Emily Gale - Elsewhere Girls

Its midnight and Im alone in the kitchen eating a cold potato scallop. Coach OCall would say something like, Thats not what I expect from a scholarship girl! because I have to be up for squad training in five hours and Im not supposed to go near potato scallops, andoh, yeahits my fifth.

Cat has recently started at a new school on a sports scholarship, and shes feeling the pressure of early morning training sessions and the need for total commitment. Fanny loves to swim and she lives for racing, but family chores and low expectations for girls make it very hard for her to fit in even the occasional training session.

Cat and Fanny have never met. They both live in the same Sydney suburb, but in different worlds, or at least different times: Cat in currentday Sydney, and Fanny in 1908. But one day, time slips and they swap places.

As each girl lives the others life, with all the challenges and confusion it presents, she comes to appreciate and understand herself and the role of swimming in her own life.

Narrated in alternating chapters by Cat and Fanny, Elsewhere Girls is a moving and funny story of two girls with a deep connection, one based on the Australian Olympic champion, Fanny Durack. Its a fresh and engaging exploration of the challenges and pressures for young women growing up in the past and today.

Dedicated to Aidan Fennessy

Cat

Its midnight and Im alone in the kitchen eating a cold potato scallop. Coach OCall would say something like Thats not what I expect from a scholarship girl! because I have to be up for squad training in five hours, Im not supposed to go near potato scallops, andoh, yeahits my fifth.

I know the consequences, they circle me as I chew, chanting like bullies. Indigestion! Weight gain! Poor performance in the pool! But as I suck the grease and salt off my fingertips, a rumour starts to spread that Im going for lucky potato scallop number six.

Rumour confirmed.

Bite taken.

I promise this is the last one.

Coach OCalls laminated food list gives me the evil eye from the fridge. Theres a Yes! column of foods that should make up most of my diet and a No! column that sounds like heaven. Potato scallops arent even on it. They must be worse than bad. The snack of outcasts and criminals.

Cat Feeney, you are charged with the crime of not taking your swimming scholarship seriously. How do you plead?

I stare out into an imaginary courtroom.

Coach OCall and Dad would take turns being the prosecuting lawyers: Isnt it true that you binge-watched Netflix instead of getting an early night before your training session?

My sister Maisy would race to the witness box to give evidence against me: Cat doesnt deserve a scholarship. She only pretends to eat salad!

Mums away a lot for work so shed FaceTime to let the court know shes on my side: I blame the potato scallops! FREE CAT FEENEY!

I could argue that its not my fault that we had cold potato scallops in our kitchen in the first place; its because Dad runs the mini-mart downstairs and cooks more than he can sell.

I could argue that other thirteen year olds commit crimes a lot worse (actual crimes).

I could argue that I didnt ask to come to Sydney, that I never wanted to leave my old life in Orange behind, and that I didnt even want a swimming scholarship at stuck-up Victoria Grammar.

I creep down the narrow hall towards the room I have to share with my sister, past Dads bedroom (hes snoring, Mums at work), past the bathroom (I should brush my teeth but I keep going). In our room, Maisys in bed on the far side, wearing a sleep mask. Perfect, salad-loving Maisy, who would never eat six potato scallops at midnight. She makes me want to be bad. Before I know it Im improvising a terrible dance in her honour: I jump and jerk and kick up my feet, then I bend overbum-wiggle bum-wigglewhoops! A fart.

Sorry, Maise. Dancing isnt the best idea after salty cold potato.

In bed, I stare at the blank wall on my half of the room. Its been months since we moved but my stuff is still in a box in the corner, along with Aunt Rachels junk (shes an eBay addict). Swimming trophies, medals, posters, strips of photobooth pictures of me with my friends back in Orange. I cant make the room mine because I dont want it to be. I feel flat and lonely now. I miss home so much.

Last year Dads building company went broke and we lost everything. When my Aunt Rachel offered him her shop in Surry Hills because she was going to live overseas, my parents decided on a fresh start in Sydney. So Dads a shopkeeper now, and we live upstairs where its poky and dark. Dads doing his best but the shop is small and grimy and a lot of the people around here turn their noses up when they walk past.

Mum is allowed to escape all the time because shes a flight attendant. Maisy, whos in the year below me, is all Orange who? She loves our new school and since she made the swimming squad a few weeks ago shes been painfully cheerful.

Im the only one who doesnt like our new life. And thats the worst for a few reasons. I fought for the swimming scholarship even though I didnt really want it, just to be a winner. But now what? Coach OCall wears a black stopwatch around her neck that times us to one-hundredth of a second. So much depends on these tiny fractions of time.

One hundred times less than a second.

Less than a blink of the eye.

I see those stopwatch numbers climbing in my dreams.

My scholarship is the only reason that Mum and Dad can afford to send us both to Victoria Grammar. And after losing everything, the scholarship letter was the first thing that made Dad light up. He cried happy-parent tears. Killer.

So I plead guilty, of course (back in my imaginary courtroom). No matter how angry or sad I get about leaving my old life behind, guilty is the way I feel when I dont behave like a scholarship girl.

My tummy gurgles like a blocked sink. Its less than five hours until I have to be in the pool.

Fan

By the time Mina trounces through the turnstile towards the changing rooms with her hair ribbons and her school uniform, Ive swum over a hundred laps. I wish shed hurry so wed have time for a race. Ma doesnt like it when Im late back. Swimming has to fit in around all my chores: there are rabbits to skin, floors to scrub, clothes to mendand thats just on Mondays.

Heading back across the belly of the baths, I start swimming breaststroke. Its not my favourite stroke, but I want to improve my times. My arms pull through the water. My legs shoot me forward.

On my fourth lap of breaststroke my left ankle is grabbed. I hear Minas laugh, so I wrench my leg free and power to the end of the pool as fast as I can. The fingers of my left hand touch the rough stone edge, and Mina slams into the wall alongside me. She bursts out of the water with a grin and pushes her hair back off her face. Bit slow today, Fan, she says.

I pull a face at her because this is what she does: turns up late when Im starting to get tired and then teases me. I try not to fall for it, but swimming is the one thing I never find amusing.