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on track.
    I’ve come home from school early. I was bawling my eyes out in the guys’ gym toilets with the door locked. I wasn’t about to get caught doing that. I’d rather get suspended for wagging.
    Mum’s at work, Dad’s at the boatsheds. I’ve got the house to myself.
    I’m sitting in the lounge room in my boxers, eating a pie and a milkshake, hating myself. I eat when I feel like this, trying to fill the empty feelings with sugar and fat. It works for a bit, then more blackness comes in its place. Worse than before.
    After Dad dropped me off at training, Westie gathered us in a circle. Eighteen of us were up for re-selection – the first and second crews shuffled like a pack of cards. Everyone was twitchy. There was a smell of fear in the air. We may row in the same school colours, but we’re enemies when it comes to keeping our seats in the boat.
    The room went so quiet all you could hear was the whir of a guy on the ergo and the patter of rain on the tin roof. The second’s coach, Mr Patterson, aka Patto, got out an iPad. Numbers were going to be crunched today.
    â€˜Boys, today we are racing in single sculls,’ Westie said.
    â€˜FFS. I hate sculls,’ I muttered to Adam.
    The scull is a single boat – light as a wafer and tricky to balance. They make me feel like a wrestler on a tightrope.
    â€˜Yes!’ Sam whispered loudly and pumped his fist like he’d won lotto.
    Sam rocks the scull. He taps the boat along with hardly a splash and rockets along the water. There was something I didn’t like about Sam. He may have fooled the girls with his cool, mysterious act, but there was something shifty about him. I didn’t trust his yogi Buddhist bullshit as far as I could throw it.
    â€˜Group weigh-in before we head out,’ said Patto. He’s not that much older than me – in his mid-twenties and already an Australian rep in the single scull. His ego hardly fits in the room.
    â€˜Weigh-ins? What next, the guillotine?’ I said.
    â€˜Got a problem with that, Poppa?’ asked Patto.
    â€˜No problem, sir,’ I said.
    Most guys in my squad don’t care about weigh-ins. They have no problems stripping down in the communal showers. I’m not one of those guys. I’ve never liked being weighed. It usually makes me feel bad.
    Patto dragged out the scales and one by one we stood on them. Charley copped it for being too skinny.
    â€˜Fifty-three point four kilos,’ Patto said. ‘Aren’t you a dainty thing?’
    Adam got on the scales. ‘Sixty-seven point eight kilos,’ Patto said. ‘A little light on for a six seat, Adam. Time to hit the weights room.’
    Adam’s dad won’t be happy if he’s not in the first eight in his final year of school. It’s a family tradition. The Langley boys row in the firsts. End of story.
    Sam bounded over to the scales and steps on.
    â€˜Seventy-six point three. Perfect, Mr Camero,’ said Patto.
    It’s my turn next. There’s no escape hatch. No time-travel machine or teleporter to make this all disappear.
    â€˜Cristian, let’s see how much beef the meat seat is carrying,’ Patto said. I glared back at him.
    The squad hung around like it was a spectator sport. Any idle chatter petered off to hear my weight. I felt like a circus freak.
    I prayed the number wasn’t as big as I thought it might be. I thought light thoughts. Patto let out a long, slow whistle and my hopes burst.
    â€˜One hundred and seventeen point two kilograms.’
    I’d put on 7 kilos since the last weigh-in. The secret bingeing on chocolate bars and trips to the kebab shop weren’t so secret anymore. The squad clapped and I took a silly little bow, as if I was actually pleased to be the heftiest man in the boat. My crew might have laughed in the sheds, but on the river, they were hauling my flab along.
    Patto patted my tummy. ‘Ease off the