by Lisa Glass
Before Garrett had even turned, I dived down, using every ounce of the new strength in my arms to follow the board’s leash, hand over hand like I was climbing a rope, only downwards. Then I felt a handful of soft hair.
chapter thirty-eight
His body was moving gently, anchored as it was by the urethane leash which had wound tight around an anvil-shaped boulder. It was murky, but up close I could just about see how the leash had snagged. I shook it with everything I had, but there was no way I could loosen it. I didn’t know if Zeke’s eyes were open because I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face.
The sea would not take him. With my lungs on the brink of exploding and the force of a broken wave rushing over us, I worked my hands down his body, only just stopping myself from springing up to the surface, and I took hold of the Velcro strap around his ankle and released the leash.
I gripped Zeke around the waist and let the air in my body take us up.
Garrett was right there to take hold of Zeke; behind him, I watched Wes dive from the rocks into the sea. I turned around and saw Daniel swimming towards us, his face a mask of panic.
Three words looped round and round my brain.
Zeke is dead.
chapter thirty-nine
Two days later, his board washed up with the sunrise. Relentless waves had eventually split the board in two and dislodged Zeke’s leg-rope from the boulder. The pieces floated ashore with a mass stranding of tiny white jellyfish. My knees buckled. The palms of my hands burned. The swell had died like it was never there and I looked right past the headland, out to where the Cribbar breaks.
It was like an inshore lake. Nothing. No sign of what had happened that terrible morning.
The gannets were diving far out in the bay, sending up plumes of spray, and behind me I could hear London voices say that it was dolphins’ breaths, water spray chucked out by the blowholes. But they were wrong. It was just birds pulling out fish after fish after fish.
They talked like nothing was wrong, wrapped up in their own worlds and oblivious to what was happening ten feet from them. Not understanding the significance of this broken surfboard.
A few weeks after I first met him, Zeke had told me, ‘A leash snagged on underwater rocks is every big-wave rider’s nightmare. After a bad wipeout, a leash can be a lifeline or a death sentence. Down in the deep water where it’s so dark, you’re disorientated and you don’t know which way is up, so if push comes to shove you can literally climb your leg-rope, because it’s attached to something that is way more buoyant than you are: a board. And odds are that your board is floating on the surface. I’ve climbed my leash to the surface and it’s saved my life, given me that one precious mouthful of air, which is all it takes to survive. But if that leash is snagged on underwater rocks? And you can’t pull it free, or get it off your ankle? You’re a goner. You’re holding your breath as best you can, twenty feet down, or forty feet down if a second wave has broken on top of you. You try pulling off your ankle leash then, with the current pinning your body. It’s like doing a stomach crunch with an elephant sitting on your chest.’
This conversation came back to me with such clarity that dread rose through my body. I just stood there, looking at the pieces of his board, one at my feet, the other a hundred yards down the beach.
Surfing was rough and Zeke never, ever, went easy on himself. I knew the scars that marked his surfboards as well as I knew the ones on his body. I recognized everything: his board-waxing pattern, the replacement fins, and the small ding that he’d fixed with epoxy resin. I’d been there when he put his mouth to the hole and sucked out the saltwater.
That orange board was like a bright lamp in the grey early-morning water. A little bit of aloha in Cornwall.
I couldn’t stop crying.
I carried the halves of his board over my head as if they were a coffin. No one helped me, no one stopped me.
I made a quick stop at my place, and then I went to Daniel’s house.
chapter forty
I placed the two pieces of surfboard on the concrete outside Daniel’s front door and then I knocked hard, staring at the flaking blue paint without blinking.
He opened the door and gave me a look of such pain that I almost turned around.
‘They just washed up,’ I said.
He stooped to pick up one of the pieces, and he turned it over in his hands, respectful and sombre like he was touching a dead body.
His shoulders sagged and he placed the piece back down on its other half.
‘I’m sorry.’
I shook my head at him.
