I lowered my arm. Hero’s mouth hung open below teeth that would have made Bugs Bunny proud. His eyes were wide, his lashes stuck to the skin below his eyebrows.
‘You can swim,’ he spluttered. ‘Joey said you’d drown if – he said you can’t even go to the swimming carnival – because you’d sink – because you’re, you know, a–’
I sighed. Joey Castellaro had told him that vampires couldn’t swim.
‘That’s witches, Hero. Joey’s an idiot.’ The words spilled out before I could stop them. He looked momentarily confused, and I couldn’t resist backing it up with some hard evidence.
‘In the olden days, they’d throw anyone suspected of being a witchin a lake. If she floated, it proved she had evil powers, so they’d fish her out and burn her at the stake. If she drowned, bad luck. She probably wasn’t a witch, after all.’
Hero’s frown unstuck his wet eyelashes. ‘That’s not very fair.’
‘Witch-hunts aren’t usually about being fair,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re about people who think they’re right, victimising someone they think is different.’
Hero’s eyes widened again and I felt the blood rush to my face.
The conversation had strayed a little too close to touchy ground and I looked around for some safer conversational territory.
‘So ... You training for the swimming carnival?’
He nodded, eyes skating round me. Fidgety about being caught talking to me, out here in the open, in a pool that, according to Joey Castellaro, was a death sentence for creatures of my kind. But he was still blowing hard from his recent exertions, so he probably wasn’t ready to swim away from me just yet.
I fiddled with my goggles. ‘Yeah, me too.’
The silence stretched for so long, I wondered if it was going to snap back and hit me in the face. I carefully pulled my ageing goggles over my head and put us both out of our misery.
‘Well, have fun then,’ I said, slipping into the water and pushing off.
Four laps later, I was heading toward a tumble turn at the shallow end when I saw Hero duck under the lane rope and wave at me under the water.
I surfaced before I hit him, blew my nose into my hand and rinsed it off in the next lane.
He squinted down the length of the fifty-metre pool, glanced back at me, and looked away again. He was gagging on something, but just couldn’t spit it out.
I decided to make it easy for him. ‘Having fun yet?’
‘Not really.’ He shook his head, sending a spray of droplets my way, his next words coming out in a rush.
‘I’m crap at swimming. I hate the swimming carnival more than anything in the whole world. All the girls are better than me. Even BB can swim faster than me, and he’s blind without his glasses.’
He wouldn’t meet my eye. But it was a lot to admit to, all in one breath, so I decided I could afford to be charitable.
‘Actually, you were doing OK, considering.’
‘Considering what?’
Good question. That’s what you get for trying to be nice. ‘Well ... considering you haven’t been training.’ It was an educated guess, but a good one, as it turned out.
‘Training? You gotta be kidding. I’ve never even had a lesson.’ He swaggered a bit when he said it, trying to sound like Joey Castellaro, like it was something to be proud of.
Though, if you thought about it, it probably was an achievement of sorts that he could swim at all, given that he had never been taught.
‘You’re actually not that bad.’ Sheer determination was getting him through fifty metres a damn sight faster than his lousy style could account for. ‘You look pretty fit. A bit of training, and you’d probably be OK.’
He studied me to see if I was having a go. ‘Seriously?’ His eyes lit up. ‘You reckon you could give me a few pointers?’
I was so taken aback I actually took a step back, straight into a lane rope.
Hero surged towards me. ‘You’re an awesome swimmer. I was watching you doing those laps and you weren’t even puffed after swimming two hundred metres.’
Now probably wasn’t the time to tell him that I usually did a kilometre – that’s twentylaps – most days as a warm-up. No point in pushing it, this early in the friendship. That set me back another step. Were Hero and I actually making friends?
His face closed over. ‘It’s OK, I can see you don’t want to help me.’ He turned away. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just forget it.’
He’d taken my silence for something it wasn’t; I really had to stop having conversations in my head when real people were standing there, waiting for an answer.
‘No, wait–’ I grabbed his arm. ‘I was just trying to work something out in my head. I don’t mind helping you.’
