Goldfish

by Nat Luurtsema

  I don’t see how, though. “Dad?”

  Dad twists in his seat to look back at me and say, “Wrong church, wrong funeral.”

  We gate-crashed a funeral?

  We sit in stunned silence.

  “That’s awful,” I breathe.

  “Don’t!” cries Mom. “I feel terrible.”

  “So you should!” Dad says. “No one in that church was related to you, and you didn’t even notice!” (Mom is laughing.) “I’m glad there are only four of us, or you’d be getting us muddled with the pizza delivery boy!”

  As I continue drying my hair in the heat from the vent, I realize I haven’t thought about swimming in about an hour and a half. Which is a new record for me. I feel encouraged. Maybe I am going to cheer up and get normal.

  A month ago I wouldn’t have believed this was possible. It’s like when I had the norovirus and I puked for hours until I felt like a deflated balloon. I couldn’t imagine ever leaving the bathroom.

  However, there’s still a long list of Things That Are Rubbish About Lou Brown’s Life. And the latest item is, I’m not about to get a day off school, because Mom craftily stowed our schoolbags in the trunk this morning.

  She pulls up at the school gates and looks back at me.

  “How is it, honestly?” she asks. Lav is fixing her makeup in the sun visor mirror.

  “It’s not terrible,” I tell her. “It’s just not what I thought I’d be doing.”

  Mom nods. “I understand, Lou,” she says, and I feel an unfair stab of temper.

  “Pfft. Do you?” I snark.

  She raises an eyebrow at me and rolls her eyes in Dad’s direction. Oh, right. I doubt anyone imagines they’ll be roommates with their ex-husband. I smile a “sorry” at her.

  I kiss them both and slide out of the car, followed by Lav. And now we’re strangers again for the rest of the day. Although maybe not—surprisingly, she walks alongside me until we’re halfway across the yard, before nudging me goodbye with her elbow and peeling off to sit with some friends. It’s not much, but it feels sweet.

  chapter 8

  As I walk into school, I can hear the bell ringing for the beginning of afternoon classes. I check my schedule. Come on, P.E.… Please, please, P.E. The only class I don’t find completely baffling.

  Unless there’s a new class called Lying Down and Having a Little Bit of Rest.

  It’s biology. Gutted.

  I get there first and sit on a tall stool at the back. This is the best desk in the classroom—closest to the window, farthest from the teacher, good view of the tadpoles. Prime real estate! Someone will have to sit next to me.

  You’d think. Everyone enters in gaggles of twos and threes, and they sit somewhere they can all be together. Melia comes in and I smile at her. But Cammie is right behind her. She spots me and mutters, “Tragic.” The two girls with them laugh. Melia doesn’t laugh, but she doesn’t return my smile either.

  Biology actually passes quickly, since I spend the whole class thinking about my hatred of Cammie, which is strong and healthy. I get lost in daydreams of how happy I’d be if she got horrendous acne.

  As we leave biology, I overhear Melia and her friends talking—apparently they’re got a swim meet tonight, so the whole team is leaving right after school in the minibus.

  Interesting.

  At the end of school I watch the swim team congregate in the parking lot. Debs counts them all off, and they stick their sports bags and the box of packed dinners in the minibus trunk. Ah, that brings back memories of cheese rolls that always tasted of gas fumes.

  I grab Lav and ask her to tell Dad I’ll walk home, since I’ll be a little bit late.

  “Should I tell him you’ve got detention?” she asks.

  “Yeah. He won’t believe it, but go on.”

  I’ve never been in trouble at school. I don’t think some of my teachers could pick me out of a lineup.

  I put my hand in my bag and feel something silky. Excellent.

  Everyone races past, happy to get out of school ASAP. If I were a teacher, I’d be a little hurt by how desperate my pupils were to leave. It’s like they’re fleeing a fire.

  I walk against the tide, feeling a little thrill. I’m looking forward to this.

  The swimming pool seems deserted, but I’m not risking it. I check all the changing stalls and even the toilets. With the exception of the occasional staff member wandering around, I have the whole place to myself.

