by J. C. Burke
'Hey?' I waved at the door.
Kia stood up and started walking to the bathroom.
'Kia?'
'What?'
'Can I talk to you for a sec?'
'I'm about to go for a surf.' She stood at the entrance to the loo, rocking back and forth on the soles of her feet. 'So make it quick.'
'I need to ask you something.'
Kia leaned into the doorway doing her best at looking bored.
I knew launching straight in with the big question was not the way to do things with her. I'd had enough practice.
'I thought I'd finish writing up the bikini prices,' I started. 'You probably need to check them 'cause I can't remember how much a metre that red lycra was.'
'Eight dollars,' Kia answered like a robot.
'Oh?'
Kia was giving me a stare that said, 'You are the greatest waste of space on this planet.'
'Anything else?' she muttered.
'Kia?' I folded my arms and came straight out with it. 'Did you, did you get your periods?'
'What?'
'Did you get your periods?'
'No!' Kia's face had suddenly gone from bored to very alive. 'Why are you asking me that?'
'Ace said that she –'
'Ace?' Kia walked back into the room and tossed her wetsuit on the bed. 'So you and Ace have been discussing how I'm about the only girl in our year who hasn't got them. Nice one, Georgie. What else have you been telling her about me?'
'Nothing!' My hands landed on my hips. 'You didn't seem to have a problem discussing with Ace how I was the only one out of our friends who hadn't properly hooked up.'
'You were there when we had that conversation, Georgie. That's different.'
'You're being paranoid.'
'I am not! You've been so up yourself since you've been here.' Kia was rocking hard now. Her face was stretched and her words seemed to be spitting through teeth that were jammed together. 'I know you've been avoiding me. Strutting around thinking you're the best thing ever 'cause you're hanging out with Tim Parker's girlfriend. Next you'll be thinking she's going to hook you up with Chad Parsons.'
I almost jerked at the dirty shot she had fired.
'Your head's still fat from getting that eight-point-five score,' Kia hissed. 'Well, I'll tell you what, Georgie, a few of the girls have been wondering what the hell you're doing here. Ace being one of them. They gave you that award the other day 'cause they thought it might boost your confidence.'
'They did not!'
'Oh, really. You're that sure of yourself now, are you?' Kia pulled her cheeks into an ugly smile. 'Well, how come Carla told me?'
'That is a total lie!'
'So you're accusing me of being a liar?'
'You lied about how Micki's mother died,' I told her. 'Ace knows that too. She was there when Micki told us how her mother really died – breast cancer.'
'She fell off a verandah. I remember.'
'Well, she didn't die that way!'
'So.'
'So, you've been so mean to Micki.' My voice was trembling almost as much as my knees. Just behind my eyes I could feel hot tears ready and waiting to spring forth. 'I've seen a side to you I've never seen before, Kia.'
'I don't owe Micki anything!'
'I didn't say you did!' I shouted back. 'But she's young and she's a long way from home. Her dad's sick.'
'He's not sick,' Kia spat back. 'He's just a dole bludger!'
'What is up with you?' I took a step towards her. Kia took a step back. 'I came up here to see if you were okay; to, to try and make up with you. But you don't want to make up with me.'
'You didn't come up here to make up with me.' Kia was pushing our beds to opposite sides of the room. 'You came up here being Miss Nosey. Asking me if I'd got my periods.'
'Well, sorry!' I yelled. 'Ace said there was blood in the garbage bin. So what was I to think? Hey?'
'I cut my heel shaving my legs.' Kia picked up her wetsuit and hugged it around her body. 'Stay away from me, Georgie. Unlike you, I'm here to focus on the camp.'
Kia slammed the door so hard I almost expected the roof to cave in.
Hot tears exploded. Big, fat pellets of salt water bounced all over my face. Here was I feeling bad and ready to make up with Kia when she had no intention of making up with me.
I sat down on my bed, held my pillow to my chest and sobbed. Ace wouldn't have said that I didn't deserve to be here. The award I got was fair. I carved it up that day and everybody knew it. They were just jealous 'cause I had other things in my life besides surfing. As if they would've given me an award to boost my confidence. As if!