On the way back from the beach, I’d stopped back at my place as I knew there was something that could do what my words couldn’t. In a bag hooked on my wrist I had an old Nike shoebox that was so full the lid barely stayed on.
I handed Daniel the box and he opened it, looking down into it.
It was everything. I’d kept all of the bits of jewellery that Daniel had bought me for Christmas and birthdays. Even after I met Zeke, I kept that stuff. Beaded bracelets and necklaces that Daniel bought me when we were falling in love with each other. I even had a cardboard case from an old deck of cards where I kept all the ticket stubs from cinema trips, as well as receipts from coasteering and all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut lunches. Daniel had no idea how sentimental I was. None at all. I never let it show, because I didn’t want him to realize the power he had over me. Which was a joke. As if he didn’t know all about that.
I had been so weak. Back then, I had loved him so much that it caused me physical pain whenever I was away from him for more than five minutes. On one school science trip to Bodmin Moor, where we weren’t allowed phones or computers, I wrote Daniel a letter every single day, kissing the envelope before posting it.
Daniel glanced into the shoebox and looked at me. He hadn’t kept anything like that. Of course he hadn’t. What he meant to me, I had never meant to him. We were two people in one relationship but it wasn’t the same one. I’d thought he was parasiting off my strength, but it was the other way around: I’d been addicted to his pain.
And look what I had allowed to happen. Look how reckless he’d become, because I had encouraged him to be that way, with my head in the sand and constant excuse-making.
Daniel had not meant to hurt anyone else. He hadn’t meant for Zeke to drown. He couldn’t have known Zeke would show up and try to save him. But Daniel was toxic. And I had made him worse.
‘I’m so sorry, Iris. For everything I ever done.’
Then he added, ‘I never meant to hurt anyone,’ like it was the most important thing in the world that I believed that. ‘I’ll always love you, Ris. You know that.’
I couldn’t answer him. The lump in my throat burned so fiercely that I could barely swallow.
I looked straight into Daniel’s eyes, those lovely dark eyes framed with black lashes, and I felt the strength go out of my legs. I put up a hand to support myself, took a deep breath and said, ‘Have a good life, Daniel. Be happy.’ And then I turned on my heel and I didn’t look back.
chapter forty-one
At the apartment, I laid the board fragments against the wall and pressed the buzzer. When Garrett answered, I said, ‘Come down. It washed up.’
‘Be right there. Just gotta find some clothes first.’
He appeared in the doorway, looking surf-sore and dishevelled in crumpled jeans. He was rubbing his eyes and sand was splashed across one side of his face. He’d obviously gone straight from a set of waves into his bed. I watched as he pulled on a bright purple T-shirt.
‘Dawn patrol, huh?’
‘Best waves always roll in at 6 a.m.’
I nodded at the board fragments propped against the apartment block.
Garrett slid past me out into the fresh morning air to stare at Zeke’s broken board. A gust of wind caught one of the pieces and sent it flying. I went after it, and when I turned around I saw Garrett kicking the other half, leaving his own dents and scrapes in t
he fibreglass.
I didn’t know what to say, and he must not have either, because we just looked at each other. His blue eyes were full of pain, and I guessed mine were too. I stood waiting for him to tell me what he wanted to do with the board, but he was silent.
I knew why: throwing the board away would be impossible. But the thought of keeping it was equally painful. In that moment I wanted to hug Garrett, or reach out and grab his hand, but I couldn’t.
Then he snapped out of the trance, scooped up the orange board pieces and carried them up the stairs.
‘Come on,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘There’s a pot of coffee on the stove.’
Garrett hadn’t blamed me for what happened. He could have; should have. Zeke had been trying to help my ex-boyfriend. If Zeke had never met me, he wouldn’t have been on that cliff-edge. Garrett should have hated my guts, but since the accident he hadn’t even raised his voice to me.