  My bathing suit is a little tighter than it used to be. I poke my stomach, I suspect that’s the culprit. But as Mom always says when Lav complains about her weight, “Some people don’t have arms or legs! So shut up!”

  Can’t really argue with that.

  I stride toward the swimming pool and I’m about to dive in when I notice that Pete, Roman, and his brother are loitering in the field again. They’re kicking a soccer ball around, and Pete is definitely smoking.

  If I had to name the person I find least relaxing to be around, I’d say Pete and Cammie are currently fighting for the top spot. But this is more my pool than the boys’ so I’m determined to ignore them. They’ll get bored and go away soon.

  I dive in just from the side and it feels amazing. I swim a length and feel the muscles in my ribs stretching. Then I lie on my back in a starfish shape and scull gently, with small movements of my hands, just enough to spin me in a slow circle.

  I take a deep breath and let it out bit by bit as I sink to the bottom of the pool, where I start somersaulting slowly, forward, then backward. I can feel the air in my nose—enough pressure to stop water from shooting up my nose but not enough to release any bubbles.

  I don’t know what this is that I’m doing at the bottom of the pool, but I’ve always been good at it. It’s a useless trick, really, only good for making people think you’ve drowned. (If you need that skill regularly, then your life is more depressing than mine, and I tip my hat to you.)

  I start to feel an ache in my ribs and I surface slowly, with my eyes closed. Mmmm. So relaxing.

  I open my eyes.

  Roman, Small Roman, and Pete are all standing at the side of the pool, looking down on me. In both ways, I sense.

  The silence hangs. I say weakly, “No outdoor shoes.”

  “What?” says Roman.

  “Nothing.”

  Small Roman definitely heard what I said. He’s like three feet closer to me than the other two.

  “What were you doing down there?” asks Roman.

  “Uh…”

  Really, are we going to talk like this? I never usually feel naked in a bathing suit, but suddenly I do. I don’t get out of the pool. I bob around, a little talking, floating idiot head.

  I realize I need to give Roman more of an answer than “uh.”

  “Just floating around, really—somersaults and stuff.”

  “You a swimmer?” asks Pete.

  I hesitate.

  “Used to be. Don’t do it anymore.”

  They all nod and Small Roman smiles at me. They have no idea what a massive big deal it was for me to say that.

  “Do you swim?” I ask. They don’t, of course, or I’d know them. But still, Operation: Make Friends is going surprisingly well here; let’s not derail it.

  “No, we’re dancers” says Small Roman. Pete rolls his eyes.

  “What?” protests Small Roman good-humoredly. “We still are!”

  “What’s this?” I ask. (Lav taught me the trick to talking to boys: not too many words. It looks eager. Treat everything you say like a tweet—140 characters or fewer.)

  “OK, so for years we’ve been, like, this dance … uh…”

  “Troupe?” I suggest.

  “Collective,” Pete corrects me. OK.

  Small Roman goes on. “And we just auditioned for Britain’s Hidden Talent but didn’t even make it through to tryouts.”

  “I thought everyone tried out in front of the judges?” I asked.

  “No,” says Small Roman. “They’
re holding public auditions once a week for the next few months. We did the first one and got nowhere. You only get on TV if you’re talented or mental. The people in the middle who are just deluded and a bit pathetic get sent home.”

  He looks so sad my heart breaks a little, and I scoop the water around me to fill the silence, which makes me spin in a small circle. “I’m sorry,” I say sincerely once I’m facing him again.

  “Apparently people are ‘over’ dance collectives now that there’ve been like a million of them on TV,” explains Roman, scuffing his shoe along the floor tiles. “They said Gabe would appeal to young girls, but it didn’t help.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, sneaking a glance at Small Roman. Who I guess is called Gabe and would be appealing if I weren’t looking straight up his nose. My neck hurts.

  “So we thought maybe something to do with swimming?” Gabe continues.

  “Can you swim?” I ask. It seems a reasonable question unless they want to go on TV wearing water wings.

  “Everyone can swim,” scoffs Pete.