'Georgie?' Ace knelt by the bed. 'Georgie? What's happened? What's wrong? What's your bed doing over here?'
'Kia and I just had the most massive fight,' I blubbered. 'We have had some bad fights. But this one was the worst ever.'
'Did she tell you about her periods?'
'She cut her heel.' I hiccuped. 'That's where the blood was from.'
'Oh no,' Ace sighed. 'That was my fault.'
'Ace?' I peered down at Ace. She was wearing a green scarf in her hair. She looked so pretty and I must have looked so red and blotchy and ugly. Still, I was going to ask her this: 'Ace, did you tell Kia that I didn't deserve to be here?'
'No! Never!' Ace said. 'Remember I told you how I was nervous about being here with you 'cause I'd heard so many good things about you.'
'So you didn't say that?'
'No.'
'The lies Kia tells. They make everything so . . . dirty.' I caught my hands wiping my arms, as if they could physically rub away the yuckiness that clung to me. 'Do you ever feel like that?'
'Yes.'
'Promise you won't lie to me?'
'Promise.' Ace climbed up on the bed next to me. 'Okay, um, here are two things.'
'Two what?'
'Two lies I need to get off my chest. The first one's tiny.' Ace pinched her fingers together. 'It's not really a proper lie. The other one is. It's a bad lie. But it's only bad to me.'
I shrugged. 'Tell us.'
'One,' Ace began. 'I never said to Kia that you didn't deserve to be here but I did try and pump info out of her about what you were like. And the first time I saw you surf I thought you were crap.'
'That's because I was.'
'And the second thing is –'
'That's not the second thing?'
'No,' Ace said. 'The second lie is that' – Ace's face was screwed up into a ball of creases – 'Tim dumped me.'
'What!' I gasped. I had not seen that coming. 'When?'
'The day we had the soccer game.'
'Is that why you've been crying?' I asked. 'Oh Ace, you should've told me. I'm so sorry. Poor baby. You must feel horrible.'
'Yes and no.' A tiny smile crept onto her face. 'There's actually a third thing.'
'A third lie!' I spluttered. 'What?'
'It's not a lie.' The smile on Ace's face was growing. 'I just haven't told you.'
'Out with it.'
'I just bumped into Jules down at the far end of the beach.'
I actually felt my jaw drop. I tried to force some sound out but I think I had just overdosed on one too many shocks.
'I was looking for him and he was looking for me. Can you believe it? He's so nice, Georgie.' Ace was shaking my arm, almost dislocating it from my shoulder. 'He's one year and two days older than me. Can you believe that? Our birthdays are three days apart.'
'Hang on. Hang on,' I said. 'My head is spinning. I'm still trying to process that Tim dropped you, let alone Jules.'
I was trying to grasp the where, when and how. It was like we were on a different planet at this camp. Interaction with non-surf-camp people didn't seem humanly possible.
'Did Tim dump you by text?'
'Yes!' Ace thumped her fist on the mattress.
'Bastard!' we said together.
'He dropped you, then left for Indonesia. Nice one.'
'Well, actually, he hasn't gone yet.' Ace cringed.
'Sorry. That was a little white lie. I just said that to get Kia off my back. The way she's always snooping around my phone drives me crazy.'
'How come he dumped you?'
'He said I was too young for him.' Ace didn't speak for a while. I wondered if there was something else she wanted to tell me. 'It took him nine months to figure that out' was all she finally said.
'You don't seem that upset about it. Now, I mean,' I said. 'I'm kind of surprised. I thought you'd be devastated.'
'Jules.' Ace threw her arms in the air. 'He's so divine.'
'You hardly know him.'
'So?'
'Are you going to tell anyone about Tim and –'
'No.'
Again Ace had that look as if there was something lingering on the tip of her tongue.
'What is it, Ace?'
'Do you think people will still, you know' – she shrugged – 'like me if I'm not Tim Parker's girlfriend?'
Now I remembered she had asked me something like this the day we played soccer. I never thought I'd feel sorry for a girl like Ace. They were the ones you thought had the perfect lives. No insecurities, no worries.
