Breathing Underwater Read Online Free PDF Page A

of this group, and I’m not explaining why I’m late, so I take a seat, feeling the blast of air-conditioning on my wet T-shirt. I shiver, and there’s Leo-the-cool smirking in his chair. Suddenly, I hate him, hate him because he’s got a girlfriend who’ll drop the charges. Mine won’t speak to me on a bet. Hate him because if we’d met in school, maybe we’d have been friends.
    “Want a sweatshirt?” Mario gestures toward a Miami Hurricanes shirt draped across his chair.
    “I don’t wear orange,” I say, and Mario turns back to the group. I sit, shivering through the rest of his lecture.
    After class, I wait by Mario’s desk until everyone else leaves. Leo gives one final smirk. I manage a sneer back. I examine Mario’s photographs. There’s a smiling woman, a little boy. Mario’s family. What could he possibly know about my life? I’m about to ask him, but he speaks first.
    “You want to talk about it?”
    “I won’t be late again, okay?”
    “Fair enough. I’m sure you had a good reason.” He smiles, fat cheeks spreading, and gestures toward my dripping notebook. “Are you writing in that?”
    “Huh?” How’d I get off the hook so quickly?
    “Your journal?”
    “Oh. Yeah. Need to see it?”
    “Maybe next week, when it’s dry.” Mario gathers his things, an umbrella, the sweatshirt, then turns. “My uncle Gustavo, a very wise man, used to say it doesn’t take a genius to come in from the rain.” I must look at him funny, because he adds, “Need a ride home, son?”
    I’ve been looking out the window. It’s eleven o’clock, but outside is night, with rain pounding worse than before. Still, I say, “Someone’s picking me up.”
    After he leaves, I walk to the train.
    Much later that day, after I (and the journal) have dried off
    I look at my journal, hoping Judge Lehman doesn’t require neatness. It’s trashed—wavy and bumpy and smudged, like it’s been through a shipwreck. Yet, I’ve dried it off with a hair dryer so I can write in it. Thinking of the car makes me think about Tom.
    The day of Zack’s party, I spent most of the afternoon waxing my car. Tom even helped. Buffing worked his triceps or something, and we were getting tan, too. He’d given up on Ashley and me, possibly realizing, before I did, that I was in love with Caitlin. Sometimes, Tom knew me better than I knew myself .
    And sometimes, he didn’t .
    “Man, you’re so lucky to get this car,” Tom said. He was always saying stuff like that, and I never corrected him. I just sprayed Armor All and shrugged. Tom went on about what a perfect make-out machine it was .
    I hoped so. I’d sort of been obsessing about kissing Caitlin that night .
    Don’t get me wrong. I was hardly sweet sixteen and never been kissed. I’d probably swapped spit with a dozen girls if you counted Spin the Bottle and a botched attempt to cop a feel off of Peyton Berounsky playing Seven Minutes in Heaven in eighth grade. By ninth grade, everyone was pairing off, at least for the evening, and I’d spent many sticky nights playing tonsil hockey on someone’s parents’ unsupervised sofa. So I’d touched, kissed, and groped, and been touched, kissed, and groped, all meaningless so far. I had a feeling Caitlin’s would be the kiss that mattered .
    That night, we had dinner in the Carters’ dining room. Tom’s family always ate there on weekends. I’d been joining them since grade school. The first time, I’d stood, gaping at the china, silver, and flowers, and Tom and his brother, wet-combed and shining. It was the kind of spread my father had for clients, not for me. They even dressed for dinner, although Tom and I just wore khakis. Conversation was quiet, smooth as peanut butter .
    Like every time, Tom’s old cocker spaniel, Wimpy, played around my feet. Feeding him table scraps was firmly against the rules, but for some reason, it was important to me to be Wimpy’s favorite. I used to pretend he was my dog too. I listened to