Skippy Dies: A Novel

Skippy’s back in his room. The others are still out on their operation; he makes it in here without talking to anyone. He knows what he has to do now, he doesn’t want to waste any more time. He closes the door and switches off all the lights except for the lamp on his desk. He takes a blank sheet of paper from the stack in Ruprecht’s printer, and sits down.

The goggles stare down from the door. The swimming trophy gleams with little fragments of remembering. Driving through Thurles on the creaky old bus. The day like elastic, stretched tighter and tighter till the moment of the race when all of time snaps. In the bleachers the blank space where Mum and Dad aren’t. The green underwater hotel, the room where you can’t sleep, the numbers that count down in gold to the door –

Hurry, Skippy, hurry! You have to do it now!

It’s like he can see the door opening again.

Come on, come on!

Slowly opening, the streams of future wrapping around him and pulling him forward into it –

No! He picks up his pen. He writes, Dear Coach.