She couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Heath?!’
Heath looked up. He took a deep breath. ‘Guess I’ve still got one heat to surf.’
Fly screamed. She was not usually a screamer, but today she screamed and bounded across the room and wrapped her arms around Heath’s boofish head and squeezed the living daylights out of him.
She was still squeezing him as they came down the stairs. The rest of them could see Fly beaming, even if Heath was still a bit green about the gills. They wrestled him to the ground and pretended to beat him for making them suffer for so long. And then they decided that finally, at last, they could really celebrate.
The walk home was full of good-natured argument about what they should do, where they should go. Anna copped most of it ’cause there was a general agreement that anywhere playing German hip-hop was definitely off the cards. They had a whole week of training hell in front of them and they wanted to make their last night out count. After all they’d been through, they figured they owed themselves. Jilly was at the table toiling away at her last uni assignment when the noisy flock burst in.
‘Judging from the mood here I’d say you all seem to have passed.’
‘Got it in one, Jilly,’ said Bec.
‘Except Matt, of course,’ added Perri.
This was news.
‘He got a certificate of distinction.’
‘Suck to the end,’ said Heath.
‘So we have a full dance card for the finals?’ said Deb from the doorway. Simmo stood behind her and, for two people who’d succeeded in getting half their job done, they didn’t seem too thrilled.
‘Just in time, you two,’ said Perri. ‘We’re issuing a formal invitation for you to join us for a Big Night Out.’
‘It’s nice to be asked, but we’re going to have to give it a miss,’ said Deb.
No-one got what she was really saying, but Fly could tell something was up.
‘Come on, Deb. I’m sure you’re much better at dancing than bowling,’ said Edge.
‘Sorry, guys – I mean I don’t think any of us should go out tonight. You included.’
It just didn’t seem fair that after all the hard work they wouldn’t be allowed one night off.
‘Deb,’ moaned Bec, ‘we’re about to become prisoners for a whole week of solid training before the finals. What’s the problem with going out tonight?’
Deb and Simmo exchanged a glance of discomfort.
‘Sorry, but there’s been a slight hiccup. The tail end of a cyclone’s going to hit the whole east coast next week. Andrew wants us to bring the comp forward.’
‘How far forward?’ Fly was the only one brave enough to ask.
‘Tomorrow.’
It took a moment for the shock to hit.
‘Tomorrow!’ Perri cried.
‘It’s totally unfair!’ Bec declared.
‘He can’t do that!’ Edge decided.
But the decision had already been made. Andrew owned Solar Blue, he could do whatever he liked.
Simmo argued that it wasn’t as bad as they thought. They’d been in training for a whole year, they were all as fit and ready as they’d ever be, and one more week was really neither here nor there. And the final was going to be held tomorrow whether they liked it or not.
Fly couldn’t work out why exactly it had happened, but in that moment, something changed between them. It was like someone had peeled an orange and all the segments fell down … down and away from each other.
It was a very quiet dinner, that last supper. Without discussing it Jilly had taken over at the stove. She knew they all needed to get focused and, given how spun out they all seemed by the sudden rescheduling, who knew what they’d serve up if dinner was left to them? They ate in silence.
It took Fly a while to work out what was going on. Usually, when something happened they clumped and lumped together, united against a common enemy, but this time it was different. In the morning they would be, if not enemies, full-strength competitors – and somehow it just didn’t seem right to be talking to each other about how freaked they were all feeling. They’d all grown so used to being together that it just didn’t seem possible that the day after tomorrow they would all empty out their drawers, pack their bags, give each other a hug – and say goodbye for good!
On one of his grumpier days Edge had put the wind up them with one of his happy theories. They were pairing up for a triathlon and Edge, having been bumped out of the Matt/Heath love affair, was slagging off the value of being part of a team. Fly could still see him staring around the room at them all, declaring that none of their friendships were real. He reckoned they were fishbowl friendships, that if they’d just met in the street or at school they would’ve passed right on by. Edge reckoned as soon as the whole thing was over that they’d have forgotten each other in ten seconds flat. They all reckoned it was just Edge talking out of his backside again. Fly knew it was really Edge just trying to slag off the team he hadn’t been asked onto, but she hoped there wasn’t a little grain of truth in what he’d said.
After all those nights which raced by under the weight of a billion things to do, they were suddenly rudderless – no homework, no housework, no theory exercises, no training. Just them and their own heads. As Fly headed up to her room she suddenly found herself thinking of home … and the fact that she hadn’t thought about it for a while now. She’d become so used to this house, this room, this bed that it was a shock to think about going back to the farm, back to sharing that rickety old double bunk with Josie.
As she came down the hall she saw Edge coming out of the boys’ room. He had a backpack on and his pillow and blankets in his arms. Matt and Heath had bounded up the stairs and were right behind Fly. The three of them suddenly stopped dead, staring at Edge.
‘I know you’ll think I’m being my usual anti-social self, but I … I just need to be on my own tonight.’
Not a hassle from the boys, not a peep. Things had definitely changed.
‘Sorry, guys, it’s just – it’s got to be about winning now. And no offence, but I can’t get my head straight if I’m swapping small talk with you two.’
