by Kate McMahon
‘You know what I hate?’ Jaspa pushes herself against the table to lean back. ‘The top pro female surfers are all absolutely ripping, doing airs, power turns and getting barrelled and the commentators always remark that they’re surfing as good as the guys. Why always the comparison?’
Mel grins and pats Jaspa’s hand. ‘My feminist protégé, I’m so proud!’
Josephine turns off her recorder and waves at Sean to join them. ‘Thank you, girls, that’s great. I have more than enough now.’
Mel grins through clenched teeth. ‘Sorry, I hope I didn’t ramble too much.’
‘Not at all. Sean, if you can take shots of the girls surfing now, and try to capture the one we spoke about.’
Mel, Jaspa and Carolyn sit on their surfboards in the ocean while the photographer floats a little further towards shore. They’ve already taken a few pictures on the beach. One cringeworthy shot of the three girls staring dreamily out to the horizon – the kind you always see in local newspapers, usually attracting some kind of cheesy caption like “sea change”. The other pose was more fun, with them jumping in the air with their surfboards.
Sean uses his flippers to push closer towards the girls. ‘For this next shot, try to choose a wave that peels, and ride it all together if you can.’
Mel splashes Jaspa. ‘You know what that means?’
‘Yippee! Party wave!’
Carolyn immediately paddles to position herself on the inside of Mel and Jaspa.
‘Oi, what are you doing, cheeky snake?’ Mel snickers, attempting to grab Carolyn’s leg-rope.
For a regular surf session this would be a tactic to have first dibs on the wave, but Carolyn’s got other intentions in mind. ‘What do you reckon? I wanna be furthest from the camera!’
A smaller set swoops in, offering a shoulder for them to jump on. ‘This is the one, chicas!’ screams Mel, waving her arms for them to swing their boards towards the shore.
All three jump to their feet in hysterics. Jaspa bends her knees to ride low, Mel stands tall and clasps her hands behind her back in a soul arch stance, and Carolyn grabs her rail on her backhand. While giggling and screeching, they ride along the wave, aiming at Sean, who holds his camera up high out of the water, takes a frame of photos then dives deep underneath the moving surfboards.
‘I think we got it that time,’ he shouts over the sound of the waves, resurfacing and flashing a smile.
Jaspa glides to catch the hands of her friends and they hold them high above their heads. ‘The Bikini Collective will change the world!’ she sings as they ride to shore and hop onto the sand with their hands still linked.
#13
‘Two more plates, honey, and if you can grab a couple of extra chairs from outside,’ Ellen says, counting around the dining table.
Jaspa doesn’t realise that with her mum, dad, Tyler, Carolyn, Mel, Mel’s parents and her little brother Daniel, that still leaves one spare spot to fill.
Jaspa strides upstairs to find Carolyn sitting at the desk in their room, staring down at the phone cradled in her hands. She glances up as Jaspa comes in, but her attempted smile doesn’t do a very good job of masking the fact that she’s upset.
‘Hey, miss, is everything okay?’ Jaspa places her hands on her friend’s shoulders and gives them a comforting squeeze.
‘I just called Mum to tell her about the photo shoot and the GoPro, but she sounded fully wasted,’ Carolyn sighs, sticking a finger between her teeth to tear off a cuticle.
‘Oh, no, I’m so sorry,’ Jaspa says, resting her chin on the top of Carolyn’s head. ‘You know, she’s probably just going through a hard time at the moment.’
Carolyn relaxes under Jaspa’s hands and closes her eyes to ward off any tears before they even think about making the journey down onto her cheeks. ‘Yeah, you’re right. She’s stressing out because her hours have been cut, so we have no cash. And I reckon she gets lonely since she had to ditch Stinkbreath Steven.’
Jaspa lets out a sympathetic laugh, remembering Carolyn’s mum’s now-ex boyfriend. Without exaggeration, his breath smelt exactly like fresh dog doo. Carolyn used to hide out in her room whenever he visited, to avoid chance encounters with his exhalations, so she pretty much stayed there for the five months he was in their lives.
Jaspa wraps her arms around Carolyn’s chest. ‘We love ya, everything’s going to be okay, I promise.’
