Goldfish

by Nat Luurtsema

  No, if I’m honest with myself, I’d still rather be a horrible cow with a gold medal. I could always go into therapy later, sort myself out.

  “Are you coaching them for something, Lou? Good, good, fill the days.”

  “Coaching them?” I ask, stuffing down my rage and faking complete confusion. “For what?” Debs’s eyes narrow.

  “So what are you doing?” she asks carefully.

  “Just swimming,” says Gabe, and swims a little circle to demonstrate. He is a terrible liar. We’ll leave him at home the night we steal a fish tank.

  Debs still looks suspicious.

  I panic and say, “I’m just hanging out here out of habit, really. I miss swimming.” Apparently the best lies have a grain of truth in them. There’s a silence. I know Debs so well—she hates emotional stuff.

  She keeps walking toward her office, followed by the four girls, and I feel a temporary sense of victory. She’s backing down, she’s leaving us alone! This is amazing! Take that, Debs, you and your stupid girl gang. She shuts the door like a full stop.

  I turn back to the boys with my most unbothered face.

  “Pfft. Don’t even know why they’re here. There’s no swim practice tonight.”

  “No,” says Pete, hanging off the side of the pool and readjusting his goggles. “That’s the swimming team that’s already through.”

  Hot vomit jumps at my ribs.

  “What, the BHT team?” I croak, feeling my Unbothered Face fall off. Now, where’s my Extremely Bothered Face…?

  “Yeah.”

  “Argyhjfffgggg.”

  “You OK, Lou?”

  “I am fine. Everything is fine. When’s the next public tryout?”

  “This weekend.”

  “This weekend?!” Here’s my Extremely Bothered Face—I’m wearing it.

  “Yeah,” says Gabriel calmly. “It’s up north. There are weeks more tryouts, and it’s another five weeks before they come back to this part of the country, so it’s cool.”

  Depends on your definition of cool.

  “Five weeks isn’t very long,” I grumble.

  “Well, it’s a hundred quid to you,” says Roman reasonably.

  “Are you paying me per session or per week?” I ask cheekily. Pete and Roman look at me stony-faced. Gabe watches this with mild curiosity.

  “Because the note said per session…”

  They say nothing.

  “Per week it is, then,” I agree. (Wooohoo! A hundred quid!) “Seems reasonable,” I chat mildly to myself as I pack up my sports bag. (Wheeeeeeee! That’s so much money!)

  “Are you going, then, now that you’ve earned your money for today?” asks Roman. I can’t tell if he’s teasing or serious.

  “I’m not allowed out past nine on a weeknight. My dad’s coming to get me,” I say honestly.

  Pete and Roman seem to find that funny, but I don’t know why.

  “So between now and the next session you’ll come up with a routine?” says Roman. Somehow he manages to make it sound more like an order than a question.

  “Ab-so-lutely.” I give him a big, fake, calm smile.

  An … underwater synchronized swimming routine. Yes. I’ll just come up with one of them, then. Easy.

  “I’ll work out a routine, and then we’ll try it next time we meet, and hopefully you won’t drown.”

  Gabriel laughs, Roman smiles, Pete ignores me.

  chapter 12

  The boys stop to get something from the vending machine, and I don’t want to look socially clingy, so I go wait outside. My phone dings, a message from Hannah:

  Get outta town. Did YOU know bananas were fattening?! I LIVE OFF BANANAS!

  Dad pulls up in Mom’s car.

  “Dad!”

  “What?”

  “You know full well what.”

  He’s just wearing pajama shorts with a coat thrown over the top. He even has his slippers on.

  “I look normal from the outside,” he says. “You can only tell if you’re right next to the car and look in and down.”

  “Bye, Lou,” say Roman, Pete, and Gabriel as they walk right past the car, looking in and down.

  “Oh dear.” Dad grins. “Have I made you look uncool?”

  “Yes, actually,” I tell him, “so don’t smirk at me like it’s no big deal, because that’s exactly what you’ve done. I have zero friends at school, two and a half acquaintances” (given the mild hostility bubbling off Pete, I won’t consider him a whole acquaintance) “and you just embarrassed me in front of them. So you can stop smiling about it.”

