Breathing Underwater

by Alex Flinn

  JANUARY 17

  * * *

  My room

  The second week of Mario’s class, I oversleep, awakened only by thunder roaring across the beach. I’m late. I dress and run down the marble stairs, my hand brushing the butt of the ridiculous naked woman–shaped pillar on the landing. When I pull the front door open, rain slaps me in the face.

  Where the hell is my car?

  I gape a second, unmoving. Then, I run into the downpour, searching, like maybe the car’s playing hide-and-seek with me. But it would be hard to miss a car that red. It’s gone. I stand there, getting wet. Finally, I sprint back upstairs to my father’s bedroom, planning to—I don’t know—tell him? Impossible. That would mean waking him. Instead, I dial the police, still clutching my journal for class.

  “My car’s been stolen!” I start to describe it when I feel him standing over me. His familiar Greek accent is like nails on a blackboard.

  “It was not stolen.”

  I hang up. “What? Where is it?”

  I turn. My father’s maybe an inch taller than me, which is short. Still, his voice fills the room, and he looks pretty happy for this early Saturday morning. That kind of happiness is a bad sign.

  “I sold it,” he says. “Someone at the yacht club offered a good price.”

  “But it was mine.” Even as I say it, I know his answer. My throat tenses, but I’m not surprised. The hallway clock chimes eight-thirty.

  “I paid for it.” Like I knew he’d say. “It was my car.”

  It was a birthday present. But I don’t say it. Instead, I say, “I have class in half an hour. For court.”

  “Have the housekeeper drive you to the Metrorail station.”

  I leave my keys on the hallway table.

  The train station is five minutes away, on the mainland. But half an hour later, I’m still waiting on its raised platform. The place is deserted, and the rain shows no signs of stopping. Gusts of water soak my face, rattle the tracks. I lean forward to search for the train’s white light against gray sky. Not there. I’ll probably have to take the class over, and it’s my father’s fault. The hollow in my stomach grows, and somehow, even my hunger becomes his fault. If he’d sold the car because of what happened with Caitlin, I’d understand. He didn’t, though. He sold it because he could. The train finally lumbers in, and I get on. The sagging seat hits my butt, and I stare through a dirty window.

  I don’t know when I first knew my family was different, that I could never tell anyone about the silences and the rages in my father’s Architectural Digest house. I knew for sure when I was eleven, the year my father bought the Mustang. I came home one day to find my father smiling. Smiling. He was like a kid with a new toy, and for once, for once, he wanted me to play with him. I followed him to the garage, and there, beside his gleaming Mercedes, was a rusted-out carcass of a car.

  “We will fix it together?” he said.

  I nodded, though part of me—the smart part—knew it wouldn’t happen. Like I said, I was eleven. I knew stuff. It was a good day. There were some good days then. But the smart part of me knew. Working on that car was something other fathers and sons did, something Tom and his dad did, not us. Not me.

  I was right. A week later, he hired some grease monkey to replace the engine and just about everything else until finally, the car was perfect. My father liked perfect. Then, he hardly drove it.

  Father’s Day, I got the brainy idea of detailing it for him. I hitched a ride to the mainland for supplies then begged off the beach with my friends and spent the hotter part of a Saturday spreading Turtle Wax, rubbing it down with an old, soft shirt that still smelled of my father’s cologne. I remembered him smiling the day he got the car. When he came home, I showed him what I’d done.

  In the garage’s fluorescent light, my father inspected my handiwork. Planets hesitated. He ran an index finger across the hood, opened doors, examined Armor All–coated rubber. Then, he circled the car to the other side, his entire body registering begrudging approval. On the passenger side, he stopped. He leaned over, eyes riveted to the door panel.

  “What is this?” His green eyes barely flickering between the door and my face.

  “What?” I stooped, saw nothing.

  He jabbed his finger closer to the nothing. “That!”

  A scratch. To call it a nick would grossly exaggerate its size. More like a paper cut, and one that must have been there to begin with. I’d been too careful. But my father wasn’t rounding up suspects, and my butt was there to kick.

  He never drove the car again. It went into hiding, and so did I. From then on, I avoided him, made good grades, and kept my room clean enough to perform surgery. It worked except when it didn’t.

