“What classes do you have?”
“Evolution and Behavior, Biodiversity, and Physical and Chemical Processes of the Ocean.”
“OK. But didn’t you tell us the other night your course was so easy you could do it in your sleep?”
“Erm,” I start to reply. I might have said something like that, but I didn’t use those exact words.
“So catch up later. When you’re asleep. It’s too nice a day now.” She moves on fast, like it’s settled already. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the library.”
“BU?”
“Huh?”
“We’ll pick you up outside. We’re renting boards and wetsuits, so you don’t need anything. Just clever old you.” She hangs up. She didn’t even say how long they’d be.
So I think about it for all of maybe thirty seconds, and then I get up to put my books back, get my stuff and go outside to wait for her. I feel a bit unsure when I’m there. Like I half-expect one of my lecturers to spot me and ask what I’m doing and where I’m going, but I know they won’t because college isn’t like school. You can actually miss lectures if you want to. There’s no register, no Principal to report to if you don’t turn up. You can do what you want.
Still it feels wrong. Until, ten minutes later when I see a big silver SUV come round the corner, and Lily’s beautiful face peering out of the passenger window looking for me. Then she suddenly points towards me, and starts frantically waving.
Chapter Seventeen
We drive out towards Nantasket Beach, which isn’t somewhere I’ve ever been before. James is driving, with Lily beside him, and Jennifer and Eric are in the back seat. I’m in the middle (Eric got out to let me in – he said he gets car sick if he’s not by the window). Then there’s a third row of seats and Oscar is back there on his own, well – he’s sitting next to a giant wicker hamper, I don’t know what’s in there, but I can smell it, and it smells pretty good.
It takes us about forty minutes to get there, with the traffic, and all the way they’re chattering and excited, and it’s really infectious. Not just because I love the beach, and I’ve been missing it. But because we’re all going.
It’s not busy when we get there. Kind of the same as Silverlea beach on a nice day, but during the week, when most people are at work. James seems to know where he’s going, and pulls into a parking bay outside a little surf shop, and then he and Lily disappear straight inside. I don’t follow them though, I just walk across the street and look out at the ocean, sort of drinking it in. It’s not the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen – there’s a road running along the top, backed with buildings, and there’s no cliffs or dunes or anything very natural, but at the same time, there’s not a breath of wind, and the surface of the water is so calm it has a glassy look. Yet over the top there’s a small swell that’s rolling in, silvery and lazy in the afternoon sun. It’s not epic, but even so, I feel it luring me out there. I shorten my gaze to take in the beach, pale sand, the tide out. There’s a few dozen little encampments of people stretched out on their towels, or with sun umbrellas, but there’s loads of space. The water’s not busy either, just dotted with the heads and shoulders of a few surfers.
“Eric and Jennifer are going to wait on the beach, but you’re coming in aren’t you Billy?”
I turn to see Lily, standing with another guy. I don’t know him, but I recognize the type right away. “This is Wayne, he runs the store here, I asked him to get you a suit and a board. Take whatever you like, it’s all on my tab.”
I realize I should protest at the generosity of this, and start to do so, but she stops me at once.
“Don’t be silly. I dragged you here. And I’m going in.” She smiles at me, a fresh, encouraging, excited smile. “Come on.” So I glance back at the ocean, and then follow her and Wayne back into the store.
I’ve been in a dozen surf shops before, usually with Dad, and this one’s no different, but I’ve never rented a board before. I’ve never needed to. Dad’s always had tons of boards lying around. Usually people just give them to him, because they want him to ride on their brand, or tell them how to make them better. I’ve never rented a wetsuit either. Back home on Lornea, it’s only tourists who rent wetsuits. Basically I’m just saying the whole thing is a bit weird, but I do my best to ignore that.
