Tuesday afternoon in Biology there was only one vacant seat at the back of the lab, next to Starkey from the bike racks. As I took my place, he turned his yellowed palm for a low five. Without thinking, I slapped it.
‘Sean “Mullows” Mulligan,’ he said, pointing to the guy on his left with his thumb. ‘And Nads.’ Hair removal cream or gonads? I wasn’t about to ask. He was sitting on the end opposite me. Handsome in a ‘rip your balls from the sack if you cross me’ sort of way. Mullows had a ranga mullony – a mullet in a ponytail. His long neck, face and lashes gave him the appearance of a docile giraffe.
‘On Thursday you will perform your first rat dissection in pairs,’ Miss Keenan said. ‘Anybody not wishing to participate for ethical or religious reasons may articulate their concern.’
Isa Mountwinter raised her hand at the front of the room. ‘A rat is a sentient being, not an object to be cut up, pulled apart and thrown in the bin. Biology is the science of life, not killing.’ She turned to face the class. ‘Please stand up if chopping up animals could hold any importance for your future.’ Three people stood, including Tibor Mintz, who wants to be a doctor like his father. ‘Everybody else is a cold-blooded animal killer.’
‘Animal killers!’ Phoenix Lee repeated for emphasis.
‘You self-righteous hypocrites,’ Nads said, raising one scarred eyebrow. ‘Somebody has to slaughter the animals you eat.’
‘We’re vegetarians,’ Isa said. ‘And only buy cruelty-free cosmetics.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Enough, thank you, Darvin!’ Miss Keenan said. No wonder he doesn’t use his real name. ‘Respecting one another’s opinions is part of the Crestfield Code of Conduct. Isa and Phoenix will be performing their dissection on the Cyber Rat simulator in the tech lab on Thursday. Does anybody wish to join them?’ Two other students raised their hands.
‘Pussies,’ muttered Starkey.
When the final glockenspiel sounded, the dread of swimming at squad the next day hit me and I went to Bondi Junction and bought a pair of black Speedos. Though the fabric was smooth and thin, I prayed they’d be dark enough to fully conceal the nub and save me from humiliation. On the train home, I puzzled over how Simmons had known my measurements. Then I remembered Dad had insisted on taking them last year. He’d told me it was for my uniform.
Five forty-five Wednesday morning, new Speedos already on to avoid changing on arrival, I pedalled furiously to get to squad on time. The synthetic chafing caused the nub to swell, and I walked into The Hive like a saddle-sore cowboy.
Squad comprised the best eight swimmers from each grade, with Year 10 represented by Nads, Mullows, Starkey, a guy called Pericles Pappas, three girls and, inexplicably, me. Simmons opened with a long pep talk, ending with, ‘My dream is to make Crestfield the top swimming school in the state and this pool the birthplace of tomorrow’s champions!’ An image of Mrs Coombs having a natural water birth popped into my head. Tiny baby Coralee, future Olympian, slithered out and wiggled like a tadpole towards the surface for her first gasp of air, umbilical cord trailing behind, clouding the pool with blood and other bodily matter.
Simmons flipped a whiteboard to reveal the lap breakdown and tally – fifty laps total, 2.5 kilometres. ‘Nobody will leave until they’ve completed the program,’ he said, then introduced the assistant coach, Deb Gelber. Her name sounded like a brand of baby food but she was all muscle, tracksuit and topknot.
‘Sort yourselves out!’ she barked like a drill sergeant. ‘Slowest in lane one, fastest in eight. If you’re tapped three times, move down.’ Everybody peeled off their last piece of clothing but I kept my towel wrapped tightly around my waist.
Mullows slapped his broad shoulders then tucked his ginger pony into a blue-and-yellow racing cap. ‘Best for you to start in five,’ he said to me, snapping on reflective goggles.
Three things came to mind:
1) Mullows was the snarling backstroker in the Hallway of Champions photo.
2) He and Nads were both preternaturally stacked for teenagers – possibly on the juice?
3) I forgot to bring goggles.
Fifty laps without them would fry my eyeballs, but there was no time to worry about minor inconveniences like blindness. I threw my towel onto a nearby seat and stood behind Pericles Pappas in lane five, hands behind my back and head down, hoping nobody would notice the nub.
>BOY IN LANE FIVE WITHOUT GOGGLES, FIND SOME IMMEDIATELY!< Gelber bellowed through a megaphone.
‘Don’t worry,’ Pericles said. ‘I’ve got a spare pair.’ He fetched them from his bag and gave them to me. They were super tight, and the connector carved into the bridge of my nose, but beggars don’t have the luxury of a wide product range.
I dived into the pool and the coolness of the water seemed to reduce the inflammation of the nub. But after ten warm-up laps of freestyle we moved on to breaststroke and the frog kick made me feel exposed, so without being tapped, I demoted myself to lane three and swam as fast as possible to increase the distance between myself and the next swimmer. The next ten laps with a kickboard provided the relief of knowing the nub would be impossible to see through all the splashing. But then we switched to pull buoys, holding the foam peanut between our legs and using only our arms to crawl through the water.
With legs now making no splash, I used every ounce of strength in my arms to ensure the trailing swimmer made no sighting of my little abnormality. On completion I climbed out of the pool, arms aching, lungs burning, and switched to lane two with one other sorry swimmer for the warm-down laps, every stroke a battle of will through water that felt like Clag®.
‘Thank God for that,’ Gelber said when I finally heaved myself out of the pool and made a dash for my protective towel. ‘I thought you’d never finish.’
The single consolation of being the last male swimmer to finish training was having the change room to myself. Still, you can never be too careful so I slipped into a cubicle and after drying my back, reached around to check the nub. It felt tiny – hardly even there. I walked to first period feeling tentatively euphoric on the basis of having made it through squad without anybody noticing anything, and wondered if I was just being paranoid. Maybe the thing was in fact shrinking away.
‘Don’t get cocky,’ Homunculus said. ‘It was just your first session.’
True – and the prospect of swimming endless laps, constrained by lane lines in chlorinated water, was legitimately soul-crushing to someone who was born for the ocean.