  “Louise, being popular isn’t about trying to be cool,” says Dad.

  He has no idea how wrong he is. This is exactly the sort of terrible, awful, useless advice you get from people over twenty-five. I’ve heard it a million times, along with how I’ll be pretty when I’m older and one day I’ll regret shaving my legs. (When? When I want to stuff a duvet cheaply and need all that thick leg fur? I don’t think so.)

  “You know, being popular,” says the Man Who Doesn’t Get It, warming to his theme, “it’s about doing what you like.”

  Why doesn’t he just tell me to be myself?

  “Just be yourself,” he goes on, nonsense spouting out of his head. “Do what makes you happy, and then everyone will see how cool you are and want to be friends with you!”

  “Okaaaay! Thank you so much, Dad. I really appreciate that you care, especially since you have so much on your plate at the moment. But this is terrible advice. Being cool is not about being yourself, it’s not, and you need to stop handing out that advice in case one day someone actually listens to you and you ruin their life. I am myself and I have one friend, who emails me details of meals. And my school days are so lonely and it’s not fun. You have no idea what it’s like to be lonely. I’m sorry, but no.”

  There’s a silence.

  “It’s lonely being unemployed,” says Dad.

  I rub my finger along the door handle and stare at the chocolate wrappers on the floor.

  He takes a deep breath. “You wake up and you have nowhere to go and everyone rushes off to school and work, where people notice if they’re not there and where people need them, while I sit at home and email people asking them to notice me or need me and no one does. That’s unemployment. If you don’t like school, Louise, at least it will end soon and you’ll make new friends somewhere else. But I don’t know when this will end.”

  We stop at some traffic lights. On impulse I grab Dad’s hand.

  “We need you,” I tell him. “Me and Lav and Mom. We all need you and we like having you around. Look, you and Mom are divorced and she’s still happy to live with you. Think how amazing that makes you! And I have to share a room with Lav and all her girl … smells … and glitter that gets everywhere and spiky boot things and I’m still happier that you’re here.”

  “Thanks, Lou,” he says.

  My palm sweats gently.

  “Should we stop holding hands now, Dad?”

  “Yeah, I need to change gear.”

  Someone behind us beeps loudly. The light has turned green.

  “Do you mind?” Dad yells. “We’re bonding and we’re new to it!!”

  We drive home in silence. But a nice silence.

  I text Hannah:

  Then why aren’t monkeys fat?

  chapter 13

  8:48

  Hey guys, we’re all going to hang out before the swimming tournament next weekend, if the weather’s nice we’ll go to that park near the leisure center—let’s all meet at the fountain at 1?

  Cammie xx

  8:51

  Sorry, Lou! I forgot to take you off the group email for the swim team! Ignore this, see ya round.

  Cx

  The next morning is Saturday and Mom is making eggy bread. She calls it French toast, but I can’t see why dipping something in egg makes it French. It puts me off the idea of French fries. I share this thought with the kitchen.

  “Yes, and French l
etters,” agrees Mom. Dad laughs explosively. Lav and I frown and Google that on our phones.

  “Ew, Mooom…” says Lav, who has 4G. I have 3G, so it takes me longer to be grossed out. But it still happens.

  “Dad was saying you’ve made some new friends,” says Mom brightly. Thanks, Dad.

  “Well.” I summarize it for her. “I am employed by three people too cool to be my actual friends.”

  “Oh, come on!” she scoffs. “My Lou doesn’t care what people think of her.” So very incorrect.

  “No, I just dress badly. Which makes it look like I don’t care, but I do. If I had some cash, I’d buy some new clothes and then you could see how badly I care about what people think of me.”

  Lav nods, backing me up, then returns to her phone.

  “Not that I need cash,” I say hastily, for Dad’s sake. “Because material things like money aren’t as important as, like, family and love and that. Plus I’m earning twenty quid a week coaching these three.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve got a job before me!” says Dad, poking me in the shoulder. “What are you coaching them in?”

