The Art of Not Breathing (13 page)

“And Danny?”

“He thinks he’s the boss—always telling me what to do, who to speak to.”

“Ignore him. He doesn’t own you,” I say.

Tay smokes silently. “No, he doesn’t,” he finally says.

“What’s wrong with this place, then? I think it’s okay.”

“The people. You know—small place, small minds.”

“Oh, thanks.” I suppose I’m one of those people.

“Apart from you, of course.” He turns to face me. “Noodle girl.”

And then he’s kissing me and I kiss him back. He tastes like cigarettes and weed and strawberry lip balm, and his lips are soft and smooth. Our mouths work together, and there’s no crashing of teeth like with the last boy I kissed. I’m living in the moment, I think to myself. And then Eddie pops up and tugs on the inside of my rib cage, and he wants to play chase.
Not now, Eddie.
But he pulls me away.

“You okay?” Tay whispers.

“Yes,” I whisper back, trying to lean in again.

“Your eyes,” he murmurs. “They’re so green.”

“Yes.”

“It’s late.” Suddenly he turns away.

He gets up to go.

“Wait,” I call. “Did I do something wrong?”

He shakes his head and lingers at the entrance.

“No, of course not,” he says, his voice all gravelly. “I just don’t want to make my dad mad.”

Then he disappears. My lips tingle, like he’s still there, and when I close my eyes, the tingles go right to my toes.

When I crawl out of the boathouse an hour later, I see Danny down on the harbor wall, staring out to sea. Giddy from the kiss and the smoke, I decide to confront him. Before I’m even halfway along the wall, he turns around.

“I thought I told you to stay away.”

His hair looks shiny in the moonlight and rustles gently in the breeze. One of us is swaying slightly. I think it might be him.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do. It’s not really any of your business where I go or who I hang out with.”

He walks closer, and I smell beer on his breath.

“No, but if you had an ounce of sense, you’d listen to me. Tay is not good for you to be around. He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s reckless, and he probably won’t even be here for long.”

“He’s here to help you and your dad, you know.”

I feel myself getting hot, but I want to have my say—someone needs to stick up for Tay. Danny’s too close. I take a step back.

“Watch out,” he says sharply as he grabs me by the shoulders. For a second I think I’m going to tumble into the water, but then he pulls me to him. “You were too close to the edge,” he says.

“Christ, I can look after myself,” I say, releasing my arm from his grip. “My mum said you were odd—she saw you the day you dropped me home. She said you looked untrustworthy, and I think she’s right.”

Danny snarls. “That’s rich coming from her.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

I feel tears building up and quickly blink them away. I hate it when strangers say stuff about my mum when they’ve never even met her. Tay’s right: this is a small town.

He looks out across the bay and folds his arms. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I just know that she’s had a few issues. Look, are you okay to get home? I can drive you if you want.”

“No,” I say. “You’ve been drinking.”

I make my way back down the wall and across the road. When I finally turn back, he’s still standing on the wall, and I feel a tickle in my throat. Tay’s kiss keeps me warm on the way back, but the nice feeling is tainted with Danny’s cruel words. Eddie stays quiet all night. He doesn’t want to talk to me.

11

THERE’S CHEWING GUM IN MY HAIR. A NASTY OFF-WHITE COLOR
against my black mop of curls. In the toilets, I cut it out with scissors I took from the art cupboard, along with the curl it was stuck to. The first chance I get, I spit on the gum and slip it into Ailsa Fitzgerald’s bag. I get caught and have to spend lunchtime in the library under supervision.

Dillon is in the library too, doing a bit of last-minute studying before his Business Studies exam. He’s hunched over the desk with his head in his hands, and his pens are neatly lined up beside his notebook.

“What’s happened to your hair?” he says, grabbing the small tuft on top of my head.

“Ailsa and chewing gum.”

“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.”

“Who says anything about going down? As soon as you’re under, that’s it.”

