Goldfish (16 page)

I drop gently onto the roof and run like a cartoon burglar over the garage with pointed toes and fingers. Hee hee, this is
fun
! When I get to the edge, I sit down and hook my legs over the side, feeling for the garbage can with one foot. I have to be careful; the top is slimy with mildew. I reach downward, further and further, but still can't feel it. I've got like the longest legs of anyone I know. How are they letting me down now?

I decide to drop the last couple of inches.

I let go and fall eight feet to the ground, hard.

I land on the balls of my feet, then fall backward onto my butt and elbows: classic gymnast's dismount. So
where
was the garbage can? I stand up quickly and bash my shoulder against it. Oh, there it is, a quarter of an inch to the left. Great work, Lou. That's going to bruise.

I'm really late now, but as I step forward, I crash into something big and confusing. It's metallic, with loads of sticky-out bits that hit me in the stomach, legs, and face, and I lose my balance and fall on top of it.

I fight it for a while; it seems to be covered in moving parts. Is Dad building a
torture machine
out in the middle of the yard?

I can't believe it—he's usually so fussy about putting things away. And not a psychopath.

I finally fight off the Machine of Pain, adding a few more bruises to the collection. It's been a pretty unstealthy few minutes, and I can picture Lav standing at the bedroom window, shaking her head and wincing at every crash as her idiot sister pratfalls over everything she can find.

I stand and wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was an upside down bike. Of course it was. Something else that Dad's “repairing.” Once I can see better, I feel my way out of the side gate and start running.

I'm a fast runner, and without a bag full of books I make great time sprinting along the road. As I approach the pool, I can just about make out the three boys loitering in the gloom, impatiently pacing around the parking lot. Pete's fiddling with a cigarette packet but not smoking.

I bound up to them and they all jump about six feet.

“What are you doing?” Roman snaps.

“Did I fwighten you?” I snigger before shyness stops me. Surprisingly, Pete laughs.

“I'm sorry!” I tell them all. “I couldn't get away sooner! I had to wait for my mom to leave and then fake a … an illness for my dad.”

“Why?” asks Roman, baffled.

I stare at him. “Why? Because I'm fifteen.”

Gabe laughs. “She can't just stroll out the house like, ‘Don't wait up, guys, I'm taking the car!'”

“You're fifteen?” say Roman incredulously.

“Yeah?”

“You look
much
older,” he says, in a way that doesn't feel like a compliment. But fine.

“Right,” Pete says, bored of this chitchat and snapping on a professional-looking flashlight. “Follow me.”

We walk past the swimming pool and through one of the school fields, which is just behind it. It's seriously creepy. I wouldn't do this alone, but Roman and Pete lead, with me and Gabe following. Roman doesn't seem to be able to let the age thing go.

“Did you know she was only fifteen?” he asks Gabriel.

“Yes,” says Gabe, “she's in the grade below me. The grade that fifteen-year-olds are in. I didn't think she was a twenty-year-old who couldn't pass her exams.”

I snicker. Gabe's so funny; he might even be funnier than Hannah. Oh,
Hannah
! I haven't had a second to email her again, something better than
Everything will be OK, here's a stuffed owl with its head on the wrong way
. I will do it when I get home, even if I'm dropping with tiredness and it's five a.m.

We reach the edge of the field and Pete leads us into a dark little wood. He marches through it and we all follow like obedient ducklings.

It comes out into what looks like an industrial estate, and Pete heads down an alleyway toward a big concealed doorway.

Pete fiddles with the lock and carefully pushes open a heavy metal door, and we follow him in. We're in pitch darkness, but the air feels warm and there's a weird smell. Also a humming noise.
Where
is this? I follow Pete closely. It's
so
dark in here. I reach out and pinch his sweater gently. I expect him to tell me to get off, but he doesn't, and Gabe hangs on to me in the same way.

There's carpet underfoot that's so rough my sneakers are catching on it and making me trip. We take a few steps forward, then Pete suddenly turns right, and I stumble over the back of his foot. I fall forward, putting my hands out to catch myself, but there's nothing there and I'm falling and falling into darkness and I don't land on the floor—I land on a sloping pane of thick glass. My hands slap down on it first, smooth and cold, followed by my head. Hard.