Appearing at the door, Mel beckons the girls with an over-exaggerated swoop of her arm. ‘I’d ask to join in on the hug-fest, but c’mon – there’s a pizza party about to happen.’
They leap to their feet to follow Mel, when Jaspa hears a familiar voice downstairs say, ‘Thanks for having me Mrs Ryder.’
‘Oh my god, is that Cooper?’ she whispers to Mel, freezing in her tracks.
‘The one and only. And he’s about to see you drip tomato sauce and cheese all down your pretty face.’
Jaspa tries to keep her cool as she approaches the remaining spare chair at the table, which is tightly nestled between Carolyn and Cooper. She kisses Mr and Mrs Appleby on the cheek on the way around, and blows a raspberry on Daniel’s. ‘Gross!’ He winces and pulls away.
There’s only a small gap between the seats, so as Jaspa slides into hers she brushes the side of Cooper’s head with her chest. She’s thinking: mortification, please kill me! He’s thinking: bonus! Jaspa glances at Mel, who’s seated directly opposite – perfectly positioned to observe highly entertaining awkward moments like this.
‘Hey, Jaspa,’ Cooper greets, politely pretending not to notice her embarrassment.
‘Oh, hi Cooper, I didn’t see it was you sitting there,’ she lies terribly, folding the napkin in her lap and searching for something else to do to make her look busy.
She gestures for the water jug and he decides to pour it for her. Jaspa avoids eye contact with Mel, knowing she’ll be smirking her face off right now.
‘So, do you know you girls caused a bit of chaos at the coffee shop today?’ Cooper asks quietly, hoping Tyler won’t hear.
Mel screws up her nose, perplexed. ‘Whaddaya mean? We weren’t at the cafe today.’
Cooper rests on his elbow, shielding the side of his mouth with his hand and leaning closer into the triangle of girls, which is more than fine with Jaspa. Here’s my personal space, invade away.
‘You know that tool Andrew Olsen and his cronies?’ The girls nod. ‘They heard about the post you wrote and they were hassling Tyler about it,’ he flicks his head subtly in Tyler’s direction.
Jaspa lets out a soft groan, hoping this isn’t something else she’ll cop grief from her brother about.
Cooper holds up a hand to suggest there’s more to come. ‘Don’t worry, he stuck up for you. But then, there was a group of chicks, the one from Sydney with the fringe …’
Mel clicks her fingers. ‘Oh, yeah, umm … Pepita Map-something … Mapstone! We saw her and her friends legging it up the road today.’
‘What happened?’ Jaspa asks, her face now the closest to Cooper it’s ever been. His breath most certainly does not smell like doggy doo.
‘That Pepita girl went ballistic at the Maroubra boys, telling them to be more respectful, that girls’ surfing deserves to be in the mags, and then you’ll never guess what she did …’ he trails off, leaving the three girls hanging.
‘What? What did she do?’ Carolyn demands playfully through gritted teeth, trying to keep her voice down.
‘Get this, she chucked a jug of water on him in front of everyone, saying something about doing a cutback in his face. Something like that anyway. It was nuts.’
The girls gasp and giggle in disbelief. This thing has grown legs and is running rampant, way beyond what they expected.
Anthony spreads several pizza boxes along the table, and hands reach in every direction for the doughy goodness. Jaspa watches Cooper talking to her brother and father, a cute rim of oil around his lips. She remembers her first year of high school, when he was sitting with all the surf
ers along the surfie wall. She walked by with two of the first-grade netballers and Cooper yelled, ‘Hey Jaspa, how are you, cutie?’ in front of everyone. At the time it was just a friendly greeting from a guy she thought of as her older brother. She had no idea she’d one day be thinking of their mouths touching. If only she could have bottled up that moment, then open it up now and have Cooper Crawford still think she’s a cutie. They could be that perfect couple who melt into each other’s arms as he kisses her softly between the ear and the cheek … Mmmm …
Jaspa feels a kick to the shin under the table. Mel gestures to her to scrape a fingernail between her teeth, and Jaspa digs out a gooey clump of wilted baby spinach. ‘Thanks!’ she whispers, wiping it on the side of her plate not a moment too soon.
Cooper leans into her shoulder. ‘What are you having?’
