Читать книгу Boy Underwater - Adam Baron, Adam Baron - Страница 9

Swimwell.org has quite a bit to say about diving. It is, says Swimwell.org, the action of ‘leaping or springing into water’. I had not, however, paid much attention to this part of their website as I really hadn’t thought that, on our very first school lesson, we’d be doing that. So, when I entered the water below me, it wasn’t with a dive so much as a sort of tangled upside-down ouch. Water, as I found out then, HURTS. I blame the pain for what happened next. After the initial shock, I did not panic. No. I put the knowledge I had learned on Swimwell.org to use. I started to move my arms like windmills, just like the woman in the pictures had done. I started to move my head from side to side. Both of these things should have sent me bulleting to the other end of the pool, where I would have been able to execute a perfect tumble-turn (minus bubble bath). For some reason this did not happen, something I intend to inform Swimwell.org about in the strongest possible terms.

I did not, as they said I would, go forward. Instead, to my intense surprise, I went down, entering what seemed like another world in which you couldn’t really hear anything. Everything was blue and when I looked around I saw bolts of white light whipping round. I saw legs wiggling across the pool, and then I saw something else. It was, I realised, the bottom of the pool, and it was coming towards me. Fast. And then I felt it, with my head, after which I felt sort of floaty and not particularly concerned that I was now at the bottom of a swimming pool. At least I’d done it – I was swimming, though not how most people do it, I admit. Then I felt something else, a sort of emptiness around my waist that I couldn’t quite understand. I was about to investigate when I heard the

It really did sound like an explosion. It came from above and I looked up to see a mass of bubbles and foam coming towards me, out of which two hands appeared, which hooked themselves under my armpits. Then I felt myself rising, up out of this quiet new world, sound suddenly smashing back into my ears as I hit the surface. What happened next is the COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER that I was talking about before. My rescuer pushed me up against the side and, as I held on to the edge and gasped, I looked up, confused. For there was the man in the red shirt. He was standing above me with a long pole in his hand. Miss Phillips was there too, bending over and looking horrified.

So who had jumped in to get me? Billy Lee? It must have been. And I’d never live it down, not EVER. But Billy was standing at the back with his mouth wide open. Everyone was there except …

It was only when I turned to the left that I saw who it was who’d rescued me.

Veronique Chang.

I found out later that Veronique’s on Level 9, or whatever it is that lets you swim for the borough at the national finals. She’d just climbed out of the water and was grabbing my arm to pull me out. Seeing her do that, Miss Phillips reached forward for the other one.

‘NO!’ I screamed, spitting out water like a stone fish in a fountain. ‘Please don’t pull me ou—’

But it was too late. My legs kicking, I left the swimming pool, though not quite as I’d entered it. Earlier, I’d tied the cord on my dad’s swimming trunks as tight as I possibly could. But it wasn’t quite tight enough.

‘I can see his willy! I CAN SEE HIS WILLY!’

Marcus Breen. That was him. And if you haven’t got one in your class you can have ours.

You can come and get him, ANY TIME.