Fly felt a spurt of energy and suddenly she turned and paddled hard to the left, looking for the rip. There were two strong ones running out. They were like water escalators running at top speed, and even though every life-preserving force tells you to keep well away from rips, Fly wanted to be in one, she wanted the fast train back out there.
The one she found was sucking hard. She could feel the sand it was churning from the bottom scratching at her legs as she let herself be drawn into the pull. Rips were to be respected, you needed to know how to handle yourself when you stepped on board because all your instincts suddenly started to sing their own song. Fly let herself go for a while, and then she could feel her nerve endings starting to object, she could feel herself wanting to paddle against it. It took all her strength just to go with it, to let it take her until it was time, and then she slowly paddled to the side.
Maybe making that rip work for her had given her the little boost she needed, because Fly found herself out there, legs astride the board, smiling. A big set was forming up further out and she was starting to stare at the milk can floating at her side and she was remembering everything Matt had told her about fear. She was seeing herself on the podium at Marley beach, she was hearing Simmo’s words, telling her that it was a genuine possibility that she could win this thing. Whether she won or not, it didn’t matter now, what mattered most, way down deep in her heart, was that she didn’t pike, that she didn’t take the last wave of the set because it was safest. No matter how they scored her, the fact that she’d taken on the first, a big churning monster of a thing, that was what mattered.
Halfway down the face she knew it was hers, she could feel her fins digging hard into it, making a path of their own, not running scared, not holding on for dear life. She was deciding what happened here. She gouged and gorged her way along that wall of angry water till it ran out of steam … And she was still standing. If nothing else good ever happened in her life, as she pulled off the back of that wave, Fly felt like she was a winner.
By the time she made it in Fly’s heart was on fire. She didn’t know if it was from nerves or fear or what. She didn’t care. It was making her feel more alive than she had in her whole life. The rest of the crew stood and gave her a round of applause. Maybe, out of all of them there, only Matt really knew what had gone on for her out there.
Simmo, Andrew and Deb stood too and, once the clapping calmed down, there was a long awkward silence. Had it come to this? A small announcement on the beach? A second to catch your breath and then all would be revealed?
Andrew stepped forward.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing this now for six years, and you guys blew me away. I’ve never had such a hard time scoring. You guys are going to be a very hard act to follow.’
Fly could feel the nervous tension rippling around the group. It was almost as if their hearts were beating in time, their pulses rising and falling in time like a tree full of cicadas.
‘The truth is, we weren’t able to pick it on today’s performance,’ he said.
All those hearts suddenly stood still.
‘We’re going to have to go and nut it out back at the academy. Simmo’s suggested we look at overall performance and improvement and a whole heap of things, give them a score and then add it to what we came up with today.’
After all the build-up Fly thought the crew would explode.
‘I know it’s going to be hard,’ said Andrew, reaching for a bunch of envelopes, ‘but maybe you can all go find something to wear to tonight’s party where we’ll make the announcement.’
Andrew handed out seven envelopes, each with two hundred dollars inside.
‘We want to see you all at the surf club at five pm sharp, looking … well, looking sharp.’
Fly looked down at her watch. Five o’clock was four hours away. Four hours at fifty dollars an hour … She looked around at the rest of the crew and guessed she wasn’t alone thinking that someone would’ve had to pay her two hundred dollars a minute until the announcement for her to be happy.
Chapter 26
Fly couldn’t remember ever having two hundred in one go before. Or maybe she had, but it had definitely never been for a dress. It took the rest of the girls a full half-hour to convince her that it was actually okay to go and spend it.
The boys hadn’t been so hard to convince. Heath had come up with a grand plan as soon as he’d seen the cold hard cash. Seventy dollars to hire a suit for the night left them with a tidy little bonus.
Perri was in charge of the shopping, and as the girls set off together it was like they’d never been apart. All the tension had disappeared. More than that, it was like they were even closer having had a tiny taste of life without each other.
Fly let them talk her into trying on the most outrageous dresses – violet toilet roll covers with nine-hundred-dollar price tags and green wedding cakes for three hundred dollars. In the end, they decided on an aqua number, on sale and spectacularly reduced to be within her budget, with fifty dollars to spare. Fly stood there looking in the mirror, the blue silk lapping at her ankles, seeing herself as if for the first time. She pulled up the skirt and smiled at her thongs just to remind herself who she really was, but she smiled at the girl in the fancy dress too. She was a long way from the reflection in the portaloo mirror. So much had changed – but so much was the same, and maybe that was just life. Maybe it was about tinkering around the edges, but keeping the stuff you were dealt, learning to get that all the crunchie bits were okay too.
At 4.35 they gathered in Perri and Bec’s room. Perri had marched over to Fly and gone to town on Fly’s ponytail, turning it into some kind of elaborate hairdo, then, standing back and looking at them all, she declared them the spunkiest bunch of girls she’d seen in a long time.
The boys were waiting downstairs, all penguined up in their suits, and from the looks on their faces as the girls arrived at the top of the stairs, they thought they were the spunkiest bunch of girls they’d seen in a long time too. Fly stared at Heath, trying to work out what he was thinking.
