The Art of Not Breathing

by Sarah Alexander

  “Are you not going out on the boat?” I ask, wondering which boat is theirs.

  “In a wee while. We’re waiting on Danny to finish in the cellar,” Tay says.

  Damn, that’s bad news. I bet as soon as he sees me, he’ll tell me to get lost.

  “You gotta judge on who made the biggest splash,” Joey says, stretching. “I think I’m the winner.”

  “Eejit,” Tay says.

  “Twat face,” Joey responds.

  I suck my cigarette, playing for time as they rib each other.

  “I’m not sure. You’ll have to do it again,” I say.

  As they line up, Danny emerges from the clubhouse wearing a white T-shirt and heads toward us. I pretend not to see him. Rex goes first again, leaping into a star jump, tucking himself into a ball at the last minute.

  “Fuck, yeah!” he shouts when he eventually resurfaces. Joey and Tay go together in a synchronized back somersault, landing almost at the same time, Joey with a loud crash and Tay hardly making a sound at all.

  Rex shoots water from his mouth. “Your turn,” he shouts up to me.

  It’s okay to go near the water; just don’t go in it. I shake my head. “No fucking way,” I yell, but my words get swallowed by the wind.

  “Chicken!” Tay calls. “Come on—it’s fine. I’ll catch you.”

  I take a step closer to the edge and watch the white foam swilling around the base of the wall. The drop must be three meters. I imagine myself falling, belly-flopping. I try not to think about all the seaweed down there—it’s kelp, the worst kind, thick and slithery.

  “Come on, Elsie! Don’t be such a girl.” Rex makes chicken noises and flaps his arms, making the sea froth up around him.

  “Well, she is a girl. What do you expect?” Tay shouts back, and then holds his arms out as if to catch me.

  Danny is climbing the steps up to the wall. I’m sure he’s going to stop me.

  “Don’t even think about it, Elsie,” he calls. “It’ll hurt.”

  What does he know about pain? The others keep calling me into the water, hollering and clucking. They don’t think I can do it. Loser, I hear in my head. Loser. Danny is up on the wall, his footsteps getting closer. It’s now or never.

  “All right! Move out the way, then.” I can’t believe I’m doing this. My hands shake as I unzip my jacket and kick my trainers off. I leave my socks on, hoping they’ll protect my feet from the cold. Below, they are cheering—Tay the loudest.

  “Don’t . . .” I hear Danny call from behind. But it’s too late, I’m already running to the end of the wall, and then I’m flying, falling, the surface rushing toward me.

  The cold rides up my body as I go down, piercing my bones like a thousand glass splinters. The liquid swarms around my head, pushing me down and down, the cold chilling my brain. My eyes feel as though they are being pulled from their sockets, and the salt stings. The water looks black in every direction as I fall headfirst into the immense space below. I kick and try to pull myself up with my arms, but the water slides through my fingers. It’s like crawling through iced gel. My rib cage heaves and shudders, my whole body goes into spasm. I’m dying. Let me breathe. Let this be over.

  Then there’s a silence in my head, a quiet that seems to grow and grow, and I let the current take me. My body wavers gently like a stray piece of seaweed floating out into the unknown.

  There’s a flash like a light bulb exploding, and boom, I’m back there on the day Eddie went missing, searching for him, the icy water nearly up to my waist. Dillon’s frantically swimming back toward the shore. Then he gets to his feet and wades in my direction, his cheeks bright red with exertion as he fights against the current. But then I see he’s not looking at me. He’s looking over to his left, past the lighthouse.

  “Dillon,” I call. My words are tiny in the huge mass of water.

  “Dillon, he’s over here, this way.” I point to the water, right where Eddie was standing.

  “Not now, Els,” he calls back. He pushes hard against the breaking waves with his thighs. What can he see? Is Eddie over there?

  “Can you see him?” I shout, moving toward Dillon. The waves knock me about.

  “I’ve got to find her. Did you see her?”

  “What? Dillon, is Eddie there?” I ask again.

