The Adjusters (5 page)

“Well, we have a sports day at the end of every school year. And the coach is always throwing races into the mix—”

“No,” Henry interrupted. “I mean, what trophies has the team won?”

Blake looked at him blankly.

“You compete against other schools, right?”

“Why would we want to go to other schools to swim? We have the best facilities in the state right here!”

“You mean you don’t take part in any competitions outside Newton?”

“There’s more to being part of a team than just winning trophies, Henry,” Blake said.

The patronizing tone in the other kid’s voice annoyed Henry suddenly. “I know that,
Blake.
But healthy competition increases motivation.”

“Well, I think you’ll find we have all the motivation we need right here at Malcorp.”

Henry frowned. He’d never heard of a school team that didn’t get involved in local competitions. “What about the football team then? Who do they play?”

Blake laughed as if the answer was obvious. “Simple. We have two teams and they play one another every Friday night. I tell you, there’s been some pretty exciting games this
year…”

“You must be Ward! I can spot a swimmer’s physique a mile off.”

Henry turned to see a stocky, middle-aged guy walking towards them. He wore a faded pair of track pants and a T-shirt that read
Malcorp Swim
.

“This is Coach Tyler,” Blake introduced them.

The coach reached out and gave Henry a predictably bone-crushing handshake. “I’m looking forward to getting you in the pool. How about a trial sometime this week?”

“Sounds good,” Henry said, and the coach gave him a wide grin, revealing a row of crooked teeth. It seemed to Henry that this man was the most normal person he’d met all day.
He liked him immediately.

“Friday afternoon then,” the coach confirmed. Blake grinned at him too.

At least the locals are friendly,
Henry thought, but then he remembered the girl from the gas station. What had she said?

No, not Newton.

“Hey, do you know a girl called Gabrielle Henson?” Henry asked impulsively.

The coach shook his head. “Don’t know the name. She a friend of yours?”

“Not really,” Henry said, suddenly feeling a bit stupid for asking.
What was she to him?
“Just someone I met. She gave me the impression she might be from
Newton.”

“Well, she isn’t a swimmer. Might be in one of the compulsory classes, but I mostly only remember the kids with an interest.” He looked over at Blake. “Is there a girl
called Gabrielle Henson at the high school?”

Blake turned and Henry saw that the blood had drained from his face.

“Yoo-hoo, Blake!” the coach said, waving his hand at him. “Anybody home?”

“Huh?”

The kid called Steve had been listening to their conversation from the side of the pool. Now he pulled himself out, dripping water. “No, coach,” he said, wiping his eyes as he stood.
“There’s no girl with that name here.” Something in the kid’s tone made Henry certain that he was lying.

Blake looked at Steve and then said unconvincingly, “That’s right, coach. Never heard of her.”

The coach shrugged at Henry. “Well, there you go. Perhaps she
was
talking about one of the other towns around here.”

“Perhaps, but—”

He was interrupted as a kid across the dive pool shouted to the coach that he had a telephone call. The man excused himself, reminding Henry to be at the pool on Friday afternoon after school.
As he hurried away, Henry turned back to Blake, who was suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

“Tell me about Gabrielle Henson,” he said.

Blake kept looking at his feet, so it was Steve who answered. “Didn’t we make it clear? She doesn’t go to school here.” His manner was sharp and unfriendly.

“That’s funny,” Henry said, not backing down, “because I met her this afternoon in a gas station toilet. She was on the run and looked like she’d been living rough
for about a week.”

“And you think she’s from Malcorp?” Steve said, as if the very idea was distasteful. “A girl who hangs around gas station toilets?”

“She seemed familiar with Newton,” Henry replied.

Steve sniggered loudly. “You’re new, so I’ll make this nice and simple for you. The hick kids from Newton get scholarships to the school here in the facility, but mostly they
just sit at the back of class and look stupid. It makes everyone feel better, I guess. Maybe she was one of those. I wouldn’t remember.”

“Take it easy, Steve,” Blake said meekly.

“I’ll take it easy when I feel like it,” he snapped, before turning his attention back to Henry. “Any other stray skanks you ran into that you’d like to ask
about?”

Henry gave him a smile and took a step forward, noting with satisfaction that Steve tensed. Despite all his nastiness, he was nervous.
But why?

“Word of advice,” Steve continued, pulling himself up a little taller. “If you want to fit in around here, don’t go asking questions that you know are going to make
people uncomfortable.”

Henry frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I think you know.”

“I don’t have a clue but perhaps you’d like to explain…?”

Henry stopped dead as something caught his attention in the dive pool behind them. A younger kid had just gone off the board, but there was something all wrong. Something in the way he was
falling – tumbling rather than diving. A cry split the air as the kid spun gracelessly and smashed into the water…

Everyone around the pool watched in shock as the kid sank into the water, arms and legs outstretched. Unmoving. The kid touched the bottom of the dive pool.

“Where’s the lifeguard?” Henry said, looking around wildly and not seeing one. Beside him Steve and Blake were watching the kid in the pool with dumbfounded expressions. All
around, other kids had stopped to look but no one was doing anything.

“Someone’s got to help him!” Henry said to Blake, who looked at him with a confused expression, as if at a loss what to do. Steve was staring at the water with eyes wide, his
earlier aggression gone.

Shaking his head, Henry looked round at the other end of the pool and yelled, “Coach!” Then, kicking off his shoes, he took a breath and dived into the pool.