In the living room, the board pieces stuffed under his arm, Garrett paused. Then he made a clicking noise with his tongue, walked across the room and dropped the board on to the kitchen island, where it landed with a clatter.
He turned to the fridge, opened it, rooted inside, and then slammed its door shut.
‘Gotta run to the store to get milk. Back in five.’ He jangled his keys, put his head down and left the apartment.
My gaze drifted through the window to the waves beating against the shore, and then I watched Garrett jog barefoot towards the corner shop and I wondered how long he’d stay in Newquay. Sooner or later he’d return to Hawaii.
The noise of a door opening jolted me back to the present. He came out of the bathroom wearing grey pyjama bottoms, a razor in one hand and a strip of bright white shaving foam across the right side of his jaw. Even shaving, he looked gorgeous.
‘Hey, Iris.’
‘Hey, yourself.’
‘Wow, it finally came loose.’
‘Yeah.’
He reached for the tail of the broken board, his fingers settling where the leash attached.
‘Creepy,’ he said.
I looked at Zeke, at the colour back in his cheeks and the light in his eyes. ‘Feeling better?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, smiling. ‘That whole being-dead thing? I reckon that’s outta the way now. For maybe fifty years, anyways.’
chapter forty-two
You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead.
There on the rocks, Garrett had punched his brother’s chest. Blown into his brother’s lungs and pushed down on his heart, over and over, counting aloud to get the timing right. The sight of Garrett’s face is something I will never forget. Puffy blue eyes, ringed red. Nose streaming with snot. I stared at Garrett’s face, then at Wes’s, because I couldn’t bear to look at Zeke’s.
Over and over Garrett pushed down on Zeke’s chest, and nothing. Just nothing. Until I sobbed with the pain of it all.
But Garrett kept his cool and carried on.
‘Let me help,’ Wes said, the knuckles of his fingers white around my hand.
Garrett said, ‘It’s OK, bro. I got this,’ and kept going, on and on, beating that heart to keep the oxygen moving, and breathing hard and fast. Two breaths, thirty compressions, again and again. Hundreds of rounds of CPR. He kept on because it was the only thing in the world that mattered. And then came the sound. The best sound we had ever heard. A deep gurgle as Zeke chundered up a belly’s worth and two lungfuls of seawater.
In the days after the accident, the memory of it was like footage playing over and over in my mind. I remembered it all. Every second of it. It was with me every night and every morning when I woke up drenched in sweat.
In those dreams, I could never set him free. I would pull at that ankle leash and it wouldn’t move a millimetre. Or Garrett couldn’t bring him back. I would be slumped on the rocks with Wes as Garrett worked and worked on his younger brother, and nothing happened until the terror coursing through my body woke me up.
Standing in the light pool from his huge apartment windows, even while he was still taking in the sight of his broken board and the dazzle of a blue, blue sky, I jumped up, wrapped my arms around his neck, kissed him on the mouth and then rested my cheek against his shoulder and breathed in the smell of his shaving foam. Zeke picked me up, my legs wrapped around his waist, and he carried me into his room.
It seemed bizarre to think that in another universe I might never have got the chance to meet Zeke Francis, but thanks to Kelly dragging me to one little yoga class, somehow it had happened.
I couldn’t stop touching him, like my brain kept needing to check in that he was actually there. And I was spending every spare second I had at his apartment, which was cool as Kelly was there visiting Garrett almost as much as I was there with Zeke.
Saskia popped in a couple of times and brought food hampers, embroidered silk cushions and scented candles as housewarming gifts. Zeke always seemed pleased to see her, and she was always polite to me, but we were just so different. Apart from 1) being female, 2) being surfers, and 3) Zeke, we had nothing in common.
Wes was sometimes round at the apartment too, playing video games with his brothers, and they seemed as close as ever. Elijah and Garrett still avoided each other though, and one of them generally left as soon as the other turned up, which was awkward.
