The Art of Not Breathing (27 page)

Thoughts race. Is she looking for me? Does she know everything?

Then it all becomes clear.

She slides off the barstool and walks to the end of the bar. Her curly hair is sprayed and set, and she’s wearing my Ruby Red. Mick reaches out, she reaches out, and then they are in each other’s arms. He bends his neck.

Uncle Mick. Affair. My father picking up a piece of clothing from the beach. Mum arriving without her jacket.

Mum
was
there that day, before we called her, before Eddie went missing. Dillon knew, and so did my father.

I run down the steps, across the pebbles, along the jetty.

I loop the slimy rope around my arm as I unmoor the
Half Way
.

The motor starts the first time.

The boat swings out in a sharp right when I move the throttle, pitching me to the floor. I scramble back up and adjust the tiller, keeping the boat steady until I’m clear out of the harbor. Then it’s full speed ahead with the lights off—my destination awaits. I don’t dare look back.

At the end of the Point I slow down so I can find the spot. I turn on the front headlights and see the buoy immediately, fluorescent in the lights, white foam spraying up around it. I sit for a moment, taking in my surroundings, soaking up the Black Isle horizon for the last time. There are streaky clouds high up in the indigo sky. Guillemots cluster around the top of the lighthouse, crying out for mates. In the distance an oil tanker chugs slowly out to the North Sea, into the darkness.

It takes me ages to tug on my wetsuit. The rubber feels tougher than usual, my hands clumsier, and I’m not able to grip it hard enough to pull the excess material up my thighs. The weight belt feels lighter than it should. I count the weights. There are three, but I can’t remember whether there should be four—my brain is foggy, but I’m sure I worked out that I needed fifteen pounds in total. I add an extra weight and fasten it around my waist. The zip on the wetsuit jacket gets caught halfway up. I yank it but it’s stuck fast. Everything feels wrong: lopsided, unbalanced. I shove Eddie’s T-shirt into the jacket pocket, then loop the flashlight around my wrist and turn it on. It flickers, then stabilizes. The light slices straight through the surface and makes the water underneath look green. It looks serene down there. Finally, I grab the cross and Jasper the frog and tuck them into my weight belt, then lower myself into the water. My body temperature instantly drops. I kick toward the buoy, aware that I’m using energy just to get to the start point. I take three deep breaths, and on the fourth suck in as much air as I can hold, making sure it gets into every inch of me, and then I go down.

The flashlight lights up all the tiny particles that you don’t usually see: translucent blobs that could be plankton, and all the disturbed sand from burrowing rays. The water swishes about my body as I guide myself down the wire headfirst, against Danny’s advice, but it’s the quickest way. The current tries to sweep me away. I keep going, feeling the water pass around me as I fall deeper and deeper.

I stop for a rest and to check the time, and my stomach lurches. I have forgotten to put my diving watch on. It doesn’t matter. All I have to do is get to the bottom.

Something rumbles above and the wire shudders. Boat waves must have knocked it. My jacket billows out where water has seeped inside. Cold water swills around my middle, chilling my core. I slip farther down, pointing the flashlight toward the bottom.

My chest starts to spasm. I can’t have been underwater for two minutes already.

The dust cloud is beneath me—all I have to do is get through it and Eddie will be waiting. As I descend, I reach for the T-shirt in my jacket pocket. The flashlight keeps getting in the way. I remove the loop from my wrist and tuck the flashlight into my weight belt so I can grasp the T-shirt. The red looks colorless down here.

My chest has stopped pulsing. Damn. I have let out some of my breath by mistake and now I need oxygen. I’ll have to surface for air and try again. I’m not leaving the Black Isle without saying goodbye to Eddie. I summon the energy to frog kick back up. As I push my legs down, there’s a loud fizz and a pop. I’m back there, on that day.

“Where are the fins? Where’s Mischief? Where’s Sundance?” Eddie asks, still sitting in the water as the waves break around him.

“Come on. We need to get you dry.”

“No. I want Dillon.”

“Dillon’s over there. He’s probably with all the dolphins because he’s not splashing about, making a racket. Get up.”

Eddie doesn’t move. I reach down and take his hand. His hands are colder than mine.

“I want fins!” he shouts at me.

“Fine, go on. Go and find Dillon. That’s where they are. Go on—go and swim out to the dolphins.”

“I don’t want to go on my own.”

“It’s about time you started doing things on your own. I won’t always be here to look after you.”

I shove Eddie’s hand away from me and turn around to look for Dad again. He’s still not there. Eddie clambers to his feet, then throws himself into the water and starts to swim.

“Eddie, no!” I cry. I wade after him and grab his arm. “Eddie! Come back!”

Something knocks me off my feet. My head goes under, just for a second, as a wave washes over us, and when I pull myself up, Eddie is gone.

“Eddie,” I gasp. I look down my arm to my hand because I can’t feel anything. Eddie’s hand isn’t there. In its place a thick, slimy piece of kelp has wrapped itself around my wrist.

Finally, the last gap in my memory. It was my fault all along. It doesn’t matter where Mum and Dad were, or Dillon. It doesn’t matter that Tay could have pulled his body out of the water. It doesn’t matter because I’m the one who sent him into the sea.

I make my decision: I’m not going back up.