I can hear Lily is in one of the changing rooms, struggling into her wetsuit, and making quite a lot of noise over it. Meanwhile James is already in his, only somehow from the way he wears it, I can tell he’s not used to wearing one. And then Wayne starts holding suits up against me to find one that fits. I look them over quickly, and take the best one – or the least worst. Then he shows me to the changing room. It’s odd here too. Back home I’ll get changed by the truck, and I won’t really care who’s watching, but now I feel self-conscious because Lily is still next door and there’s only a curtain between us.
When I’ve got the wetsuit on I come out and the others are still choosing their boards with Wayne. It’s only James and Oscar, and me and Lily who are surfing, the others have gone to sit on the beach. James and Oscar get their boards first, both taking a while to inspect the shortboard-style surfboards, but while I’m waiting I see there’s a rack of paddleboards as well, and I surprise myself by asking Wayne if it’s OK for me to take one of those instead. It surprises Lily too, since she asks why. I explain that, when the waves are small like today, it’s much easier and you can catch far more waves on a paddleboard. And then Lily looks interested in that and says she’ll do the same. So a few minutes later the four of us traipse over the road and down onto the sand. Eric and Jennifer are stretched out on the sand. They’ve got a sun umbrella from somewhere, though you don’t really need it today. Eric gives us a wolf-whistle as we walk past them. Actually I get a weird feeling he’s giving me a wolf-whistle.
I feel a bit odd as we walk down to the water. It’s hard to explain exactly why, but it’s like there’s a meeting of two worlds. Or maybe more than two. When I was a kid I was really scared of the water, I mean properly terrified. And I had a good reason, since my Mom tried to drown me when I was a baby. But when I got over that I started surfing loads with Dad, and diving, and swimming and kayaking, and all sorts really. So now I feel very relaxed in the water, like I’m at home here. And I can see easily that Lily and James and Oscar don’t – they’re not holding their boards the right way, they didn’t even know how to zip up their wetsuits (when I was younger they all had the zips on the back, but now they’re always on the front). But at the same time, I keep expecting James or Lily to ask me a question about French impressionist painters, or snooker, or something that they all know about, and I don’t. So it’s a weird mix, if you know what I mean.
We wade out into the waves. It’s still warm. James and Oscar lay on their boards and start paddling, and I jump up onto my feet on the paddleboard and start to use the long paddle to push me along. It’s a really big board, and totally stable – I’ve got one at home that’s about half the size, and I don’t fall off that one either – but next to me Lily watches what I do and tries to do the same, but she tips forwards, and screams and falls right off, feet flying everywhere as she splashes into the water. From the shore I hear Eric calling out and laughing.
I’m a bit mortified, but she surfaces, looking shocked for a moment, before breaking into a smile, her hair plastered onto her face. She tries again, while I stop paddling and just wait where I am. She falls a second time. Still I wait there, turning to face the swells as they come in, so they don’t knock me off.
“How do you do that?” She asks in the end, she’s puffing from the effort of it.
“You just…” I try and think. “You just stand on it.” It really isn’t hard, not once you get used to it.
She tries again, but falls again, and she isn’t smiling as much now, so I suggest she stays on her knees until she gets out through the waves where it will be calmer and easier. Then when that doesn’t work either, I help her.
I get off my board and let it trail out behind me, secured by the leash, and I push hers from the back until we’re through the section on the break where the waves are breaking. All the while Lily is kneeling on her board, and helping a bit with her paddle. Eventually I get her into the lineup – that’s the part where you wait to catch waves, just further out from where they break. Here it’s easy, because the water stays flat. And here I give her a proper lesson, showing her how to get to her feet, while using the paddle to keep her balance. I show her the right place to stand on the board, and how to turn it. And it’s easy – because paddle boarding is easy – that’s why all the celebrities do it. Soon she gets the hang of it, and we paddle back towards where James and Oscar are waiting, and she calls out to them, saying ‘look at me!’, and I can see she’s having fun again.
