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So I eat lunch alone most of the time. But today, by the time I pay for my food at the cash register, there’s barely a seat left. Then I spot F5 and F19 from maths class sitting together, and I join them. They’re both idiots, F19 slightly more so. In my mind, I call them Idiot and Doofus.
“Guys,” I say.
“Hey,” Idiot replies, barely looking up.
“Everyone’s talking about the Declaration,” I say.
“Yes,” Doofus says, stuffing his mouth. We eat silently for a while. That’s the way it is with Idiot and Doofus. They are computer geeks, staying up into the wee hours of the day. When I eat with them – maybe once a week – sometimes we don’t say anything at all. That’s when I feel closest to them.
“I’ve been noticing something,” Doofus says after a while.
I glance up at him. “What’s that?”
“Somebody’s been paying quite a bit of attention to you.” He takes another bite into the meat, raw and bloody. It dribbles down his chin, plopping into his bowl.
“You mean the maths teacher? I know what you mean, the guy won’t leave me alone in trig—”
“No, I meant somebody else. A girl.”
This time, both Idiot and I look up.
“For real?” Idiot asks.
Doofus nods. “She’s been looking at you for the past few minutes.”
“Not me.” I take another sip. “She’s probably staring at one of you.”
Idiot and Doofus look at each other. Idiot scratches his wrist a few times.
“Funny, that,” Doofus says. “I swear she’s been eyeing you for a while now. Not just today. But every lunchtime for the past few weeks, I see her watching you.”
“Whatever,” I say, feigning disinterest.
“No, look, she’s staring at you right now. Behind you at the table by the window.”
Idiot spins around to look. When he turns back around, he’s scratching his wrist hard and fast.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, taking another sip, resisting the urge to turn around.
Idiot only scratches his wrist harder and faster. “You should take a look. He’s not kidding.”
Slowly, I turn around and steal a quick glance. There’s only one table by the window. A circle of girls eating there. The Desirables. That’s what they are known as. And that round table is theirs, and everyone knows by some unwritten rule that you leave that table alone. It is the domain of the Desirables, the popular girls, the ones with the cute boyfriends and designer clothes. You approach that table only if they let you. I’ve seen even their boyfriends waiting dutifully off to the side until granted permission to approach.
Not one of them is looking at me. They are chit-chatting, comparing jewellery, oblivious to the world outside the sphere of their table. But then one of them gives me a lingering look, her eyes meeting, then holding, mine. It is Ashley June. She looks at me with the same kind of wistful, longing glance she’s shot at me dozens of times over the past few years.
I flick my eyes away, spin back around. Idiot and Doofus are scratching their wrists maniacally now. I feel the heat of a dangerous blush begin to hit my face, but they are thankfully too busy scratching to notice. I quell my face, taking deep, slow breaths until the heat dissipates.
“Actually,” Idiot says, “didn’t that girl have a thing for you before? Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right. A couple of years back.”
“She’s still pining after you, she’s got the hots for you after all this time,” Doofus wisecracks, and this time the two of them start scratching each other’s wrists uncontrollably.
Swimming practice after lunch – yes, my coach is a maniac – is almost called off. None of the squad members can concentrate. The locker room is abuzz with the latest rumours about the Declaration. I wait for the room to clear before getting changed. I’m just slipping out of my clothes when someone walks in. “Yo,” Poser, the team captain, says, ripping off his clothes and slipping into his extra-tight Speedos. He drops down for push-ups, inflating his triceps and chest muscles. A dumbbell sits in his locker awaiting his biceps curls. His Buffness the Poser does this before every practice, jacking up to the max. He has a fan club out there, mostly freshmen and sophomores on the girls’ squad. I’ve seen him let them touch his pecs. The girls used to gawk at me, the braver ones sidling up and trying to talk to me during practice until they realized I preferred to be alone. Poser has thankfully drawn away most of that attention.