  The car reappeared this past birthday. Birthdays are hit-and-miss with my father, but this year, he remembered only a week late. Possibly, he’d been waiting for the occasion to remind me of my screwup. I came to breakfast, and he tossed me the keys on his way upstairs. “You break it, you own it,” was his birthday greeting. It took me ten minutes to find the scratch before I drove to school, his words ringing in my ears. You break it, you own it.

  Apparently not.

  The train pulls into the Coconut Grove station. It’s raining too hard for an umbrella to help, and I’m walking too far. The wind pushes at me like a defensive lineman and, finally, I ditch the umbrella and run to class.

  I get there at nine thirty-five. Leo’s standing, yelling at Mario. “Who are you to psychoanalyze me? I won’t even be here next week.”

  Seeing me, Mario holds up a chubby paw and starts the standard teacher line, “Nice of you to join us—”

  “Skip it,” I say. I can’t deal with this. “Just tell me where to retake the class. Better yet, throw me in jail. Who cares?”

  I’m dripping bathtubs on the floor, so I turn to leave. Mario stops me. “You don’t have my permission to leave.”

  I stop, glare at him.

  “You’re disturbing the class.” He tosses me a roll of paper towels. “You’re required to be here, so dry the floor and yourself, and sit down. We’ll discuss your future here later.”

  I tear off a wad of towels, throw them onto the linoleum, and move the sopping mess with my sneaker, feeling Leo’s black eyes on me. I glare back. Who does he think he is? I’m not towel-drying myself in front of this group, and I’m not explaining why I’m late, so I take a seat, feeling the blast of air-conditioning on my wet T-shirt. I shiver, and there’s Leo-the-cool smirking in his chair. Suddenly, I hate him, hate him because he’s got a girlfriend who’ll drop the charges. Mine won’t speak to me on a bet. Hate him because if we’d met in school, maybe we’d have been friends.

  “Want a sweatshirt?” Mario gestures toward a Miami Hurricanes shirt draped across his chair.

  “I don’t wear orange,” I say, and Mario turns back to the group. I sit, shivering through the rest of his lecture.

  After class, I wait by Mario’s desk until everyone else leaves. Leo gives one final smirk. I manage a sneer back. I examine Mario’s photographs. There’s a smiling woman, a little boy. Mario’s family. What could he possibly know about my life? I’m about to ask him, but he speaks first.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “I won’t be late again, okay?”

  “Fair enough. I’m sure you had a good reason.” He smiles, fat cheeks spreading, and gestures toward my dripping notebook. “Are you writing in that?”

  “Huh?” How’d I get off the hook so quickly?

  “Your journal?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Need to see it?”

  “Maybe next week, when it’s dry.” Mario gathers his things, an umbrella, the sweatshirt, then turns. “My uncle Gustavo, a very wise man, used to say it doesn’t take a genius to come in from the rain.” I must look at him funny, because he adds, “Need a ride home, son?”

  I’ve been looking out the window. It’s eleven o’clock, but outside is night, with rain pounding worse than before. Still, I say,
“Someone’s picking me up.”

  After he leaves, I walk to the train.

  Much later that day, after I (and the journal) have dried off

  I look at my journal, hoping Judge Lehman doesn’t require neatness. It’s trashed—wavy and bumpy and smudged, like it’s been through a shipwreck. Yet, I’ve dried it off with a hair dryer so I can write in it. Thinking of the car makes me think about Tom.

  The day of Zack’s party, I spent most of the afternoon waxing my car. Tom even helped. Buffing worked his triceps or something, and we were getting tan, too. He’d given up on Ashley and me, possibly realizing, before I did, that I was in love with Caitlin. Sometimes, Tom knew me better than I knew myself.

  And sometimes, he didn’t.

  “Man, you’re so lucky to get this car,” Tom said. He was always saying stuff like that, and I never corrected him. I just sprayed Armor All and shrugged. Tom went on about what a perfect make-out machine it was.

  I hoped so. I’d sort of been obsessing about kissing Caitlin that night.