Matt and Heath nodded; they understood. Then Edge went all kind of formal, and stuck his hand out. ‘Good luck, huh?’
Matt reached out and shook his hand. ‘You too, mate.’
Heath did the same. ‘See you out there.’
The three of them watched him disappear down the stairs. Fly finally looked at the others. ‘Could one of you say something rude, please?’
But they were right out of rudeness.
Bec needed some space too. She’d checked with Deb and Simmo, and somehow managed to get them to agree to let her go home for the night. None of the others had such a luxury, but when they’d put it to the group none of them minded either. The girls all stood in the driveway together waiting for Bec’s mum to come get her. No-one knew what to say. When the headlights pulled up Bec suddenly turned to them.
‘Just till the comp’s over, okay?’
She meant the strange atmosphere. This awkward silence. They all just nodded, then Bec got into the car. They stood there until the red tail-lights disappeared into the night.
‘Wow,’ Anna said. ‘I didn’t expect it to be like this.’
As they turned to head inside they saw Edge fighting to get his pup tent up against the gathering wind.
‘What is he doing?’ Perri wanted to know.
‘Having some space,’ said Fly.
‘You’re not moving out too, are you?’
Fly shook her head. ‘Not this lifetime.’
It was a steaming night. Tropical cyclone Leon was pushing a huge blanket of hot air ahead of it as it whipped its way down the coast from Queensland. Fly was used to big winds, since the west coast copped a blasting every second week. The vegetation all along the cliffs huddled down, twisted and hunched low against the big, belting winds which tore their way up from the Antarctic, freezing everything in sight. But the w
inds that were coming now came from warmer climes and the scouts they sent ahead were warm and sticky and impossible to wash off.
Surfers have a weird relationship with tropical storms. They hunt them like crazed gold-diggers, cursing the luck of those fortunate enough to have found that special vein that the winds delivered. Nearly all waves are caused by wind – not by tides or the suck of the moon or any other magical forces. And the wind at the centre of severe low pressures causes a kind of bulge in the ocean. Eventually that bulge boils up and overflows and sends massive pressure waves out in all directions. At some point during the night Leon’s bulge boiled over and its tail started whipping back and forth across the ocean outside Blue Water Beach.
Fly lay awake a long time listening to the wind picking up. She wasn’t the only one awake. A sly cloud of doubt was out doing the rounds. It crept along the hallway, slithering its way into Matt and Heath’s room. It settled on Matt’s shoulders, asking him if he was really good enough. It sent him pictures of Heath and Edge pulling off manoeuvres he’d only dreamed of. It pressed hard on Heath’s chest, laughing at him for even getting this far, promising there were no more lucky breaks to be had. When it was done with the boys it paid a visit to Perri, telling her she was going to choke, that she didn’t have it in her. Then that fat cloud of doubt was sucked out of Perri’s window and down onto the lawn, making a ring all the way around Edge’s tent. It told him the act was over, that he’d been seen through and all his ego and bluster were about to cop a drilling. Then it clawed its way up the boarding house wall and invited itself right on into Anna’s bed. She’d tried her best, it told her, but given what she was up against, she had to know her chances were laughable at best.
That sticky cloud of doubt looked across the room to Fly. Ah, the biggest worrywart of them all, this shouldn’t be too hard … But as the doubt grew close Fly realised it was starting to thin. It came at her four, five times, but it just didn’t seem to have any leverage. Fly sat up, watching for a good twenty minutes until finally, tail between its cloudy legs, the doubt slunk off out the door. Then while the rest of them lay there wrestling with the fallout of the toxic doubt cloud, she drifted off to sleep as if she had not a care in the world.
By morning the temperature had dropped ten degrees. Fly wasn’t sure what woke her, it was a good half-hour before the alarm was due to start complaining. She was sure something had tapped her on the shoulder, and as she lay there in the creeping dawn she realised it was a sound. It was the sea that had crept into her sleep, roaring and pushing against her eardrums.
She got up and headed to the window. She might’ve got a clue from the fact that the curtains were blowing back into the room at a ninety-degree angle, but it wasn’t until she saw it that she knew. She looked at the sea, moaning and heaving, and thrashing its distress upon the beach. Oh dear.
There would be no ‘oh dear’ if Leon had simply washed the beach out, but he hadn’t done that – he’d served up spectacular seven-foot waves as the icing on the top of his angry cake. All her not caring last night had been for a reason. Something inside her must’ve known that she would have plenty to care about this morning and she shouldn’t waste her energy on such trifling thoughts of whether she could win or not. She needed to save her trifling thoughts for questions like Will I survive? She stared out at those pounding waves and, for all her confidence, all her Twinkie and fear-busting sessions, she knew that until now she’d only faced the fear of the big waves – the ones as big as Cowaramup – in her mind. Thanks to Leon, she was going to have to face them for real … on the most important day of her life.
Time did its thing again. Just when she wanted some extra minutes to try to calm the old fear right down, time was ramping ahead, not waiting for her, making her panic. And there was no-one to go to today, no Heath, no Matt, no girls – they were all locked away in their own worlds, dealing with their own stuff. It felt like Fly blinked ten times and it was suddenly on. Simmo appeared in the kitchen.
