by Lisa Glass
Even though it happened a few years back, the surfing community was still shocked by his death, and I imagined it would have been especially bad for Zeke. As a Hawaiian surfer, he had probably grown up idolizing Andy Irons.
I gave Zeke a hug and could feel that he was shaking.
‘Did the reporter press charges?’
‘No, but he ran his mouth. Some other surf journos had seen I was out of it and word got around quick. I lost a couple sponsors. I was lucky I didn’t lose them all. Then things got real bad when I was on this surfari at Macaronis in the Mentawais. You ever been out there?’
‘Er, no. I think I saw a picture of it once. Indonesia, right?’
‘Yeah. I was with Garrett and Wes and one night they found me passed out in the bathroom of the hotel bar. I’d had the sweats all day and my heart had been beating hard, but I thought I could ride it out.’
I absolutely hated to think of Zeke going through that and I wished I’d been there for him.
‘I can’t believe your brothers didn’t notice.’
‘They noticed my eyes were messed up, but I told them it was arc-eye from the glare on the water.’
‘Arc-eye?’ I said, racking my brains but coming up with nothing.
‘You know, like snow blindness, except you can get it if you surf too long in tropical places. The UV light from the sun burns your cornea.’
‘They believed that?’
‘Yeah, Garrett made Wes wash out my eyes with some chick’s contact-lens solution and then someone found some local eye drops, which actually turned out to be nasal allergy drops and burned like a mother. But that’s a whole other story. You gotta remember I was majorly secretive and they were drunk off their asses from too much Bintang Beer most nights. I’d taken some other shit that day as well as smoking meth, and I was ODing bad, but I was in denial. When my bros found me, they said they could barely feel a pulse. Lucky for me, they got to me before it was too late and I was medevaced to a hospital in Padang. Garrett said it was terrible.’
I could feel my throat tightening up and the ache starting behind my eyes.
‘Oh my God, Zeke. Your poor brothers.’
‘I know, right? I can’t even imagine. I hung around the hospital for a day and then discharged myself. There was a thing, but Anders made it go away.’
‘A thing?’
‘This one surf journalist was gonna run the story. Part of this big “drugs in surfing” exposé. Anders stopped him.’
‘How’d he manage that?’
‘No idea. Anders said it was best I didn’t know.’
That sounded like Anders: scheming away behind the scenes.
It was so much to take in. I just couldn’t get my head around the idea that Zeke had been a druggie.
‘Do you still crave meth?’
‘Yes. Every damn day. Yoga and meditation help. I’m not perfect, Iris. You need to know that, because otherwise you’re gonna be real disappointed.’
‘You don’t have to be perfect. Why meth though? Meth?’
Meth was such a scary drug, and it seemed crazy that Zeke would risk his life by fooling around with something like that.
‘Pro-surfing is a life of putting yourself out there to be judged by strangers. It messes up your head.’
This from Zeke: the most confident, relaxed person I had ever met.
‘I thought you loved being a pro-surfer.’
‘Sure I do. It’s the best job in the world. Surf contests fuel my fire, because I’m super-competitive and, I mean, I love doing the giant-killer thing and beating the older, more experienced guys. The day I beat Kelly Slater in a contest heat was one of the best highs of my life.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘It’s way hard. They don’t call the QS “The Grind” for nothing. It’s constant travel and stress, and mostly you have no family or friends with you. You move around the world with the same group of surfers and hang out with them over and over and you start to think they’re your friends, but the minute you hit the water for a contest heat, they hate your guts. My last contest in Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz, all the tour surfers were watching from the cliff, which is like thirty feet in the air and twenty yards from the line-up, so you can talk to the people up there if you want, and I could hear the guys on the cliff cheering for the other guy. They’re my friends, but he’s known them longer so they’re cheering for him, hoping he beats me. Stuff like that makes you feel insecure, I guess, which is the last thing you need when your sponsors and team coaches have been hassling you like crazy to win.’
I nodded. I knew I’d be psyched out in that situation.
