Lifesaving for Beginners

like blood. When you cut a worm in two, it doesn’t die. It just grows into two worms. Me and Damo cut one but nothing happened. It just lay on the path and didn’t move, and then we got bored waiting so we went and climbed the tree in Damo’s back garden. I can get to the middle bit but Damo goes all the way to the top. I checked on my way home and the worms were gone.
    After dinner, I go into the sitting room but the only movie that’s on is Up and I’ve seen it loads of times. Mam loves that movie but she always cries when Carl looks at the pictures of Ellie in his photo album.
    I pick up the zapper and change the channel. Some boring programme about women who make stuff out of lace. Who cares? Ads, ads, ads. Some show about men going bald. Football. People talking about football. Another football match. Film reviews. This is better. The latest Declan Darker movie. Faith says I’m not allowed to watch those movies until I’m fifteen, which probably means there’s loads of blood and guts and kissing in them. She says I can’t read the books either till I’m older. Sully reads them. And Rob. And Dad. Dad loves all thrillers but he says Killian Kobain is his favourite thriller writer. Damo says he’s read them all too but I don’t think he has because he hates reading. They show the trailer and it looks deadly and there’s not too much blood and guts in it. If I wasn’t going to be a lifeguard, I’d probably be a policeman in New York, just like Declan Darker.
    Now they’re talking about another film. I think it’s in French because the people in the film are saying ‘wee, wee, wee’, which is French for ‘yes’.
    I switch back to Up . It’s the bit with the balloons. I’d love to attach balloons to our house and then we could fly away. Maybe to Ireland, where Mam is from.
    I wonder if you went up high enough in the sky, would you get to heaven?
    I’m only half Irish but Mam still makes me call her Mam, like Irish people do. She says her mother would turn in her grave if I called her mum, like Damo calls his. I didn’t think dead people could move. Only if they’re zombies. Damo dressed up like a zombie at Halloween. When we met Carla, he did that thing he does with his eyes and tried to chase her. But she wouldn’t run away. She’s probably the only girl in our class who doesn’t run away from Damo when he does the thing with his eyes.
    I go into the kitchen to get some more Coke. Faith’s face is all blotchy and red. She looks like Stan in my class when Damo and Alex are picking football teams in the yard.
    Adrian puts his hands on Faith’s shoulders and says, ‘Not being a blood relative of Hamish McIntyre has to be a good thing, right?’ Sometimes, Adrian calls Dad ‘Hamish’ instead of ‘Dad’.
    I’m not very good at football but I get picked for the team because I’m the fastest runner. That’s because of all the muscles in my legs from the lifesaving. I have to pass the ball when I get near the goal. I pass it to Damo. He says, ‘HE SHOOTS . . . HE SCORES . . .’ just before he puts it in the net. He pulls his shirt over his head and runs around. Once he ran into the trunk of the chestnut tree and had to get four stitches in his forehead. He says he was knocked out but I saw his eyes moving.
    The phone rings and nobody answers it so I have to go out to the hall and pick it up. It’s Dad. He nearly always rings on Friday night. ‘How’s tricks, me wee man?’ he asks, like I’m a little kid.
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘What are you up to?’
    ‘I’m watching Up .’
    ‘How’s school?’
    I say, ‘Grand,’ the way Mam does.
    ‘Will you put Faith on?’ He never asks about lifesaving. Maybe it’s because I only started doing it after he went to Scotland to do sex with Celia, which is what you have to do to get a baby. Sully told me and Damo all about it. He says you don’t get a baby if you use a johnny. He gave us a johnny but it burst after we filled it with water and threw it out of Damo’s bedroom window.
    I say, ‘Faith is in the kitchen with Ant and Adrian.’
    He says, ‘Go and get her for me, like a good wee man.’
    I say, ‘OK, but . . .’
    He says, ‘What?’ His voice sounds like Miss Williams’s when Damo tells her why he hasn’t got his homework done. ‘I’m running out of patience, Mr Sullivan.’ Her lips get very thin when she says that.
    I say, ‘Faith is crying.’ I don’t say ‘again’. I don’t say she’s been crying a lot since