‘Pardon?’ Jaspa asks, thinking the pizza slice in her hand makes it pretty obvious she’s having pizza.
‘What flavour did you guys get?’ He laughs, dropping his head in amusement.
‘Oh, sorry! We got spinach, sundried tomatoes and olives. You?’ She closes her lips so her tongue can slyly search for any more rogue greenery.
‘Chicken and avo. Here, try some,’ Cooper offers, using two hands to hold his pizza slice towards Jaspa’s mouth. She parts her plump lips and takes a bite, smiling at the same time. He laughs and helps her break apart the stretchy string of cheese, then hands her his napkin. ‘It’s yum, yeah?’
What an understatement. This could very well be the most romantic moment of Jaspa’s life. And this is only the beginning, right?
#14
Jaspa slips her arms into the pink rash vest and threads it over her head. The jagged swell looks like mini mountains on the horizon, the deep blue ocean contrasted against the pale late morning skyline. Spray from the head-high waves launching on the shore patters onto her face, leaving a salty trace around her lips.
Three girls to her left in blue, green and yellow competition shirts contort their bodies into a range of warm-up stretches. Jaspa offers them a smile, but not one returns the gesture. She hopes it’s not out of meanness. Perhaps they’re just not in the headspace to be exchanging greetings right now. Jaspa sits with the soles of her feet touching and her knees splayed out, tapping the sand out of her leg-rope strap.
She thinks about Carolyn, who won her third round heat by a whopping four points. Her friend seems to be cracking further out of her shell this weekend than Jaspa’s ever seen. She smiles, thinking how nice it would be for Carolyn to get a lucky break in life.
Looking up from her trance, Jaspa sees that her opponents are already running towards the shore break, and hears her name being shouted behind her. Glancing back she spots Tyler, frantically pointing at the yellow flag raised above the judges’ tent.
Oops, it’s five minutes before the end of heat six, which means she should be paddling out into position.
‘Were you waiting for a speedboat to pick you up or something?’ Mel asks, as Jaspa reaches beyond the broken waves with just forty seconds to spare.
Mel secured her heat win within the first fifteen minutes, and has luck on her side – a wave lull means her competitors have no chance of catching up to her.
‘I had a bit of a vague-out watching the waves. I didn’t see the flag change,’ Jaspa shrugs with a smile.
As the siren sounds to end her heat, Mel starts the paddle towards shore. ‘Seriously, Jaspa, this is not the time to be spacing out. You’ve gotta get your game together!’
Jaspa attempts to unravel the knot in her stomach as Mel’s criticism pulls it tighter. She looks at her borrowed watch to see that ten minutes have flown by already and her feet haven’t even touched the board yet. The strong offshore wind makes it easy for Jaspa to hear the scores of yellow in first place with a 5.5, blue in second with 5.3, green in third on four points, and pink on zero.
She notices her chance to get out of fourth place almost too late as a right-hander rises up beneath her, jolting her out of her thoughts. The girl down the line to her right in blue begins to paddle, thinking there’s no way Jaspa can make the drop. With no time to be picky, Jaspa takes two short strokes into the wave, springs to her feet, freefalling with the pitching lip and offers a polite, ‘Yep, got it!’ to prevent a drop-in from her opponent.
She reaches the bottom of the wave with a thud, but her low stance stops her from sliding out. Instead, the speed of her take-off allows for a dynamic bottom turn. She soars into the top pocket of the wave, but it’s breaking down on her too fast to be able to pull off a re-entry. Before Jaspa even realises her movements, she snaps the board underneath her to position herself tightly under the curling lip. A crowd-pleasing barrel opens around her and for five seconds all onlookers can see is a whoosh of pink behind the blue curtain. For a moment, Jaspa feels time stand still as a blanket of ocean shields her, and the outside world is silenced. She savours every microsecond in the belly of the wave before reaching the light and gliding out to finish off her ride with two critical turns.
Jaspa paddles down the beach, away from the main peak where her competitors scrap for waves. The corners of her mouth curl and she playfully slaps the water on hearing the score of her only ride echo out across the ocean. Even someone not savvy with tallies knows that a 9.5 is a near-perfect start.
