The Art of Not Breathing (14 page)

Later, I lie on my bed with my palms facing out. I slowly breathe in over five seconds and hold, then breathe out over ten seconds. After five goes, I feel dizzy and sleepy but it passes. I take a big breath in and count to a hundred and twenty. It was easy. I do it again; I count to a hundred and forty. I do it again; I count to one fifty. I do it again; I count to one forty. I do it again; I count to one thirty-nine. I lose count. I wonder how many seconds it would take to get to forty-three meters.

13

THE BOATHOUSE IS MY SECOND HOME. I MEET TAY MOST DAYS
after school to dive or just hang out. Now that summer is well on its way, it stays light late into the evening, and it’s hard to remember to go home. Sometimes we see Danny, and I wave to show he can’t get to me. He never waves back, and Tay moves me along and tells me to ignore him. Sometimes we pop in to see Mick, but he’s usually too busy to talk to us. He still makes the best hot chocolate, though, and there’s always a good selection of diving magazines to thumb through.

Every time we go into the water, I push myself to go a little bit deeper, and the thrill of it fills me with adrenaline and makes me want to go deeper still. Ten meters, then twelve, then fourteen, then sixteen, and finally eighteen. Sometimes Tay comes down with me; other times he hovers near the surface and then comes down to pull me up when he thinks I’m down too long. If he can’t meet me, he leaves me little notes about diving. They’re amazing, full of tips on how to increase my lung capacity, drawings (of me!) demonstrating how to do dolphin kicks and frog kicks, how to reserve my energy. What to do in an emergency—release my weights and kick for the surface. A list of things to remember: 1. Be confident. 2. Never dive alone. 3. Let your mind control your body. There aren’t any tips on how to go deeper, though. I don’t understand why Tay isn’t interested in that. Especially as Mick told me that Tay can go the deepest out of anyone. At school I create my own bubble to hide in. I barely listen in my classes. I hide Tay’s notes inside my textbooks and read them instead. I haven’t done any studying for my exams, but I don’t even care.

I’m smiling at a picture Tay has drawn of me in the lotus position with a speech bubble coming out of my mouth saying, “Tay is the best teacher,” when I feel something hit my ear. Then an elastic band flies past me and falls by my feet. I do my best to ignore it, but when the bell goes, I am surrounded.

“What you got there?” Ailsa grabs the drawing and shows everyone, then tears it into tiny pieces.

“None of your business,” I say.

Ailsa grabs my hair, and one of her sidekicks stamps on my foot.

“I know you put the rotten fruit in my bag,” she hisses. “Don’t think you’re going to get away with it.”

When she pulls her hand away, she takes a clump of my hair with it. It hurts so much, I want to cry, but I do not cry at school. It’s Lara who comes to my rescue.

“Leave her alone,” she says. “Find someone else to bother.”

Ailsa stares at Lara, open-mouthed, and then pushes her to the side.

“Well, you would stick up for your pathetic little boyfriend’s sister, wouldn’t you?” And she marches off with her sidekicks in tow.

Lara doesn’t move. I don’t want to, but I force myself to say thank you to her because it’s polite. Then I realize she only did it because she wants to talk to me about Dillon.

“I’m worried about him,” she says. “He seems really distant. Is everything okay at home? I know he’s got exams, but so have we.”

“Yeah, fine,” I say, wondering how much Dillon has told her about Mum’s drinking and Dad’s disappearing acts.

“I guess you guys have a lot to deal with,” she says. “If you ever want to talk . . .”

She looks genuinely concerned, and I feel sorry for her. I hope my brother isn’t the shag-then-leave-them type.

“I think Dillon is okay,” I say. “He’s just a bit stressed over his exams.”

But she’s right. Dillon is being very weird. He keeps having nightmares, and he never eats the food I cook, even when it’s healthy. I need to take him to the beach to cheer him up and get him away from his books. I also want to ask him again who he was looking for on the beach that day. I haven’t had any new memories, and now that I’m comfortable in the water, I’m starting to think I might not have any ever again.

