by Lisa Glass
‘What’s wrong?’ I said, knowing I should just ignore him and go inside.
‘Dunno what I’m doing any more,’ he said. ‘Everything I do is messed up. No wonder everyone hates me. I hate me. You’d all be better off if I stuck a rope around my neck like my old man.’
He looked and sounded so sad, and I heard myself say, ‘Bloody hell, Daniel. All right, come in. Five minutes, that’s all.’
Kelly and my mum would be upset, and yeah, I’d promised myself I’d never speak to Daniel again, but something was going on, and whatever had happened, whatever mistakes he’d made, we’d once loved each other.
I got up and led him into the living room, which was messy with scattered magazines and newspapers. He sat down on the sofa and looked at the floor.
‘I’m really sorry about the Hawaiian dude. Zach, is it?’
‘Zeke. And you put him in hospital. You know that, right?’
‘I was so wasted, Iris. I didn’t know what I was doing, did I?’
‘Course you didn’t.’
‘OK, OK. So I was jealous.’
‘That’s no excuse.’
‘I know. And now everything is just … shit.’
‘Is it Cass? Has something happened?’ I already knew that they’d been arguing. What was I fishing for? Details? Complimentary comparisons?
‘No. Yeah. It’s her and you.’
‘Me? What’ve I done wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
My mum walked into the room then, her face bright red, and she said one word: ‘Out.’
‘Chill, woman,’ I said.
She gave me a withering look. ‘You are on thin ice, Iris Fox. Wafer thin.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m gone,’ Daniel said.
‘Mum, just let him stay a bit longer.’
‘After what he did to you? After very nearly killing poor Zeke?’
‘He messed up. He knows that.’
Daniel had pushed past me and was in the hall making for the front door.
‘People make mistakes,’ I said.
‘Yes, and he made one when he decided to show his face in this house. I don’t want to see that lunatic here ever again, and that’s final.’
Daniel didn’t shut the door behind him and I saw him walking up the hill towards Pentire, collar up, head down, as if the whole world was against him.
The thing about Daniel was that he was damaged. I’d always known it. It was to do with his dad. Something had happened that was so bad that Daniel just couldn’t get over it.
My dad was an artist, so obviously he had his quirks. My mum said all artists were useless and covered their desire to be lazy with pretty paints and fancy words. My dad quoted Vonnegut and said that artists were necessary to society as they were so sensitive. That they were like canaries in the mines — they would keel over before tougher types had sensed anything was wrong. My dad didn’t keel over but he did walk out. He told my mum that she stifled his imagination. He kissed me on the forehead for a long time, and told me that he loved me unconditionally.
He didn’t love me enough though, because he left, even when I begged him to stay. When I called for him, he carried on walking to his car and he drove away.
My mum spent the next day watching South Pacific and singing her own tuneless versions of ‘Bali Ha’i’, ‘Happy Talk’ and ‘I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Outa My Hair’. It was more disturbing than if she’d sat crying.
Daniel’s dad was a different thing altogether. He was a drunk but he was also a character. When his local pub lifted the dog ban and his mates started bringing in their mongrels, he double-checked with the landlord that pets were welcome, then came back later and rode in on a beach donkey. My aunt was working the bar and said it was legendary.
But one day he left the pub in his car and drove so fast through two eleven-year-old boys on a zebra crossing that they both died. He went to prison for five years, and when he got out the families of the dead boys made his life a misery. Quite rightly so, everyone said. Various uncles and nephews took turns knocking seven shades of shit out of him whenever they could, and one day Daniel’s dad sat in his local boozer and told everyone he was going home to top himself. He couldn’t take it any more. Living was too hard. His mates laughed it off, thinking it was just the talk of a man who’d had one pint too many. Nobody tried to stop him. Nobody called Daniel’s mum to warn her.
Daniel was with his mum when she found him. Daniel was three steps behind her so she couldn’t stop him from seeing his dad’s motionless legs. He hanged himself from the landing light. Daniel was only twelve. You can’t erase that kind of sadness. It stays. It didn’t make Daniel a bad person. It just made him a person who needed second, third and fourth chances.