  Don’t get me wrong. I was hardly sweet sixteen and never been kissed. I’d probably swapped spit with a dozen girls if you counted Spin the Bottle and a botched attempt to cop a feel off of Peyton Berounsky playing Seven Minutes in Heaven in eighth grade. By ninth grade, everyone was pairing off, at least for the evening, and I’d spent many sticky nights playing tonsil hockey on someone’s parents’ unsupervised sofa. So I’d touched, kissed, and groped, and been touched, kissed, and groped, all meaningless so far. I had a feeling Caitlin’s would be the kiss that mattered.

  That night, we had dinner in the Carters’ dining room. Tom’s family always ate there on weekends. I’d been joining them since grade school. The first time, I’d stood, gaping at the china, silver, and flowers, and Tom and his brother, wet-combed and shining. It was the kind of spread my father had for clients, not for me. They even dressed for dinner, although Tom and I just wore khakis. Conversation was quiet, smooth as peanut butter.

  Like every time, Tom’s old cocker spaniel, Wimpy, played around my feet. Feeding him table scraps was firmly against the rules, but for some reason, it was important to me to be Wimpy’s favorite. I used to pretend he was my dog too. I listened to Mrs. C. describe the antics of Little Win, Tom’s brother’s baby, as I slipped Wimpy a huge bite of steak.

  I got nailed. “Nicky, that’s why that dog begs,” Mrs. Carter said. I knew she was thinking about Labor Day, when Wimpy had put his whole face in the potato salad.

  “And that’s why he always wants to sleep on your bed when you stay over,” Tom added. That always bugged Tom.

  I apologized, but when they glanced away, I accidentally dropped another piece.

  Over dinner, Tom’s dad tried to talk us into working after school at his office. Tom rolled his eyes. We went through this every month, Mr. Carter trying to encourage Tom’s interest in the family firm, and Tom avoiding the subject. Finally, Tom’s mother rescued him, saying she was sure Tom had the rest of his life to work at a law office.

  “Perhaps over the summer,” Tom’s father said.

  Tom pretended not to hear. “Did I mention the Iceman has a date?” he said between forkfuls of potatoes. Tom was on a carbohydrate kick that week, although the week before, it had been proteins.

  Mrs. Carter turned to me, glad to change the subject. “Is it anyone special?”

  “I don’t know yet. It’s our first date.” I was lying.

  Tom mentioned she’d had lunch with us three times during the week, and his mom chuckled. “And what about you, Thompson? Who’s your date?”

  “I don’t have one,” Tom answered, before I could say anything.

  I caught the look on Tom’s face. Though I didn’t know why, I changed the subject. “Did Trey send over any more pictures of Little Win?” I could always charm his mom.

  Of course there were more pictures, so I told her we’d clear the table while she went and got them. I rose and picked up my plate. Tom followed me into the kitchen. When we were out of earshot, I asked why he hadn’t told his parents about Liana.

  “They wouldn’t like it. Mom would hear a Cuban name and freak.” Tom picked a leftover roll from the basket and downed it in two bites. “My parents’ ancestors came over on the Mayflower, as Mummy likes to mention. They wouldn’t want me dating anyone whose people floated in on less exclusive boats.”

  Rafts, he meant. Like in the newspaper—balseros, who swam from Cuba with nothing but the clothes on their backs and rafts made of driftwood and garbage. But what did that have to do with tall, beautiful Liana and her Tommy Hilfiger wardrobe?

  “They wouldn’t think that,” I said. “Your parents are cool, and Liana’s no boat person. She doesn’t even have an accent. She grew up here.”

  “She was born here. It won’t matter. Either her family’s in the country club, or they’re not. And if they aren’t, they’re not good enough for a Carter.” Tom grabbed a handful of rice cakes. “My brother went to law school and married some cold fish from the Social Register, even turned down New York law firms to work for my dad. Now, I’m supposed to do the same thing, cut my hair, and conform. Forget what I want.”

  He didn’t just mean Liana. I was sure of that. Only I knew that Tom secretly dreamed of becoming an artist, something else he’d never shared with his parents. His father dreamed of a law firm called Carter, Carter, and Carter, and Tom never told him otherwise. I said, “You’re not being fair,” meaning the art, more than Liana. “You should give them a chance.”