My body fights my decision.
Go up—you need air. You can escape, go up north, start a new life. Not so fast. Stay down—you have nothing to go back for.
I let go of the wire and kick toward Eddie. I remember Jasper the frog tucked into my weight belt and pull him free. I look down just as the flashlight slips away. I watch the beam tumble into the murkiness and fade. This is it. This is my time.
Sorry it took me so long to find you, Eddie.

The light comes back at me, blinding me. The angelfish are not in the sky—they’re here. . . . Then everything goes dark.

CELIA:
Which fish go to heaven when they die?

EDDIE:
Angelfish! But I don’t
believe
in angels.

CELIA:
Angelfish are not angels. They are more beautiful, and they are brighter than anything in the sky.

EDDIE:
Brighter than the brightest star?

CELIA:
Brighter than all the brightest stars put together. You’ll never get lost if you follow an angelfish.

1

RAIN FALLS ON MY FACE IN SHARP SPLINTERS, STINGING MY CHEEKS.
I sit up. Danny has tied the
Half Way
to the side of another fishing boat, and we are moving slowly back to the harbor. The mist clings to the rocks around Chanonry Point, and even in the purple night I can see the swell of the ocean rolling back out from the shore.

“You followed me.” My voice is groggy and muffled.

“You stole a boat.”

I feel like I’m weighed down with sandbags. I reach down to unbuckle the weight belt, but it’s not there. Neither is Eddie’s cross. My wetsuit has been rolled down to my waist and I’m wearing the hoodie I had on earlier.

“The ribbons!” I shout. “Where are they? You’ve got to stop the boat. I need to get them.”

I scramble toward the outboard motor and reach for the cord, but a firm hand on my shoulder pulls me back.

“Joey!”

He drags me between his legs and wraps his arms around me. I wrestle out of his grip and grab his collar.

“You’ve ruined everything!”

“You could have died!”

“I wanted to die,” I sob.

Joey shakes me. “No!”

I punch him in the arm until I run out of energy.

I turn away and hang my head over the side of the boat. A white frothy line snakes away from the back of the boat, like a giant foam ribbon.

2

AT THE HARBOR, MICK AND REX ARE WAITING WITH MICK’S CAR.

“She should go to hospital,” Joey says. “She was out of it.”

“I’m fine,” I say, taking a towel from Rex and wrapping it around my shoulder.

“She’s fine,” Danny says. “I’ll drive her home.”

No one moves for a while. Eventually I get in the back of the car because I need to sit down. When Mick climbs into the passenger seat, I lean forward and whisper to him.

“I saw you with my mum.”

Mick gulps. “She . . . I . . . We were just talking. She thought you were at the hospital—she’s gone to find you. She left right before Danny discovered the boat was gone.”

Danny gets in the driver’s seat, and I lean back again. I shouldn’t be here; I shouldn’t even be alive.

As we pull up to the front of my house, the gate swings open, and my dad runs to the car and yanks me out.

“Where have you been?”

There’s desperation in his voice. He shakes me and runs his eyes all over me, taking in my wet hair, my exhaustion. Before I can respond, Mick opens the passenger door and tells my father to let go of me.

I watch my father’s face morph from anger into the beginnings of rage.

“You!” he bellows at Mick. He moves his face so close to Mick’s that I think he’s going to punch him. “How dare you come to my house after everything you’ve done?”

Mick steps back and holds his hands out to my father the way you would to an angry, barking dog.

“Trust me, the last thing I wanted to do was come here, but your daughter nearly drowned, and I wanted to make sure there was someone here to look after her.”

“You mean you hoped that my wife would be here. You sick, sick man.”

“You knew about Mum and him?”

My father ignores me and carries on shouting at Mick. Danny is still in the car, hands fixed on the steering wheel like he might just drive away.

“Please, Colin. This isn’t about Celia. That’s been over for a long time. This is about Elsie and what’s best for her.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what’s best for my daughter. You have no idea about my family.”

“Oh, really? So, I have no idea that Elsie spends most of her days down at the Black Fin because she can’t bear to be at home?”

“Let’s go inside, Dad,” I say, trying to drag him through the gate before Mick can divulge any more of my secrets.

“You go,” he replies. “I’ll be just in.”

But I don’t move.

“It’s not enough that you tried to steal my wife. Now you want my daughter, too?”

“You are a poor excuse for a father, and a poor excuse for a man. God knows why Celia chose you.”

“Don’t talk to him like that!” I scream at Mick. “Don’t you get it that my family is only this messed up because of you? If you hadn’t been at the Point with my mum that day, Eddie might still be here. And if Danny hadn’t trashed his bike, things might have been different—Tay wouldn’t have gone and I would have found out what happened to Eddie back then. This is your fault. And his fault.”

I point to Danny, and he looks at me through the car window, his face all shadowy through the glass. He shakes his head as if to warm me not to say anything else, but it’s too late. Mick bangs on the car door and asks him to get out.

“What is this about, Danny? I thought your bike was stolen. I thought Tay stole your bike.”

So many lies have been told.

“Tell them, Danny,” I say. “You might as well tell the truth now, because I’m going straight to the police.”

“I’m done talking about it,” Danny says.

“How can you be done talking when you’ve never said a single word?”

“I do talk about it. I talk to myself about it every single day. Don’t you think I wish I’d never followed my dad to the Point that day? That I hadn’t wrecked my bike?”