He entered the water perfectly and kicked away powerfully with his legs, angling down towards the bottom of the pool where the kid was resting. It took just a few seconds to reach the boy, who
was several years younger and slightly built, which would make getting him to the surface easier. However, Henry knew from a life-saving class he’d taken the year before that the actual act
of getting a person in trouble out of the water could be extremely dangerous for the rescuer. In a panic a flailing limb might knock you unconscious, or they might struggle and drag you down
too.

Henry swam round so he was behind the kid and placed his hands under his shoulders. His lungs were starting to burn and this only got worse as he began to pull the stunned kid up from the bottom
of the pool.

Come on!
Henry thought, gritting his teeth and looking up. The dive pool was necessarily deep and the surface looked a million miles away.

They rose, metre by metre. The kid was like a lead weight trying to drag him back down again, but Henry wouldn’t give up. Using all his strength, he kicked his legs even harder…

And with a gasp of relief, broke the surface. For a moment he merely floated there, getting much needed oxygen into his lungs. Then, checking the kid’s head was above water, he began to
swim on his back towards the edge of the pool.

“What happened?” Coach Tyler said, reaching down to pull the kid from Henry’s arms as he made the side.

“Bad dive,” Henry said breathlessly. A sudden wave of exhaustion swept over him. The coach quickly grabbed his arm to stop him going under the water.

“That’s it,” the coach said as Henry pulled himself out of the pool with his help. The other kid was lying on the floor, breathing but barely conscious. “Call the school
nurse!” the coach yelled at a stunned-looking girl. She went running to the office and the man turned his attention back to the half-drowned boy. “It’s a good job you were here,
Henry. I sure as hell didn’t see any of these other champs jumping in to help.”

“Maybe you should do some life-saving lessons,” Henry said, looking around and noticing that Blake and Steve were no longer by the side of the pool. In fact, it seemed they were no
longer in the building. While he’d been saving the kid’s life, they’d just walked away.

“What’s the matter?” the coach asked from the kid’s side. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Henry, shaking his head in disgust at the other two boys. “I’m just fine.”

“You’re a hero,” Jennifer Ward said as she scooped another spoonful of pasta into his bowl at dinner that evening. As usual when something happened to her
son, her answer was to start piling food onto his plate. “I don’t know what that coach was thinking. Where was the supervision?”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Henry said. “He was called away. Accidents can happen in a few seconds, Mom.”

“All the more reason to keep your eye on the ball. And what about those other boys not even jumping in to help?”

Henry took a mouthful of pasta and nodded. “Yeah, it was weird. Like they didn’t know what to do or…” He struggled to find the words. “It was like they
weren’t even bothered.”

At the other end of the kitchen table, Jennifer shook her head. The boxes from the car stood unopened all around. After what had happened at the pool, they’d decided to leave the unpacking
for tomorrow. It had been a long day.

“Well, that coach had better give you a place on the team, that’s all I can say,” she added. “Or I’ll be having words with him.”

“
Mom.
”

“Okay, okay. I’ll stay out of it!”

Henry thought for a moment before saying, “The strange thing was I started asking them about Gabrielle—”

“Who?” Jennifer interrupted.

“The girl from the gas station. Blake and Steve acted like they didn’t know her. But I know they were lying.”

His mother looked across the table at him with concern, before managing a smile. “What makes you think that?”

Henry shrugged. “I could just tell. That’s all.”

“You
are
going to try to fit in here, aren’t you, Henry?”

He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that it’s important to make friends in a new place… A new school…”

“You don’t believe me,” he said.

“I—”

“You think it’s in my head.”

Jennifer looked down, choosing her words carefully. “No. But we’ve both had a long day. And then there was the incident at the pool…”

“They were lying to me
before
that. Something was wrong, I know it.”

Jennifer smiled at him suddenly. “Just like your dad. Always a million questions—” She was interrupted by a loud knock on the front door. She rose from her seat, looking
positively relieved at the distraction. “Now who could that be?”

As she went through to the lounge, Henry pushed his plate away.
Of course, if something was wrong here, it had to be in his head.
He felt angry at her for never believing him. He
wasn’t a kid any more. And he wasn’t in the habit of making up stories.

“Henry, you’ve got a visitor.”

He turned to see Mr. Mallory standing beside his mother in the kitchen doorway. The man strode towards the table and stretched out his arm like a javelin.

“Put it there, son.”

Feeling just a little stupid, Henry rose from his chair and placed his hand in Mallory’s.

“I hate to think what would have happened at the pool without your quick wits,” Mallory said, looking into Henry’s eyes with great intensity and pumping his hand up and down.
“The coach told me all about it. In fact, the coach and I had a very frank discussion about safety at the pool.”

Henry coughed uncomfortably and pulled his hand free. “It wasn’t the coach’s fault. And someone else would have jumped in if I hadn’t been there…”

Mallory waved his hand through the air as if dismissing that argument. “From what I heard, everyone else stood around like a bunch of starched shirts while you took charge.”

Behind Mallory, Henry caught sight of his mom beaming and giving him the thumbs up.

“In fact,” Mallory went on, “there’s someone here who’d like to say a few words to you.” He turned his head towards the lounge. “Blake! Get yourself in
here!”

Blake ran into the room, coming to a halt a few steps behind Mallory.

“Well? Get on with it!” Henry was surprised by the way Mallory’s tone changed completely when he spoke to Blake. It was like he was talking to a naughty five-year-old. Blake
practically cowered as he stepped forward.

“I’m sorry for not helping you rescue Danny from the pool,” he said, looking down at his shoes. “It all happened so fast. I was…uh…”

“Say it,” Mallory ordered, his voice low.

“I was a coward.”

Henry looked over at his mother, who seemed equally taken aback. He’d never heard anyone refer to himself as a
coward
before. It was clearly something Mallory had put into the
kid’s mouth.