  “You don’t know what they’re like. They’re not your parents.”

  No. They weren’t, unfortunately. I shrugged, guessing I didn’t know much about family relations. Leaving Tom in the kitchen, I pushed through the dining-room door. The Carters waited, packages of baby pictures spread before them. Mrs. Carter waved me over, pointing at a photo.

  “Isn’t he an angel?” she said. “Look at this one, with the bunny ears.”

  I nodded, but I was back to imagining Caitlin’s kiss.

  JANUARY 21

  * * *

  Key Biscayne High

  Between Mario’s class and writing in my journal, I’m still going to school. Everything’s the same as always here, just not for me. The school office rearranged Caitlin’s schedule so she seems like a figment of my imagination: no classes together, barely passing in the hallway. God, I miss her. I try sometimes to see her, making it look accidental. Like today. I go down where my locker was B.C. (Before Caitlin), on the first floor by the Fruitopia machine. She’s there with all my ex-friends, laughing with Tom and Saint O’Connor, her blond hair barely visible between their massive forms. Saint is Key’s star quarterback and also Tom’s new best friend. What could he have said to make Caitlin laugh?

  When I walk by, she stops laughing. Her eyes meet mine, but she makes the type of sound you’d get seeing a palmetto bug or some other vermin.

  Tom sees me too. His eyes are the same as always, and for a second, I think he’ll smile, say hello. Like, maybe things will just get back to normal. No way. Tom slips a hand onto Caitlin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Cat. Saint and I—we won’t let him hurt you.” The three of them glide as one toward the science wing.

  I walk the other way, through the throng of what used to be my friends. They ignore me. After everything happened with Caitlin, me hitting her, the restraining order, everyone took Caitlin’s side. It didn’t surprise me, except for Tom. Tom, who knew me better than anyone, who should have stood by me. I glance at Tom’s back as they walk away, his fingers still on Caitlin’s shoulder. How could he just toss a ten-year friendship over this? He wouldn’t even talk about it. I guess it’s like they say: When the going gets tough … your best friend flakes on you. So, who needs him? I should be glad he’s not around.

  I walk into English class. Heads turn. It’s a small group, all honor students, and usually they’re too busy yakking about the next Brain Bowl or Debate Team bagel sale to notice much. Today, silence. Every eye tu
rns, in synch, from my face to the blackboard. I look, too, then turn away. Someone’s written:

  GO NICK! BEAT YOUR GIRLFRIEND!

  I walk, seconds multiplying like amoebas, to my desk. Elsa, Caitlin’s best friend, glares at me from under her beret—she has the nerve to wear that and look down on me? The rest just stare. Amy Patterson, who’s had a crush on me since fifth grade, pretends to be fascinated with her grammar book. Trust me, she’s faking it. But that’s the closest anyone comes to taking my side.

  The desks in here are arranged in a U shape so Miss Higgins won’t have to navigate rows in her motorized wheelchair. My seat faces the board. I shove my backpack under the chair, grip my desk sides, and stare at the green board until the letters blur and it’s all black. I hear a voice.

  “I wrote it, Nick. Why don’t you hit me?” It’s Elsa.

  And another girl, a new girl whose name I don’t know:

  “I wrote it, Nick. Teach me a lesson.”

  Derek Wayne, from across the room:

  “I wrote it. Or do you only hit women?”

  I want to bolt. Last week, Mario said if you think you’re about to lose it, take a walk. I can’t. I hold my desk like a life raft. If I go ballistic, they’ll think they’re right. Be cool. Mario’s deep-breathing exercises and his rules rise, unbidden, in my mind. Cool. I think of icebergs, of ski trips with Tom’s family when I’d refused to wear long underwear. I think of Leo. I think of breathing underwater. Finally, through the blur of thoughts and anger, I see Miss Higgins wheel through the doorway. A second later, she notices the blackboard. She sees, but it’s too high for her to erase. She faces us.

  “Who wrote this?” She scrutinizes us, acknowledging me before moving on. I keep breathing. Higgins tries again.

  “Will the creative writer please identify him- or herself.”

  No one. Her eyes scan the room and finally land on Elsa. “Please erase it, Elsa.”