'If you lose friends because you're not going out with Tim anymore then what sort of friends were they in the first place?'
'But what about here?' Ace was biting her lip. 'I don't mean you. I mean the others.'
'Too bad what they think.'
'Yeah, you're right. But I'm not ready to say anything yet.'
'So you're going to see Jules again.'
'Are you kidding?' She laughed. 'Try and stop me. Would you believe he lives about five minutes away from here?'
'You're not going to sneak over to his place, are you? Ace, you will be so busted if you get caught. Do you really think it's worth it?'
'Yes!'
'You're making me nervous.'
'Don't worry. I'll be careful.' Ace squeezed my hand. 'I won't even tell you when I'm going. Then you won't have to worry about it.'
'But when could you, anyway?'
'Free time,' Ace said. 'At night.'
'Just say he's a serial killer!'
'He's not.'
'Just say he's one of those guys you were telling us about. The ones who collect your bikini posters!'
'He's not,' Ace laughed. 'He's never seen me before. He doesn't know I'm a model. He's only been in Australia one week.'
'Well, if you sneak out at night, I think you should tell me,' I said. 'Just in case you don't come back.'
Ace was really laughing now. Laughing like I hadn't seen her laugh before. It was almost like her face was sparkling.
The lunch bell rang, reminding me of the brick in my stomach that I had temporarily forgotten about.
'Oh no,' I groaned. 'What am I going to do when I see Kia? I don't feel like facing her.'
'I'll stick with you. Don't worry about her. She just likes the drama. My friends and I used to have fights all the time. You grow out of it,' Ace said. 'Now smile!' And she took a photo of us with her phone.
KIA
We had so many planned activities that it was easy to ignore Georgie for the rest of Saturday. It was also easy as Georgie and Ace were hiding from me. It was so obvious.
Sunday was a different story. We had a lot of free time and I had to choose what I did and where I went a little more carefully. I didn't want to seem like I was looking for them, like I was some sort of hanging-on loser. Ace would get tired of Georgie. She'd come back to me.
During lunch Carla made an announcement: 'You were all too tired last night to watch the expression session we had yesterday afternoon. So we're going to watch the video of it straight after lunch.'
'What!' Ace groaned.
Carla ignored her. 'It's too hot for you all to be outside anyway and as you've noticed, there's no surf. So straight after lunch in the rec room, please.'
Carla came into the rec room, whispered something to Taylor and crept out.
'A bit of quiet, girls.' Taylor clapped her hands. 'You've had free time all day. It's time to concentrate now. The air con's on so it's nice and cool.'
On the whiteboard Shyan wrote 'Forehand Snap – Cutback' then underlined it with a red pen.
'We're going to start with the basic cutback, or forehand snap if you'd prefer,' she started. 'Let's just talk about the moves before we run the video and look at the way you execute them.'
Ace came in through the side door. I saw Georgie look at her and shake her head and giggle, trying to make out like they were so palsy and knew everything about each other. In actual fact, it was just Georgie hanging around Ace like a bad smell. Ace just hadn't figured it out yet. But she would.
'There are five main things to run through your head when thinking about a forehand snap. Think about what Hunter was telling you about on Friday night. The way he explained you should preview the wave and the move in your head like you're watching it on a TV screen. See it in a positive way, like you can execute each section perfectly. Close your eyes, girls,' Shyan told us. 'Watch it in your head. See what you have to do. How you have to prepare your body.'
When I closed my eyes I didn't see the wave I was catching. I saw Georgie's face and the way she looked when she said, 'I've seen a side of you that I've never seen before.'
I squeezed my eyes tighter, trying to make her face go away. But she wouldn't go away. Instead, she pointed her finger at me, just like she'd done yesterday, and shouted, 'She's a young girl a long way from home.'
Taylor gave me a nudge. 'Kia, don't fall asleep on us.'
'Huh?' I said.
Everyone had their eyes open except me.
'So, Tahlia, you say making a good bottom turn is what you did first?'
Shyan wrote 'good bottom turn' on the whiteboard. I hadn't even heard Tahlia speak. 'Next?'
'I lean my body away from the top of the wave,' Jaime said.
'Me too,' Megan agreed.