So Zeke and I didn’t get much privacy as, fair play, various members of Zeke’s family kept popping in, including Dave, who insisted on taking Zeke and his brothers out on a long fishing trip, where Zeke threw back into the sea every single fish they caught.
Sephy was a regular feature too. She hadn’t gone back to Hawaii and she was getting on great with Zeke’s dad. In fact, they were getting on so great that it looked a lot like they were back together.
My sister, Lily, finally came home for a week and, appreciating the irony, she took Zeke to the new Wetherspoon pub that had opened up which had been named ‘The Cribbar’. She sprang for lunch and a few beers, just so she could scope him out, telling me afterwards that Zeke was a nice dude, a bit out there, and did I know he was a vegetarian?
I couldn’t help laughing. I remembered how odd Zeke had seemed to me when he first showed up, so chilled out and confident. No one could actually be that happy and relaxed, I’d thought. And now I couldn’t figure out why everybody wasn’t like him. I wanted to be around that positive energy all the time.
I could feel myself changing too. As time passed, I began to sleep through a whole night, and one day I woke up just buzzing with the stoke of being alive.
It was, I thought, the Zeke Effect.
chapter forty-three
The rest of August was a blur of shifts at the Billabong shop and evenings spent at Zeke’s. On one rainy day, Kelly and I got our GCSE results. Kelly checked hers first and was stoked that she’d done well enough to stay on for A levels. Mine were mainly Bs, with an A* in geography and an A in maths. My mum was so pleased that she gave me a congratulations card and a cheque for two hundred quid. My dad sent a card too, with seventy quid in cash. A day later, I owned a Flash Bomb, which was supposed to be the world’s fastest-drying wetsuit as it had an inner lining that dried in twenty minutes. It took all my exam money to buy it, but it worked and was therefore worth every penny because it meant no more putting on a damp, ice-cold suit first thing in the morning.
Then it happened. We were sitting in front of Zeke’s huge windows, watching the sun go down in a riot of gold, the windows of the bay-side houses reflecting the sky, cuddling on his massive sofa and drawing warmth from each other. Lightly I touched the red knife line that Daniel had left on Zeke’s thigh, and I traced my fingers along the old scars on Zeke’s chest and shoulders. So many hidden reefs and rocks; so many near misses.
Zeke was too quiet.
‘You thinking?’ I said.
‘Maybe we should talk about it tomorrow.’
I was filled with dread at that moment. I just knew he was going to tell me he was leaving.
�
��You’re off?’ I said.
The hesitation before answering was enough to send my heart into overdrive.
‘Yeah, tell me tomorrow,’ I said, suddenly not wanting, or needing, to know.
*
The next day, when he’d told me, I sat there numb.
After everything we’d been through. All the highs, all the pain, he had to go. No choice. And he was going in less than three weeks.
And, if I didn’t win some stupid competition, I couldn’t follow.
I didn’t want to be one of those blonde girls that trailed around the surf scene, just someone’s girlfriend, some pro-surfer’s groupie. Getting in the way. An embarrassment.
If I didn’t earn my place, I’d have to stay in Newquay and do my A levels. It would break my heart and I could hardly bear to think about it, but it had to be that way.
It was all down to me. Compete and win, or stay at home. I’d barely been in the water since Zeke’s near-death experience; I didn’t even know if I still had an inner waterwoman.
It was like Zeke had told me before: he would never stop surfing. He had to get through the QS and qualify for the World Championship Tour. Not just for himself, but for all the family and friends that had helped him through his meth nightmare.
‘I have to prove to them, and to myself, that I can do this without drugs.’
So, if I wanted to be with Zeke, I couldn’t stop either. I would have to be as brave as he was. I would have to give it everything I had. And I would have to win.
chapter forty-four
September arrived, and with it Wavemasters.
Anders had officially entered me and Saskia for the Face of Billabong Showdown Contest, and another top surf agent had found a girl from Saunton Sands in North Devon, who could apparently carve so hard she’d been nicknamed Shank.