He pulled his arm away, shooting a fist into the air. ‘Yes! That BB’s gonna eat my bubbles–’
‘Don’t get too excited,’ I warned. ‘We haven’t got much time till the swimming carnival, so don’t expect miracles, OK?’
His front teeth were now all on display. Boy, I hoped his dad was real tall, so he had some hope of growing into those teeth.
‘So, what do you want to work on the most?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘My freestyle. That way, I won’t let my team down, like I do every year, in the all-age relay. I’m in Burke, which team are you in?’
‘Same.’ I remembered Mr Paulson telling me that much.
‘Joey’s in Wills. So you’ll be racing against him. He’s a year older than me and BB. He’s going to be peed off when he finds out that you don’t sink.’
I eyed him warily. ‘You planning to tell him?’
‘Nah, he’ll find out soon enough.’
I was relieved that I didn’t need to butt chests with Joey Castellaro till the swimming carnival. We could sort out our differences there.
‘OK, freestyle it is. First thing is your kick. Your legs are trailing too low in the water, dragging you down, like an anchor. If we fix that, and get you turning your body more like this when you’re swimming–’ I showed him what I meant, ‘–the water will slip past you and you’ll meet less resistance. You’ll go faster and not find it as tiring. What do you think? Want to give it a go?’
He’d been nodding the whole time I was talking, like he was really keen to learn. So I led him through a couple of drills that worked on his kick, then threw in a bit of stroke correction after that.
He was a quick learner, copying my every movement, his face a mask of concentration. And he was fit. A runner by the look of him, so a bit of technique would go a long way with him.
‘Hey, boys.’ It was Ma Mallory, neat in her lifeguard uniform, leaning over the blocks. ‘I’m going to have to get you to move into one of the outside lanes. The centre lanes are reserved for squad training from four to six. OK?’
I nodded, ducked under the lane rope and headed for the edge of the pool, Jironomo Marquez following in my wake. The crazy pool lady had taken her eyebrows home so we had the lane to ourselves.
We were practising tumble turns when the squad filed in and started warming up with lazy freestyle laps. I had to turn my back and pretend they weren’t there, or the urge to dump Hero and join in would overpower my good intentions. Instead I concentrated on getting Hero to ride higher in the water, lengthen his stroke and work with the flow, instead of against it.
By the time we took a breather, the white heat of the day had mellowed into gold and shadows had begun to creep across our lane. A wiry old man wandered in, holding a faded blue towel and a Perpetual Sucker schoolbag. ‘Jironomo, nos vamos!’
‘That’s my granddad,’ said Hero. ‘He’s been living with us since Dad died. I gotta go.’
The likeness was unmistakeable. One front tooth was capped in gold and the other was missing, but dental records alone confirmed a blood relationship.
‘Hello, Mr Marquez,’ I said.
‘ Hola,’ he said, smiling as he hauled his grandson out of the water. ‘ Lo siento. No hablo inglés.’
If his granddad was anything to go by, Hero wasn’t ever growing into those incisors. But then again, if he ended up with the same happy grin, he’d get through life just fine.
Hero swabbed himself down with the towel his granddad handed him. ‘See you back here tomorrow?’
‘Sure.’ I looked away to hide my disappointment. He hadn’t said that he’d see me at school. ‘But I have to get my times down for Mr Paulson, so I’ll be doing more swimming and less talking.’
‘No problemo,’ he said, flicking the towel in the air. ‘I’ll practise the stuff you showed me today.’
Hero’s granddad let out a burst of machinegun Spanish that sounded like a question. I heard Hero say my name and a heap of other stuff I couldn’t understand.
His granddad gave me a cheerful wave. ‘ Adios, Henry.’
‘ Adios, Mr Marquez.’
By the time the pair of them trotted off, squad training was all but over.
I slipped into the adjacent lane and shadowed the last couple of drills, not sure whether to be glad or sorry that I’d spent nearly two hours helping Hero.
Then the timed sprints kicked in, driving everything but the feel of the water out of my brain.