Chapter 10

The week leading up to the first of our district meets that season was one of the busiest I can remember. After riding home from training, I collapsed into bed and slept until the late afternoon sun shone orange through my bedroom window. When I dragged myself downstairs, mum was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and making notes on a stack of assignments from her job at the university.

“It lives,” she said, removing her glasses. I grunted and got myself a glass of orange juice from the fridge. “Have fun last night?”

“It was okay,” I allowed.

“Was this the girl you’ve been mooning over for the past few months?”

“Mu-um!”

“Oh, come on. You can’t expect that we wouldn’t notice. And don’t forget, I still change your sheets,” she said with eyes twinkling.

“Okay. One: Eww! Two: Ewwwwwww! Are you trying to mentally scar me?” I asked.

“Seriously, it was pretty obvious, Jimmy.” She held up her hand and began to tick things off her fingers. “You’ve been acting a bit strange lately, but your grades haven’t changed, your times haven’t improved unreasonably, and there’s been no strange change in your comings or goings, so we didn’t think it was drugs. Then you had that phone call Monday night from a girl, which is quite unusual for you, followed by all that shouting from your end. And a few days later you ask for money for a date. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what’s up.” I sat down at the kitchen table in defeat as she regarded me over her coffee cup. “Spill, Moriarty.”

“Her name is Nao. She’s on the squad and she’s amazing.”

“Oh yes. I think we’ve seen her in the pool. So, your interest is purely professional? Just supporting a teammate?”

“She moved here last year. Her dad moved around a lot. She’s really nice.”

“And she didn’t know that you liked her? Hey, I told you we heard you yelling at the phone,” she said soothingly as I glared at her.

“Well, I think she kind of guessed. But she never said anything to show that she might be interested in me. In fact, I thought she hated me.”

“And did she?”

“Before last night I would have said yes.”

“What changed your mind?”

It all came out in a rush.

“I dunno. It was really confusing. She seemed happy at first, but then she got all angry at me over some dumb thing I said the first time I met her. She’d been annoyed about that for like, six months! But she never let me apologise even though I tried to for ages. Then she was upset because she yelled at me, and I was upset because it was like she’d expected me to be some kind of mind reader. But then we made up and had fish and chips and walked on the beach and everything seemed great. And today she told me she’d really enjoyed last night and told me to call her tonight. Why is this so hard?” I complained.

“Because you’re both teenagers and you’re both really stupid,” said mum, matter-of-factly. “Seriously. Both of your brain chemistries are changing so you’re pretty much useless right now. The part of your brain that deals with empathy is basically closed for renovations, so you won’t always pick up on her cues. And the logical part of her brain is overridden by her emotions right now, so while you might be looking for a clear reason for her behaviour you won’t find it because there’s not much logic to it at all. Plus, you’re a boy, so it’s in the rulebook you are basically dumb when it comes to girls.” I just stared at her. “Hey,” she said soothingly patting my arm, “you’re lucky your mum lectures in education and understands adolescent neuroscience. Other kids without this keen research-informed insight would just have to despair that they were useless and doomed to a basement-dwelling life of Kleenex and cable internet.”

“Oh. My. God! I will be scarred for life. That’s disgusting!”

Mum shrugged as she put her glasses back on, picked up her red pen and turned back to her pile of marking.

“No, you’ll be fine. You just have to be aware that you may not always be able to figure her out and hope that she can tolerate you being well-intentioned but a bit slow on the uptake.” She regarded me over the top of her glasses. “Do you like her? Seriously?”

“I do,” I said, without hesitation. She smiled.

“Good. You can use the cordless phone from our room tonight when you call her. That way if you’re yelling at the phone, it won’t interrupt your dad’s television.”

“Thanks, mum,” I said, standing up and giving her a hug as she sat at the table.

“You know, you’re taking this little explainer a lot better than your sister did. She was about your age when she came storming in, carrying on about some boy named ‘Keith’.” Keith was my sister’s first serious boyfriend, now her husband. They’d been together since the ninth grade.

“Well,” I said, in my best German psychoanalyst impression, complete with a ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ quality accent. “That’s because as a teenage boy I can grasp the underlying logic, but as a teenage girl she was obviously incapable due to her overriding emotions.”

“I wouldn’t let Nao hear you putting it like that, Sigmund, or you just may end up moving into the basement after all. But you’ll have to supply your own Kleenex,” she teased.

“Mu-um!”

I spoke to Nao on the phone later that night. She’d gotten the third degree from Sarah about Friday night, just like I had from Derek. And she had been non-committal with Sarah, just like I’d brushed Derek off (or pushed him off – into the pool). I told her that I wasn’t ashamed of her, but I wasn’t interested in being the subject of public speculation and commentary; I was interested in her for her, not for what status it would get me with the other guys in the team. She seemed to appreciate that. She’d also gotten a grilling from her folks at dinner, particularly her dad, but her mom had talked me up and he seemed resigned to the fact for the moment, but she did say that he wanted to meet me. Nervously, I changed the subject.

“So how are you feeling about the trials this week?”

“Oh God, I dunno. This’ll be the most serious meet I’ve ever been to. I’ve never been on a team weekend before. It’s kind of exciting.”