Nobody else could see that about Daniel, but I knew it. I wondered how Cass was dealing with Daniel’s sadness. It was a burden, and it was one I’d taken seriously. I’d thought that with enough time and love I could heal him.
Daniel sensed that, which was why he’d always kept such a tight grip on my hand. I was his everything. Part of him hated me for it too.
The wind slammed the front door and made me jump. My mum sighed and went to make us a pot of tea. Tea solved everything in her world.
I stashed the Cosmo Girl in a stack of surf magazines and then locked myself in the bathroom and submerged myself in a hot bath. My head was throbbing with the emotion of the day and for twenty minutes I opted out of it all. Out of Daniel, Zeke, Cass, Saskia and out of the competition.
For twenty minutes it was just me in stillness.
chapter fourteen
My home phone rang at 7.45 a.m. I heard my mum pick up and then her thudding footsteps on the stairs. She burst into my room, her face a question mark.
‘Some guy called Anders is on the phone. He sounds old, Iris. When you finish speaking to him, we need to have a talk.’
‘Chill out, mum. He’s just an agent.’
‘What kind of bloody agent?’
I just knew she was thinking something dodgy. Strip-club agent, escort agent. Sometimes it was like she would totally forget that A) I wasn’t an idiot, and B) I was only sixteen.
‘Surf agent.’
‘A “surf agent”?’
‘Surfing’s a sport. Sports have agents.’
‘Surfing is not a sport — it’s a bad habit. And what in the name of Rice Krispies would a surf agent want with you?’
The phone was in her hand, so Anders was probably hearing every word of this.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute, all right?’ I put the phone to my ear.
‘Mornin’, darlin’. And how are we today?’
‘Er, half asleep.’
‘Well, we’re here waiting, but Flower is a no-show.’
‘Huh?’
‘You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Where? Nobody told me.’
‘Excuses, excuses. Just get your skinny bum down here pronto.’
‘I’m there in fifteen minutes.’
‘Make it ten.’
A dark thought crossed my brain.
‘Who was supposed to have told me about this?’
‘Me. I texted you.’
‘What number do you have?’
He read it out and the four and the five were switched.
‘Who did you get my number off anyway?’
‘Saskia.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Sorry, love. I must have inverted the numbers when I typed it into my phone.’
Yeah, right, I thought. Total accident …
‘Anyway, hun, less chat, more getting dressed, please.’
‘OK, OK.’
‘Shorts and T-shirt is fine, and don’t bring your board.’
‘Don’t bring it?’
‘No. This is something else. We’ll be waiting for you in the Little Fistral car park.’
I had a quick shower and changed into shorts and a vest.
I had an idea what this might be, and if I
was right, it was not going to be a fun morning.
When I arrived at the car park, I saw Anders and Saskia deep in talk. I was walking over to them when Zeke came running up the metal steps from Little Fistral. He was wearing grey joggers, a blue T-shirt with the words ‘It’s not the destination, it’s the glory of the ride’ printed on the front, and he was drenched from head to toe.
‘Welcome to boot camp,’ he said.
‘Is that allowed?’
‘Hey, I’m not surfing, am I? Anyways, Kelly Slater surfed Teahupo’o and Bells Beach with a broken foot, got through eight rounds and won those entire events. He landed aerials at Bells. So I can sure manage this.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt to run?’
‘Naw, my rib feels OK now; even my leg is way better.’
‘Wow, just how strong are your painkillers?’
Zeke grinned, and said, ‘Yeah, the doc gave me the good stuff.’ He fiddled with some tracks on his iPod.
‘How many times have you run up those steps?’
‘Not many. Say twenty. Just down to the water and back.’
‘Oh, just twenty.’
He was still messing around with his iPod, trying to find a certain song.
