Fireball (31 page)

That was Karen. She looked straight down as she said it, as if she hoped to see the bottom. I did the same – we all did – but I could only see my bare feet, beating in circles to keep me afloat. They looked white and fat and seemed bent at impossible angles.

I said: ‘Deep.'

Jules said: ‘A couple hundred feet, at least.'

And Chris said: ‘Maybe deeper.'

All three of us were talking shit. Obviously.

‘Sure.' Karen swept the surface with her hand, making a little wave. ‘But how deep is that? Is it as deep as a really tall tree, or a skyscraper, or the Lions Gate Bridge, or what?'

I pointed at Mount Seymour, looming above the Cove like a moss-covered monster.

‘As deep as that peak, in reverse.'

‘Really?'

I didn't answer because I didn't know. I'd only said that to impress her.

Chris said, ‘One thing's for sure.'

We all looked at him.

‘It's deep enough to drown in.'

Back before Chris kicked the shit out of Bates, before Jules smashed that racquet on Chris's head, before Karen fucked Jules and even before she'd fucked Chris, we smoked up and went swimming. There's nothing – absolutely nothing – better than going for a swim when you're high. We were so seared it didn't even feel like swimming. It was more like flying through the water. We fluttered past the marina and flapped way out into Indian Arm. Nobody took the lead and nobody trailed behind. We just soared along together and stopped, all at the same time, like a pod of dolphins. By then we were right in the middle of the Arm. For once, there were no motorboats or kayaks around. There was nothing but the sun-glazed water, so bright and blinding that you could barely see the shoreline in the distance.

We treaded water while we talked.

‘Think about it,' Karen said. ‘There's nothing between us and all that water. If we stopped kicking we'd sink down and down like stones and never stop.'

We thought about it. We were baked enough to think about it for hours.

‘Guys dive this deep,' Jules said. ‘Without scuba tanks or wetsuits or anything.'

Chris snorted. ‘Bullshit.'

‘I'm serious, man. They use weights to drag themselves down so they can catch shellfish and crap. They hold their breath for like four or five minutes. Crazy, huh?'

Chris didn't say anything. I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking the same thing: weights had dragged his dad down, too – only he hadn't come back up.

‘They don't live very long.' That was Jules again. He just wouldn't let it drop. ‘Their bodies get all messed up from the bends.'

Karen said, ‘
The Bends
? I love that album. It's a classic.'

‘It happens when you go really deep and come up too fast.'

Karen started singing: ‘Green plastic watering can…'

She sang a few lines, then sort of tapered off as she forgot the words. Out on the open ocean her voice sounded almost supernatural. When she finished I could still hear the tune, floating around in the watery silence.

‘Look,' Chris said.

He pointed back towards the Cove. Between the waves I spotted a shiny-wet head and two dark, round eyes. It was maybe twenty yards off, watching us curiously as it swam.

‘Is it a seal?' Karen asked.

‘Sea otter. Let's see how close we can get.'

We paddled forward, pulling ourselves along as quietly as we could. Usually sea otters don't like you getting anywhere near them. Not this one. It waited and watched us approach, until we were close enough to see its trembling whiskers and quivering nose. We were so close it seemed impolite to get any closer, so we stopped and stared. It stared back. Then, very casually, it ducked beneath the surface like a gopher dropping back into its hole.

I didn't think anything could be better than the sea otter. I thought the day was over.

Then Karen asked, ‘Do you guys know how to be starfish?'

We didn't, so she showed us. To be a starfish you took a deep lungful of air, then lay on your back with your eyes closed and your limbs spread out. In the salt water you could float like that forever, breathing gently, while the sun baked moisture off your belly and cheeks. Being a starfish was the greatest thing ever. You didn't have to think or worry about anything. All you did was float around, sucking up sun and hanging out with other starfish.

‘Open your eyes,' Karen instructed. ‘Pretend you're looking down, not up.'

We did. We gazed down at a stark blue plain littered with strips of cotton.

‘Hold your breath. You're not allowed to breathe until I tell you.'

I inflated my chest and closed my mouth, feeling the air tight against my ribs. Karen waited. Blood slowly filled up my head, making it ache with dizziness.

‘Now you're falling upwards. Can you feel it?'

At first I couldn't. Then the water surged beneath my back, buoying me up. Each swell pushed me a little higher, a little higher, until I didn't need to be pushed any more and I felt myself sort of drifting towards the sky, a free-falling starfish, and there was no longer an up or a down or a left or a right – we were just a cluster of bodies floating through space.

‘Okay, breathe!' Karen gasped.

We deflated together. White spots flickered against the sky and I could hear the heavy panting of Chris and Jules trying to catch their breath. For a long time after that, we lay totally still and silent in a pod formation, our fingertips almost touching, with Karen in the centre and the three of us surrounding her. At that moment, it felt like all the land on the entire planet had sunk beneath the ocean. Every single person had drowned and every single animal, too. We were the only ones left. Us and the sea otter.

It couldn't last forever.

We burned out, big time. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to. We just started swimming back because we knew. By the time we reached the wharf, I had a killer headache and super bad pasties – like my mouth was full of ash. It didn't help that the wharf was crowded with powerboats and houseboats and pretty much every kind of boat you could imagine. Also, there were tons of kids around, screeching and screaming. We gathered our clothes and towels. All we wanted was to get out of there.

‘Hey – hold on.'

‘What?'

‘It's Bates.'

He was parked in the little cul-de-sac overlooking the water. We couldn't see him but we knew his car. He was the only cop who ever bothered coming down to the Cove.

‘What's he doing?'

‘Looking for us, probably.'

