The Art of Not Breathing

by Sarah Alexander

  2

  After three days, we’re finally allowed to see Dillon. He has his own room away from the younger children so that he doesn’t upset them with his screaming. This means that I can talk to him without anyone listening. I need to know if he was telling the truth. I leave Mum in the hospital gift shop, and I run upstairs so I can get to Dillon first.

  Dr. Shaw waves at me as I come up the stairs and takes me into Dillon’s room.

  “I went down there,” he slurs. “And it was goooood. Come w’me. . . . And we can eat spaghettiiiii . . .”

  I look at Dr. Shaw, confused.

  “He’s been sedated, so he’s a bit woozy. It should be wearing off now, though. He pulled out his feeding tube and kicked a nurse in the groin as she tried to restrain him.”

  “He’s never been violent, Dr. Shaw.” I feel like a mother defending her naughty child to the headmaster.

  “Where’s your mother? Is she coming?” Dr. Shaw asks.

  “She’s gone to the shop.”

  Dr. Shaw hesitates and pulls me outside into the corridor.

  “How are things at home? Are your parents separated?”

  She studies my face. I know she’s looking for clues, just like the doctors did when Dillon and I stopped talking. She wants to know if Dillon stopped eating because of my parents. She won’t find anything in my face or in my voice. I keep my jaw clenched shut.

  Before I have a chance to speak to Dillon alone, Mum walks up the corridor with a white carrier bag full of sweets and magazines.

  “Mrs. Main, I’m sorry to say that we’ve had to sedate Dillon. I have to let you know that the CAMHS team will send him to a more secure unit if his behavior continues to be unmanageable without medication.”

  “The what team? Can you speak English, please?”

  “Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.”

  “Dr. Shaw,” my mother says loudly, “you’re part of this team, are you?”

  “I am,” Dr. Shaw replies. “Look, spend some time with Dillon, and then perhaps before you leave, we can have a chat?”

  “Fine,” Mum says, but I can already tell she has no intention of staying for a chat. She heads into Dillon’s room and starts talking nonstop about completely pointless stuff, like how warm it is, what a nice day for a walk in the glen it would be, how the birds have taken over the cathedral ruins.

  Dillon barely looks at her. He lies in the bed, measuring his arms with his fingers and sighing. Eventually, he interrupts her to ask me how school is.

  “It’s holidays,” I say.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot,” he replies. “Happy holidays.”

  Later that night, I sneak out of my father’s flat and get a taxi to the hospital. I have to hide in the toilets for half an hour, but eventually I get into Dillon’s room and shake him awake. He smells of vanilla and stomach acid. The skin around his nose is red from where he ripped the feeding tube off.

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” I whisper. “They’re going to lock you up.”

  Dillon looks at me wearily. The blue light of the moon shimmers through the window, making everything look dusty gray.

  “I’m already locked up,” he replies, rolling away from me. I walk around to the other side of the trolley bed.

  “What you said before about Mum, is it true? Did you just make it up? Do you mean Dad was having an affair?”

  Dillon’s eyes focus for a few seconds.

  “Forget I said anything. I think I was a bit delirious.”

  “You think? So you remember what you said?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I want to grab hold of him and beg him to come home, but I’m too afraid of breaking him, too afraid of everything that will happen after now.

  “It matters,” I hiss. “It matters for Eddie.”

  “I saw Eddie,” he croaks. “I saw him in the water.”

  “I see him all the time. In the street, in my bed, in the sky.”

  “In the water.”

  He splutters and his breathing gets heavy. I watch him for a couple of minutes, wondering what to say.

  “Dillon,” I say softly, “Dr. Shaw says you’re unmanageable. What happened to you, Dillon? What made you break?”

  But he’s no longer awake. In his sleep, he smiles.

