Excerpt from BARELY HANGING ON by Karen Rivers
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“Blah, blah, blah,” he says. No he doesn’t. I pretend not to pay attention, but really I am listening. Jon is very handsome and smart. He is also a very good diver. Anyway, apparently when he was learning to dive, he was fooling around on the platform with his buddy and his buddy pushed him and he fell and didn’t think he was going to hit the water, and after that he freaked out and couldn’t do the platform dive for months afterwards. Then he says, “I think maybe if you take a break from the tower, you’ll be fine in a little while.”
Take a break! No way! So I say, “I don’t think so, Jon. I’m sorry you are afraid of heights and whatever, but I’m not.” And I march out of his office as stompily as I can. It’s hard to stomp with bare feet, but my feet slap, slap, slap against the tile. It’s a resounding slapping noise. I go straight up the ladder-stairs, which is no small distance. It’s ten metres. If you don’t know how far that is, I’ll tell you. It’s far. I mean, you have to climb and turn and climb and turn and climb and turn. It takes most of the stomp out of my step. I’m winded when I get to the top. But when I finally do, I run to the end of the platform and dive like crazy about ten times before I realize that practice is over and everyone else has gone to get ready for school and it’s just me and Jon left.
“I think you proved your point, Carly,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s mad or not. Probably, he’s just embarrassed because I know he was too scared to do this when he was a kid. I’m not scared of anything. I’m not. Okay, I’m afraid of sharks and ghosts and that sister-thing from my dream the other night, but that’s all.
I’m late, so I don’t have time to shower properly. All day long I can smell the chlorine in my hair, which is kind of nice. In class, I spend a lot of time sneaking sniffs of my braid and imagining what it will be like to win a gold medal at the Olympics. I sure won’t need to know this stuff. I mean, really, who cares which order the planets go in? It’s hardly important when you are a world-famous athlete. I listen anyway, sort of. Well, not really. I should pay more attention in school. Sometimes we have surprise quizzes. Ha! Anything with the word “surprise” in front of it should be something good, not something horrendously awful such as a test. I’m trying to focus on listening when someone taps me on the back and passes me a note. It says, Scaredy-cat!
“What?” I say out loud. And, of course, then Mrs. Witless says, “Miss Abbott-Fitzgerald? Something you would like to share with the class?”
“No,” I say. “I just thought I heard something. I thought I heard the fire alarm!”
The class giggles, and I grin because I like to make everyone laugh, but then she goes over to the corner and writes my name on the detention list right underneath Smith’s. Ugh. Detention is bad, but worse when it is with someone you don’t know or like. Normally, I get detention with Felicia or Montana for talking in class or what have you, and in that case detention can be quite fun. I turn around and glare at Tim the Nose Blower and he winks.
He winks.
Honestly. What a loser. It’s too bad he is somewhat cute. I can’t believe he would write such a mean note! I thought he was being nice-ish this morning. Well. It just goes to show, like my mum would say. People can let you down. Probably, he was just trying to get me out of the way so he could do his big old show-off dive.
From Barely Hanging On. Text copyright © 2002, 2007 by Karen Rivers. All rights reserved.
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