She made the first couple of stairs, but after that things seemed to go wrong. She didn’t know whether the tip of the stupid high-heel she’d let the girls talk her into caught the bottom of her dress first, and that’s what caused Heath to start laughing, or whether Heath started to laugh, and that’s what caused her shoe to catch, but suddenly she could feel herself falling. As she left the top step she was cursing her dress, her shoes, her weak will for letting Perri ‘do something with that hair’. Maybe that’s why Heath had laughed … She could imagine Darren Crocker of the Marley Beach Gazette banging out a story about how one of the Solar Blue finalists had broken their neck falling down the stairs just twenty-five minutes before the announcement.
But suddenly there were hands dragging her back from the precipice.
‘Whoa there,’ said Simmo. Just like he had when she’d jumped up off the stretcher in the medical tent on day one. He kept her hand in his and guided her down the rest of the way.
At the bottom she stared up at Heath angrily.
‘What are you laughing about?’
‘I’m just … happy. That’s all.’
Just like Heath to come out with something you couldn’t argue with. Cranky as she was, she was too wobbly on those heels to say no to his arm on the way out to the van. After lobbing into that beaten up old van for the past year with salt water dripping and sand falling out of their shorts, it was kind of weird to step inside pulling your dress up behind you.
Andrew had taken charge of the evening’s celebrations at the clubhouse and he had gone to town. There were long white silks falling from the ceiling and columns of blue laser light beaming up from the floor in every corner of the room. Waiters floated around carrying trays of blue smoking drinks and the place was full. There were dozens of industry types there – journalists and photographers and everyone who was anyone in the local surfing scene. At the back of th
e stage a huge sail had been draped across the wall and onto it footage of all of them throughout the year was screening. At first Fly thought it was a cobbled together version of Simmo’s famous ‘one-on-one footage’ but as it went on, as it danced into them at the boarding house, them horsing around over the pool table, the board auction, the South Coast regional finals, Fly realised it wasn’t Simmo’s work at all.
She looked to Heath. ‘This is you?’
Heath nodded – it was him.
‘It’s amazing.’
Heath stared up at the screen for a long time.
‘Thanks. Andrew reckons there might be an opportunity for me at Solar Blue – however things pan out.’
Fly reached up and hugged him for all she was worth … and she would’ve gone right on hugging him if Andrew’s voice hadn’t intruded.
‘Alright everyone!’
It took a while for them all to settle. Fly could feel the rest of the crew gathering around them.
‘I know this is a party so we’ll keep the speeches short.’
Fly saw Simmo and Deb standing at opposite ends of the stage, but they were smiling at each other. This was a big thing for them too.
‘As you know,’ Andrew said, ‘it’s been a big day and a big year for all the Solar Blue team. And I want to say a huge thanks to Simmo and Deb for all they’ve done.’
The crew exploded. All thoughts of obstacle courses, underwater training and whiteboards disappeared as they clapped out their gratitude. As much as they complained through the year, they all knew they couldn’t have done it without Deb and Simmo.
‘And none of this would be possible without the superhuman patience of Jilly.’
They roared out their thanks to Jilly. She stood at the side, dressed to the nines, blushing a hundred shades of violet.
‘Simmo tells me it’s been a year none of them will forget.’
Fly could sense the ants starting to crawl up all their legs. For a man who had promised to keep the speeches short, Andrew was good at stringing it out.
‘And,’ he looked down at all of them, ‘we hope you won’t either. Now, I’d like to ask our two winners to come forward and receive their official invitations to join next year’s pro circuit. I’d like to invite Dean Edgley –’
The room exploded. Edge stood there, his head bowed in relief. Fly watched him, a huge grin over her face, until he raised his head, unable to hide the smile as he started to make his way towards the front.
Andrew reached out and pumped his hand before handing over the envelope.
Fly looked at the other girls. She felt hands reach for hers – Bec on one side, and Perri pushing Heath’s hand out so she could hold the other one. Anna appeared at Perri’s side and reached around for Bec’s spare hand.
‘And joining Edge on the world tour …’
Fly could feel the breath in the room, it was almost like the ocean – pulling in, pulling out … And then he said it.
‘Fiona Watson!’
She thought she might explode there and then. There was an intense pressure on her hands. Bec and Perri squeezing out their congratulations and suddenly Anna’s arms around her neck. She thought she might faint. She had won. The girl on the bus with the Macarena hairdo, the girl who had ducked kisses and gone green and feared the ocean and growled like a dog, had won.
As she walked to the stage she felt like the whole world had slowed down. She could only just make out the crowd, beaming against the lights, chanting her name. She knew she had taken the envelope, she knew it held her ticket to the world, but she couldn’t quite believe it was true.
But it was still true when she came down from the stage, it was still true after they’d all hugged the breath out of her. She couldn’t believe how happy they all were for her. Bec, Perri and Anna had all been waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs – they told her that they’d voted and if they were going to be beaten by anyone, they had wanted it to be her.