  3

  As June turns into July, the weather remains hot and sticky, and the only respite is the cool water around Sandwich Cove. I see Tay as much as possible, but he’s being difficult. But then he gets mopey when I leave him to visit Dillon, and says he misses me. I don’t mention the drop-off to Tay, but I still think about it every day. As soon as Dillon is well again, I’m going down—I just hope Eddie waits for me. He’s been quiet since Dillon’s been in hospital, and he’s started ignoring me when I call for him. Deep down, I suspect his silence has more to do with what I did with Tay than with Dillon being ill. Eddie will never get to have sex, or even have a girlfriend. I’ve never felt so far apart from him as I do now.

  The tube is working. Dillon has gained some weight, but it’s put him in a foul mood.

  “How can you do this to me?” he yells. “You’re just trying to make my life difficult.”

  “We’re trying to help you,” I say. I can’t keep the annoyance from my voice. It’s not really fair that I’m spending my summer holiday visiting him in hospital, trying to cheer him up, and he’s so ungrateful. How dare he blame me for all of this when he’s the one keeping secrets all the time?

  I’m sent home to pick up some more of his clothes, under instruction from Dr. Shaw to bring loose-fitting ones—nothing that Dillon wore when he was at his lowest weight. She says it like that—“lowest weight” rather than “skinny as fuck” or “at death’s door.” I’m used to all the hospital-speak now. I can read between the lines of everything they say and everything they mean.

  Dillon’s bedroom still smells vomity, even though I squirted air freshener all over it. I peer down into the garden and look at the spot where I found him. The orange cones are still there, rolling gently on their sides in the breeze.

  I grab a bag and start shoving old T-shirts into it. Trousers are harder to select. I can’t choose the baggiest ones, because they won’t stay up and the hospital doesn’t allow belts. In the end I put in tracksuit bottoms that have an elastic waist and some shorts that might fit. The sock drawer sticks, and when I yank it, the whole chest of drawers wobbles, sending Dillon’s collection of swimming trophies and science awards crashing to the floor.

  Exasperated, I kick one of them and it breaks. I don’t even care. I flick the socks out of the drawer and into the bag. A small piece of folded-up paper flies out. It’s probably a love letter from Lara. I put it in my pocket to read later. Then I’ll tear it into tiny pieces and post them to her letterbox.

  Dillon is in an even worse mood when I get back with his clothes. I guess that my parents have been winding him up about something, Dad going on about his impending exam results, Mum fussing with his tubes and pillows.

  “Go away,” he growls as we crowd around his bed.

  “I think you could be a bit nicer to us,” I say.

  “Don’t be rude, Elsie. He’s sick,” my mother responds.

  Yet again, one of my brothers is being a nuisance and I’m the one who gets pushed aside.

  “Well, thanks but no, thanks. No visitors today, please,” Dillon says, and rolls away from us.

  I’m suddenly fed up with his disgusting smell, his arrogance, and the fact that he keeps saying weird things and then denying them. I’m totally fed up with him.

  “Why are you such a knob? Don’t you care that you’re killing yourself?”

  Mum gasps and starts crying. Dillon’s face bunches up and I think he’s going to cry, but then he bursts out laughing, spitting as he does. We watch him uneasily.

  “Calm down, Dillon. Let’s all start again,” Dad says. My throat itches.

  My father seems to think that the past can be erased.

  D
illon straightens his face, and then he looks at me and cocks his head to the side.

  “Elsie can stay. Everyone else, leave.”

  My parents start arguing, but Dillon presses the alarm by his bed and a nurse comes and escorts them away.

  “You’ve got ten minutes,” the nurse says to Dillon and me.

  When the door is shut, Dillon pulls my head toward his. I try to keep my nose away from his mouth, which smells of vile vanilla meal replacement.

  “I need your help,” he whispers. “I need you to do something for me, but you can’t tell anyone.”

  “I am trying to help,” I hiss.

  “No, I need you to do something for me.”

  His eyes dart about as though he’s worried someone’s watching.

  “You need to ask that boyfriend of yours about Eddie’s T-shirt.”

  I sigh. This sounds like more delirious nonsense. I tell him to rest and that I’ll be back tomorrow, but his grip around my neck is firm.

