Goldfish (18 page)

“Can't they find out from Roman?”

“I heard this girl, Camo—”

“Cammie.”

“—trying to flirt it out of him. He was pretty rude to her.”

I really enjoy that news, for several reasons.

I sigh and catch sight of my stomach. I lift my top up and look at it. It's less muscle-y than it used to be. Cammie once said, “That would be so hot. On a guy.” She's good at insulting me in a way that sounds like a compliment. So I have to say thank you or else
I'm
rude.

I suck my tummy in and push it out as far as I can. Then suck it in again. Skinny. Fat. Skinny. Fat. Hate Cammie.

“What are you doing?” comes a wary voice from the other bed. I look over and Lav is staring at me over the top of a textbook. I pull my T-shirt down primly. Honestly, no privacy in this room.

“I have you on eating disorder watch, just so you know,” she informs me. “You've been on it since the time trials.”

“That's sweet,” I tell her. “I have you on pregnancy watch.”

“Ha ha,” she says good-humoredly. She puts down her textbook and rolls onto her stomach. Dammit,
everything
Lav does is elegant. Probably because she has much less body to control. I'm so lanky, when I move, it's like trying to lead a school trip around the zoo—barely controlled chaos.

“I know you look different now that you're not training, but it's OK, all right?”

“OK.”

“Don't you dare get an eating disorder. If you go bulimic, you'll rot your teeth. If you go ano, you'll get a hairy face.”

“I
won't
!” I say, horrified.

“Uh-huh,” she says authoritatively, disappearing back behind her textbook. “Your body goes fluffy everywhere, like granny's chin
all over
.”

I think for a second, then hand over my phone with a thread of Hannah's last emails. “Does Hannah sound a bit weight-obsessed to you?”

She skim-reads it. “Yes. Are you going to tell her parents?”

“I told Mom and Dad, but if we tell Barbra and Damian, what if they pull her out of the Training Camp? Then she won't get to be a swimmer and all her dreams will be ruined and it'll be all my fault because I
told
—”

“Lou, breathe.”

“Sorry. It's very stressful to think about it. It must be worse to live it.”

“Stop picking your lips, you'll make them bleed. Look, you made them bleed. Hannah sounds pretty messed up.”

“Yeah, but I bet everyone there is messed up!”

She chucks me a tissue.

“Thanks,” I say, dabbing my split lip.

“Well.” Lav shrugs. “I would tell them.”

“I think Dad wants to. Mom and I say no.”

We both lie back on our beds.

“So it's a tie,” says Lav.

“Hannah makes it three to two we don't tell.”

“Hmmm.”

I tap out a quick good night message to Hannah. It's so good to have my phone back.

I watch it send and I see she's read it immediately. Some dots appear—she's writing. They go, she's stopped. They pop up again, she's having another go. I watch the dots.

“Don't watch the dots.” Lav says wisely. “It's a rule of dating.”

I put my phone down. She'll reply tomorrow.

 

chapter 29

Drafts Folder

Hi Gabe, are you OK? I'm OK, I'm sorry, I don't know what happened.

Gabe, can we talk?

Hi Gabriel, what's going on? Everything is so weird here.

Hi Roman, I don't know if you want to talk to me but

Hey Pete

I haven't broken my word to Mom, I haven't
sent
any messages to the boys. I would, if only I could think of the right thing to say. Anyway, I'll be seeing them soon.

Yesterday, Mom and Dad said I can go back to school if I think it'll be OK. No, Mother, Father, bless your optimism, it will be
far
from OK. Lav says all anyone knows is that the three boys got arrested and I was there, and that could mean
anything
, right?

Bottom line: Loner Loser Lou Brown got three popular boys arrested. I can't see this raising my social standing much higher, but how much lower can it possibly go? I bet people will want gossip for a few days, then they'll forget about it, so I'll just keep my head down. Funny after I've spent half a semester desperate for anyone to talk to me.

