Daylight Saving (5 page)

There weren’t many people around, and the water came up to our necks, so nobody stared at me. Everyone’s hairstyles were just about the same. The wet look. By the time the rapids ejected me back into the pool, I had my breath back.

I let myself be carried by the momentum, and then I rolled beneath the surface and opened my eyes to that glassy underworld. What had Lexi said?
“Swimming’s easy. You just make a wave and ride it.”
I thought about her, the rhythm of her strokes, the perfect timing of them that made her motion look so effortless. One. And. Two. And. Three. And.

I counted the rhythm in my mind. Eventually, I felt my arm coming over my head, and then the other. I felt the bowed swell of the water in front of me, and I chased it, settled into the slipstream. My body moved slowly but inevitably, as if the strokes had already happened and I was just following them. I remembered to breathe and put my face out of the water for a moment. The noise came crashing in — the music, the shouting, the chitchat, the clink of glasses, and the rude squeeze of the inflatables — and then, mercifully, it stopped when I went back under.

This was a space I could be in. Outside of time, outside of my father’s moods and my own hang-ups. There were moments when I felt my legs slowly and forcefully propelling me forward, when I felt like she was there in the pool with me. I half opened my eyes, but the water was clear and empty. I heard the bowstring echo of voices.

For a few moments, I felt completely relaxed. But then I thought of the faint coloring around her eye. Something wasn’t right. I could feel it. I kept swimming, but I was panicking now, my body shuddering, the air going out of me in great bubbles. It was her hand — when she held out her fist for me to bump — there was something not right about her hand. I saw it in my mind. The long fingers, the watch with the digital seconds flickering. It was the watch. I did not have to search my memory, because the images seemed to come without my bidding. The seconds flickering:
34, 33, 32, 31.
I burst through the membrane of the pool’s surface and took in a huge, desperate breath. It was almost a scream. People were looking at me. I was standing up in the shallow end, my body on show. Ryan was frowning from his perch.
Her watch,
I thought.
It was ticking backward.

I went over to the palm tree to retrieve my T-shirt. The boys I had seen through the Dome’s outer shell on the first day were sitting on a lounger nearby. The girls in bikinis weren’t there, fortunately. “Nice pair,” one of the boys said, but I ignored him. My mind was spinning with the thought of Lexi and her watch.

I picked up my T-shirt and put it straight over my wet body. I felt the cotton becoming wet and cold in two big patches against my chest. “Give us a feel, darling,” one of the boys said.

Usually, I would have said something back, maybe even flipped them the finger. But I felt so calm after being in the water. I was in a trance. As I walked past the boys, I saw my Dad, and the calm dropped away. He was pale, and the odd light of the Dome made his skin look green. I could smell him before I could hear him. He smelt like petrol, and he was wearing his tracksuit and sneakers. This was typical Dad: he wore his flip-flops to drive and his sneakers to the pool. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Daniel. Where’ve you been?”

I was sopping wet and standing next to a pool. “Swimming,” I said.

“I can see that. I saw you in there. But I thought you didn’t like swimming. I thought you were too . . .”

“Too what? Too fat?”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

I stopped about a meter from him. Shot veins like lightning strikes stretched across his eyeballs. He was holding a paper cup full of coffee, and his hand was shaking.

“You weren’t in the cabin this morning when I woke up,” he said.

“Really? And when did you wake up?” I said.

“I was worried about you.”

“You weren’t worried last night, were you? When you were kicking the TV and throwing up everywhere.”

“Shush. Keep your voice down.”

I could feel people sitting up on their loungers, peering over. “Why should I?” I said. “Why should I behave properly when you don’t?”

I walked past him, but he stuck his arm out, caught me by the wrist. I nearly slipped on the wet tiles. My father was short and weighty like me, but he carried it better, and he was strong.

“You listen to me, lad,” he said.

“Let go,” I said. I could hear the boys laughing in the background. I struggled slightly, but I couldn’t even move.

“Everything cool here?”

It was Ryan.

“It’s fine,” Dad said. “This is a family matter.”

Ryan smiled and looked at me. “Daniel, how’s it going, dude?”

I stared at the water and tried to calm my breathing.

“Look,” Dad said to Ryan. “This doesn’t concern you, all right?”

“Actually, sir, it does concern me. I can’t let you stay in the Dome while wearing outdoor footwear. It’s a flip-flop zone, man. Or you can go natural, like Daniel here.”