Instead of going up the stairs to the shops we took the long way around, following the water. We'd learned it was better just to avoid Bates, whenever possible. Chris and I found a stone and started kicking it back and forth along the path. Then he booted it, super hard.

‘One of these days he's going to arrest us.'

At the time, I didn't think he actually meant it. The idea of Bates arresting us was just too far-fetched. Not any more, obviously. Considering all the other shit we went through, it almost seems sort of tame.

52

I got out somewhere between Cypress Bowl and Horseshoe Bay. There was nothing to do but walk back along the highway. The vicious heat of the day caught up to me. With Chris at the wheel we'd been able to outrun it, but now I was alone among whining motors and sickening exhaust and thrashing rays of sun. I trudged for about three miles without looking up once. What I needed was one of those cone-shaped collars that a dog wears on its head when it's got stitches – the kind that stops it from eating itself. That way I wouldn't have been able to see or hear anything. I could have blotted it all out.

I turned off the highway at the next exit. It didn't make any difference. There was nowhere I could go that wasn't just as hot, just as bright, just as noisy, just as nauseating. Somehow I found my way to Marine Drive, then caught a bus that went past Park Royal and the Avalon. It got me to Lonsdale Quay. From there I followed the low road next to the railway yards. On my right, rotting shacks and sagging warehouses leaned against each other for support, looking dry and brittle in the heat. It wouldn't take much to start a blaze down there. A single match would do it. Even the sun could do it. Pretty soon the fire would spread to Lonsdale, and eventually an inferno would engulf the entire city. Everything would be consumed, nothing would be spared. I imagined the earth becoming a great ball of fire and when the fire died out only a desert was left. I wandered alone through the desert, leaving footprints in the sand. Sweat stung my eyes and trickled down my cheeks. My neck and arms slowly seared to a bright, lobster pink. There was nothing in the desert. Nothing but sand and heat and time and a hungry wind blowing from somewhere up ahead.

I thought I heard Chris calling my name.

It took me four hours to get home.

I stumbled through the back door, panting and trembling like a brain-fried junkie. A slick layer of grime coated my face and arms. The sun had fried my retinas and I could hardly see. I wandered through the murk of our basement, blinking back spots and trying to get my bearings. Nothing felt familiar. Actually, nothing even felt real. All the furniture looked flimsy and artificial, as if our whole house was one gigantic stage set. At any moment the show would end and that would be it.

‘Pops?'

I followed the murmur of the television upstairs, to our den. My dad was sprawled on the couch, watching one of his nature shows and drinking beer. He didn't say anything when I sat down, but I think he sort of grunted. You know – just to acknowledge me or whatever. Other than that I don't remember much except staring at the TV for about twenty minutes. It showed some dirty boat in the middle of the ocean, with all these bearded guys standing on deck. They were hunting a whale with a harpoon the size of a rocket. I don't know what kind of whale, but you could see it playing in the water on the horizon. Then, bam, they speared it right in the head. Afterwards they hauled it onboard and made a big deal of standing beside the carcass, taking photos of each other. The whale was still breathing.

They were grinning their stupid faces off, too.

‘I'd like to kill those fuckers.'

My dad sat up straight, like I'd poked him with a pin. ‘What?'

‘How'd they like to get harpooned in the head? The shitfucks.'

‘Hey – are you okay?'

I didn't say anything. Before I could, somebody rang our doorbell.

‘You better get it,' I said.

Normally my dad would have made me answer it, but he didn't argue. I guess he saw something in my face.

‘All right.'

He heaved himself off the sofa and walked to the front hall. I heard the click of the lock being turned and then I heard him say, ‘Yes? Is there a problem?' I went to the window and looked out. There was a cop on the porch. A short cop, holding her hat in her hands. My dad stepped out­side and half-shut the door behind him. I could hear their voices but not what they were saying – not until the end, when my dad said, ‘No, I'd prefer to tell him myself.' I moved away from the window. A few seconds later my dad came back.

He looked about a hundred years old.

Under the right circumstances, my dad can talk and talk and talk. He can talk about the feeding habits of Australian wombats or how evolution happened or why Lennon was a musical genius. He can talk about anything, so long as it doesn't really mean anything. But give him a tough topic – like having to explain how my best friend drove a squad car through a police barricade and off a cliff into Howe Sound – and he really clams up. You'd think somebody had stuck a spoon in his brain and stirred it around. He stood there holding his beer and fiddling with the pull-tab like a Chinese finger puzzle.

‘That was the police,' he said.

That was as far as he got. Then he sobbed. I'd never really seen my dad cry before. I mean, I'd seen him get a little emotional at the end of sad movies – especially Casablanca – but this was something else entirely. The tears came next – big and fat and rolling down his cheeks. He dropped the can and gathered me in his arms. I don't think he'd had a shower that morning, because he smelled like old sheets. He squeezed me and since he was crying I started crying, too. He kept trying to explain, but all he managed to say was, ‘I have some bad news…' He never got past those five words. He just couldn't do it. He couldn't tell me.

53

A media circus. That's what my dad called it. I'd heard that term before but I never really understood it. I mean, by this point we'd been in the papers a bunch of times: first for saving Mrs Reever, and then when Chris slapped Crazy Dan around, and again after the toga party riot. All that was nothing compared to this. Chris got his fireworks, that's for sure. Front page headlines, six o'clock news, editorials, whatever. Every­body was scrambling for a piece of the action. But I'm glad he wasn't around to see it. Beneath the excitement it all came across as cheap and fake. They took his story and blew it way, way out of proportion, filling it up with all kinds of stupid assumptions, until even I wasn't quite sure how or why it had happened. It reminded me of being at a party where everybody's talking shit about the person who's just left the room – but only because they know he can't hear them.