Frustrated, I push away from him, slightly out to sea, and launch myself down to the bottom. It’s not that deep, but as soon as I get to the seabed I grab a rock and hold myself, belly down, on the floor. The seconds tick by. I brace myself for the memories to flood my mind. The rocks down here are jagged and dig into my hands, but I grip them tight. Some of them are covered in a wispy kind of seaweed that looks like parsley, not at all like the big bits of kelp along the shore and in the harbor. The parsley swishes about in the current. There are shells, too, stuck to the rocks, purple ones, black ones, and white speckled ones. The images don’t come, and I’m annoyed but also relieved. Down here, I’m not a loser. I’m also a lot lighter. I move my head from side to side, swishing my hair about. I pop a couple of bubbles from my mouth and watch them float up.

When I burst through the surface, Tay is there, clapping.

“Two minutes. You’re almost as good as me.”

We swim out a bit farther. I’m starting to get cold, but I don’t want to leave.

“What’s the deepest you’ve gone?”

Tay tilts his head back into the water. “I don’t know. Why is everyone so obsessed with how deep?”

“Isn’t that what it’s about?”

He lifts his head and flicks water in my face on purpose.

“No. Not at all. Come on—let’s dive.” He grabs my shoulder.

“How deep is it here?”

Tay sighs. “About twelve meters, but we’re not going to the bottom.”

From here I can see the lighthouse on the Point. I can just about make out small dots on the beach. Dolphin watchers.

“What about out there?” I ask, pointing toward the bit of water just away from the lighthouse, where Dillon used to swim, where the dolphins show off.

I feel Tay’s fingers tighten around my shoulder.

“Deeper,” he says. “There’s a drop-off. It goes to about forty-three meters.”

I shiver. “Ever been?”

“Nah, nothing to see down there. Right—enough talking. Let’s go under.”

The drop-off. The very bottom of the bay. I picture the seabed gently sloping away from the shore and then suddenly falling away. That’s where I need to go. That’s where Eddie would have gone.

“Elsie, come on.”

I notice I’ve been holding my breath. I let it out and tear my eyes away from the Point, refocusing my attention on Tay. It’s not that hard. I could look at him all day.

I take three deep breaths, like Tay does, then dive down. I kick and kick, but I seem to move only horizontally. I give up and wait on the surface for Tay. I watch his shadow dart about and count three minutes, and I don’t even know how long he was down before I started counting. When he surfaces, he looks like he’s been on some kind of magical experience. His eyes are glazed and shiny. He puts his arms around me and kisses me on the mouth. He tastes of salt.

“Come on, El,” he says into my neck. “Let’s go to the boathouse and warm up.”

I love how he just called me El—I feel so much older.

On the way back to Fortrose, I try to ask Tay for diving tips, but he ignores my questions and tells me about all the different rocks that can be found on the Black Isle.

“Did you see all the different-colored layers?” he says, pointing to the shoreline. “There’s sandstone, black shale, limestone. Sandstone is what the Pictish people used to carve their sculptures. If you look carefully on the beach, you can sometimes find bits of their artwork. You can find fossils, too.”

“Why are there so many layers?” I ask, feigning interest.

Tay kicks a pebble. “The passing of time, I guess. Earthquakes causing the land to shift. Do you ever think about all the people who’ve walked along this beach before you?”

“Not really,” I say. “Isn’t that a bit morbid?”

“No. It’s history. It’s amazing what you can find on the beach if you look hard enough.”

“And under the water?”

“Yes, but most of the interesting stuff ends up on the beach.”

He bends down to pick up a small flat black rock. “See? It’s a fossil.”

“Why don’t you like talking about diving?” I ask him. “Especially when you’re so good at it.”

Immediately I feel annoyed at myself for giving him a compliment, but at the same time I want to know.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Tay says. “I don’t need to talk about it. It’s just something I do, like breathing.”

I grin. “You mean it’s like
not
breathing.”

He smiles slowly at me, like he’s just realizing something.

“You’re right. And I’m glad I get to not breathe with you.”