  “Burlesque,” I tell him. He blinks at me. “Swimming, obviously!”

  “That’s nice. I bet you’re good at that. So, your new friends. What are their naaames?” Mom persists.

  “My employers are Roman, Gabriel, and Pete,” I give in and tell them.

  “What?” says Lav, putting down her phone. “How are you friends with them?” She suddenly realizes how rude that sounds. “No, I mean … the thing is … OK, ha, what that sounded like…”

  “I know, Lav, I’m just helping them out with something.”

  “You should get them to say hi to you at school, though,” she says. “If people think you know them, you’ll have a better chance of making some friends. That’s why Becky used to play cards with Pete’s gran when she did work placement at the residential care home.”

  “Laverne! That’s a terrible thing to say!” exclaims Mom.

  We both look at her and try to work out which part she means.

  “No, Mom, it’s true,” I say. “Now that Hannah’s gone, I don’t have anyone to hang out with.”

  “Which is not her fault,” Lav informs Mom.

  “It is a little,” I say gloomily.

  “Why don’t you ‘hang out’ with each other?” Mom asks.

  We look at her as if she’s suggested we grow tails.

  “Anyway, it’s because you always had Hannah,” Lav continues. “You didn’t know she’d just disappear one day to Swim Team School.”

  “High Performance Training Camp,” I correct her, but quietly.

  “And school is stupid.” She looks very adult all of a sudden. “You know who your school friends are?”

  “Invisible Girl and Nonexistent Boy.”

  She ignores this. “They’re people who happen to be your age who happen to live near you. So you end up in the same class, and that’s who you’ve got to choose from. Just sit tight a few more years, and then there’s a whole world out there of people you’ll like more.”

  We all sit and digest that.

  “Well,” says Mom, “Lou has a job and Laverne’s become a philosopher.” She looks at Dad and shrugs. “I guess our work is done. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to hang around outside Mickey D’s and take selfies.”

  “Nice for some,” says Dad, getting up from the table. “I’ve got to get my nails done for prom and I have literally nothing to wear!”

  Lav and I roll our eyes. They think they’re so funny.

  “I don’t take selfies,” I inform them sniffily.

  “Yes,” says Lav, not really helping, “and I don’t wear acrylics. They’re so bad for your natural nails.”

  chapter 14

  Lou

  Guys, click on the link, could we do this move?

  Pete

  I could.

  Roman

  We could if we had gills. Seriously, Lou?

  Lou

  Sorry, sorry, just a thought.

  Pete

  Are you having trouble with the routine?

  Lou

  No!! Course not, no. LOL.

  Gabe

  Hey guys, what did I miss? I was washing my gills.

  Lou

  Ha ha.

  Gabe

  Don’t make fun of my gills.

  Roman creates a WhatsApp group for me, him, Pete, and Gabe. When it first popped up on my phone, I was sitting in the cafeteria by myself and I went bright red. Cammie would kill to be WhatsApping Pete and Roman every day. If only she knew. Ha!

  I hug my smugness to myself, wishing everyone knew.

  I watch her, holding court at her table of girls, her shiny ponytail swooshing with every overdramatic gesture. She feels me looking at her and turns her head to fix me with a challenging stare. She mouths at me: “Stop staring at me, you lesbian.”

  I go red again and return to being very interested in my lunch. Aha, Ms. Bread Roll, we meet again.

  Forget Cammie. I still feel smug. Though less smug when Roman and Gabe walk past and completely and utterly ignore me. I look up at them with a friendly smile that I turn into a cough, then a grimace, and finally some choking on bread.

  So I sort of have friends, but they’re secret friends, too ashamed to acknowledge me in public. Cool, cool, that’s cool.

  It’s a tricky week. I spend every lunchtime and evening Googling synchronized swimming, but it all looks so boring. I wonder what Debs’s team is doing, but I know there’s no way I can spy on them. Cammie seems to have a Lou-radar. I spend most of my time trying, and failing, to be ignored by her.

