I woke at first light to the sound of footsteps outside my bedroom door.
I scrambled up from the mattress, my heart thumping in the unfamiliar room.
The footsteps stopped. A board creaked and shadows shifted in the crack at the bottom of the door.
Something slapped against the floor and rasped as it jammed under the door. I dived for the door handle and wrenched it open, surprising Anders on the other side.
‘What are you doing?’ I hissed, looking around to see if any of the others were up. ‘It’s five in the morning.’
He reached down and picked up a large yellow envelope from the floor. ‘Your mum’s contract,’ he said, handing it to me. Then he rubbed a hand across his bloodshot eyes and walked away.
‘Wait–’ I followed him out to the kitchen. ‘Where did you find this? Was it in the car?’
I pulled out a dozen or more typed pages. They were meaningless apart from the signatures scrawled on the front and the initials at the top corner of each page. They’d signed. Both of them. Mum would get her money.
Anders was at the sink, splashing water on his face.
‘Have you been out all night getting this?’
He rubbed a handtowel across his face. ‘Had to find the right towing company. Couldn’t get into the yard. Had to wait till someone towed in another wreck. Eventually found it under the front seat.’
He tipped a whole glass of water down his throat. ‘Go back to bed. The real-estate office won’t be open for hours.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m going to walk up to the hospital and see Mum. It’s not that far–’
He placed the glass back down on the bench and met my eyes. ‘They didn’t operate till past midnight. It went well, but she’ll be tired. Better to wait till visiting hours start at ten.’
The pit in my stomach yawned wider. ‘Did you see her?’
He shook his head and mopped again at his face with the towel. ‘I’ll take the contract in to the real-estate office. You should go to school–’
‘I told you, I’m not going to school. I’m going to see my mum.’
He stared at me, at my arms folded across my chest, his limited supply of words exhausted.
A sharp voice cut in from the next room. ‘What are you two doing up at this hour?’
It was Caleb, with bird’s-nest hair, a grumpy pig T-shirt and drawstring pants that had a crotch halfway down to his knees. He wasn’t much of a morning person. Or maybe he was still dirty at Anders about whatever they’d been arguing about the night before.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. Could you please let Mr Paulson know that I’m not coming in today.’ I stared stubbornly at Anders. ‘That I’m visiting my mum. In the hospital.’
His eyes flicked between me and Anders. ‘I can do that. But right now, I’d like to get back to bed.’
‘No probs,’ I said, heading for the front door. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Whoa–’ He grabbed my arm as I tried to slip past him. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
I wiggled out of his grasp. ‘I’m going to grab my stuff from next door–’ it wasn’t home any more, not without Mum there, ‘–and have a swim. If I train for a couple of hours, then come back and grab some breakfast, it’ll be time to go see Mum.’
‘Swim?’ asked Anders, suddenly alert.
I nodded.
He pushed off the bench, ignoring the look in Caleb’s eyes. ‘Go get your stuff. I’ll give you a ride.’
‘Two for squad.’ Anders held a fifty-dollar bill out to Ma Mallory.
‘You don’t have to pay for me for squad,’ I said. ‘I can train on my own.’
Ma Mallory raised an eyebrow at Anders, a whisker short of grabbing the cash. He slotted the note into her waiting fingers and leaned back. A moment later, she slapped the change into his palm.
‘Better get in there. Squad’s about to start.’
Anders pushed through the turnstile.
‘Thanks,’ I said, a little stab of excitement knifing through me. My first real squad training session. Where I could ask questions of my own. Not just eavesdrop on what other people were doing.
Anders pulled off his T-shirt and threw it on the nearest table. I did the same, dropping my shorts and my bag next to it. I yanked on a cap and hung my goggles round my neck. Swung my arms in a quick warm-up routine, one clockwise, one counterclockwise, then swapped arms, as the morning squad filed in, laughing and chatting.
No Angelica this morning. Thank the high heavens for that.
I turned to see Anders stretching his shoulders behind me. He looked pretty fit, with one elbow raised, both hands locked behind his back. His head was down, listening to something Ma Mallory was telling him. She broke off when she saw me looking and barked out warm-up instructions to the lines of waiting swimmers.
‘Ten laps of freestyle to start. Hit the water.’
I hit the water and the cares of the world dissolved around me.
Two hours later, I’d almost demolished the big breakfast that Anders had bought for us both at Vinnie’s Café at Newmarket.
‘Ma says you’re a good show for Districts; says you’ve got the juice.’
It was his first attempt at conversation for the morning and he’d timed it kind of badly. I really couldn’t talk with a mouth full of bacon and eggs.
‘You should be training every day.’
I rolled my eyes and kept chewing. For someone who didn’t say much, he liked to tell me what I should be doing. You should go to school. You should do squad training.
I swallowed hard. ‘I should go see my mother in hospital every day, that’s what I should be doing.’
He speared a corner of bacon-and-egg-laden toast with his fork and sliced it off. ‘Visiting hours go through to eight at night. You can do both.’ He put it in his mouth and chewed, eyes fixed on me.
I forked in a mouthful of sausage instead of answering, but he wouldn’t let it rest.
‘You can swim. You should do what you’re good at.’
‘Can I get you anything else, sir?’ The waitress was young and pretty and had been smiling at Anders since we walked in. ‘Another coffee?’
He nodded.
‘Short black?’
He nodded again. ‘Thanks.’ Then turned back to me.
‘Well?’
I looked at him blankly. ‘I don’t drink coffee.’
He wiped his mouth on a napkin and pushed his plate away. ‘About squad training.’
I looked down at the plate and was surprised, and a bit disappointed, that the huge plate of egg, bacon, sausage, toast and grilled tomato had somehow disappeared. I pushed my plate to the side. ‘I’ll see how Mum is first.’
He nodded and leaned back in the chair.
I stared at him for fully two minutes then said, ‘You don’t say much, do you?’
He shook his head, then, for the first time since I met him, he actually smiled. A real smile. With teeth and everything. It made him look younger. Way younger.
‘I do most of my talking inside my head too,’ I said, surprising myself. Normally I wouldn’t tell anyone that. But it seemed pretty safe to tell Anders. He didn’t really talk to anyone, so who was he going to tell?
‘I have these huge conversations with myself about everything that goes on in my life. Then it doesn’t matter so much if I don’t have anyone to talk to...’Cos, you know, I can always talk to myself.’
He was no longer smiling. ‘That’s a mistake,’ he said quietly, and I felt the heat rise in my face.
‘There you go.’ The smiley waitress was back with a coffee. ‘If you need anything else, just give me a wave.’
He nodded and waited till she took her big smile off to the next table. Then he leaned forward, eyes fixed on me.
‘Shutting people out is a mistake,’ he said. ‘You have to tell them what’s going on in your head. Or they won’t know.’
He was a fine one to talk. I pulled away from him and folded my arms across my chest.
‘Yeah? Well, what if people don’t want to hear? What if you don’t have any choice because noone talks to you anyway?’
He flinched and tried again. ‘If they shut you out, it’s on them. But if you don’t give them the chance, it’s on you.’ He hesitated and looked away. ‘Then you end up like me.’
‘What?’ I glowered at him from across the table. ‘Really bad at talking to people?’
The skin tightened around his eyes.
‘Alone.’