As Jaspa strokes through the water towards her second wave, she realises she’s no longer alone. A flash of yellow darts to her inside and before Jaspa has a chance to launch to her feet, Tara Watson yells that it’s her wave. Jaspa jerks back her board and raises her eyebrows in disbelief as Tara slices her fins into the lip so hard that a cover of spray blasts into Jaspa’s face.
For the remainder of the heat, she can’t escape Tara. Whenever Jaspa paddles for a potentially heat-winning wave, Tara cuts her off and claims it for herself. Jaspa sighs. Is she doing this on purpose? Just as Jaspa is convinced she’s allowed herself to be bullied out of the competition and out of the race for the junior tour qualification, she’s stunned to hear that she’s finished in second place. If she can progress through a heat by catching just one wave, imagine what she could do with two.
Tara is chitchatting away to Jaspa as they walk towards the officials’ area to return their rashies. Jaspa lets Tara babble on about how the swell’s getting bigger and it’s going to be sick, and how it’s just like her local spot at home and that Jaspa should come down and visit her in Newy one day … Only five minutes ago Tara was practically sitting on top of Jaspa’s board to make sure she couldn’t catch a wave, and now she’s nicey-pie. What’s with that?
Jaspa spies Cooper in the distance pulsing up and down on his toes and whirling his arms like propellers. She guesses he must be preparing for his heat and wonders if he gets intimidated, too. Cutting off Tara mid-sentence, Jaspa says a timid goodbye and heads in Cooper’s direction. She feels much more relaxed about him after last night. Surely he’ll try to kiss her in the near future? No one feeds you pizza like that if they think of you like a little sister.
In their room after dinner, Carolyn convinced Jaspa that he’s definitely keen, and suggested she should show him that she is, too, before some other girl does. A tingle dances up the back of Jaspa’s neck as she remembers the sly wink Cooper gave her when he was talking to her dad at the other end of the table, and how his warm lips melted into her cheek like marshmallow as he said goodbye.
As the clouds part, rays from the early morning sun prickle across Jaspa’s skin, her eyelids relaxed and heavy from its heat. She combs her fingers through her wet locks to smooth them out and a subtle swing creeps into her hips. Her heart palpitates as she gets nearer, like the moment you see a wave coming towards you that’s a little bigger than you’re comfortable with, knowing you just have to go for it because it’s too perfect to let go.
‘Hi Cooper,’ she waves, eager to wish him luck, hoping she’ll be brave enough to make plans to catch up later. Perhaps they could even go surfing together, she thinks, completely forge
tting she’s got a quarter final to compete in.
Jaspa notices Cooper’s shoulders stiffen. He doesn’t even wait for her to reach his side before offering an abrupt, ‘I can’t talk right now,’ and taking off towards the ocean.
A wave of embarrassment and disappointment washes over Jaspa as she’s left standing alone on the sand in disbelief. One tear trickles down her face, glides to the corner of her mouth and dives off her chin, prompting more to follow. Jaspa throws her rash vest into the returns bin without making eye contact with anyone. If ambushed, at least she can blame her bloodshot eyes on the salt water. Everyone at her tent is probably wondering where she is, but she can’t face a soul right now. Mel’s mad at her, Cooper brushed her off, she’s getting hassled in heats … she rests her board on the ground and slumps on the grass against a gum tree with a sigh. Placing her face in her hands, she allows the tears to stream down her cheeks.
#15
Something warm and wet splats onto the back of Jaspa’s hand. She unburies her face from between her folded arms and sees a mass of white goo trickling down her fingers and onto her wrist as a kookaburra cackles on the branch above.
‘Oh dear, he got you a beauty,’ she hears someone croak from behind. She turns to see a lady who must be about sixty, seated on a park bench Jaspa hadn’t noticed. The lady digs into her handbag and offers her a bunch of tissues. Jaspa’s not sure if they’re meant for the bird poop or her tears, but she reaches over to accept them.
‘Thank you,’ she says, using them to first wipe her face, then hand. ‘I … I … didn’t notice you were there,’ she mumbles, not sure how much of her sniffling and blubbering the lady has overheard.
‘I don’t mean to pry, but is everything all right?’ the lady asks in a low voice.
‘Yeah …’ Jaspa replies unconvincingly, sucking in her cheeks in an attempt to force the emotion back down.