  Dillon turns to me, breathing hard. He stops and scans the water. Then he scans the beach.

  “Where’s Eddie?” he asks urgently.

  I point to the water, and the color drains from his cheeks. He dives straight toward me and thrashes about. Our arms and legs tangle as we both plunge down trying to find Eddie. I can’t stay down for long. When I come up for air, I’m alone. I search the surface of the water, and then I search the beach. Dad isn’t where we left him. There are a few people clustered near the lighthouse looking out at the dolphins, but he isn’t one of them. I call for him. I call for help.

  “Drag her in,” I hear. It’s Danny’s voice. And Tay is saying, “It’s okay, we’ve got you.” There’s an arm around me, someone’s cheek against mine, their breath in my ear. Another flash of an image—my father running toward me, something blue in his hands.

  I open my eyes and see only the sky.

  “My legs,” I murmur. I can’t feel them. The pebbles rotate underneath my spine as the boys drag me up onto the beach. Dried, spiky seaweed digs into my head when they lay me on the ground. I shiver violently.

  I’m on fire.

  16

  Inside the clubhouse, we sit around the table by the fire. My skin is hot, but I keep shivering. Mick brings a blanket and drapes it across my shoulders. A steaming cup of hot chocolate is on the table just in front of me, but I’m too tired to reach for it. The boys are quiet, muttering among themselves, glancing at me.

  “How long was I under for?” I ask, looking at no one.

  It’s Tay who answers. He coughs first. “Not long. Maybe ten, fifteen seconds. We got to you quite quickly.”

  I look at him and he’s frowning. I’m taken aback by his answer; it felt like so much longer. Just like when Eddie went down and the seconds seemed to slow to minutes, and the minutes felt like hours.

  Danny pokes a white contraption in my ear, and it makes a beeping sound. I flinch.

  “Relax,” he says briskly. “I’m just taking your temperature.”

  Tay watches me the whole time.

  “You’ll be okay.” Danny scrapes his chair back, and the noise makes my teeth tingle. “You haven’t got hypothermia. Where do you live? I’ll drive you home.”

  My mouth is still not working, my jaw feels numb, and I can’t form the words.

  “McKellen Drive,” Mick says. “The house by the cemetery.”

  My body slumps down in the chair, and a feeling of dread passes over me. I have been stupid to think that Mick doesn’t know who I am. Everyone knows who the Mains are. Our house was on the local news during the search for Eddie. My face, too—my parents gave the police the first photo of Eddie they could find. It was a slightly out-of-focus picture of the two of us on the beach, my arm around him, Eddie holding a pebble out to the camera, grinning with his wonky smile, his face ghostly white in the overexposure. At first they showed the full picture on the news, but after a few days they cut me out. All that was left of me were my fingers, pressed tightly into Eddie’s arm.

  I see a flicker of fear in Danny’s eyes. He storms over to the bar and rubs his face, as though he’s trying to work out what to do. I’m confused. Most people go quiet when they realize who I am, but then they’re immediately nice to me, as though I might break if they raise their voices. They don’t usually seem afraid or angry.

  I want to close my eyes and disappear, but I can’t help glancing at Tay. His mouth is slightly open, like he’s thinking too hard. He can’t possibly know. He wasn’t even here when it happened. Or was he? Danny marches back over to us and grabs my arm. It hurts, but I don’t say anything. I guess he’s just annoyed that he’s got to deal with me.

 
; “Come on, Elsie,” Danny says. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Tay stands and moves around the table, but Danny pushes his palm firmly into Tay’s chest.

  “You’ve done enough damage.”

  “Sorry, Elsie,” Tay says. “Get home and warm up, eh?” He smiles, and I feel a hot rush of blood. Already, I forgive him.

  Danny drives smoothly and slowly, both hands on the steering wheel. He’s like an older, stronger version of Dillon, with a long neck and blond stubble on his chin. He even sounds like Dillon as he lectures me.