As my forehead smacks against the glass, the most nightmarish thing I've ever seen looms at me: cold, pale skin, stone eyes, and rows and rows of teeth.

A shark.

It emerges silently out of the darkness and I think I'm going to die. I scream and scream and my head is throbbing. There's whooshing in my ears, and I slide down the glass until I'm crouching, wrapping my arms around my head to save myself from those teeth and then …

 … nothing.

 

chapter 25

I open my eyes. I'm lying on the floor. The carpet is so rough it's like lying on Velcro. It's snagging my pants, and I notice in a dreamy way that it's giving me a wedgie.

My back is aching and I feel sick to my stomach, but there's something soft under my head, and cool hands are cupping my face.

“Lou? Lou?” I feel breath on my cheek; it's Gabe's voice. He turns to the others and says in a harder tone, “Call an ambulance.”

“We can't!” That's Pete, sounding panicked.

“His dad will lose his job!” Roman is somewhere far above me.

“I don't care! Call an ambulance!” I've never heard Gabriel sound so angry.

“I'm here. I'm…” I'm
trying
to say, “I'm not dead and
please why shark?
”

“Oh god, Lou!” breathes Gabe, sounding like his old self again. I feel a weight on my shoulder: his head. I put my hand on his hair. I feel like I should be comforting
him
, not the other way around.

“Are you in pain?” he asks.

“No,” I lie. To be honest, between the garbage can, the upturned bike, and now this, I am 87 percent pain, but whatever.

“The shark!” I pull myself into a sitting position. My stomach churns. “Was … did…?”

“We're in the aquarium,” explains Gabriel with a shaky laugh in his voice. The aquarium. Of course.

“You could've said!” I say in the general direction of Pete's voice.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he defends himself, sounding uncharacteristically nervous.

I say heavily from the floor, “I was surprised.”

I hear Roman give a tiny laugh, and I get to my feet slowly with Gabe's help.

“So now what?” I ask a little throatily. Standing up makes me feel like sick times sick, so I lean against a wall.

“Now,” says Pete, his voice disappearing into the darkness, “this!” He turns on the lights in the fish tanks, and the water glows with a bluish light. Small schools of shining fish drift past the glass. It's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

We stand in silence and I find myself reaching for Gabriel's hand. To my surprise, Roman reaches for mine. It feels nice, like a family. I wonder if Roman and Pete are holding hands too? Best not to ask. We stare in silence until Pete breaks the moment.

“Now, what would you like to swim with?” he says, peering in to read the labels. “Koi carp, tuna fish, or—”

“Swim
with
the fish?” interrupts Roman. “I thought you said there was an empty tank!”

“Yeah, there was, but now there isn't.” Pete brushes it off as if it's not important.

“Sorry, Peter, hate to be dull,” chips in Gabe, “but could we have a few more details on this?”

Pete sighs as if Gabriel is being ridiculously fussy.

“There was an empty tank, but it is EMP. TY. No water in it. So just for tonight we've got to swim with a few fish. It's fine, they're totally harmless. Shall we try tuna? I had a tuna sandwich for lunch; I feel like it's one-nil to me already.”

Well, someone's in a good mood, I think groggily. That may be the first joke I've ever heard him make. But … hang on.

“Pete,” I say, “tuna fish are huge and bitey.”

“No they're not,” he corrects me. We turn toward the tank, and about twenty tuna fish slide past. They're the most thuggish-looking fish I've ever seen in my life.

“Yeah. They are,” say Roman and Gabe in unison.

“Oh, for f—” Pete sighs and runs lightly up a flight of stairs I hadn't seen in the gloom.

There's some activity above us, and the top of the tank slides to one side. We watch as one pale foot and leg appear in the water, then another. There's a moment of calm, then suddenly
all
the fish race toward them. It's so quick I yelp with shock.

