Monday 11 July

Monday morning, six-thirty. Grey clouds bulge in the sky. Jinx says she doesn’t feel the cold, but I can’t stop shivering. We’re walking to the new pool and with each step on the frosty grass I want to put myself in reverse. It’s been six weeks since I’ve been to training. I only made it out of bed today because we’re getting our new uniforms – part one of our reward for killing it at Nationals. We’re also getting a trip to Canberra. Each member of the St Hilda’s Marlins relay team won in our individual categories. Unprecedented, apparently.

Jinx bounces ahead of me like she’s on springs. ‘Lainie says we’re getting bomber jackets.’

I make a noise, enough so she thinks I’m contributing.

She stops suddenly to stretch. ‘Did you see the itinerary for Canberra?’

‘Uh. I haven’t looked at it yet.’

Jinx goes back to bouncing. ‘You’re gonna love the pool. Remember how crap the old one was? All the bandaids and hair ties floating around? This one’s so clean. I feel faster.’

Jinx doesn’t have to worry about speed. Last time we raced she beat me – clocking just over a minute for the 100-metre freestyle. She’s so tall – the bitches at school call her Slenderman, but Jinx doesn’t care. She can eat whatever. Nothing sticks. Beside her I feel like somebody’s squat aunty.

The new aquatic centre looms before us, all glass and concrete. We pause on the step.

Jinx puts her hands on my shoulders. ‘Go hard, Clem – Maggie’s eyeing your slot.’

I snort. ‘Maggie Cho! I could’ve beaten her with my cast still on.’

I flutter my hand and feel a twinge, but it’s just phantom pain, nerves. I broke my wrist back in May. For a while after the accident I still turned up for training, but it was frustrating having to sit there while everyone else was thrashing up and back so I decided I was on hiatus. And then something – someone – came along and stole my attention.

Jinx heaves the glass door open. I smell chlorine and competition. Steam rises from the surface of the water. When Coach Beazley sees me she starts to clap, and the Marlins join in, slow at first, but by the time I reach them they’ve gone feral, clapping like I’m the second coming. Jinx bows because she’s the one who brought me.

Beaz is all business. ‘How’s the wrist, Banks?’

‘Perfect,’ I say.

Jinx is right, the water looks crystalline. I should want to dive right in, but it’s the last thing I feel like doing. I turn my attention to the new uniforms, join the frenzy of ripping into the polythene bags. The new suit is as green and shiny as a Christmas beetle. Our surnames are printed on the back of our satin bomber jackets. The relay team – me, Jinx, Lainie and Roo – floor it to the change rooms while the other Marlins look on in envy.

Some sixth sense tells me to use a stall. I have a warning feeling, a buzz in my brain that gets louder when I close the door. I take off my trackies, take a breath and step into the new suit. I pull it up. It’s tight. It’s very, very tight. That breath I took – I’d better keep it in, like, forever, because once it goes all the stitching will too. I take the suit off and I grab handfuls of fat from my stomach. I didn’t realise it was this bad. It’s like I’ve gone up a whole size. All the sleeping in and second helpings and no training to work it off.

I can hear the others admiring each other, and I imagine they look like sleek machines. I wait until their footsteps fade. Then I put my trackies back on and shove the new suit in my bag. I try to walk casually past the pool but Beaz strides after me.

‘Everything okay?’

‘Ah, there’s an emergency.’ I can feel my face burn with the lie. ‘My sister, Iris. She’s sick.’

I shuffle faster until I’m practically running.

‘Clem!’ Her voice drowns in the sounds of swimmers.

She’ll want to see me later. I’ll get the call when I’m in English or History. Some junior will come in with a note and I’d better have a good reason. I guess I’ve got from now until then to think of one. I imagine telling her I can’t swim because my suit doesn’t fit. She’ll want to do the whole diet interrogation. In first term Lainie lost eight kilos – she did it by chewing her food and spitting it into a napkin. I don’t know if I have that kind of willpower.