He turned to me. “Actually, Dan, you should get some flip-flops. It’s wart central in here,” he said, before addressing Dad again. “But no sneaky sneakers, sir, if you don’t mind.”

Dad took his hand off me, and I walked out before I could see him rub the stubble on his neck. As I got to the changing rooms, I looked at the clock. I could hardly believe it. I’d been swimming for two and a half hours.

I put my sneakers on and ran straight out, half expecting Dad to chase me, half disappointed when he didn’t. I cycled like crazy to the lake, left the Shopper by the first stand of pines, and sprinted into the woods, the patches of cooling cloth raising goose bumps on my skin. I ran out to the clearing, then stopped and put my hands on my thighs. I was dizzy with the exertion. I could hardly breathe and could feel curtains of darkness closing in on my vision. I composed myself. There wasn’t a sound from the lake; the instructors had taken the boats out on the water. There were no clothes on the sandy earth. “Hello!” I shouted. My voice echoed through the treetops.

Some old woman on one of the boats waved at me.

I thought I was going to have to lie down, but then I felt this great surge of energy flow through me. I don’t know where it came from. It was something like happiness.

I walked back through the trees slowly and felt that my vision was so much clearer. I could see every groove in the bark of the trees, every contour of the soil, every fern glowing with the afternoon sunlight.

I collected my bike. As I was about to leave, I noticed a carving on the tree against which I had left the Shopper:

For some reason, the numbers sent a chill through my body. Suddenly, everything seemed important, so I stared at the numbers until they were lodged in my memory, and then I rode back toward the cabin, because there was nowhere else to go.

That night Dad brought pizza back from one of the restaurants. He had cleaned the cabin and said he was sorry. I could see from his expression and hear from the tone of his voice who he was sorry for — and it wasn’t me. “It was good to see you swimming,” he said. “You were going fast. Imagine if you pumped your arms a little bit faster.”

“You don’t need to pump your arms. It’s about timing,” I said.

“Your mother was a strong swimmer,” he said.

Oh, Jesus,
I thought.
Here we go.

He bucked up and shrugged. “Anyway, you looked good in the water. That’s all I was saying.”

Of course I looked good,
I thought.
I was submerged.

In my room, I stared out the window into the woods. I thought about the numbers on the tree. What could they mean? It wasn’t the usual
Tom is gay
or
Daz 4 Niki.
I took Dad’s mobile from the living area and went back into my room. I dialed the local area code and then the first number: 122593.

The number you have dialed is not recognized,
the woman said. I hung up and tried the second number.

“Hello.” It was an old man’s voice. Sounded like there was something wrong with him.

“Hi. Who’s this?”

“It’s Mickey bleeding Mouse. Who’s this?”

“I just wondered if Lexi was there.”

“If
what
was there? Is this a prank? Are you the kid that pissed on my pansies?”

“No,” I said. I started laughing. It was such a funny thing to say.

“Bugger off! Bloody kids.”

The old man hung up, and I deduced that the digits on the tree did not relate to phone numbers.

I lay back on my bed and thought of her swimming, the absolute clarity of the sound of her hand dipping into the water. I thought of her wrist, and the time ticking backward.
32, 31, 30, 29, 28 . . .

When I woke the next morning, I felt ill. Except
ill
isn’t the right word. I felt like someone had kicked the absolute crap out of me. Was this
love
? That was how my parents always talked about love. Like a pain, an ache, a bind. True, I’d only spoken to Lexi for a few minutes, but I felt more alive than I had for God knows how long, and I felt battered and bruised.
Maybe that’s it,
I thought.
Maybe I’m in love.

I had woken later than I’d wanted to, but I took a little time to dress and style my hair. I thought I’d wear the T-shirt she said she liked, but it didn’t smell so great, so I went for a black polo shirt instead, black being a slimming color. I had become addicted to the hay-fever nasal spray and fired a few shots up my nose, the flowery smell taking me back, for a moment, to happier holidays, with Mum.

Dad was already up, but that wasn’t a great surprise. He operated in a cycle: feel emotional, drink, kick stuff, get a hangover, apologize, become slightly righteous about health, and then, eventually, get emotional again. The “become righteous about health” stage was better than the “drink” stage, but I didn’t much like any of the cycle.

“Morning, Daniel,” he said. He was wearing his tennis gear. His legs were sturdy and thick. “Where are you off to?”

“I’m just going out,” I said.

“Who with?”

“Oh. Just some mates I met at the pool.”

“Some fellas, eh?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Brilliant. I told you that Dome was the place to be. Is that where you’re meeting?”