  Every time I finish on the school computer, I dump my cache. The last thing I need is to be outed as some sort of synchronized swimming obsessive. During lessons I doodle ideas in my notebook and try to think like Hannah—constant optimism! Maybe underwater synchronized swimming is a Thing. It’s just a new Thing.

  New things always look weird to begin with. Imagine being the first monkey who grew a thumb. No one realized how useful that was going to be. They probably all ran around yelling, “Look at Clive’s hand! It’s icky, hit it with a rock!” Thousands of years later, we’re texting with it and Clive has the last laugh.

  By the end of the week I’m so obsessed with synchronized swimming routines that at dinner I stick six green beans in a pile of mashed potatoes and imagine they’re legs. I’m up all night with my phone in my mouth, using it as a flashlight so I can see my notebook as I scribble in it. Lav has made several two a.m. death threats, but I argue, quite reasonably, that now I’m frightened to turn the light off in case she sneaks up on me.

  I don’t have time to juggle everything, and I find I’m having this conversation a lot:

  “Louise, where is your homework?”

  “Ah … is it not in the pile on your desk?”

  “No, because you didn’t put it on my desk, so if it were on my desk, that would be spooky, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ha ha ha ha ha, that’s funny, Mr. P. Great stuff.”

  “Louise?”

  “Hello, yes?”

  “GIVE. ME. YOUR. HOMEWORK.”

  Teachers always used to give me extra time to do my homework because, between training and traveling to competitions, I only had my morning breaks to scribble out something. Now I’m working even harder, but because it’s secret, I have to do my homework too!

  Not to sound like a Classic Teenager here, but seriously, so unfair. Fascists.

  And I am trying. I hate being the densest person in my class. I stick my hand up for every question (I mainly get them wrong, but hey, good arm exercise, right?) and take tons of notes in class, even if my books are covered in long jagged scrawls from where I fall asleep midword.

  A week after our first training session, I meet the boys for another one after school. They all seem pretty excited. Even Pete’s eyes light up as I pull my big notebook out of my backpack, open it carefully, and hold it up for th
em to admire.

  In places I’ve had to tape extra pages onto it to make a bigger canvas for my designs. I feel like a mad scientist unveiling some freakish experiment—“Behold! I have bent the laws of Nature to my own demonic will!” (Maniacal cackling.)

  The boys stare at it in silence. I feel my smile falter. Do they not like it? Maybe it’s not ambitious enough. Did I draw Gabriel too small? I should’ve just put G, P, and R on their heads.

  Roman looks at me, opens his mouth, frowns, and closes it again. He goes back to scrutinizing the notepad.

  “Lou,” Pete says with typical grace and politeness, “what the f—?”

  “It’s amazing!” Gabriel jumps in loudly.

  “Thanks.” I beam at him.

  “It’s just … what is it?”

  Really? I thought it was perfectly obvious. I take them through it patiently.

  “Here’s the three of you—”

  “Am I the one with the big ears?” Pete interrupts.

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m the little one?” Gabe says.

  Definitely should’ve just put G, R and P over stick figures.

  “Um, yes. Now this is the three of you doing a twist dive in from the side, then barreling down to the bottom, where you form a circle.”

  “Form a circle how?” asks Roman.

  “Hold your ankles! Now, here’s where it gets a tad tricky.…” I’m engrossed in my diagrams and only look up when I realize they’re not crowding around my notebook. They’re all bent double.

  “Are you … ill?” I ask.

  “I can’t touch my toes!” gasps Gabe.

  “Yours are a lot closer than mine, man,” pants Pete.

  Roman straightens up. “We can’t touch our toes,” he asserts, as if it’s my fault.

  “Really?”

  “Well, touch yours, then,” Pete challenges me.

  I bend, wrap my fingers around my toes, and stand up. Honestly, call themselves dancers?

  “Don’t worry.” I say. “Bodies are bendier in water.”

  “Are they?” Of course it’s Pete who challenges me. I blow my whistle at him.

  “Yes.” (I have no idea.) “Everyone in the water and let’s try it out!”