In a flash, Pete yanks his legs out of the water, but those fish moved so fast, I can't tell if he got bitten. They look furious, thrashing around at the surface of the water. I can't be sure, but I
think
one of them is chewing.

“Pete, man?” Gabe calls quietly upstairs. “You all right?”

No answer.

“You probably ate a close friend for lunch, Pete. They wanted revenge,” I call up.

We wait a moment, sniggering quietly.

“OK, fine.” Pete appears again at the top of the stairs, acting as if that never happened. He bounds downstairs. “Let's try another tank.”

“After you, man,” Roman says, smirking.

Several nibbles and a couple of harrowing near misses later (seriously, if you've got an octopus in a tank,
label it
; there's no point being modest), we finally find a tank near the back full of tiny brightly colored fish that seem more scared of us than we are of them. We agree that we can only practice the underwater stuff, none of the lifts above water, but these things all need work, and the boys sink to the bottom of the tank and begin.

It is arresting to watch, and that's not just my concussion talking. The boys float in perfect unison in the glowing blue water with fish drifting past them in bright flashes of color. It's the most calm and eerie thing I've ever seen and I feel a bit in love with all of them at that moment. Yes, even Pete.

I film their whole routine on my phone, and I get the perfect take. At one point an eel swims in front of them! Thankfully, the boys are too absorbed in their swimming to spot it or they would've freaked out. I watch the video as they're getting changed upstairs, and I'm completely absorbed.

I notice I have Wi-Fi, so I upload the video to YouTube and, after a moment's thought, I send Hannah the link. Maybe it'll be good for her to see that there's life outside camp, that there are cool things happening elsewhere. I don't tag the boys or add any hashtags; let's keep it secret 'til tryouts. Nothing but bad has come of Debs discovering our secret. I don't want any more obstacles.

I notice a new email from Han. I can only see the preview, which says,
I can't do this anymore.

Hmm, is that in a dramatic “I'm running away” way, or more of a “time for a new attitude, I must stop being so hard on myself”?

I keep refreshing my email to try to make it open. I'm a little bit anxious; if Hannah's email is serious, I want to call Mom and ask for advice.

I'm engrossed in my phone and oblivious to everything around me when suddenly Roman grabs me by the arm and shoves me and we're running, stumbling on the carpet and feeling our way along all the cold glass tanks. I'm stubbing my toes and fingers, banging my head, and I don't know what's going on except I know I'm scared.

“Police!” Roman hisses at me, and I feel cold with fear.
I'm running away from the police?
What has happened to my life?

The boys are running faster than I can keep up, even Gabe. I'm still woozy from banging my head, and I fall a couple of times and scrape my legs, but Roman won't let me go. He drags me up each time and keeps pulling me. I'm glad, because my head is thumping again and I feel so dizzy—there's no way I could do this by myself.

Now I hear what we're running from: heavy footsteps and dogs behind us. Pete suddenly darts left. There's the sound of a door opening, and he lunges back and grabs my other arm, pulling me, Roman, and Gabriel in behind him. It's a storeroom, I think. It smells like bleach and I see mops, buckets, and a Henry vacuum just before Pete shuts us in and we lose the faint aquarium light.

We are crammed tightly together. The boys are pressed against me on all sides, and I can smell aftershave, sugary hair product, and a slight smell of sweat. We're shaking with the effort of trying to breathe quietly. My head is against Roman's chest, and I can hear his heartbeat. This is the closest I have ever been to a boy.

It's gone quiet outside and I hold my breath (as if that will help at all). I close my eyes, but this makes me dizzy, and I take a small half step back. I lose my balance, Ro grips my shoulder, and I'm grabbing at Gabe and Pete so as not to fall in a loud clatter of mops and buckets.

All four of us are sliding downward, slowly and gently. It would be funny if we weren't so scared.

We can't get caught. We'll be in so much trouble. I'll be grounded, no more training, no more friends. Pete's dad could lose his job.… Please, whoever you are, keep walking.

I can't hear anything. Just the sound of us breathing. I feel really sick, and the room is starting to spin.