The Book of Firsts

Twenty-Two

Lania, Anika, Sean and I spent the next day visiting art galleries and a butterfly enclosure, and then met up with the rest of Art Club for dinner at a comedy theatre. It took longer to sleep that night, but I managed it after a couple of hours.

"Did I keep you up last night, Mika?" Lania asked the next morning. "It took me ages to get to sleep. I was thinking too much about today."

Since Lania’s breathing suggested to me she’d dropped off within five minutes of lights out, I smiled blandly and said: "Are you looking forward to snorkelling that much?"

Lania blushed, and said: "A bit nervous about going around in this swimsuit."

"Don’t be. You look fantastic."

"It doesn’t make my legs look stubby?"

I shook my head, doubting that anyone who saw Lania would even notice her legs.

After a brief check in the bathroom to make sure my own costume revealed nothing I didn’t want it to, I wrapped my matching shawl around my hips. Those inner-thigh marks were almost gone, but it was better not to risk questions.

"Have a good breakfast," I warned Lania. "Not heavy, but you want a lot of energy."

"In case we need to escape from sharks?" she asked, with a light laugh.

"Outswimming sharks—interesting idea."

"I looked up statistics. There hasn’t ever even been an attack here."

Lania really was nervous, but I didn’t think it was about sharks, or even her swimsuit. In truth her legs were a little short, but not so much they detracted from a petite hourglass figure, or a pointed, heart-shaped face. In a bikini she went from pretty to bombshell, but she didn’t even seem to notice how much attention she drew when we went for breakfast.

The dive trip involved catching the hotel shuttle to the centre of the island, and then a small boat out to a floating mooring on the reef, where we’d be split up according to activity. Lania and I decided to go early, checked in with the tour operators, and managed to squeeze onto the first boat.

The other occupants all looked the age to be Corascur students, but there were only two familiar faces. I smiled at Carr and Meggan and said: "Lania and I thought we were going to beat the rush."

"Great minds, etcetera," Carr replied. "Are you snorkelling or diving?"

"I’m snorkelling, Mika’s diving," Lania said.

"You know you can’t dive without a licence," said a fine-boned brunette.

"Yes, they asked for my C-Card when I checked in," I said, wondering at the faint note of hostility.

"This is Mika, who transferred to Corascur at the start of term," Carr said, and then nodded to those immediately around him. "This is Katerina, Tomas, Alexa and Daphne. And you know Meggan already, of course."

"Presidents of the Broadcasting Club, the Literature Club, the Social Club, and the Newspaper Club," Lania murmured.

"And Art and Dance? Is it some kind of board meeting?"

"More a get-away-from-the-clubs club," Meggan said, smiling. "Have you been enjoying Arcadia?"

"Yes, a lot," I said. "I’m impressed by how much there is to do, though I’m a little unused to school trips that don’t involve constant roll calls. The teacher presence is very low."

"I expect Corascur’s a little beyond the scope of your previous school," the brunette—Alexa—said. "There are different expectations."

"Oh, definitely," I said, very seriously. "My previous school’s class trip was to a bordello."

Silence greeted this pronouncement, until Meggan laughed and said: "I expect that was educational?"

"Absolutely. The teachers were particularly enthusiastic, though not at all inclined to let us go off alone." I smiled. "It was a performing arts school, and they were filming an advertisement for a stage production of Moulin Rouge."

"You sing, Mika?" Carr asked.

"Not if I can help it. Because there weren’t a lot of suitable schools in the area, my dad called in a favour and I spent a few months being background support at a school I’d never get into otherwise. There were way too many spectacular singers around for me to try to push my way in front of the cameras, so I learned about set design, theatre lighting, and things like that. Watching the science faculty decked out in striped corsets performing Lady Marmalade will forever be the apogee of my school experience. They were so big and beardy, and the corsets so small."

"I never know whether to believe the things you say, Mika," Lania said, shaking her head.

"Why, what else has she said that you don’t believe?" the Newspaper Club President, Daphne, asked.

Lania suddenly flushed, and looked guiltily at me.

"What?" I asked.

"You said, uh, your father writes…"

"An author?" the Literature Club President, Tomas, said, giving me an interested glance. "Anyone we’d know?" He was a handsome boy with a romantic tousle-haired look.

"My dad writes under the name Rock Hardison," I said, hiding my amusement. "He’s pretty well-known: you can look him up."

The name always gives the genre away, and I enjoyed their careful lack of further questions, although they didn’t immediately haul out their phones to confirm their suspicions. It wasn’t until we had disembarked at the sprawling floating mooring on the reef that the usual range of reaction was sent my way.

"Let me give you another layer of sunscreen before you head out," I told Lania, rather than immediately join the line-up for wetsuits and tanks. "I’ve always burned myself into a brick going snorkelling

"You tell people about your father as a test," Lania observed, as I slathered a thick layer of white over her back and neck.

"You spotted that? My dad has a whole bunch of pen names, and I could always tell people the mystery writer one, or the travel writer one, but Hardison is his oldest, and such a great definer of character. There’ll be people like you, and Meggan, Carr, and Daphne, who are startled and a little embarrassed, but who otherwise just treat it as a surprising extra bit of information about me. And then there’s the Alexas, Tomases and Katerinas, whose interactions with me from now on will always have that hint of disdain. It’s a useful way of quickly working out who’s worth talking to."