14

THERE IS A HUGE SWELL, AND THE WIND CHURNS UP THE WATER
so it looks like frothed-up egg white. Tay isn’t in the boathouse, where we’d agreed to meet. After a few minutes, I hear the door to the clubhouse slam, and then voices. I crawl outside and peer around the corner.

Danny and Tay are on the veranda having what looks like a heated discussion. The wind is too loud for me to hear properly, but I catch the end of the conversation.

“You know what you need to do,” Danny says.

“Fuck off,” Tay replies, and then jumps down the steps two at a time. I slither back into the boathouse and pretend that I’ve been there the whole time.

Tay is agitated when he comes inside, swearing under his breath and kicking things about. After he discovers all the beers are gone, he slams my cupboard door so hard that the whole thing topples over.

“I can go and get more beers if you want,” I offer.

He sits down heavily and leans back against the wall.

“It’s fine.”

I light us cigarettes and pass one to him. Even when he’s angry, he smokes delicately.

There’s a nasty yellow bruise on the bridge of his nose. He sees me looking and turns away, so I don’t say anything, but I’m guessing what I heard wasn’t Tay’s first fight with Danny. “I can’t do the rings,” I say after a while.

Tay puts his arm around me and tells me he thinks the sideways smoke looks better anyway. I can’t help but look at the bruise— there’s a small cut, too, that’s scabbed over.

“Must have whacked myself in the face while I was asleep,” he says.

I frown at him.

“Who were you talking to just now? Danny?”

“No one.”

“Tay, I could hear you. Why did you tell him to fuck off?”

“He’s just being a twat. He says I need to help more with the diving club. He thinks I shouldn’t be spending all my time with you.”

“So? I thought you didn’t have to listen to him.”

Tay brings his knees up and then stretches out again, like he can’t get comfortable.

“He says you’re too vulnerable.”

And then I know that Danny has told Tay about Eddie. I shouldn’t have provoked him by waving all the time, and there’s a chance he saw me having a teary moment in the water the other day.

“He’s told you about my twin, hasn’t he?”

Tay is silent for a minute and just smokes. At first I panic and think that Danny was right, Tay doesn’t even care. Then I wonder if he just didn’t hear me.

“Tay?”

He turns to me and reaches out to stroke my hair. Then he puts his cigarette down and touches my forehead with his. Finally, he pulls back and picks up his cigarette again.

“I know about Eddie,” he says. “And I’m sorry. Why didn’t you talk to me about him?”

He doesn’t give me the pity head tilt. Instead, what I read in his face is disappointment that I didn’t tell him myself. And something else. Admiration, perhaps.

“I can’t pretend to know how you feel,” he continues. “But just so you know, you can talk about it, if you want. Or not, if you don’t want to.”

I’m so relieved he’s not running away that I kiss him, on the lips, and I have to rein myself back in before I literally eat him. And he is just as hungry for me. And then, when I’ve kissed away all my fear and I feel Eddie getting embarrassed for me, I tell Tay everything: about the day Eddie disappeared, the police search, the flashbacks I’ve been having. Tay holds me against him as I talk. I can’t see his face, but I can tell he’s listening because he breathes lightly and twirls my hair. I’ve never told my story to anyone before. Everyone I meet either already knows or doesn’t need to know. I tell him about how my family is falling apart, about Dillon not eating, and about his nightmares.

“He wakes in the night shouting, ‘You let him go!’ And it’s completely my fault.”

Tay squeezes my hand.

“It’s not your fault, El.”

I sit up and look at him. His eyes are watery, but he quickly wipes them dry.

I’m ready to tell someone my biggest secret.

“It was my fault,” I say. “I was supposed to hold Eddie’s hand the whole time we were in the water. I shouldn’t have let go but I did. He’s never said it to me, but I know Dillon blames me. My dad does too.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” Tay almost shakes me. “It’s not your fault. You were only small. The water out there is so unpredictable. If you get caught in a rip tide or a strong current, it’s impossible to hold on to anything. Trust me—I know.”