  I’m about to argue with him about that, but Gabe jumps in. “We were playing soccer outside and…”

  “… we thought you’d drowned,” adds Roman, in a way that makes me feel dumb.

  “But when we came in, we saw you doing that amazing underwater acrobatics,” says Gabe. “It’s cool.”

  Roman and Pete nod and I feel a bit giddy with neck ache and compliments.

  “So … teach us that?” says Roman.

  “I don’t want to be on TV,” I lie. I do, I totally do, but holding my gold Olympic swimming medal and smiling modestly and tearfully at the cameras. Not prancing about in front of booing weirdos.

  “Not you,” says Roman bluntly. “You could train us.”

  “In … what, though? What is this?”

  At this they all look extremely uncomfortable. They glance at each other, and I take the opportunity to stretch my neck down.

  Ah ah ah aaaah. The pain is so intense I see spots of light. By the time I look up again, I think my eyes must be bulging like a squeezed hamster. I imagine. I’ve never squeezed a hamster, though Hannah did once when we were eight and I didn’t stop her.

  (Before you get all judge-y, Mr. Nibbles went on to live a full and happy life. For nine more days.)

  “I guess it’s kind of like … synchronized swimming,” says Roman with an effort, and they all look like they’re sucking a lemon. I try not to laugh. Poor boys, it must be so hard being cool all the time, eh?

  “There was a synchronized swimming team from around here who got through last week’s audition,” says Gabe.

  “But they were all girls and really hot,” Pete remarks, suddenly enthusiastic.

  “So hot,” adds Roman, entirely unnecessarily, in my opinion.

  Good for them. I smooth my wet hair behind my ears before I realize how that looks. Insecuuuure!

  “So, you want me to train you?” I ask. Because although it is lovely to talk to boys about “hot” girls, I am getting very cold.

  “Yeah. We can’t pay you, though, we’re broke,” says Pete. From where I’m floating I’m exactly eye-level with his £150 Nike sneakers, and I allow myself a skeptical face.

  “But we’ll say hi to you at school,” says Roman.

  I stop treading water and sink a bit. I keep my chin underwater—my eyes feel very hot.

  “Duuude,” Gabe says quietly. Somehow that just makes me feel worse.

  I can feel myself blushing; I swim away from them and hoist myself out of the pool on the other side. I can hear murmuring behind me. I know they’re discussing whether I’m upset (YES) or maybe even crying. (NO. That is water from the pool on my face. Yes, all of it.)

  I may be a social outcast (fine, I am), but I don’t deserve this. It’s mean, and I’ve had a gutful of people being mean. I wanted to come and swim without Cammie and her bitchy friends, and instead I run into the male version.

  Plus, in my mind, I’m already telling Hannah this story later, and I want to tell her how I left in a haughty silence, so that is what I do.

  chapter 9

  Fantastic dramatic exit, Lou. Except … in the locker room I realize I didn’t bring a towel with me, so I have to dab myself dry with toilet paper. Twenty-five minutes later, picking damp tissue clumps off my legs, I head out of the sports center.

  Why is everything so hard? I want one thing to go right. Please, just one thing. I kick the door open, and it doesn’t bounce back and smash me in the face and knock all my teeth out. This is a start, though I was looking for more, TBH.

  I look around. You have to be careful when you walk home alone. It’s starting to get dark. I check my watch. I really didn’t mean to be this late.

  I’ve never stayed out late and lied about where I was before. I was hardly boozing at a bus stop, but still I’m impressed by my new rebellious behavior. For a newbie, I’ve really committed to it; in fact, I’ve done overtime!

  Typical dweeb. Lav’ll love that.

  When I get in, Mom and Lav are crashed in front of the TV. They look up at me, and from their faces, I guess it’s obvious I had cried as I jogged. I scoop some tears out of my ear.

  “How’s my goldfish?” asks Mom, patting the sofa beside her. She doesn’t realize what she’s just called me—my nickname from all the gold medals I used to bring home. Not because I once pooped in the pool on a holiday to Spain when I was five, despite what Laverne may say.