When a nice set of waves comes in I let James and Oscar take the first ones, because that’s kind of the polite thing to do, and I watch them too. They both get to their feet, but they don’t have the smooth, fluid style that the Lornea Island surfers do, like Dad and his friends. Instead they lurch up, knocking the boards from their path down the waves. Then they sort of flap about for a bit, waving their arms and trying to coax enough speed to make a turn. It’s not really their fault, the waves are too small and slow for their shortboards – that’s why I chose the paddleboard. So when the last wave comes in, and Lily is too far out to take it, I turn around and stroke into it.
The board I’m on is quite nice for surfing, as it happens. I zip down the line a bit, and then – just because I can – I step forward and hang my toes over the nose. Dad taught me to do this, and to hang ten, but instead of that I step right the way to the back of the board, since the wave is steepening in this section, and drive it around a couple of little turns, and then finally carve off the wave. Without falling I paddle back out to where Lily is waiting, watching.
“Oh my God. You didn’t say you were an expert!”
I shrug. “I’m not.” But I don’t say anything else, because right away another set of waves is coming in, from a slightly different angle, and I paddle out to it, this time taking the best one, and I surf it on my back hand, leaning myself into the wave and casually dragging a hand for a few seconds. Again I carve off the wave at the end of the ride and paddle back out.
Soon I’m really having fun. James and Oscar are still struggling away, and there’s not much I can do for them, so instead I concentrate on teaching Lily how to actually catch waves. Stand up paddle boarding is much easier than surfing, and if the conditions are right – like today, with smooth water with small waves – almost anyone can learn to ride proper waves, but there’s a few things you have to get right. Like the way you stand. You start off facing forwards, but when you catch a wave you have to turn sideways, like when you’re riding a skateboard. And you need to start paddling forward at just the right time, and do short, hard strokes with the paddle, so that you’re going at the same speed as the wave when it picks you up. Once Lily gets all that she’s able to catch the waves. The first one she gets she yells out in fear, and I think excitement, and her eyes are shining when she paddles back out (her hair mopped onto her head, and on her knees, a bit less elegantly than me, but she’s getting the hang of it now). And it’s obvious she’s enjoying it, and that, well that makes me really happy too.
An hour later James and Oscar go in, and Lily says she wants to join them. I’m a bit surprised, I guess because I’m used to surfing with Dad, and he’ll sometimes stay out for six hours. But we ride waves in together, and I get nice top-turn off the final section. Then we carry the boards up to where Eric and Jennifer are sitting, and James and Oscar are lying on their backs on the sand. They look puffed out.
“So you’re a dark horse, Billy,” Eric says when we get there. “You didn’t tell us you were a surfing champion.” He looks at me with raised eyebrows.
“What?” Lily turns to look at me.
“We were watching you zipping around out there like some sort of…” Eric waves one hand as he searches for a word “…Hawaiian prince, and I got suspicious.” He holds up his phone. “I Googled you.” He starts reading from the screen. “Lornea Island Champion, several times over, plus winner of the Big Wave Challenge. Look at the size of that trophy!” He turns the phone, and Lily leans in to look. James does too, but from further away. I can’t see the image that clearly, but I know right away which web page he’s on. It’s about a surf competition that was held on Lornea Island, and I didn’t win it, Dad did, but the local paper is so bad at fact checking they got mixed up. They used a photograph of me holding up Dad’s cup, and thought I’d won it.
Lily turns to me, a look of pretend outrage on her face. “I can’t believe you sat in the back of the car the whole time we were driving here, and didn’t mention once you were a bloody professional.”
“I’m not.” I protest. And I think about explaining, but then I decide I’d rather everyone just forgot about it.
Eric laughs, and James and Oscar say they’re going to the store to get changed. I look at Lily to see if she’s doing the same, but instead she’s already reaching behind her for the zip on her suit, and she pulls it down. I’m a bit stunned, until she peels it down and I see she’s wearing a bikini underneath, a white one. Then I remember I should look away.