‘Got anything good on there?’ I said, looking over his shoulder.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe Alice in Chains, or Megadeth, which Daniel had all over his iPod. But actually Zeke just had a load of mellow surf music on there. Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Ben Howard, the Neighbourhood, Bon Iver, Newton Faulkner. All pretty chilled-out tunes. The sort of stuff you’d listen to before bed, not in the middle of a workout. Then it occurred to me that maybe he had so much of this mellow stuff on his iPod because it set the mood when he was entertaining girls.
‘You and Saskia got through yesterday. You didn’t hit up my phone to tell me,’ he said, giving me hurt eyes.
‘I thought you knew.’ Truth was, my head had been spinning all day, and after the madness of the surf trial, the embarrassment of the Lighthouse Cinema and the weirdness of seeing Daniel, all I’d wanted to do was sleep.
‘How would I know?’ he asked, sounding surprised.
‘Anders is your agent.’
‘Anders? Anders never tells me anything. You know what he’s like. Always busy with some master plan. I thought you’d tell me though. I was thinking of you all morning.’
He was? Even when he was at his swanky surf film festival, surrounded by the adoring masses? I felt a warmth come into my chest. A boy I really liked had been thinking of me. Though God only knew what he was thinking about. I hated to imagine how I looked through other people’s eyes. There was so much that you didn’t see or notice about yourself. It was like hearing your voice on an answering machine. You were always surprised by your own thickly accented mumbling, which sounded so clear in your own ear.
‘Sorry. It’s been kind of a hectic few days.’
‘I thought you’d be stoked. You did so good. This could be the moment that the rest of your life hangs on.’
‘No pressure, then,’ I said.
He laughed and said, ‘Your turn now.’
He handed me a stopwatch, which I guessed was the boot-camp baton.
I pressed Start, ran down the steps, across fifty yards of beach to the water, turned and headed back. I was feeling OK. I made it back up the metal steps. When I pressed Stop I saw it had taken me a mortifying two minutes.
I looked over to Anders and Saskia but they were busy with press-ups. Great.
Zeke took a look at the stopwatch and pursed his lips to hide a grin.
‘This time I’m really gonna cane it,’ I said.
I managed one minute and forty-eight seconds. It was torture. By the time I had done ten circuits I was ready to drop.
Anders waved us over. Saskia was hard at work on stomach crunches. She was wearing an Adidas peach training top that stopped just above her navel, and white leggings. I mean, who in their right mind wore white leggings? You could see everything, or rather the fact that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath them. In contrast, I was wearing a black vest that I’d bought for four quid in the Ann’s Cottage summer sale and camouflage Reebok shorts. If she was Sports Illustrated, I was the Army Times.
‘All warmed up?’ Anders asked me.
‘Warmed up? Er, I’m done.’
‘Guess again. Race time.’
‘Whoop whoop!’ Saskia said, as only she could.
‘Right, so it’s up the hill to the coastguard lookout, back down again, then across the cliff path to Fistral Beach, and the finish line will be the door to Bodhi’s. Coffees are on me.’
The coastguard lookout was an old whitewashed building at the top of a very steep hill. Once there, the view was panoramic. It was one of my favourite places. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the end of the race though; we had to get to Fistral Beach and run its entire length before we were through, and given that running on sand was about ten times harder than running on grass, I was pretty sure I’d come in last. Still, finishing — even last — would be some kind of achievement. Definitely more than sleeping in.
I slipped my iPod out of my pocket and the first song that came on the shuffle was Christina Aguilera’s ‘Fighter’. Some days it was like my iPod answered to my guardian angel, who knew all the right songs to play.
Just as the first bars of the song were getting going, Anders threw his water in a bin and shouted, ‘Go.’
Zeke took the lead, racing ahead of me and Saskia, but he stumbled a little when he looked over his shoulder at me. I was slightly ahead of Saskia but she was gaining. In any case, I was running way too fast and I knew it was only a matter of time before my knees buckled and I ended up crashing out.
