers close around its smooth metal barrel. The rest of it looks well-used. Though it weighs barely more than one of Caitlin’s hand weights, my arm sinks with the heft of it.

“It’s real?” Stupid question.

Leo raises an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

On television, the sportscaster screams, but it seems a whisper. The pitches come closer together, and every crack of the bat is a gunshot.

“You’d … use it?”

“If I have to.” Leo takes the gun back. “I won’t, though. Hector knows I have it, knows it’s loaded, ready to go, and if he hurts any of us…” Leo raises the weapon like one used to handling such machinery and aims for the wall. “Boom.”

He returns it to the safe, goes back to watching the game. But a few minutes later, he says, “You can borrow it, anytime.”

Writing in this journal seems better than thinking about what Leo showed me this afternoon. And a lot better than writing a poem for Higgins’s class.

Saturday was the day we saw the shark
.

By nine the next morning, we’d sobered up (not counting the three coolers we’d loaded onto Zack’s parents’ yacht) and were bound for a reef off Key Largo. Zack drove like a wild man, and I loved watching Caitlin’s body as the boat bounced across the waves
.

Caitlin was terrified. In case you think I’m exaggerating, I’ll clarify. Caitlin was scared of water, boats, snorkeling, and sharks, stingrays, sawfish, and barracuda. That day, she was probably also afraid of tuna, suntan lotion, and Diet Coke. I tried to help by telling her that if we saw a great white, I’d stick my leg in his mouth—so she could swim to safety
.

“You’re not very funny,” she said. But I thought I saw her lips crinkle upward, so I kept going, telling her how sharks can swim eleven miles per hour. Even an Olympic swimmer can only do five
.

I bent my leg backward. “Would you love me if I only had a stump?”

That got her. She cracked up. Between giggles, she said, “Let’s avoid the issue by staying on the boat.”

But Zack was dropping anchor, and the others were already sliding to join the early arrivals at the reef. Tom yelled for us to join them. I waved him off
.

“You don’t have to, Caitlin,” I said. “But even if something happened, you’d die in this magical place with the person who loves you most in the world.”

“You’re not afraid of dying?”

“No one’s dying.” When she kept looking at me, I said, “No, I’m not afraid of that.”

She touched my shoulder. “What are you afraid of?”

“Being without you,” I answered, before thinking
.

She kissed me. “You aren’t afraid of anything, then.” She looked at our friends and reached for her fins. After putting them on, she started to pull off the Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt she’d worn over her bathing suit. I stopped her
.

“Keep it on. You’ll fry otherwise.”

“I have on sunscreen.”

I eyed Liana’s butt in the water, imagining people looking at Caitlin like that. I didn’t want anyone looking at her like that. “Look, I didn’t want to say anything, but you’ve been eating like a pig lately, and it shows.”

She examined her stomach. “You think so?”

“I’m the only one who’ll tell you the truth.”

It worked. Caitlin sighed, slipped her swim vest over the T-shirt, added mask and snorkel. Then, as if she’d decided to get it over with, she jumped in. I watched the ocean filtering through her fingers, the trail of her yellow hair. Cat had courage stored for the winter. I loved and hated that, hated it because I wanted her to need me. She had to need me. Still, I followed in her wake. Though she’d said she wasn’t a strong swimmer, Caitlin pushed on. I only hoped she’d take me with her
.

Underwater was gray and bright at the same time. Breathing through a snorkel, all you can hear is your own snorkel-enhanced breath in your ears. But there was plenty to see. First, there was the reef, surprising shades of purple, green, and gold with small fish who let us be part of their schools. Other creatures materialized. If anyone saw something worth investigating in the folds of coral, we’d take deep breaths and skim down far as our air would hold us. Down there, that seems like forever. Breathing was unimportant. We made a game, seeing who could find the best sights to show the rest. At first, there were only the usual clown and parrot fish, floating like forgotten balloons. Soon, I spotted a huge ’cuda in the shadow of someone’s boat. I was Lord High Ruler, at least until Saint said he saw a sawfish. Funny thing was, no one else could find this enormous thing. Saint insisted it was in the rocks somewhere
.

“It’s in your mind,” I said, and he gave me the finger
.

We wasted ten minutes searching for a nonexistent sawfish and were starting to think about lunch. Then, Liana surfaced with bright eyes and one word. “Shark.”

Cat started paddling toward the boat. I yelled, “Eleven miles per hour, Cat!”

Liana glared at me. “It’s a nurse shark. They’re harmless.” She swam after Caitlin
.

“She doesn’t have to go.” I followed them while everyone else dove down to investigate. Caitlin hung with one foot on the boat’s ladder
.

“Don’t scare her, Nick,” Liana said. Then, to Caitlin. “It won’t hurt you,
Gatita
. Come and see.”

“I’m not the one pushing her,” I said
.

“Oh, right. Mr. Patient and Understanding. You forget, I know you, Nick.”

Liana joined Caitlin where she hung. Around us, heads popped through blue water, everyone talking about how cool the shark was
.

“Come on, Cat,” Liana said. “Let’s go together.”

“I said, don’t push her,” I said
.

“Butt out.”

“I’ll go,” Caitlin said. “I’ll go, okay?”

Liana extended her hand, and before I could join them, they were under. I spit out my snorkel and followed, down, down, past the living purple coral to the gray world below. The shark was still there, barely visible, lurking huge and silent within an outcropping of rocks. I saw eyes, beady and close, nose like a dog’s snout. Though it could have killed us with one swift chomp, it only floated, bright round eyes meeting mine. Caitlin hung back. She and the shark watched each other. Finally, she realized it wasn’t going to jump out like an amusement park monster, and she swam closer
.

We were down there ten seconds, maybe. Liana left, and I started to feel my lungs give out. I was gulping to make myself feel like I had air, exhaling like crazy. Unable to last longer, I grabbed Cat’s hand, and we swam for the surface. My lungs felt thick. Caitlin came up an instant later
.

“I did it,” she said, like a kid who’d eaten a bug on a dare. “I can’t believe it. Wasn’t she beautiful, Nicky? I just know she was a girl shark. And I wasn’t afraid. Me. I wasn’t afraid. Can we go again?”

Cat was practically panting, but her eyes shone. I looked up at the boat. “I don’t know. We’ve been in over an hour. Everyone’s having lunch.”

She didn’t argue, just said, “Oh, well. At least, I saw her,” and swam toward the boat. She threw off her flippers and ran to Liana, thanking her for making her go. I was forgotten
.

“You did it,
Gatita.
” Liana snuck a glance at me. “I just believed in you.”

After lunch, sandwiches prepped by the Schaeffers’ maid, we settled in. I’d oiled up and insinuated my body next to Cat’s, balling a towel over my trunks in anticipation of the borderline sick sex dreams that come from sleeping in sun. I closed my eyes, waiting for sleep to take me. I felt a tap on my shoulder
.

I pulled an eye open. It was Tom. “’Sup, bruthuh?”

He put a finger to lips and gestured toward Saint, who looked like a beached rhinoceros on his stomach. Tom crept toward him and whispered something in his ear. No response. Tom whipped out a zinc oxide stick and started writing. When he finished, he stood back so I could see. I laughed. He’d inscribed JUSTIN 4EVER! in zinc on O’Connor’s unsuspecting back, assuring Saint a semipermanent skin shrine to the god of tween-age girls. O’Connor would not be a happy camper when he woke up
.