'So the single words we'll use for these first two moves are what? Kia?' Shyan stood there, her black pen waiting. 'Kia?'
'Um.' I knew the words she wanted. I just had to find them through all the junk in my head. 'Um? Is it drive and lean?'
Shyan clapped. 'Glad to see you're with us. Thank you.'
By the time it came to watching the video of our expression session I had relaxed a bit. I'd become used to the process of analysing one another's moves. Who did what well and how this person could improve on that move. We'd all had our turn of looking good and looking not so good.
But maybe I had relaxed too much 'cause I wasn't prepared for what I saw when Taylor pushed the 'play' button.
'Hey, this is from the team relay.' Ace whistled then nudged Georgie and they high-fived. Next Micki would be in on the act. But actually, where was Micki? My eyes scanned the room. There was no Micki.
'Hey!' Megan bellowed. She had the loudest voice of any girl I'd ever met. 'Fast forward my moves, please!'
Everyone laughed.
I didn't. I sat on my hands and took a deep breath. My heart was beginning to beat just a little faster.
My hands crept up to rest behind my head; then my neck, across my chest, then back to my neck as the video of Georgie played in slow motion, then in normal time, then from the beginning to the end and back again.
I stopped counting at the sixteenth press of the 'pause' button. The sound refused to come up my throat when we had to call Hunter's words in time with Georgie's moves. 'Drive, lean, backwards shoulder, snap, compress to maintain balance.' But I kept a smile pasted on my face and at the end, when everyone applauded Georgie, I made sure my hands moved in time.
It wasn't even possible to go for a surf it was so flat. But I needed to be alone; to get some space so I could try and make my screaming head shut up. There was always the bungalow but I didn't trust myself to be up there alone.
I'd spotted Georgie and Ace walking towards the gates, their heads stuck together like gossiping Siamese twins. I bet they were talking about me; tearing me to shreds as Georgie traded
my secrets for Ace's friendship.
As always, I found myself back at the beach. The water lapped gently like a bay. Every so often the odd wave took a body boarder calmly into shore.
Jaime, Natasha and me lay on the sand reading from Jaime's stash of magazines.
'Yuck, look at this girl. She got down to twenty-nine kilos.' Natasha showed us a picture of a girl who looked like the younger sister of the skeleton in our science lab. 'And then she started cutting herself when they made her put some weight on. We have this emo girl in our year and she is fully into that.'
'I don't know how you could do that,' Jaime said.
'Me neither,' I agreed loud and clear. 'That's the most disgusting thing ever.'
'Oh, look at this picture!' Jaime said. 'He is thirty-five years younger than his wife.'
'Gross!' I groaned.
'Hey!' Jaime pointed. 'Isn't that your dad, Kia?'
Walking down the beach were Dad and my little brother Charlie, waving and calling.
'Great, a visit from the family,' I groaned, getting up and going over to them.
Charlie gave me a hug. I squeezed his pudgy arms and cheeks and nuzzled my face into his soft, baby skin. If I could take him to bed at night like a teddy bear I knew that I would never hurt myself again.
'Hi, Dad.'
'Are you missing us?'
'No.'
'You're missing me but, aren't you, Kia?' Charlie was pulling at my arm. 'Bury me, Kia.'
Charlie lay down and began to heap sand over his tummy.
'Of course I miss you, Charlie.'
'So how's it going?' Dad asked.
'It's been really good,' I told him. 'I'm learning heaps, Dad. I'm really working hard on my moves. The other day I stayed in for almost four hours straight.'
'I know, Carla told me.'
'Have you been up there already?'
'Just then.'
'Were you looking for me?' I asked. 'Sorry. We don't have to say where we are during free time. It's not like there's anywhere to go anyway.'
'I had to speak to Micki.'
Dad said it like it was the most normal thing ever to drive an hour north to tell someone (who wasn't even your own daughter!) something.
'I spotted you, Kia, didn't I, Dad?' Charlie said. 'I got good eyes, don't I, Dad?'
'How come you had to see Micki?' The odd grain of sand escaped my clenched fist. I watched my knuckles turn from flesh to red. 'Dad?'