He passes me a cigarette and says he wants to hear more about Eddie. We sit and smoke while I tell him Eddie stories. Tay laughs at the story about the dog and Eddie hanging on to the lead.

“What was wrong with him?” Tay asks, when I take a break from telling stories.

I flinch slightly at the question before remembering that it’s a normal thing to ask.

“A few things. We don’t know, really, or at least Mum never told us. The doctors kept changing their minds, but it was probably to do with being starved of oxygen when he was born.”

“I’m sorry,” Tay says. “He sounds like a cool kid.”

When it’s nearly time for me to go, I feel sad. It’s been a long time since I shared Eddie like this, and rather than giving part of me away, I feel like I’ve gained a bit more of Eddie.

“The hardest thing,” I say, “is that we don’t know what happened to him. Sometimes I think that we’re all just waiting for him to turn up. I wish that we’d found him so we could have said goodbye properly.”

Tay makes a choking noise, and I feel bad for burdening him, but then I look up and he’s just coughing.

“You can say goodbye in your head,” he says quietly. And then he says, “Maybe it was a good thing that you didn’t have to see him. Bodies that have been underwater don’t look human.”

My head instantly fills with nasty images of mutilated zombies. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

I try hard to picture Eddie underwater but alive: his dark curly hair bouncing in the current, his lips red and smiling.

“Sorry,” Tay replies, looking confused. “I wish I could help.”

I turn to him. “There is something you can do.”

“Of course. Anything,” Tay whispers.

“Help me get to the drop-off.”

His mouth falls open. “No way,” he says defiantly.

“Yes way. I think it’s where Eddie would have ended up. I want to go down there and see.”

“What do you think you’re going to find?” Tay’s eyes are wide in horror.

“Nothing. I don’t know. It’s not like I think he’s still down there, but I just want to go to where he died. You know, like if someone dies in a car crash, the family all go to the place where it happened to put flowers and notes there. I want to do that.”

“And if someone falls into a river, the family put flowers on the bridge or by the side of the river. Not in it.”

“Only because they can’t go in the river. But that’s the difference, Tay. I
can
go down. I know how to. It’s the only way to get closure.”

“That’s not the way to get closure. The best way to let go is to start living your life.”

“You just said you’d do anything for me.”

“I would. But it’s too deep. It’s impossible. You’d need to hold your breath for at least four minutes.”

“I just want to say goodbye.”

Then he pulls me around to face him and presses his body into mine.

“Okay, here’s the plan. I’ll think about it. But we have to lie low for a bit, stay away from Danny and the harbor.”

“I’m not giving up diving.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying that we’ll have to make sure no one sees us. We dive at night.”

“In the dark?”

“Yeah, it’s even better in the dark. That’s the thing with art. You have to always look at it from a different perspective.”

“You’ve lost me. What’s art? The sea?”

“Diving. Every dive is different, and two people doing the same dive will have different experiences. And if you dive in the same spot at a different time of day, it will be different. It’s the same with a painting. If you look at a painting in different light, or even no light, you’ll have a new perspective on it. Don’t you think?”

I raise my eyebrows. “Are you crazy? The drop-off is too dangerous but diving in the dark isn’t?”

But I feel a thrill bubble away inside me.

I long for the dark.

“The sea comes alive at night,” Tay says. He kisses my collarbone, and then he moves his hand up inside my sweater. I don’t stop him. I’m not sure if it’s the crazy amount of nicotine racing through me or Tay massaging me that’s making me dizzy, but I let him lay me down on the floor. He lifts my top right up and pulls my bra down, and then his mouth is on me and he’s telling me how nice I taste. I wait for Eddie to pop up and force me to stop, but he doesn’t. Eventually, Tay stops of his own accord and pulls my sweater back down. He looks worried.