‘I’m very proud of you all.’
That’s all he said. They knew what it meant – time to go out there and dance.
If you hadn’t known what was going on, it might’ve looked like a regular weekly comp. Bec had banned her family from coming to watch and, because of the sudden rescheduling, no-one else knew the finals were on. There were no spectators, no journalists from the Marley Beach Gazette, it was just the nine of them – the kids and Deb and Simmo (Jilly couldn’t bear the tension) – and Andrew.
Deb, Simmo and Andrew had had a long discussion about the conditions. They all knew it was bigger than the kids were used to, but Andrew thought it was fate smiling on them – this was the chance to see what they were really made of. Fly wondered if it was possible to hate someone after only meeting them twice.
They drew names out of Simmo’s hat: boys first, then girls. And Heath was the first of the first. He met Fly’s eyes and gave her a nod, telling her it was alright, telling her not to worry. As he bounded down to the water for the most important session to date, the rest of them sat in a row on the sand in front of the judging table, not wanting to see Deb, Simmo and Andrew jotting down scores, pulling interesting faces. For now, they just wanted to see what they were up against.
Fly had pulled the last number. Lucky last to the end. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If she’d been on top of her fear she would’ve seen that there was an advantage to be had by going last, that she had been given the chance to see all the other girls surf, that she had been given the time to really watch how the break was working. But she was too wound up to see sense; all she could think about was the fact that any moment now she was going to be asked to step into the kind of ocean she had managed to avoid for the last two years of her life.
But by not looking at her friends as cold, calculating competitors, not trying to look for strengths and weaknesses, not looking for angles, allowed something beautiful to happen instead. She didn’t see a take-off, she didn’t see a re-entry, she didn’t see a single thing they did with their bodies. What she saw was her friends.
As Heath slid down the face of his first wave she saw his goofy smile, she saw him leaning down to kiss her that first time in the caravan, she saw his vulnerability as Mr Savin flung that coin high in the air.
Then she saw Edge’s soft-centred chocolate, in spite of all the aggro. She saw him kind and tender with Bec, she saw him grinning like a circus clown with the shark photo in his hand.
Matt she saw on the stool in the darkened shed, putting in the time with her even though he didn’t have to. She saw his face the day Perri had agreed to go to the formal with him.
As Anna pushed her way down the first gnarly wave Fly saw that hideous mobile bill, flashing its scary green numbers at her. She saw Anna’s arm around her in the night. She saw Anna grooving in their bedroom with her German music pounding through her headphones.
Perri was a picture of generosity. She saw her hand in the air when she’d won, and then her hand going straight out to Anna. She saw her gathering up the money they’d all made at the auction and sharing it between them, making sure that Matt got his share, even if he decided to give it to Surfers Against Sewage.
Bec was a hundred shades of loyalty. Sharp teeth at Fly having bumped her, blushing as the pillow fight finally uncovered her heart, straight as an arrow to any question they asked her. As much as Bec had probably pushed her the hardest, Fly only saw her big, pumping heart as she flicked off the back of her last wave.
And then it was time. Fiona Watson, would you please step down and introduce yourself to tropical cyclone Leon? It wasn’t really a question. There were ten pairs of eyes, all looking, all waiting to see what a year at the Solar Blue Academy had done for Fly.
She had to fight hard to get out there. When the swell was big the risk was that you used up so much energy getting out that you were too knackered to do much once you got there. Fly was so relieved to have made the break she felt like she could have bounced to the m
oon, and the truth was she would’ve felt a lot safer there anyway. Leon was going off. The sheer weight of water swelling up beneath her as she sat out the back was giving Fly the chills. She could feel all the old habits rising up within her. She could feel the fear scratching at her throat and she could see that old milk can bobbing around on the surface, banging hard into her leg with its rusty metal edge every time a wave passed her by. It wasn’t a timed heat this time, it was the best of three waves, but that required you actually taking one, and Fly was starting to wonder whether they wouldn’t all be sitting on the beach as dusk feathered down on them, waiting for her to make a move.
While she waited, and tried to kick that milk can away, Fly managed to get it together enough to suss that the last of the three set waves, unlike usual non-cyclonic waves, was actually the mildest. This was the one for her, and, letting the first two pass, she turned and paddled for the third.
Mild by comparison, she should’ve said, because even this third wave had more than a tonne of water thrashing its way towards shore. Fly’s plan was just to get on board and hold on for dear life. If she managed to move this way or that way it was a bonus. After the wave’s first initial burst it seemed to lose power and Fly found herself cutting left and right, pulling off some solid but average moves. As she flicked out of the crumbling white water she knew she had caved. After all this work, she had let the fear win. And what was worse, she was going to have to claw and scratch her way out there two more times in order to pull it off … this losing kind of performance.
Somehow it seemed like more effort than it was worth. You didn’t get a free ride out there just because you were going to pike on the big stuff. You didn’t get waves deciding not to implode on your head, you didn’t get any bonuses now that Fly thought about it. Why not just take Matt at his word, decide what you wanted and do it. She was probably going to get pounded anyway.
Blue Water High Page 23