I pack my backpack the night before, and I feel something bulky at the bottom. It's
Swimming for Women and the Infirm.
The spine is flaking away, it's sat forgotten at the bottom of my bag since our last training session. The musty old smell of it reminds me of late nights in the swimming pool, and I feel sad that all that is over. Even my shoe box full of twenty-pound notes makes me feel nostalgic; I'm not sure I'll ever have the heart to spend the money. Lav offers to take it off my hands if it's too emotional. So kind, I tell her. But no.

I wake up early the next morning and I'm eating cereal as Mom and Lav come downstairs. They give me supportive looks, but I just stare into my bowl—I'm not in a good mood. I sneak out
once
in fifteen boring nerdy years and all hell breaks loose. Because when I rebel, I really go in with both feet.

Dad gives us a lift. He pulls up in the school parking lot and Lav turns back from the front seat.

“Want to walk in together?”

“If that's OK.”

“Of course.”

She waits for me as I disentangle myself from the car and my backpack. I'm nervous and clumsy and I can feel people's eyes on me. Looking, not actual eyeballs. Gross.

When I finally step out of the car, my legs feel a little rubbery as Laverne and I walk toward the front doors. People are definitely staring, and I'm blushing already. But Lav doesn't peel away from me to join her friends. She walks me right to my homeroom, and luckily we bump into Mr. Peters in the doorway.

I feel like Lav hands me over to him like a package, but it's probably for the best. As I enter the homeroom, some people stop talking and stare at me, while others talk more urgently, possibly about me. I don't look good. My face is still a mess of bruises, and I have carpet burns on my hands and a nasty scab on my lip. I sit at an empty desk at the front rather than risk walking all the way to the back. I'm next to Mr. Peters, so no one dares to approach me.

The people at this school are the worst. It's either ignore you or stare at you. Find a middle ground, weirdos!

The bell goes off for the first class.

“Hey, is that a
bruise
?” some guy yells at my back as I race out of the homeroom, and I can hear a couple of girls gasp, scandalized but amused.

Three more years, Lou, I tell myself, hitching up my backpack and walking head down toward my history class. Three more years, take your exams, change your name to Trixie McCool, go to college, and deny Louise Brown ever existed, let alone went to an aquarium after hours.

I'm exhausted already. A week and a half in bed and I feel weak as a kitten. I snooze gently at the front of history with my Interested Face on. The teacher isn't convinced, but she leaves me alone today. At my size, I'm not one of life's natural sneakers, but today I do my best. I skulk in the bathroom in the first break, then sit at the front for my next two classes.

At lunch I'm heading to the cafeteria, looking around for Roman and Gabe, but I don't see them anywhere. Instead I bump into Melia. She smiles, looks genuinely pleased to see me.

“Hey, you OK?” she asks, jumping straight in without any chitchat. Seems odd, but then Cammie and the rest of them appear behind her, putting an end to any conversation.

“Oh my god, look at
you
!” drawls Cammie. “Who did that? Not Roman? Did he
hit
you? Were you in an accident?”

People are turning to look, exactly as she intended. Melia looks mortified.

“Cammie,” she murmurs.

“What?”

“Just … forget it.”

Well done, Melia, way to assert yourself. I take advantage of Cammie's being distracted to sneak past them and do the unthinkable.

I quickly buy a sandwich at the cafeteria and head to my old refuge, the library. I'm going to find the biggest book I can and hide behind it. If it's big enough, I'll build a fort and refuse to come out until it's time to go home. Immature, but that's my plan.

I turn into an emptier hall and I feel myself calming a little. Honestly, all this drama! The worst thing I did was lie to my parents and maybe scare a few fish. There wasn't half this much fuss when Lav snuck out to a party, trod on a nail, and ended up in the hospital, in sequined booty shorts, getting a tetanus shot. The injustice rankles.

Head down, I'm marching quickly down the hall. I turn a corner and I walk straight into Roman—I actually bang my face on him.

“Owb!” I say pitifully, pinching my nose. It tastes metallic, as if I might get a nosebleed.

“Sor…” Roman begins but falls silent when he sees it's me.

