The Swim series - Book One

Chapter 13

We were sent to bed after that. With noses broken, bodies bruised, and Sister Ruth showing early symptoms of stroke, nobody was quite in the mood to hang around the Activities centre any longer. 

"Move over gang! I've got sleeping bags!" Quentin rolled his way into our shelter. There was barely enough room to crawl around let alone lay out and stretch.  

I found a spot against one of the mud walls, and then tried to make myself as small as possible. The middle of the shelter was a sea of limbs that continued to smack out against each other. 

"I think I have a tick..." Brett announced, causing Quentin to jump down on top of him.

"LAY STILL! WHERE IS IT? HEAD, BACK, UPPER OR MIDDLE BUTT CHEEK?!" 

"Get off me!" Brett threw him backwards, causing Quentin to end up closer to me. 

Christina was so mad at Brett that she visited our shelter countless times throughout the night to sit in the tunnel entrance and hiss. 

"How could you do this to me?" she asked. "You ruined our camp! A public brawl?! Really! Our reputation is never going to recover from this!" 

"We didn't start the fight!" Frasier yelled back at her, "Cole did! So go back to your shelter and yell at him!" 

"Brett controls Landon! Brett controls all of you!" she accused, which I thought was true before the fight, but now I wasn't so sure. 

At half past two in the morning, Christina had gone and we'd all found some semblance of sleep. No one was comfortable but we were all exhausted enough to accept the cold dirty floor as a mattress.

Then, unbeknownst to us, Gemma Goodrahem left her teams shelter to go in search of bathroom. I guess she got lost in the dark and couldn't work out where the compost toilets were, because she ended up walking out towards the river and collapsing through the centre of our roof instead.

"Holy shit - "

"OH MY GOD! THE DESTRUCTION!" Quentin screamed into the night.

The carnage that followed was just another example, of why it was incredibly stupid idea to build a shelter "beneath the earth" 

Tw days later, and I was back in the Scotts Bradley school hall, listening to another disciplinary speech from Housemaster Davenport. This time he was explaining to me that although I might experience angry feelings sometimes, it was best not to grab someone by the neck, and smash their face through a table in retaliation.

The ironic thing was the person who could have really benefited from his speech was not in the school hall at all. Landon had made only a few brief appearances since we'd been back at Scotts, but spent the majority of his time training in the Scotts pool.

"Take a walk. Drink some water. Do some simple breathing exercises to try and redirect your anger..." Housemaster Davenport went on and on. 

My eyes fell on the clock and kept close track of the time, knowing that when the bell rang I'd have no more than seven-minutes to get myself from this old hall, all the way  back onto the other side of the school.

Today was the first official day of classes. And for a student like me who'd been roaming aimlessly for a week, I saw the small stem of structure as nothing but the lifeline that it was.

No more games. No more school camps. No more trying to make friends when I'd already proven that wasn't a possibility for me. Give me books, exams, homework and assignments. A desk to hide behind, a timetable to adhere to. A reason to get up out of bed in the morning.