Excerpt from How It Feels to Float by Helena Fox, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

There's never enough time. Actually, there's too much and too little, in unequal parts. More than enough of time passing but not enough of the time passed.

Right?

Ratio of the time you want versus the time you get (a rough estimate)—

1 : 20,000.

Ratio of Dad's time as the son of Martin : as the living father of Biz : as my dead dad, sitting on the edge of my bed telling me stories—

1 : 0.7 : ∞.


Monday morning, 7:30, and it's so hot the house feels like it's melting. Cicadas scream through the windows. The dog pants on the kitchen floor. I had a shower five minutes ago and already I'm sweating through my shirt.

"Ugh," I say, flopping over the kitchen counter, crumpled uniform on, shoes untied.

Mum reads my face and sighs. She's making breakfast for the twins. "Be grateful you get to have an education, Biz." She waggles a spatula. "Not everyone's as lucky."

I peer at her. "You might have read me wrong, Mum. Maybe I meant, 'Ugh. How I wish school lasted all weekend, I have missed it so very much.' "

I'm a month into Year 11, which is ridiculous because I am nano and unformed but I'm still supposed to write essays about Lenin and Richard III and urban sprawl. Year 11 is a big deal. We are only seconds away, the teachers say, from our final exams. The teachers can't stop revving us up about our impending future.

This is a big deal! say the teachers of English, science, art, maths, music, geography, and Other Important Subjects in Which We Are Not Remotely Interested But Are Taking So We Can Get a Good Mark.

You need to take it seriously!

You need to be prepared!

You need to not freak out, then have to go to the counselor because we've freaked you out!

I open the fridge. "I'm going to sit in here, okay? Just for a minute. Let me squat next to the broccoli."

Mum laughs. She's making banana pancakes. Billie and Dart drool over their waiting plates. The twins have the morning off school. They're going to the dentist! They love the dentist—it's where Mum works, so they get extra toothbrushes, and as many little packs of floss and toothpaste as they can carry in their hands.

"Are they ready yet?" says my brother, Dart, six years old.

"Come on, Mum! I'm starving todeath," says my sister, Billie, nineteen minutes younger than Dart.

"Give me a second," says Mum. "A watched pancake never boils."

She flips one over. It looks scorched. Mum doesn't love cooking.

I can't see how she can be anywhere near a stove in this heat. I grab some coconut yogurt and grapes out of the fridge.

"Did you study for your test?" Mum says.

"Absolutely," I say, and it's true, if you count watching YouTube videos and listening to music while reading the textbook studying. I don't know if I'm ready—there's the lack of sleep thing, and the not-having-spoken-properly-to-Grace-since-I-kissed-her thing, which makes today impossible and complicated before it even begins.

I hug Mum goodbye and smooch the twins' cheeks as they squirm.

I grab my bike from the shed, ride it for thirty seconds before I realize the front tire is flat.

Ah, that's right.

When did the tire go? Friday? No, Thursday.

Shit, Biz! You had one job.

A magpie laughs from a nearby tree. His magpie friend looks down, then joins in.

I could ask Mum to drive me but I know what she'd say: "Do I look like a taxi, Biz?"

I could skip school, but then I'd miss my test and ruin my impending future.

I shove the bike back in the shed. And start walking.


I live with Mum and the twins in Wollongong, in a blue-clad house on a street wallpapered with trees.

We moved here a couple of years ago, after moving to a lot of other places. We're one and a half hours south of Sydney. The city is not too big, not too small; it's just right for now, says Mum. The city sits beside the sea, under an escarpment. The sea pushes at the shore, shoving under rocks and dunes and lovers. Craggy cliffs lean over us, trying to read what we've written. The city is long like a finger. It was a steel town once.

Excerpted from How It Feels to Float by Helena Fox. Copyright © 2019 by Helena Fox. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.