He does ten more push-ups in quick succession. “It’s got to be about a Heper Hunt,” he says, pausing halfway down. “And they should forget about doing it by lottery this time. They should just pick the strongest among us. That would,” he says, finishing his push-up, “be me.”
“No doubt about,” I say. “It’s always been brawn over brains in the Hunt. Survival of the fittest—”
“And winner takes all,” he finishes as he pushes out ten more push-ups, the last three on one hand. “Life distilled down to its rawest essence. Gotta love it. Because brute strength always wins. Always has, always will.” He runs his hand over his bicep, looking approvingly, and heads out of the door. Only then do I fully remove my clothes and put on my trunks.
Coach is already barking at us as we jump in and continues to berate us for our lack of focus as we swim our laps. The water, always too cold for me even on a normal day, is freezing today. Even a few of my classmates complain about it, and they almost never complain about the water temperature. Water at cold temperatures affects me in a way it doesn’t anyone else. I shiver, get something my father called “goose bumps”. It’s one of the many ways I’m different from everyone else. Because despite my near identical physiological similarity with them, there are seismic fundamental differences that lie beneath the frail and deceptive surface of similarity.
Everyone is slower today. Distracted, no doubt. I need more speed, more effort. It takes everything in me to stop shivering. Even when the water is at its usual temperature, with everyone splashing away, it usually takes a full twenty minutes before I’m warm enough. Today, instead of getting warmer, I feel my body getting colder. I need to swim faster.
After a warm-up lap, as we are resting up in the shallow end, I am almost overcome by a sudden urge to kick off and swim the forbidden stroke.
Only my father has seen me use it. Years ago. During one of our daytime excursions to a local pool. For whatever reason, I dipped my head underwater. It is the first sign of drowning, whenever even the nose and ears dip below the surface. Lifeguards are trained to watch for this: see half a head submerge underwater, and they’re instantly reaching for their whistles and life preservers. That’s why the water level, even at the deep end, goes up only to our waists. It’s the depth that gets to people, renders them incapacitated. If their feet can’t touch the bottom without their jaw line sinking below water, a panic attack seizes them like a reflex. They freeze up, sink, drown. So even though swimming is considered the domain of adrenaline junkies, those willing to flirt with death, really, it’s not. Here in the pool, you can simply stand up at the first sign of trouble. The water is so shallow, even your belly button won’t drown.
But me that day, dipping my head underwater. I don’t know what possessed me. I ducked my head below and did this thing with my breath. I don’t know how to describe it except to say I gripped it. Held it in place in my lungs behind a closed mouth. And for a few seconds, I was fine. More than a few seconds. More like ten. Ten seconds, my head underwater, and I didn’t drown.
It wasn’t even scary. I opened my eyes, my arms pale blurs before me. I heard my father yelling, the sound of water splashing towards me. I told him I was fine. I showed him what to do. He didn’t believe at first, kept asking if I was OK. But eventually, he came around to doing it himself. He didn’t like it, not one bit.
The next time we went swimming, I did the same thing. And then some. This time, with my head underwater, I stretched out my arms, stroked them over my head, one after the other. I pulled on th
e water, kicked my legs. It was awesome. Then I stood up, choking on water. Coughed it out. My father, worried, waded towards me. But I took off again, arms reaching up and over, pulling the water under me, legs and feet kicking the water, my father left in my wake. I was flying.
But when I swam back, my father was shaking his head, with anger, with fear. He didn’t need to say anything (even though he did, endlessly); I already knew. He called it “the forbidden stroke”. He didn’t want me to swim that way anymore. And so I never did.
But today I’m freezing in the water. Everyone is just going through the motions, even chatting to one another, heads smiling above water as hands and feet paddle underneath like pond ducks. I want to stroke hard, kick out, warm up.
And then I feel it. A shudder rippling through my body.
I lift up my right arm. It’s dotted with goose bumps, grotesque little bumps like cold chicken skin. I paddle harder, propelling my body forward. Too fast. My head knocks up against the feet of the person in front. When it happens again, he shoots a glare back at me.