She saw Heath waiting behind them, but before she could reach him there were official duties to be taken care of. Andrew promised to keep them short, but she had a role now and it came with responsibilities. For the next half-hour, Fly and Edge answered questions and gave credit where credit was due and smiled for the cameras and said the right things. Finally Simmo barged in and looked to Andrew.
‘Come on, Andrew, give them a break, will you? You’ve got them for a year, so let us play.’
He dragged Edge and Fly back towards the dance floor as if they were suddenly back in some training exercise. He held Fly back a moment before he let her go.
‘Couldn’t be happier, Fly,’ he said.
‘Me either,’ she beamed back.
Then he pushed her out into the swirling mass. He’d done his job and he’d done it well.
Fly danced hard, but all the while she kept an eye out for Heath. He didn’t seem to be anywhere. She danced past Matt and Perri who were in the middle of organising Perri’s first visit to Melbourne. She danced past Bec and Edge who had decided that Edge would make Sydney his base for the world tour. Anna and Joe had a bigger distance to deal with, but Anna had postponed her flight home for another month, so they were in the middle of deciding how best to spend the time left … But where was Heath?
Finally she saw him, leaning against the door, staring out to sea. She fought her way over, starting to worry that the win might change things for them in a way she wouldn’t like.
‘Hi.’ She suddenly felt like she was back at the beginning, nervous and not sure where to start.
Heath turned. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a present for you.’
He grabbed her by the hand and led her out of the noisy room, down the stairs and into the car park.
‘Actually, I’ve got two,’ he said, reaching into the back of the Solar Blue van.
The first one was smallish, wrapped in brown paper. Fly squeezed it to try and get a clue – she was a present squeezer from way back – but it gave no hints.
‘Come on, just open it,’ Heath said.
Fly pulled back the paper and stared down at her thongs. Heath had given her her own thongs? As a present?
‘I’m not ready to say goodbye yet,’ Heath said. ‘I’m going to make you stay up a long time … So I thought you might as well be comfortable till you go to bed.’
He reached down and lifted the edge of her aqua skirt, and then, like Prince un-Charming, he took off those beastly high-heeled slippers and slid Fly’s tired feet into her battered old thongs. She could have cried with relief.
‘I like you more than . . ’ She couldn’t believe how good those thongs felt. ‘More than anyone else I know on the planet.’
Heath smiled up at her. ‘Same to you.’
Then he stood up. ‘One more,’ he said, as he headed around the side of the clubhouse. When he came back he was holding a board bag with a big white ribbon around the middle.
‘Though this one’s really as much for me as it is for you.’
He held the board out to her. Fly reached out, took off the ribbon and unzipped the bag. There in the moonlight, across the white surface of the board, she saw Hinemoa swimming through the water, following the notes of her boy on the other shore.
‘I thought maybe if you took it with you, you might not forget me in a hurry.’
She didn’t know what to do with what was rushing up inside her. She reached out and squeezed him hard.
‘Not possible,’ she said.
And then she remembered something. She reached for her purse.
‘I’ve got something for you too.’ She pulled out a coin. ‘Although it’s not really from me, it’s from Mr Savin.’ She held out the coin he’d tossed in the air, the one which had decided Heath’s fate.
‘He thought you might like it as a souvenir.’
Heath was frowning. ‘Why would he give me that?’
‘Maybe ’cause it’s got two heads.’
Fly and Heath danced for a long time. She remembered falling asle
ep twice on his shoulder. But when she woke the third time she was lying down, her head against his stomach. She could see the sun peeping up over the horizon through the windows of the clubhouse and she could hear Bec’s voice.
‘Come on, you two. Wake up.’
She pulled herself upright, but it felt like the world was swimming.
‘Come on,’ said Bec. ‘There’s something we’ve got to do.’
‘Now?’ said Heath from the floor.
‘Yes, now. Come on.’
Fly finally managed to get Heath upright and the two of them groggily followed Bec to the large glass door of the surf club, which looked out across the ocean. Cyclone Leon had moved on through and left them with the most perfect, curling surf you could wish for. The rest of the crew were all waiting.
‘Ah,’ said Heath. ‘I see what this is. It’s what we in the English-speaking world call a door.’
‘You woke us all up to see the door?’ Fly sleepily asked.
‘No,’ said Bec. ‘I woke you up ’cause I think we should all go for a surf. But also ’cause it’s the last time we’ll ever be together as a group.’
This woke them right up.
‘And I was looking at this door, and I thought …’
‘You thought we should gang-tackle the door?’ said Matt.
‘That’s a bit savage,’ said Perri.
‘No, you idiots.’ Bec was starting to get cheesed. ‘Look – this side of the door is our past. That side is our future. I just thought that maybe we could all step through into the future together.’
They all looked at her blankly.
‘Okay, I guess it is kind of corny. I just felt like we had to do something.’
‘It is corny,’ said Fly, ‘but it’s nice too.’
She reached out her hands. Heath took one side and Perri took the other, and then suddenly the hands reached out across the line.
‘On the count of three everyone!’ Fly called out.
Blue Water High Page 24