A mean voice in my head wonders if he'll say hi. Bearing in mind he didn't talk to me at school
before
I got him arrested and nearly expelled. But a less bratty voice reminds me how he held on to me when we were running through the aquarium and he didn't let go even when I was slowing him down.

“You look awful,” he says, shocked.

A couple of boys from my grade turn into the hall, see us, and openly stop and stare.

Roman glares at them and they remember they were on their way to something very important, actually, and bustle past.

“I know I do. It's this new shampoo,” I tell him.

Roman laughs. He never laughs at my jokes. Perhaps it's a pity laugh, but I'll take it. I feel sorry for myself. Every time I speak, my lips tug at the scab on my mouth.
Bleurgh.

“How are you?” I venture.

“I've … been better,” says Roman carefully. I feel like he's hiding something from me, and also … “Stop talking to my scab, please,” I tell him.

“God, sorry.” He smiles. He's so handsome when he smiles, but I'm not thinking about that right now. I'm preoccupied with something else.

“Where's Gabe?” I ask.

“Ill,” Roman says, his friendliness cooling. “With the stress, he's ill again.”

I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach.

“I … I'm so sorry.”

“It's not
your
fault!” He seems almost angry at the thought.

“I know it's not my fault!” I retort. “I'm sorry for
him
, I mean. I like him, he's my friend. I don't want him to feel like he's got flu all the time and he's tired and his limbs ache and stuff.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. Now, where do you live?” I ask, getting out my phone so I can type in the address. I'm going to go see him, I decide. Right now. Roman watches me.

“You want to see him?”

“Of course!” I say. “If that's OK?”

“I was just about to get a lift from Pete, if you…?”

“Will Pete want to see me?”

“Oh, shut up,” he says, grabbing me by the backpack and giving me a little shove. “We'll drop you back by the end of lunch.”

Our strides match as we walk out to the parking lot together; I'm nearly as tall as him. I can see people watching us and I begin to feel pretty nervous.

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever done, and I've been really adding to that list this past couple of weeks. I'm cutting school with two boys who were recently accused of beating me up. In a closet. In an aquarium.

Pete is waiting in the parking lot in his Mini, having a cigarette. I guess we aren't training anymore, but I still feel a prickle of motherly irritation at him. He stares when he sees me, flicks it out the window, and gets out to say hi. I give him an awkward wave, and I'm shocked when he comes over and gives me a hug.

He squeezes pretty much every bruise I've got, but that's OK.

Roman opens the passenger door, flipping the seat forward for me.

(This is so cool! Or it would be if it weren't an emergency dash to the sickbed of someone I really care about.)

“Actually, do you want front or back, Lou?”

(And if it weren't physically impossible to get three lanky teenagers in a Mini.)

“Um.”

I feel like the only way we'd all fit in is if we liquidized ourselves and someone poured us through the sunroof. So I take the backseat and we play a slow, careful game of Twister as eighteen feet of human being is folded up inside the car.

We get the giggles halfway through, and this helps nothing except it makes me feel a lot better. I don't remember the last time I laughed. I think it was pre-shark.

 

chapter 30

Lav

Are you OK? Millie says you cut school with Roman and Pete? You are aware this is the Worst Idea Ever?

Lou

Gabe's ill, I went to see him. I'll be back by the end of lunch!

Lav

OK. Stay away from fish.

We get to Roman and Gabe's house—Ro lets himself in, Pete follows behind, clearly at home here, and I suddenly feel a bit shy.

It's bigger than our house, I notice as I walk in, but not as swanky as Hannah's.

“Gabe! Lou's here, are you decent?”

“Lou? Really?”

“Yes! Get dressed!” I call up the stairs. I hope his mom isn't in; that was dangerously close to flirty.

Gabe is dressed but sitting on his bed surrounded by stacks of books and a laptop. I don't hug him, because it feels weird—he's in bed. Instead, I sit on the end of the bed and squeeze his leg.

“How are you?” we ask at the same time, and laugh.