“Here, do you want to borrow some shorts? I brought a spare pair.” Eric smiles at me, and then tosses me a towel, so I get changed right here on the beach, while Lily peels off the rest of her wetsuit, then stretches out on a towel.
Chapter Eighteen
I don’t know who packed the hamper, but it’s filled with amazing food. There’s cute little sandwiches, some with cucumber and others with this special Italian dried ham, and a cold pasta salad, and then little pastries, and pots of olives and sun-dried tomatoes. I ask about it, and Jennifer shrugs, and says she picked it up from a deli, though she doesn’t say which one. She seems to be into sunbathing, she’s wearing a green bikini, which goes well with her brown skin, which is shiny from the sun cream she’s put on. Actually it was Oscar who put it on, I notice, since he and James are back now. And for a little while, everyone just stays like that, sunbathing. Except Lily, who seems restless still. Right after James lays down next to her, she jumps up and then pushes me on the arm with a bat, and says we’re playing beach tennis. So I take it and follow her a little way away, and we start hitting the ball to each other. We’re both a bit rubbish at first, but soon get the hang of it, and we start trying to make it to a hundred shots without either of us missing, but every time we get close one of us feels the pressure and we miss, and pretty soon neither of us can get there because we’re laughing too much.
But then she gets a serious look on her face, and tells me we’re going to really go for it, so I stop laughing too. Then we get into a rhythm, sending each other easy shots, and concentrating more on the counting, and suddenly it’s easy.
We get to ninety four shots, and it seems we’re going to sail past one hundred. But then it’s my turn, and I hit it back to her too carefully, so she has to lurch forward to get it before it bounces twice. She just manages to send it back to me.
“Ninety five. Don’t mess this up!”
I hit it back to her, better this time.
“Ninety seven!” she says, as she gets to the ball.
The tension is actually getting to me, but this time my shot back is OK, she sends number ninety nine back towards me, with a little bit of a triumphant whack, but she mis-hits it this time, and I have to jump forward to reach it, but by now the sand is scuffed up, and I trip on a hole, and I completely miss the ball.
“Billy!” She yells at me, and then she runs forward, and she starts mock hitting me with her bat. And then somehow she’s sort of holding onto me and sort of leaning on me and groaning, and I can feel the strap of her bikini top pressing into my chest – and I don’t know where I should put my arms.
“You don’t have an ounce of fat on you do you?” she says al
l of a sudden, and then breaks away. I wonder if she wants to start again, like before, but this time she gives up, and wanders back to the little camp. Oscar and Jennifer take the bats, and they have a go too.
I don’t really know what’s going on. I can feel there’s some awkwardness, mainly around James, who’s really sulky now. But I’m still a bit disappointed when, a little while later, he suggests to her that they go off for a walk. I kind of expect her to say no, but she doesn’t. And they wander off, along the shoreline together. That just leaves me and Eric alone for a while, since the other two are still playing tennis. I don’t say anything at first, instead I watch Lily as she gets smaller and smaller, walking down the beach.
“You’re playing a dangerous game Mr Wheatley.” Eric says. Surprised, I spin around to face him.
“What? What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“No I don’t.”
He raises his eyebrows at me, but then turns away, and I think he’s dropped it. Until a moment later when he speaks again.
“She is beautiful though, isn’t she?”
For a second I think about denying it, or pretending I don’t know who he’s talking about. After all, it could just as easily apply to Jennifer. But I notice he’s looking at me again, and I sense he’ll see if I lied. I nod.
“And lithe, and vivacious, and oh so sexy in that little white bikini. And let’s not forget, insanely rich.” Eric’s not looking at me now, he seems lost in his own head. “And yet somehow she’s still more than the sum of those parts.” He smiles sadly, and a funny realization hits me, Eric likes Lily as much as I do. Though actually it’s the second part of that thought that really impacts me. I like Lily. I really like Lily.
“But she belongs to James, and James belongs to her. And that’s how it’s always going to be.” He says it with a real finality. I don’t know why, but it grates with me.
The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4) Page 9