"But I also—"

"You were worried about whether I’d be embarrassed. Very different to deciding it makes me inferior. Though I have the impression that I’d already been categorised as…how shall I put it?"

"Not quite people," Lania said, dryly. "There’s a lot of that at Corascur."

"Does it bother you?" I asked. Lania seemed to get along with everyone, so it was hard to imagine her not being classed as people.

"Only when it’s from someone I don’t expect," Lania said. "My first couple of years I struggled, especially when Sirocco—she’s now the President of the Rose Court—talked me into applying to join. I didn’t understand that the Court had changed from its original purpose to a collection of people who are Somebody. I’m at Corascur on a partial scholarship, my parents are both accountants, I’m a low-key computer nerd, and I will never in a million years qualify for the Rose Court." She shrugged, and glanced across at the group collecting wetsuits. "Thankfully, I soon realised I shouldn’t want to."

"Low-key computer nerd? I never did ask you what you were planning to study at Helios U."

"Robotics."

"Nice." I wondered if the low-key part had come about because of this Sirocco, but decided now wasn’t the moment. "I’ll see you at the morning tea."

Spotting another boat heading toward the floating platform, I put my towel and small backpack into a locker, and joined the others in being issued with a wetsuit to struggle into.

"Hi there, we’re Rashid, Rachel and Kip, your dive leaders today," said a lanky man with gorgeous brown eyes. "First step today is to pair everyone up into buddies, and then do a buddy check of your gear. Before you all pick a partner, first split into two groups by your certification level: supervised on my left, autonomous on my right."

I shuffled obediently over to Rashid’s right, along with Carr and two boys I didn’t know.

"Hi buddy," Carr said. He was carrying a very professional and expensive-looking camera. I smiled at him, glad I’d not ended up with any of the Rose Court.

"You’ll see the depth levels on this chart," Rashid went on. "Rachel, Kip and I will each take two sets of buddies into the green area. Autonomous divers, you’re free to move anywhere within the circled area."

"What happens if we get lost?" Daphne asked, just a touch nervously.

"The platform provides a large and obvious navigation aid. Since most of the water depth here is no more than ten metres, and it’s a bright day, there’ll be no issues with visibility. Autonomous divers, watch your air, and please be sure to surface before forty minutes are up. Buddies, if you lose track of your partner, surface safely and signal for help. Now, before we go further, it’s time for a buddy check of equipment."

"I want to photograph the two wrecks," Carr said to me. "One each dive. Is that okay with you?"

"Sure."

Carr was clearly an experienced diver, running through the checks with me in a methodical way, and then leading the way to the first of the wrecks, which was in the green area.

Diving always makes me feel incredible. Movement, colour, light, weight. The awareness of breath. Most of the other divers also headed to the wreck, and I followed the crowd, enjoying the patterns they made in the water, and also thinking it was convenient of Carr to be carrying such a large camera, making it easy for me to keep track of him. We surfaced a little ahead of time, and took a short break, sampled the light snacks set out, then went down with fresh cylinders to find the second wreck.

This was in the yellow area on the map, where the water was deeper, increasing the consumption rate of our air tanks. There was less coral, fewer fish, and the light changed to deep blues and greens. The second wreck was the prow of a ship, tilted forward, with a still-intact figurehead of a woman, arms held back to mingle with flowing hair.

We swam in a circle around the wreck, and found only sand and greenery inside the severed hull. I floated upward, then followed the slope of the deck downward so that I could more closely examine the figurehead. The details were blurred, hidden by a fine layer of algae, and I couldn’t guess if it was intended to represent a specific woman.

Carr tapped lightly on my arm, and when I turned to him, performed a little pantomime, pointing to me, then the area in front of the ship, and then describing a small circle with one finger. I obediently swam forward, and then turned around, and watched as Carr swam off to one side and raised his camera. Understanding the kind of image he was aiming for, I gazed up at the figurehead, trying to work out what position and angle would give the best composition, occasionally checking Carr’s responses, and maintaining my location once I saw a thumb’s up signal from him.

After further thought, I reached up and pulled off my hair tie, letting my hair float freely. Then I made a tiny stroke forward, keeping in mind the position of my arms.

Once Carr was done, we swam back to the platform, and hurriedly changed out of our wetsuits in hopes of catching the next boat back.

"Thanks for waiting for me," I said to Lania as we crammed into the last seats under the canopy. "Are you tired?"

"I’m glad we didn’t schedule anything for the afternoon," Lania said. "I’m definitely down for a big lunch and then lolling around an airconditioned hotel room."

I nodded my agreement. The evening event was a pool party, which I wasn’t in the mood for at the moment, but perhaps an afternoon indoors would change my mind.

"Did you get what you needed, Carr?" Alexa asked, watching Carr slot pieces of his camera into a customised backpack.

"I won’t know until I review," Carr said. "Ocean scenes may be a little too obvious for the Majesty in Blue theme."

"Are you entering the Mirion?" Lania asked. "Wasn’t the deadline yesterday?"

Carr ticked up a corner of his mouth. "The entries just involve submitting a link. I submitted a link to an image I took a while ago, which I’ll replace hurriedly if I’ve produced anything better today." He glanced around at us: "If any of you are in shot, do I have your permission to use your image?"

Amused that he asked generally, but paid attention to my response, I nodded. I’d seen advertisements for the Mirion Prize for Photography, and could only wish Carr luck, for the competition would be fierce. But if he won with a picture of me, I’d consider it payment for all the free rides.