  “Listen to me. Eddie’s T-shirt is out there somewhere. Tay thought I had it—he wanted to know if I’d destroyed it, but I never found it. I looked everywhere, for months after, but it was gone. You need to talk to Tay and find out what happened to it. And if he knows where it is, you need to find it and burn it.”

  It must be the drugs he’s on. Or he is dying. People say crazy things when they are about to die. Why would Eddie’s T-shirt be anywhere, and why would Dillon want to burn it? I hold back tears. My brother has gone mad.

  “Dil, do you know where you are?”

  He stares at me vacantly. I panic. What are the other questions to ask to find out if someone is okay or not?

  He refocuses.

  “I’m serious. Tay has it—ask him about it. The red T-shirt Eddie was wearing that day.”

  “Red? No, you’re wrong. Eddie was wearing a blue T-shirt that day. Don’t you remember? He had a tantrum about it. And recently I was starting to think that Dad was holding it and then he dropped it on me when I collapsed. I kept seeing this blue material in my dreams and flashbacks. But now I know it wasn’t the T-shirt. It was Mum’s coat. And that’s another weird thing, because why was he holding her coat? It was freezing. Why wasn’t she wearing it?”

  Dillon pulls me even closer.

  “No,” he cries. “You’ve got to believe me on this. Eddie wasn’t wearing blue. Don’t you remember? He changed right before we left the house. The phone rang as we were about to leave, and he ran upstairs and changed. He put the red one back on, the one that had the rip in it.”

  Colors whiz through my mind. The blue haze before I passed out, the gray pebbles, the white froth, Eddie’s red T-shirt with the yellowy-gold lion logo on it, Eddie wearing it, splashing in the water.

  The red against the misty gray water.

  I remember him wearing it.

  Dillon is shaking me.

  “Elsie, will you find out where he hid it?”

  I tear myself from Dillon’s grip.

  A flash of red. I think of the jasper quartz and the other stones—the ones the boat boys take to the Grotto for luck, and then I know where Eddie’s T-shirt is.

  “I don’t understand,” I stammer. “Why has Tay got Eddie’s T-shirt? And how did you know?”

  “He wrote me a note. For five years I’ve been waiting for someone to find out what we did. And now it’s all going to come out.”

  “What did you do?” I whisper, and my words feel as though they are thousands of miles away.

  “It’s my fault. I could have saved him but I didn’t.”

  “What did you do?” I repeat. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  Dillon starts tugging at his tube. The thick vanilla liquid squirts all over the bed as he wrenches it from his nose.

  “No visitors today, please,” he shouts.

  “What else do you remember?” I plead. I can hear the nurse coming.

  “Nothing.”

  “What else?” I shout.

  “Dad found Mum’s coat on the beach when he was asking everyone if they’d seen anything. I told you. She was there.”

  A nurse comes in and leads me out of his room.

  4

  The revolving doors take years to get me out of the hospital. I take two steps and sit on the wall, the note from Dillon’s sock drawer in my hands. My whole body shakes as I unfold it.

  D,

  I need to talk to you about what happened that day.

  I’ll be at the Point tomorrow at six. Please come.

  I turn the note over.

  PS—Destroy this letter.

  Tay

  The words scream at me.

  D,

  I need to talk to you about what happened that day.

  Tay

  I tell myself that there is another Tay, that this is all a misunderstanding. But I recognize the writing. The note is written in the same loopy writing that’s on all of Tay’s notes to me. It doesn’t make any sense. All I know is that I have to go and find Eddie’s T-shirt, right now. I’ve got to get all the way to Sandwich Cove and go down into the cave, and it’s almost dark already.