Zeke reached the coastguard lookout, ran around it for extra measure, and then started belting down the hill towards me and Saskia. Spurred on by the sight of him, I made myself run faster. It was all or nothing. Go hard or go home — and I wasn’t going home. I reached the lookout hut first, swung around it and bumped into the back of Saskia. She hadn’t bothered to go around. Anders hadn’t said we had to, but it was just good form, since Zeke had. Wasn’t it? But then maybe she hadn’t seen him. I didn’t know. All I knew was that she was now in second place and I was trailing in last. I pushed on down the steep hill, feeling like I was flying, legs working too fast again, like Cara’s when she was about to nose-crunch into the floor. My iPod was working its way through the complete back catalogue of Christina Aguilera and was now on ‘Dirrty’. I used to loathe her music, but got into it for about two weeks after I watched the American version of The Voice on YouTube.
I was gaining on Saskia; three more paces and we’d be shoulder to shoulder.
I was there, when suddenly she lurched to the right and her elbow hit me in the ribs. OK, I’d given her the benefit of the doubt in the surf trial, but this was a pattern. I shoved my whole body weight back into her and sent her flying.
‘What the hell?’ she shouted so loudly that I could hear it over my iPod. Luckily Zeke was so far ahead that he didn’t hear Saskia’s complaining.
I turned up my iPod volume a few notches, blasting ‘Dirrty’ into my ears, and put even more distance between me and Saskia.
By the time she got to her feet, she was hopelessly behind. There was no way she could catch up to me now. This race was mine.
I cruised up the steps to Bodhi’s, dripping with sweat but victorious. Saskia had obviously lost her fighting spirit as she was miles behind, or perhaps she’d just done too many stomach crunches with Anders.
Anders and Zeke were sitting at a table by the window. Lazy sod that he was, Anders had driven around in his BMW. He had a steaming cup of coffee in front of him and Zeke was downing an entire bottle of water. When Zeke saw me, he got up and held up his knuckles for a fist bump.
‘We have a winner,’ Anders said. ‘What are you drinking, kiddo?’
I turned off my iPod, where Christina was wailing through the last verse of ‘Gen
ie in a Bottle’.
‘Gin and tonic, no ice.’
‘Try again.’
‘Pint of Coke.’
Zeke stood up and looked out of the window. Checking on Saskia, I guessed. She was just below us, walking up the concrete steps as if they were the most depressing thing in the world.
I had a horrible knot in my stomach. What would she say? Would she tell them I’d shoved her? But how could she, when she’d tried to sabotage me first?
She limped in.
‘Lordy, could those steps be any steeper?’
Zeke was at her side in a flash. ‘What’s wrong? Is it your chest?’
I wasn’t a fan of Zeke asking about Saskia’s chest. If she was worried about that, she should have worn a proper sports bra, instead of that stupid peach crop-top number. I felt incredibly guilty about this thought two seconds afterwards, when Anders handed Saskia a blue inhaler.
I hadn’t known she was asthmatic.
‘Don’t worry, my darlings,’ she said. ‘I just landed awkwardly and snagged my ankle back at the lookout. If I rest, I’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.’
I was waiting for her to point an accusing finger in my direction, but … nothing.
That was it for the day. Anders was leaving to go and talk on a local radio show. About Zeke, his one-and-only surf megastar, I guessed.
Zeke gave me and Saskia big sweaty hugs and then left with Anders.
Saskia was barely denting a boiling hot latte and I was getting beasted by a Coke that was way more gas than liquid.
The silence was horrendous. I was sure she could hear me swallow.
‘You know, Iris, I didn’t mean to catch you with my elbow.’
‘Whatever,’ I replied, meaning it to sound laid-back. It came across as totally hostile.
She sighed. ‘Do we have to be enemies, just because we’re competing?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me. Because you’ve seemed pretty aggressive with me, right from the start. And while we’re at it, just what are we competing for? A surf sponsorship? Or something else?’
What exactly was her relationship with Zeke? I wanted to know, and he obviously wasn’t going to tell me.