“You still need to qualify yet. You only get a seat on the bus if you finish in the top four in your age group during trials this week.”

“Well,” she said in a tone of false modesty, “I hope you end up on the bus. Me, I should be driving it!”

“Seriously,” I laughed. “You think that the bitching in the squad has been petty until now? You haven’t seen the knives come out until the away team is announced on Wednesday afternoon. Like sucking up to the staff can somehow bend space-time or something – thank goodness the timing system doesn’t lie.”

“Well, you better hope you get a seat on that bus. I need someone to talk to.”

“What’s wrong with Sarah?”

“Oh please. If she and Derek get on that bus together, we won’t hear anything out of them until we arrive. They might even have to use the jaws of life to prise them apart when we get there. Oxygen tanks might be required,” she giggled, a melodious sound to me.

“There’s a pretty picture. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. But the staff are pretty tight about fraternising, apparently.”

“Not what I heard,” she scoffed. “One of the senior girls told us after the ‘lights-out’ room check the coaches all get together for a drinking party – the seniors have their room swaps organised before the bus even leaves. As long as everybody shows up for breakfast in the morning, nobody ‘knows’ a thing.”

“Uhh – room swaps?” I choked. “That’s a little ... I mean, I like you, but don’t you think that it’s a little...”

“You wish, Romeo,” she cut me off. “We don’t know each other that well. Yet.”

“Yet?”

“Yeah. Maybe in three or four years I’ll let you kiss me,” she teased. “And we’ll see after that.”

“I’ll be there,” I said, flushing at the thought.

“First, you gotta make it on the bus.”

I thought about this for a moment.

“Hey!” I exclaimed. “What makes you think you’ll make it on the bus?”

“Because I’m me,” she giggled. “Don’t worry - I can’t take your spot on the team. Even though I can beat you in the pool,” she teased. “Seriously though - it would be a looong ride by myself.”

Get on the bus: that was my goal. I was already pretty well placed within my age group to get a slot at the district meet, placing in the top two or three pretty consistently, however everybody stepped it up for important events like this. It was where you got noticed, particularly if you were trying to get a university scholarship or build a profile for national recruitment. Of course, I was interested in all those things, but I also really wanted to be on that bus with Nao.

If I had stopped to think for a minute, I would have realised that Nao needed to work just as hard to make sure she placed well enough to get a seat on the bus too, but I had no doubts she would. She was that good.

By Wednesday night both of us had completed our trials. Nao had smashed it, naturally, topping the field for girls in our age group. I had placed first for the boys, prompting rare personal praise from the head coach.

“That’s a PB for you, James,” he said. “And just below two seconds off the district record.”

“Thanks, Coach.”

“He’s got some special motivation,” leered Derek, who had qualified third, over my shoulder. Coach raised his eyebrows.

“Ahh, yeah,” I stammered. “Mum and dad said they’d uh, help me out with a car if I did well this season.”

“Well, it seems to be working,” he said. “Bring that fire this weekend.” He headed off to his office.

“Ow,” Derek winced as I elbowed him in the ribs.

“Next time you’ll get it lower, and Sarah will have to find other ways to amuse herself this weekend,” I hissed.

Six o’clock on Saturday morning found me climbing onto the team coach bound for Westlakes after blearily slinging my bag into the luggage pile. As I walked down the aisle, I found the last empty seat towards the middle of the bus and settled myself against the window. We had a three-hour ride before arriving at Westlakes Aquatic Centre and I was planning to try and catch up on some sleep. I was shattered from five days of trials, final practices and trying to complete a weekend’s worth of reading and homework ahead of time so I could focus in the water.

I hunched up against the window and pulled the hood of my team sweatshirt over my head, trying to make myself comfortable enough to doze off. My efforts were disrupted by someone else dropping into the empty seat next to me.

“Hey, I’m trying to sleep here,” I began, turning to see who had disturbed me. I saw Nao grinning at me.

“Hey, you made it,” she smiled cheerfully. “Is this seat taken?”

“Now it is,” I said grumpily. “I’m sorry. I’m over the moon that we’re sitting together, but I’m so bloody tired. I need to sleep so this isn’t a wasted trip.”

“Me too,” she said. “That English report was horrible. Move over, you’re hogging the seat.” She wriggled around, hip-checking me before settling in and closing her eyes. I was painfully aware of her thigh pressed against mine. Instantly I had the predicted biological response. I sighed, knowing that it was going to be impossible for me to sleep now. Nao opened her eyes and regarded me narrowly. “Do you want me to move?”

“No!” I said, too quickly. “I just...” wickedly, a thought occurred to me. “I just didn’t think that the first time we slept together would be so public.” Her eyes opened wide. Too far? I thought. Then she giggled.

“I guess maybe we’ll have to move that kiss up a year or two.” Then she yawned. “Seriously though, I intend to kick arse this weekend but first I need to rest mine. Can we pick this up tonight after we’ve made the finals?” And with that she closed her eyes and within a few minutes was snoring softly. She was so close I could smell her shampoo, triggering memories of the previous Friday night. I exhaled heavily and turned back to the window, pressing my forehead against the cold glass, and wondering how I was going to get any sleep with Nao pressing against me and my hardon pressing against my thigh.