  “You could’ve got yourself into some serious trouble.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Look, I don’t think you should come back to the harbor. I’m guessing your parents wouldn’t be too happy if they knew you were jumping into the sea.”

  “Well, they don’t have to know about it, do they?” I say.

  He purses his lips. “It’s hard to keep secrets around here.”

  It sounds like a threat. I run my hand through my frizzing-up hair in a way that I hope shows him I’m not bothered by empty threats. It’s not like he would have the guts to turn up at my house and tell my parents that he let me jump off the harbor wall into ice-cold, life-sucking water, right?

  “Why have I not seen you around before?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “Maybe you just weren’t looking.”

  “You didn’t go to school here?”

  “Inverness. I lived with my mum before but spent most weekends here. Only moved to the Black Isle when my dad decided to open the diving club.”

  When we pull up outside the house, he stares at our front gate for a while. Then he unbuckles my seat belt for me and reaches right over me to open the car door. It makes me feel claustrophobic. He stares at me as I gather the strength to move.

  “Stay away from the harbor, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  My eyes feel heavy and I fight sleep. I don’t tell him that for a few seconds down there, for the first time in five years, I stopped feeling any pain at all.

  COLIN: What did one tide say to the other tide?

  CELIA: I don’t know, what did one tide say to the other?

  COLIN: Nothing. It just waved.

  1

  I paint my mother’s nails Mocha to match mine. We sit at the kitchen table, both glancing at the window, waiting for my father to come home from his Saturday meeting. Lots of people want to discuss loans on Saturdays, but I’m pretty sure most banks close at two p.m., and it’s already five. Beads of sweat break out on Mum’s forehead every now and then. I’m still feeling hot and cold after idiotically hurling myself into the North Sea.

  “Who was that guy?” Mum asks, staring at the spot where Danny’s car had been earlier. “Your boyfriend?”

  “Just a friend.”

  She snaps her head to me. “I don’t think you should hang around with him. He’s too old for you. It’s odd that he would want to hang around with someone your age—I don’t trust him.”

  “He’s eighteen, same as Dillon.”

  But she’s right. There’s something suspicious about him, and he knows too much. My throat feels itchy just thinking about him.

  Mum blows on her fingers and then reaches under the sink for the bottle of Bombay Sapphire. It’s half empty, and I know she only bought it two days ago. She glugs it straight from the bottle, and when she finally puts it back down, her eyes water but there is a serene look on her face.

  “Go on, have some,” she says. “You seem as miserable as me, sometimes. Let’s not let those boys get to us.” She takes another gulp and slams the bottle on the table in front of me.

  “I thought everything was okay with you and Dad.”

  “Never assume,” she says. “Never think that everything’s okay.”

  The gin makes me retch after the first sip. She throws her head back, laughing, and says, “It’s a bit of an acquired taste.”

  I want to acquire the taste. I get a glass and pour some into it.

  We stay there at the table and as the light fades, our bodies form long, wavering shadows over the kitchen surfaces. She glugs from the bottle and I take tiny sips from my glass, getting used to the burning in my throat. She doesn’t stop me when I pour myself some more.

  “I miss her,” she suddenly says.

  At first I wonder who she’s talking about, but then I work it out. I sometimes forget that Granny isn’t around anymore—she stopped visiting when Eddie and I were nine, so it’s been a long time since I saw her. Dad says she visited once after Eddie had gone, but I must have been at school that day.

  “Yeah, I miss her too. It’s hard to believe she’s gone.”

  Mum looks wistful, like she’s remembering something nice. She never talks about her childhood, except to say that when she was really small, it had been good.

  “Why did Granny leave the Black Isle?” I ask, thinking it’s a good way in and maybe Mum will open up to me. She seems to be in a sharing mood.

  “It was the bridge,” she says, as if that’s all the explanation needed.

  “The bridge? Why? What happened?”

  “It got built.”

  I find it strange that a bridge could make someone leave their hometown. Before the bridge was built, you had to drive all the way to the bottom of the peninsula and then back along the estuary to get to Inverness. The bridge has always been there for me, so I don’t know any different. It’s not even like we go across it much anymore, but knowing that we could makes this place seem less forgotten.