‘And sometimes you have a total shocker and get knocked out in the first round, even though you’ve done all the right training and followed the strategy. It’s the pits. You’re like, “I’m surfing smart so why am I losing? Why isn’t it coming together?” It’s constant pressure. When I started winning, the pressure got even heavier. Every contest I surfed, I was being marked out of ten and people wanted to see eights and nines from me on every single wave. Meth just made it feel easier.’
‘Didn’t it affect your surfing?’
‘Sure. Methamphetamine gives your brain this intense high that makes you think you’re invincible. I started taking crazy risks. Late drops, ignoring the shark flags at training grounds, trying to surf close-out sets. Slept with too many girls.’
‘Yeah, I figured out that last part.’
‘It was a crazy time. Before the thing in the Mentawais, Billabong had paid for a yacht for me and five of the other guys they sponsor. We lived on it for a couple months, sailing along the west coast of Australia. All we had to do was surf as much as we wanted and show up for contests. Obviously we checked out a lot of bars and clubs too. Not just in the cities. We found all kinds of cool little towns.’
‘So a group of six pro-surfers rock up to some small town bar? Girls must have been all over you.’
‘It’s weird. We felt this pressure to act up, give them a good show, almost? Because like for us it was just a normal day, but for them it was the biggest night in their social calendar. That sounds super-egotistical and sketchy, right? But I’m being honest here and that’s how it felt. So we just went for it, I guess.’
‘I kinda noticed you had a lot of girls’ names in your phone.’
‘You checked out my iPhone?’
‘Yeah, I’m so sorry. I didn’t exactly mean to, but I picked it up and saw it was open on the Contacts page, so I caught a few names. Then I accidentally dropped it in your hot tub. I’m really sorry.’
‘Forget it. It’s just a cellphone. Some of those girls are friends and some are girls I’ve dated. I keep their numbers in my phone so I know who’s calling me. I’ve been blind-sided a few times. I should just change my number.’
‘Honestly, don’t feel like you have to. I was acting crazy insecure. Stuff with Daniel screwed me up. But I don’t wanna be that person any more. I wanna be here for you. If you ever need to talk, I’ll listen. I’m really sorry you had to go through all that stuff.’
‘You know, I kidded myself that I was having the best time of my life. I was doing well financially. I paddled some monstrous waves. Got the covers of surf magazines. I picked up so many injuries, got more scars than I needed to get, broke bones, but somehow got through it alive. Anders sent me to rehab and got me clean. Wes and Garrett helped. Now I have to pay them all back by winning the QS and getting on to the ASP World Championship Tour. So I couldn’t give up surfing, even if I wanted that.’
‘Right. So why can’t we just see how it goes? Have a cool summer together?’
‘Because I’m falling in love with you. And it gets worse every day. You’re all I can think about. Even when I’m in the ocean, where I’ve always been able to relax and switch off, I’m thinking of you.’
Why? I wanted to ask. Nobody had ever let me get into their head like that before. Daniel had been with me for ages and never even told me he loved me, and he
re was this amazing boy who was thinking about me when he should have been catching waves, and telling me that he was falling for me. It was nuts.
‘If I’m ruining your surfing practice, we definitely shouldn’t be going out.’
‘No, it’s not like that. You’re good for me. I’m just, I don’t know, like, better or something around you. I want to work hard, so you can know me at my best. But I’m not stupid. I know you’re sixteen. I get that.’
‘So what’s the problem here?’
‘I don’t think I can do long distance. It’s just not for me. I’d be no good at it.’
‘You’d cheat on me.’
‘No. I’d really miss you. It’d suck and I’d hate it.’
‘So what am I supposed to do? Run away with you and travel the world?’
‘No … Yeah. Maybe.’
‘Like you said, I’m sixteen.’
‘If you get sponsorship and parental approval, you can come on tour.’
‘I’m up against Saskia. There’s no way that I’m going to get sponsorship. I only started surfing a few summers ago. I’m not good enough yet.’
I didn’t want to point out that I’d never in a million years get parental approval.
