‘Ha ha,’ Skippy says, but he gets up to go.
On the way back to school he tries calling her again. He pretends to himself it’s to tell her about the hampers. But really he just wants to hear her voice. Something has started to feel wrong: it’s like being in a car that’s gradually going faster and faster, and though to everyone around it still looks totally normal, you know that the brakes have been cut. She doesn’t answer; he leaves a message on her voicemail, asking her to call him back.
Overnight a new cold sets in, the kind that permeates your bones while you sleep and, once arrived, will not leave again till spring. Armadas of leaves set sail with every fresh gust of wind; fingers are blue on the straps of bags and satchels; and the school-doors in the distance appear, uncharacteristically, as a blessed haven, to be hastened towards.
‘No training today?’ Ruprecht asks, surprised to find Skippy only getting up now. No, no training – no getting up before dawn, no stripping off in an icy-cold changing room, no punishing your body till every muscle aches before you’ve even had breakfast. Instead there is an extra hour of dreams, and you arrive at the Ref still cloudy with sleep to –
‘Hey, Juster, what’s the fucking story?’ Siddartha comes rushing up with Duane Grehan in tow.
‘What story?’ Skippy like he doesn’t already know.
‘You missed fucking training again.’ Beneath his freckles Siddartha is pink with anger. ‘The race is tomorrow, shithead, why weren’t you at training?’
Skippy doesn’t say anything, just hangs in the breeze that seems to have sprung up around him in the corridor, austere and silent.
‘This is total fucking bullshit,’ Siddartha seethes. ‘Coach never should have picked you. You’re his little bum-chum, that’s the only reason.’ From behind him, Duane gazes at Skippy with expressionless eyes. ‘Asshole,’ says Siddartha, by way of a parting shot.
‘You didn’t go to training?’ Geoff says, when the other two are gone.
‘I didn’t feel like it,’ Skippy says vaguely.
‘Oh,’ Geoff says, and doesn’t say anything else.
*
In the shopping mall at lunch break a huge silver-needled Christmas tree has been installed, making the people rising and descending on the escalators around it look like tiny decoration-angels in anoraks and polar fleeces.
‘Where are you going with your girlfriend tonight, Skip?’
‘I’m not sure – maybe to the cinema? She’s going to call me.’
‘Cinema is good,’ Mario says approvingly. ‘I have been on many dates in the cinema – but I have not seen very many films!’
‘Because I was having sex,’ he adds a moment later, in case the others haven’t understood. ‘In the cinema.’
Yesterday she never called back. In the Study Hall carved into the desk a new graffiti: CARL CAME IN THE GIRLS HAND BEFORE SHE EVEN TUCHED HIS PENIS.
But now, as if to squash these doubts, Skippy’s pocket starts to bleep. It must be her! He hurries out the door of the video-game shop and fumbles open his phone. No, it’s just Dad. ‘Hi, Dad.’ He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
‘Hi, D. Just thought I’d give you a call, see how you were set up for the big race tomorrow.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘How do you feel? Are you excited?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘You don’t sound it.’
Skippy shrugs, then realizes Dad can’t see it, and instead says, ‘No, I am.’
‘Okay,’ Dad says. In the background Skippy can hear the printer whirr and telephones ringing. There is a long strange pause: Dad takes a deep breath in through his nose. ‘Listen, Danny,’ he says. ‘We had a phone call last night.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He stiffens, turns a little to the fluted wall.
‘Yeah, from Mr Roche, your swimming coach.’
Skippy stops dead.
‘Yeah,’ Dad muses, like he’s thinking over a crossword clue, but you can hear his voice stretched taut like it’s on a rack. ‘He told me you’d quit the team.’
Frozen by the wall next to the kitchen spoils shop.
‘Danny?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I was pretty surprised to hear that, I have to say. I mean, I know how much you were looking forward to this race.’
‘Oh, well…’
‘Oh well what?’
‘I’ve been getting a bit tired of it lately.’
‘You have?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Of swimming?’
‘Yeah.’
They circle each other through an imaginary space that is not mall or office: in Skippy’s head it is a clearing in a winter forest, with sun clinging to the trunks of bare trees.
‘Well, that comes as a surprise,’ Dad says slowly. ‘Because you’ve always loved to swim, ever since you were a tiny tot.’
Pan-pipe ‘Away in a Manger’ descends like nerve-gas from the speakers above. All of a sudden Skippy feels a great weight tugging on him, tugging on the whole mall, pulling it downward towards a single point.
‘Your coach was surprised too. He says you’re a natural. Phenomenal natural ability, that’s how he put it.’
Dad pauses but Skippy doesn’t say anything. He knows what is coming and there is no way to stop it. Around him the walls of the mall begin to tremble.
‘He wondered if it might be him, if he’d been too hard on you in training. Well, I told him you’d never said anything like that to me.’
Screws twist from their sockets, girders creak.
‘He said you’d mentioned personal reasons.’
Everything is vibrating, like the shopping mall is one big tuning fork.
‘Danny, I told him about your mum.’
Skippy closes his eyes.
‘I had to, Danny. I had to.’
Windows exploding, huge reefs of masonry descending from above, the walls of the mall tumbling in on themselves.
The Game blown all over the road.
‘I know we had our pact and everything. But I’ve often wondered whether I’d done right by you there, sport. I mean, in a school there are people, there’s a framework in place to help you deal with exactly these kinds of things. I should’ve told you – I don’t know, I just…’ Dad’s hands dropping hopelessly to his sides, the two of them, Skippy and Dad, falling to the ground, shot in the head. ‘I feel like I’ve let you down, son. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Danny.’
A glazed Christmas-coloured distance away, Mario in the door of the game shop, making an Is it her? face at Skippy. Skippy yanks his face into the shape of a smile and waves him back.
‘Anyway – well, your Mr Roche was quite taken aback by that, obviously. But he said it explained a lot, in terms of your attitude lately. He said it was clear you’d been under a lot of strain. But he also said – and I agree with him – that the very worst thing to do would be to let that strain stop you from doing the thing you love.’
Skippy just nods. Disbelief all that is keeping him upright: the blood that whomps through his head, as stars whiz back and forth through the mall, through the bodies of the shoppers, which fade into negatives behind the bright streaks.
‘He says – he seems to me like a good man, a really decent man, he was a very promising rugby player, did you know that? Anyway, he – he knows all about missing chances, that’s how he put it to me. And whatever about chances and potential and all that – swimming’s what you love, Dan. It’s what you’ve always loved. God, I was telling him how we’d put you in the pool when you were only a year old, and you’d steam about like a, like a dolphin!’ Dad laughs to himself. Then he stops. ‘I know you’re worried about Mum, sport. Maybe it’s impossible to carry on a normal life while this is going on. But you know how much she wanted to come to the race tomorrow, you know how hard she’d been working to get herself strong enough to see you. If she thought for one second that you’d had to stop because of her, that after all this preparation you’d quit because of her… well, that would break her heart, sport, it really would.’