Page 8 of Open Water

TO [email protected]

FROM [email protected]

RE: Informal meeting

Hi Max.

Does that mean fine, I will come with a parent, or, fine, I will attend the meeting tomorrow at 5 with Simon Vasquez?

Best

Lukas

TO [email protected]

FROM [email protected]

RE: Informal Meeting

Fucked if I know! I don’t know shit, and I’m not doing this if you don’t tell me what is going on. You tell me why you and Dad have history and I will turn up at the meeting with him. You choose.

Max

Lukas shuts the laptop with a bang. He can’t do this. He can’t. Not now. Not ever.

He slams the door to the classroom shut with a crash that echoes through the quiet hallways as he jogs down the stairs and breathes deeply as his lungs hit the outside air.

He can’t go through this again. He can’t deal with Tom Andersson-Björklund. Not now. Not ever. Never again.

MAX

For the first time in ages I felt sorry for my Dad last night. I mean he was clearly wrecked, snoring on the sofa with his feet on the table and an empty bottle of bourbon on the side. He almost never drinks at home. He definitely never drinks on his own. Yet, last night he drank himself into a stupor. Sobbing and slobbering and muttering to himself. I could hear him through the walls.

Usually I have my music on loud and my headphones on, but I was too anxious to lock myself away with Dad being fucked up like this. He’s supposed to be the stable one. I am the messed up one. Not the other way around. That is not how we work. That is not how our life is supposed to be.

I’m also a coward, just like my Dad. Well, to be honest, I didn’t want to wake him up this morning, he’s on nights next week again, so he needs his rest. Needs to sleep in, so he can cope with work. I know the drill. I have grown up with all of this, working nights and sleeping days—it’s just the way it is. Dad needs to sleep. I get that.

I still miss Anne-Mette. She used to come and look after me when Dad worked. Officially she came to clean our house once a week, but unofficially, she stayed the night when Dad worked, so I wouldn’t be alone. I used to curl up with her on the sofa and fall asleep whilst she read meHarry Potter. We got to book four before it all went to shit. I must have been maybe eleven? Then, Dad got an Au Pair. A scatty Italian girl who drove us both mad, but she cooked all these great meals and we ate like kings to the point that Dad couldn’t button up his jeans. She was fab. Then, we had a Lithuanian girl who was terrified of Dad. Followed by Mika from Finland who tried to teach me to play football and gave me a black eye on the trampoline. He tried, I’ll give that to him. After that, I looked after myself.

So yes, I am a coward. I have left Dad a note on the table telling him to turn up at school around five o’clock this afternoon, and that we are doing this. He will get what I mean. He can sweat it out all day and man the fuck up and come and deal with me. And Lukas.

Because Lukas is a fucking coward too, and he hasn’t responded to my lame ultimatum, so no doubt we will turn up with that Vasquez dude there as well. I wonder if Dad has fucked up his life too.

I still manage to turn up at school on time and got away without opening my mouth all through Swedish. I also turned in my essay, which is forty-six words short of the required wordcount, but whatever. I finished it off with blah blah blah forty-six times at the bottom and sent it in. Fuck it.

So, now I am back in the corner of the cafeteria, just by the back door, so I have an easy escape route should I need one. Should the tsunami rear its ugly head in the pit of my stomach for some unexplainable reason. I am calm today. Calm and collected and cool. Beanie over my head. Washed out hoodie on top of a slightly smelly t-shirt. My good jeans. The trainers where the sole is loose on the left, so water seeps in when it rains. The cafeteria is also pretty much deserted, so the air is quiet, which helps.

Calm. I am calm.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I have my laptop open and am actually contemplating looking at the English homework. Browsing casually through the sentences. Shakespearean quotes dancing around on the screen, which I randomly translate. I know some of this stuff. It’s amazing the strange things that actually stick in my brain sometimes. And anyway, English is fine. Not too complicated. Just let the words dance around. Stick them in the right order. Whisper them out loud and listen to the rhythm to make sure the grammar sticks. It’s fine. I can do this.

For once, I am doing good. I am doing homework like a proper well-functioning normal person. Like I can totally do this. See? Two pages of translations done in under ten minutes. I can so get a B in English…

My breath hitches. Fuck. I shouldn’t have looked up.

Fuck fuckety fuck.

---