‘You are good enough. Anyways, Lisa Andersen didn’t start surfing until she was fifteen.’
Lisa Andersen lived rough under a pier, or on a bench or something, after running away from home. I wasn’t tough enough for that. I also couldn’t make my mum worry about me. She didn’t deserve that. True, Lisa Andersen had gone on to win four World Surf Championships, but what were the chances that would happen to me?
‘Anders thinks you have what it takes.’
‘Anders thinks I look nice in a bikini.’
‘Sure you do, and that does count. Looks are important in this business, and especially the female side of it. It’s stupid, and my mom is totally right when she says surfer girls shouldn’t have to be “the patriarchy’s cutest dolls” or whatever. But it comes back to money. The surf companies run the major contests, and the whole surf industry exists through selling merchandise, mostly to non-surfers who want to look like surfers. Good-looking chicks sell stuff. Queebs do great in pro-surfing. They’ve got the looks and the own-it attitude.’
Queebs were queen bees who strutted around the beach like they were God’s gift. I hated them. There was no way I was going to be one.
He was right about them bringing in money though. So many surfer girls were growing their hair long, getting nose jobs, even boob jobs. In the past it didn’t matter so much what you looked like. No surfer was a mainstream celebrity. I guessed people like Kelly Slater and Lisa Andersen had changed that. You had to look good now, especially if you were a girl.
It wasn’t easy though. Surfing builds up muscle, which is why so many female surf pros are built like brick shithouses. They’re not at all fat, but once you hit twenty, it’s hard for all that strength training not to bulk you out. So if you want to be a sleb surfer, a pin-up girl, you really have to break out while you’re still a teenager, while you’re still at your lightest and leanest. I knew from reading Surf Girl magazine that the pressure to be thin and pretty had destroyed careers.
‘OK, so just say we can run off together, what then?’
‘Then life happens. We see a lot of really cool places, catch a lot of sweet waves and have the time of our lives. What’s not to like?’
I thought about that. I would miss my family and Kelly. But this would be an incredible opportunity and I’d be stupid not to consider it. But then the sensible side of my brain kicked in again. I imagined myself after a fight with Zeke, stranded somewhere like Morocco. Not knowing the language, and not having any money, or any way of getting home. All my female acquaintances would be my competitors. I’d have no Kelly. No Lily. No Mum. I’d be totally reliant on a boy. This boy I’d only just met. I’d rushed head first into an intense relationship with a boy once before and it had ended in disaster.
‘What if we split up?’ I said.
‘Let’s just live for today and see what happens. I wouldn’t be suggesting this if I didn’t think we had a really good shot of making it work.’
I sighed and stretched back on to the cold grass. The crazy thing was that we were discussing things that were months and years ahead and still he hadn’t properly even kissed me. How much longer could this go on?
And then the stars were darkened by his silhouette leaning down to me.
I can remember the snogs I’d had with other boys quite clearly, and lots of the vanilla kisses with Daniel. But it wasn’t the same with Zeke. Something different happened with Zeke.
It was a really deep kiss and I remembering thinking, Wow, our mouths and noses fit together perfectly. No awkward readjustment; just totally in sync with each other. But there was more than that. It was the most hardcore intense feeling. I wasn’t thinking about what to do with my mouth, or if my breath smelt of coffee, or wondering how many other girls Zeke had kissed and how this kiss compared to them. I was just totally one hundred per cent in the moment.
I was still kissing him when I rolled so that I was on top of him. I could feel that things were getting serious when we were interrupted by a drunk old man who’d walked quite close to us and shouted, ‘Young lovers.’
Then he added, ‘Should get a room.’
We laughed and sat up. Zeke’s lips had a faint stain of my dark lipstick.
‘So, are you my girl, Iris?’
‘Damn straight,’ I said, laughing and reaching to move a strand of hair that had fallen across his face.
It was a killer high. And I realized that the more I was around him, the more comfortable I was becoming with him physically. I was even getting used to that gorgeous face, although I still got butterflies whenever he looked right into my eyes and smiled.