  I sit beside Mom, slide down, and put my head on her shoulder. When I stretch my aching legs out, they go past Mom’s feet. She nudges them with her knees. “So leggy” she tuts. That’s nice.

  We watch TV for a little while. Funnily enough, it’s Britain’s Hidden Talent. I’ve never really paid attention to it before. The stage is huge, and the contestants look tiny on it—I’d be terrified if that were me. There are lights zigzagging all over it, and the sort of music that gets you excited in the pit of your stomach. It seems a little less bizarre that three of the coolest boys I know would be into it.

  A hefty man wearing only gold underpants prances onto the stage. Nope, still bizarre.

  I can see it would be cool to be on that stage if you were doing something impressive, though swimming underwater wouldn’t have been my first thought. How would you even get a swimming pool up there?

  Boys, I think with an amused weariness. Like I’ve got any idea about boys.

  “There’s pasta in the kitchen,” says Mom, and I go and help myself.

  “How was school?” she shouts through to me.

  “Yeah. Hmmm. How was your date last night?”

  “Yeah. Hmmm. Oh, that reminds me. Mark!”

  “Yeah?” Dad shouts from upstairs. I roll my eyes. Mom never thinks that three people in three different rooms is a reason not to chat.

  “You know Laura who I work with?”

  “No, but OK?”

  “She asked me if you were single!”

  Pause.

  “And if I’d give her your number so she could call you.”

  That’s so complicated. See, even old people need Facebook.

  There’s a silence from upstairs. Then he shouts down, “Is Laura the pretty redhead?”

  Mom and Dad are a little frosty with each other for the rest of the night. Lav and I make our excuses early and head to bed, where I tell Hannah what happened today at the pool—which is really lengthy by text. She texts back immediately: Hey, at least you’re talking to boys, right?

  Always the optimist.

  There are some dots on my screen—she’s still typing.

  Are you annoyed at them? she asks.

  Yes, I reply honestly.

  So … technically, you’re having BOY TROUBLE.

  Ooh. That’s one way of looking at it. I imagine myself at school tomorrow, looking weary, knocking back a coffee and saying to a passing upperclassman, “Men! Am I right?”

  The next morning Dad drops us off early, probably trying to get back into Mom’s good grace
s. As we’re leaving, she says he should keep an eye out for our geography teacher, the pretty redhead. Zing.

  “Good luck with your job interview today,” I say as I get out of the car and give him a kiss. Lav gives him a fist bump.

  Poor Dad, I wish I could do his interviews for him. I’d be terrible at them. He’s a project manager, and I can’t even manage my socks into pairs, but I want to protect him from any more rejection.

  I jog up the front steps of school, past kids enjoying the sunshine before they go in. I look up, and catch Gabe’s eye. Of course, he’s my sister’s year. I don’t know why I’ve never seen him before, though.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “OK,” I say.

  Yes, I know. Hi is the word I was looking for. No one replies to “hi” with “OK.” Except this social moron.

  I carry on up the steps past Gabe, pushing my Boy Trouble from my mind, and head to English, just to double-check how little I know about that subject.

  I can read and write, so it could be worse. And actually I read a lot over the summer because I had nothing else to do, so this lesson isn’t too bad. Which is nice, since Mr. Peters is our English teacher and I’m glad that he can see there’s more to me than crying on the floor, covered in tampons.

  At lunchtime I attempt to chat in the lunch line with a girl I recognize from my homeroom. “Oh great, macaroni and cheese!” I say. Come on, how could this go wrong?

  She gives me a startled look. “It’s basically nothing but carbs and fat. You know that, right?”

  “Well,” I say, feeling we’d headed in a direction I hadn’t expected, “you need some carbohydrates and fat to live.”

  “No, you don’t” she tells me firmly, “I’ve got an app for that.”

  So she’s not going to be my new friend—I think we both feel that. I find an empty table near the garbage to eat alone. I act like my bread roll is fascinating, “Oh, so it’s bread all the way around? I never knew.”

  After a few minutes a girl in the grade above approaches me and loiters by my table, looking effortlessly cool. She has a tan and is wearing tons of little delicate necklaces and bracelets that jingle when she moves.