Page 63 of Swallow Your Sorries

Why don’t I hate it?

I kick her soiled uniform into the water, pocket her ratty bra and make it five steps up the dock, before a thought other than Eloisa’s apparent kink surfaces.

Why isn’t she surfacing?

Why isn’t she sloshing water against the dock and sputtering pitifully as she pulls her heavy tits ashore?

Ten steps later, my boots hit the long grass, but I don’t hear her climbing onto the dock.

Turning on my heel, I watch the calm water. Not a ripple or a bubble in sight…

Bubbles.

Saliva and mucous bubbles.

Bloody bubbles.

They rise and swell and pop around her nose. At the corners of her mouth.

Then…then…there are no bubbles at all.

Of their own accord, my legs take me back to the shallow spot where I’d pushed Eloisa, but I can’t see beneath the dark teal water.

One, two, three seconds tick by…nothing.

And it’s the nothingness that overwhelms me.

Strangles me.

I don’t stop to kick off my shoes or strip out of my blazer. I don’t think at all. Freezing water stabs at my skin like a million needles as I dive in, momentarily paralysing me from the shock. When I push through the numbness, it doesn’t take me long to feel the feathery softness of her hair that wraps around my outstretched fingers, given the shallowness. In the darkness, I use it as a tether, a guide to find her lulling head, then her neck and finally her armpits, which I use in an attempt to pull her to the surface. But she’s likedead weight…

Don’t drift into the past, Gant.

Stay present.

Something’s pinning her down.Panic blooms in my chest as she slips from my arms and sinks to the bottom again. My lungs burn in protest, but I follow her, tracing her bare legs down to whatever’s got a hold of her.

A strap.

The strap to her satchel that’s loaded with textbooks she’s been lugging around all day. Most students went to the dorm before lunch to swap out their texts. She probably wanted to avoid any extra alone time in the girl’s dorms.

And whose fault is that?

When I finally get the damned strap off her ankle, I pin her close to my chest and kick off the muddy floor, propelling us to the surface, which is only a metre above my head. But as we break it and I gasp, sucking in the cool air greedily, I note Eloisa’s deafening silence. She’s completely still in my arms, as lifeless as the doll I say she is.

Her head lulls to the side and from this angle, her neck almost looks broken.

Like Mum’s…

No.No!

I don’t waste time getting us fully onto dry land. Her pale legs float gently to the surface, and her head leaves an indentation on the grassy shoreline that forms a halo as I lay her flat. Focusing on her sternum, I swat away a cheap ballet charm necklace that’s already turning her skin a sickly shade of green. Crossing one hand over the other and pressing with as much force as I can muster, I begin to count.

1

Cold.

She feels so bloody cold.

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