Still, I knew we had to accept the fact that if I didn’t succeed at Wavemasters and grab the sponsorship from Saskia, Zeke and I would be over. He would go back to his life as a surf champ, adored by zillions of girls the world over, and I’d go back to my life working in a shop and being completely ordinary.
Something I’d learned from being around someone extraordinary, someone with extraordinary talent, was that it was addictive. I wanted a bit of Zeke’s magic to sprinkle down on to me and make me extraordinary too.
I looked at him, at those eyes, which for once weren’t full of laughter but were deadly serious. And I felt the pull between us, the air rushing away and sucking us closer together. He fell away beneath me and the ache in me was lost to the feel of his body under mine, and my lips on his throat and down to that stomach, which I’d first caught a glimpse of in a yoga class forever ago.
We rounded second and third bases, but stopped it there, as neither of us was prepared, figuratively or literally.
When the sun came up, I saw him at the edge of the grass staring out to the sea.
He was watching the surf, figuring out how it was working, where the peaks and rips were, how the wind was moving, and how the tide was affecting everything. To plan his next surf was in his blood.
When he turned to me, his look of pure happiness showed me that I had been wrong. He wasn’t weighing up the surf after all. His eyes were just drifting as he thought about something else. Us.
Then I knew that, for now at least, I was his and he was mine and it would take a lot to mess that up.
If I could just win sponsorship, the years ahead of us could always be this golden.
But how could I do that?
chapter twenty-seven
The Saltwater Pro Junior Men’s Contest was in full swing. Me and Kelly were on a stripy beach blanket with a picnic and an umbrella, and about fifty thousand other people had the same idea. The skateboard contest was heating up behind me, with all kinds of lunatic stuff going down in the half-pipe, including a broken leg. To my right, the Nuts magazine Wet-T-shirt Competition was being judged, and there were more news cameras at work there than in any other area of the
beach. Only five long lenses were on the men’s surf event and not many beach-goers seemed to be watching the contest either.
The buzzer had just gone for Zeke’s first-round heat. He was in the blue jersey and a Brazilian surfer called Silvio was in the yellow. Word in the pro-tent was that Silvio had a reputation for dangerous charging and a bad attitude. He was currently placed fourth, and Zeke was placed sixth, due to him missing a contest while he was convalescing and dossing about in Newquay with me.
Despite the general lack of interest in the surf contest, Zeke still had a following. At least a dozen girls made a guard of honour for him to walk through on the way to the waterline. They didn’t care about surfing. They wouldn’t give a toss about what he did in the water. They just cared that he was relatively famous guy with a hot body and a gorgeous face. As the days went on, Zeke had been getting noticed more and more around Newquay, probably because of the Cosmo Girl feature.
I wondered how many girls had that picture on their walls. I hated the way girls would look at Zeke, even when I was right there. A couple of girls had even gone in for the blatant arse-pinch, which I thought was just sad. I totally got why girls were attracted to Zeke, but it was still horrible to see how they threw themselves at him. Garrett told me that this kind of thing happened to Zeke pretty much everywhere they went and that certain girls who followed the surf scene were always desperate to get a one-second grope of a high-ranking pro-surfer. More, if they could. Pro-hoes, Garrett called them, which I thought was a bit strong. Zeke shrugged off the attention, but after the arse-gropes I could tell he was embarrassed and fed up of being treated like that. Like some brainless piece of meat.
I looked over to Kelly, who was texting on her phone, saying something flirty to Garrett by the looks of it. Then I turned my eyes back to Zeke and Silvio and watched as the two of them dipped through the impact zone, Zeke reaching the line-up first. He took the first wave, threw a really sharp turn on the steepest, most shreddable part of the wall with a vertical snap off the lip, but whitewash was coming at him from two directions and there was nowhere to go. It was a bad wipeout, with him twisting kind of funny as he hit the water. He came up after a couple of seconds and went straight back out. That wave was scored a 4.79. Silvio took the next wave — the biggest in the set — made the drop and got tubed. The judges awarded him a 7.68.