  I get a taxi home using money I’ve stolen from Mum’s purse and get my headlamp and my watch. There’s no time to fetch my wetsuit from the boathouse. I run the whole two miles to Sandwich Cove without stopping once. When I get there, I’m exhausted but I don’t wait to recover. I strip down to my top and underwear and brace myself for the pain of the freezing water. The rocks spike into my hands and feet as I crawl over the rock pools. The sky is clear and there’s a chill in the air even though it was so warm before the sun went down. I comfort myself by reciting Eddie’s jokes. I remember one about angelfish—it keeps me motivated and helps ease the pain. Finally I’m underwater. I can’t feel a thing. My headlamp flickers, lighting up the mollusks on the walls for a second before plunging me into darkness. Damn. The battery is dying. I wiggle the lamp and the light comes on again. I just need it to last a few more minutes. My brain is telling me to swim fast and get the ­T-shirt, but I go carefully so I don’t bump into anything. My heartbeats slow down as I count them. Navigating my way in is easy. I know that once I get around the corner, I have to force myself down another meter and then kick hard to get to the top. When my ears pop, I know it’s time to kick. One, two, three, four, five—and I’m bursting through the surface.

  I suck the stale air in as fast as I can, and then I pull myself out of the water and onto the rock. My headlamp shines down on my feet. They’re covered in blood from brushing against jagged rocks.

  Oxygen gradually flows back through me as I climb the steps and edge my way across the narrow ledge to the throne. I reach in and feel the cool stones against my fingers. At first I pick them up slowly, feeling the weight of each one before dropping it into the water below. Then I grab the stones by the handful and fling them down, the popping echoing all around the cavern. There are so many stones, way more than I remember, and I have to balance on the side of the wall to reach into the bottom of the bowl. Finally I feel material in my fingers.

  The T-shirt is hard and damp. In the darkness it looks gray, and for a second I think I’ve got it wrong and I’m relieved. But then I notice the lion. There’s no mistaking that this is Eddie’s T-shirt. I feel sick to think that I touched it back in June and thought it was just a piece of sea junk. I shudder as I remember Danny’s face the last time I was here in the cave. White, like he’d seen a ghost, right at the moment when I was up here looking at the stones. He must have something to do with this. Now I get why Danny was behaving so oddly that day: not wanting to go into the cave at the last minute, telling me to stay close to him. I was right; he was afraid—but not of the cave, of me finding something.

  The words of Tay’s note roll around in my head. D, I need to talk to you about what happened that day. Tay.

  D. D for Danny. Was this note meant for Danny, not Dillon? No, that doesn’t make sense.

  With a spinning head and a pounding heart, I clutch the T-shirt and pen
cil jump off the ledge, praying that I don’t get lost on the way out. The water crashes around my head.

  I’m back there again, the day Eddie died.

  The wheels spin as Mum’s car screeches to a halt in the beach car park, sending stones and grit into the air. I run to the driver’s door and open it and hug her before she even has her seat belt off. She smells of salt and seaweed. Her white top is covered in chocolate cake mix.

  “I came as soon as I got the call. Where is he?” she asks. “Have they found him?”

  She fumbles with the seat belt, and as she swings her legs around, a piece of dried seaweed flies from her shoe and lands on the policeman behind me. He shakes his leg to get rid of it and then offers his hand to help her out of the car.

  “Mrs. Main?” he asks. “We’re still searching for your son.”

  She sounds like a dying cat in a faraway alleyway. The policeman leads her down to the beach. Her bare arms are pale and goose bumpy and I want to run to her and throw my coat around her. I follow them, silently, wondering if they see me or if I am missing too.

  We stand on the tip of the Point, watching the coast guard launch the lifeboat. My father wanders along the beach behind the lighthouse, asking everyone who’s there if they saw anything. Then he stops and picks something up—a piece of clothing, or perhaps it’s just a bit of rubbish. He holds it up and inspects it. What is he doing? Why isn’t he in the water looking for Eddie? I point again in the direction of where Eddie was paddling, but no one is paying any attention. People are wading in the white froth, looking down, looking for little lost Eddie.

  “Over there,” I say. Still no one listens. I make my way to the edge of the water but fall down onto the pebbles. Shaking, murmuring, I try to work out if I’m looking at the sea or the sky. There’s a loud crack of thunder and it keeps on going, vibrating through my head, and then I see my father’s feet moving across the pebbles, toward me. In his hand he has my mother’s blue coat. He throws it over me.