Making Waves by Susannah McFarlane Page A

other seat. As usual, she had carefully positioned her bag so her name was clearly on display.
    â€˜Okay everyone, may I have your attention please,’ called Ms Tenga. She stopped speaking and waited until everyone had stopped talking. ‘Strong swimming today, I am really pleased with how much effort everyone put in. As you know, the carnival is next week. What you don’t know, and this is exciting,is that the carnival won’t be at our normal pool. It will be at a much larger one, an Olympic-sized one, with great diving blocks at the deep end. It will be a fantastic experience.’
    Emma put her hand up. ‘Ms Tenga, how deep is the deep end?’
    â€˜Pretty deep, certainly much deeper than our normal pool, and there’s a diving pool, which is even deeper. We’re lucky to be going there. If you’re all good, I might even let you do some bombs in the diving pool at the end of the carnival.’
    Isi squealed, as she normally did when she was excited, which was quite often, but this time so did Hannah. Even Nema smiled. Emma, however, bit her lip.
    Hannah, who noticed these kinds of things, glanced at her friend. ‘What’s wrong, Em?’ she asked.
    â€˜You’re not letting Nema get you down, are you?’ asked Isi, leaning across. ‘I mean, we’re in the race too. Even Nema won’t be able to take all the credit for a team race.’
    â€˜No, it’s not Nema, it’s nothing really,’ said Emma.
    â€˜I just didn’t realise we would be at a new pool for the carnival.’
    â€˜I know,’ cried Isi, ‘and how fun will it be if we can do bombs!’
    â€˜What’s the matter Emma?’ asked Nema, but not in a voice that made you think she was the slightest bit interested or concerned. ‘You’re not still afraid of the deep end are you? Only little kids are afraid of the deep end. Babies.’
    Someone at the back of the bus laughed.
    Emma’s face went bright red. How could Nema tell that secret?

    Emma and Nema had used to be friends, quite good friends, and even nearly best friends for a while. They had gone to the same kinder and started at the same primary school together. They went to each other’s birthday parties and played at each other’s houses after school. Like all friends, they talked, a lot,and sometimes they told each other secrets. It was sort of a game, like Truth or Dare, and, one time, Emma had to tell the truth about the things she was scared of. It took a little while. Emma was scared of a lot of things then: spiders, her brother’s skeleton mask, the dark, the creepy-looking house at the end of their street and deep water.
    Even though she loved swimming and loved the water, Emma didn’t like being in over her head, in water where she couldn’t touch the bottom. Even when she was swimming in a pool her imagination would start telling her that there were things lying on the bottom, things waiting to grab her legs and pull her down. It didn’t help that her older brother Bob thought it was hilarious to call, ‘Shark!’ just as she dived into a pool. She knew, obviously, that there wasn’t a shark in her local swimming pool, but it didn’t stop her scrambling out, just to check, just to be sure. She knew it was silly, ridiculous actually, but that didn’t help. Her fear didn’t stop her swimming it just made her a bit nervous. And, that day back in prep, during that game of Truth or Dare, Emma had told Nema about her fear of deep water. She then forgot all about it. After all, friends don’t tell secrets, do they?
    That was ages ago, three years ago in fact. Now Emma and Nema weren’t really friends any more. Emma thought Nema had changed: she had stopped wanting to play games and started wanting to talk about hairstyles and TV stars. She stopped playing soccer at lunchtime and started flicking her hair a lot. And she started being mean to