Instead of going back to the dorm, I head for the old pool. I think I’ll be alone there, but as I walk up I can hear music: someone is playing a cello. I linger by the deep end and see Kate – Iris’s roommate – sitting on a chair at the bottom of the empty pool, bowing away. There’s a laptop on the ground beside her. She bends down, presses a button and beats sound. Kate has her back to me, but she’s so intent on what she’s doing she wouldn’t notice if there were a hundred people watching. Her live melody weaves through the recorded sounds. Something in the combination makes me feel . . . I don’t know, like the world is about to end, like everything sweet must be remembered. I lean against a tree and let the melancholy wash over me. I’m thinking that nothing changes until everything does.

On our first day at St Hilda’s, when Iris and I were introducing ourselves to the other boarders, I said my natural state was half-fish. Iris mumbled about her idol, Ada Lovelace. Someone said, ‘If you’re twins how come you don’t look anything like each other?’ This is true. Iris is tall, I’m short. Iris is pale, I’m ruddy. Iris is flat as a tack, I’m all hills and valleys.

When our parents packed up and moved to Singapore for work, they decided it would be too disruptive to our schooling for us to go with them. They chose St Hilda’s because it’s academic and sporty. Iris is the smart one, I’m the sporty one. Mum always says we can be anything we want, but that’s what we are. Iris was expecting me to room with her, and she still hasn’t forgiven me for choosing not to.

I’m thinking about this stuff, but, also, I’m thinking about Stu. He’s the someone – the reason I broke my wrist – sort of.

How it happened:

I was running on the river track, and I literally crashed into him. I fell, landed, howled in pain. Jinx said she’d never seen my face so white. A few days later, I was mooching around the dorm when Old Joy, our housemistress, stuck her head in and told me I had a visitor. It was him! And he was gorgeous. We sat in the lounge – the only place boys are allowed – and he was being very funny and cute even with constant interruptions and surveillance. He told me his name was Stuart Laird McAlistair, and he wanted to buy me a coffee. He wrote his phone number on my cast and drew a rambling rose.

‘Never ring before eleven am,’ he said. ‘I need my beauty sleep.’

No, I thought. You really don’t.

I’d never seen a guy so beautiful.

Our first date was on a Friday after school. We had hot chips at the reserve. Stu did most of the talking. He told me he was nineteen, and a musician. He’d been studying community work but had dropped out. When I told him I was sixteen, he scrunched his brow, faking deep. ‘That’s a dangerous age.’ He teased me about my school uniform and, as he kissed me goodbye, snaked his hand under it. I floated home, tasting salt on my lips, feeling the imprint of his fingertips on my regulation St Hilda’s tights. I’ve been floating ever since. Now mornings when I should be training are spent lazing in bed thinking about Stuart Laird McAlistair putting his hands all over me.

Kate stops mid-bow and starts packing up. And I’m back to the real, the now, late for breakfast. I dart off before she can see me. I don’t even go to the mess hall. I just get a coffee from the machine and drink it in my room. I hang the new suit over the back of my chair, for thin-spiration. But I can’t help hating it.

And it’s the draggingest day.

I think about Stu, and I think about food.

At lunch I snub the lasagne and pile on the salad. If I’m going to fit into that suit I’ll have to ease up on carbs and sugar. But I’m a defunct dieter, bound to fail.

After lunch we have the new unit – Wellness. We lounge on the beanbags and generally take an age to settle down. My empty stomach rumbles violently. Tash (coathanger, pretty, popular) makes a face. ‘Hey, She-man, have an energy bar.’ She snorts like a pig and laughs. In the next second something flies through the air. A rubber hits the back of Tash’s head.

‘Ow!’ She whirls around. It was Iris. I can tell by her tiny smile. Iris wants me to meet her eyes, but I won’t do it. I hate it when my sister comes to my defence. Dr Malik is standing patiently in front of a quote on the board – I celebrate myself, and sing myself. I groan inwardly. Since when is Wellness even a word?