  “Wasn’t the bridge a good thing?”

  “Granny didn’t think so. For her, the bridge meant more people. Tourists, city locals. Strangers. She didn’t like it at all. She’d moved to the Black Isle to get away from all the people. She liked the isolation.”

  “Didn’t you feel cut off?”

  Mum takes another sip of gin and looks up at the ceiling.

  “We used to play on the mud banks. That was what we did at weekends. I’d look across at the mainland, and I used to feel proud of being on this side. Like I was something special. My mum stayed a year or two after it was built, but she couldn’t cope. She wanted a quiet life.”

  I can’t imagine a quieter life than living here. And these days I’m glad about the tourists. I can hide among them. They don’t know who I am.

  “Mum, why didn’t you and Granny speak anymore?”

  I sip my drink and wait for the answer.

  “I screwed up, Elsie. I made a terrible mistake and I have to live with that.”

  “What mistake?” I whisper, leaning in close.

  She moves away from me and sits back in her chair.

  “Let me tell you something. Don’t ever let anyone in your life die without them being able to forgive you. And, Elsie, don’t make my mistakes.”

  “What mistakes?” I ask again, but she changes the subject.

  She tells me again the story of how my father was on the other side of the world when she was giving birth to Dillon.

  “I kept calling the ship. That’s men for you, always last-minute,” she slurs. “And here I am, eighteen years on, still wondering if he’s coming home.”

  “Is he going to leave us?”

  She looks at me. “Me, yes. But he’d never leave you.”

  She starts laughing then, and when I try to take the gin away, she clamps her hands around the bottle and tells me that she is a bad person and everyone thinks so. I’m scared of her when she’s like this—when she starts to sway and I wonder whether she’ll topple right over and crack her head. But she’s like one of those wobbly clowns with the ball inside: just when I think she’s going down, she springs back up with those fixed eyes and that cherry-red grin.

  “I miss Eddie,” I say, hoping that she’ll want to talk about him.

  “Shhh,” she replies. “Eddie’s asleep.”

  Eddie is not asleep. He is sitting in the kitchen sink, staring out the window at the stars. �
��There’s the bear,” he says to himself. Then he turns to me and whispers, “Ellie, we never see shooting stars anymore. How are we supposed to make wishes?”

  It’s gone midnight when my father comes in. Mum is asleep with her head on the table and her arms dangling by her sides. I try to look at my father, but the kitchen tips back and forth. When I try to stand up, I slide straight to the floor and bile rides up my throat. His polished shoes catch the moonlight just before I vomit all over them.

  2

  The jackdaws cackle and screech outside, and in the distance the church bells chime for Sunday mass. My head hurts too much for me to get out of bed, and the smell of cooking bacon downstairs makes me feel queasy. I wonder if Mum realized how much I drank. Perhaps she thought it was water in my glass. I reach for the notepad by my bed and make a new list.

  NEW THINGS I REMEMBER ABOUT THAT DAY:

  Dillon wasn’t swimming back to look for Eddie. He was looking for someone else. Find out who.

  My father definitely wasn’t on the beach when Eddie disappeared. Find out where he went.

  My father was holding something blue when he ran to me after I collapsed. Find out what.

  I haven’t got much to go on, but I know two things for sure: Dillon and my father are hiding something, and I’m capable of remembering more—I just have to be under the water for it to happen.

  My father knocks on the door, and I shove the notebook under the covers.

  “Breakfast is ready,” he says, barely looking at me.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Neither is your mother,” he replies. “At least you got most of it out of your system.”

  He looks at his shoes. He doesn’t tell me off, and I wonder why. Perhaps the bacon is the punishment. For me and Mum.

  He wanders over to the window next to my bed.

  “There’s a cold draft in here,” he murmurs. He tries to pull the window closer to the frame, and cement dust falls on his hand. “This place is falling apart.”