The Day Of The Wave

by Wicks, Becky

  I rake a hand through my hair. 'Not so long.'

  'She seems nice.'

  'She is. She's really nice.'

  Izzy's silent for a moment. I can feel her eyes on me as I roll my bottle between both my palms. 'There were loud Americans on the bus,' she says eventually. I grin, looking up. I pretend to be shocked.

  'I don't know how that's possible. I mean, I don't know how you could've heard them over the loud British people.'

  'Brits aren't loud, we're very quiet and conservative,' she says, smirking.

  'Not after twenty shots of vodka and a bucket,' I tell her. 'It's always the Brits who throw up first. Then the Aussies. Then the Swedes, God bless 'em. The Russian's don't vomit.'

  She raises her eyebrows. 'Did you say bucket?'

  'You haven't had a bucket?'

  'That sounds scary. Why would I want a bucket of alcohol?'

  'You say that now,' I tease her. 'But you only just got here. You're a Brit, you'll crack eventually. It's in your blood.'

  'Getting horribly drunk?'

  'Absolutely!'

  'I think you're generalizing, Benjamin,' she tells me with faux annoyance. 'Some of us just like to read Jane Austin and model top hats in bright red phone boxes.'

  'Har har!' I get up from the chair. 'Can I interest you in another beverage, my lady? It's been a pretty bloody shit day for you, so far.'

  She rolls her eyes, holds up her bottle with a good half still left. 'Oh God, is that your attempt at a British accent?'

  'Good, huh?'

  'Bad. Don't do that again. Ever.'

  'Cor blimey, that's a bit rude, I'll tell the Queen you said that, you cheeky monkey.'

  She laughs and it's infectious, the way she holds her head back now and closes her eyes, puts one hand to her heart. 'That's awful, seriously, stop!'

  I'm laughing now too as she scrunches up her nose and shakes her head. Every time a new expression crosses her features I can't help feeling like I'm seeing her for the first time. But I can't stop comparing her now to the teenager she was when I last saw her. She was always striking but she's grown into her features even more. Her cheekbones are softly slanted and her slightly upturned nose gives her a cuter, younger look; still girlish in spite of being twenty-six. A woman.

  She catches me looking at her, still standing here with my empty bottle. 'I haven't had a beer in... I don't know how long,' she tells me now, looking at me like I might reprimand her.

  'Then you definitely need another.' I jog past her quickly to the steps, head next door. I feel like that kid all over again; the one who poked fun at her, vying for her attention, bouncing up the beach after her like a puppy dog. I need to get a grip, though. She's not here to rekindle some stupid half-lit flame and that's not why I asked her here either.

  Isn't it?

  I shake the thought from my head, grab two more beers. When I step back onto her porch she's turned around again to the ocean. I put her new Chang on the floor. 'What are you thinking?' I ask her. I hope she's getting used to the view. I hope it's not still freaking her out.

  'I'm thinking how pretty it is,' she says. 'But I'm never going in that water. I don't know how you do it.' She takes what I think are three small sips of beer in quick succession. 'I don't know how you make your living doing it after...' she trails off.

  'Sonthi thinks it's messed up how much I love it, too, considering what happened,' I tell her, fixed on the horizon now. 'I just knew I couldn't let that fear control me.'

  'You're braver than me,' she says quietly and I grip my bottle, wait for her to ask me more about that day. She doesn't know the details, of course; what happened once we were out there. No one knows that but Dao - the only one who survived. He doesn't come back here much.

  'How did you meet Sonthi?' she says instead.

  'In the hospital, after it happened.'

  'Wow, a long time.'

  'He lost his whole family, he lost everything,' I say. I see him again as a kid, devastated and crying so hard his face was covered in snot. The bandage round his leg was red with blood. 'He was looking for them with his neighbor while I was there. We were all searching the lists.'

  'Which hospital?' she asks.

  'Phuket International. I went there eventually with a Swedish family when I couldn't find them anywhere here - Toby and Charlie I mean. They took Sonthi's dad to Phuket though when they found his body, and later his aunt and cousins.'

  Izzy puts a hand to my arm. 'I stayed with him,' I carry on. 'He wanted to see if anyone else would be brought in, and I was waiting there with mom... for news. We got talking, I guess. He was only ten, same age as Toby. He'd been learning English.'

  I fight the lump in my throat by swigging more beer and Izzy covers her face with her hand for a moment. Then she puts her hand back on my arm. 'I'm so sorry about Toby,' she says. 'And your uncle. They were both amazing people.'

  'They never found them,' I say quickly. 'We stayed two weeks looking for them, and when we finally left we sent some money over, too, just for Sonthi initially. Later he helped me get the contacts we needed to build and set up the school in his village. I helped raise the money for it in the U.S. Then when he was qualified I hired him as a dive instructor, too.'

  'Wow, you've been such a massive influence in his life, Ben.'

  'And him in mine,' I say.

  'How many people did he lose that day?'

  'About twenty. He had a big family. They had councilors set up to help console the grieving at the hospital... we all spoke to them but I hated leaving him there. Even the councilors needed counseling, that's what I was thinking.'

  'I remember,' she says. 'I was thinking the same thing.'

  We're quiet. I want to ask her what she saw, but I can't right now. I'm back in the hospital again, seeing the massive lacerations in the survivors who were wheeled past me in that hospital as I sat there with Sonthi like a baby seal still in my wetsuit. I couldn't get them out of my mind for months... the horror in their eyes, the injuries they'd been dealt by floating debris. It's not just drowning you have to fear in a tsunami; it's what gets caught up in it, the things that can sever and terminate and tear.

  Don't think about it.

  My eyes flicker to the scars on her arms.

  'It won't happen again,' I say again, squeezing her hand again and standing up straighter. I'm supposed to be making her feel better about being here, not dragging it all up again. I'm pretty sure neither of us wants that. But I guess that's the glue that binds us.

  The fabric of her T-shirt brushes my arm. I move away a little before I can put my arm around her. This is still so fucking weird. It's like some crazy-impossible door to the past has just opened back up - a door I thought was shut forever. I want to step through it, but then again I really don't. In those eight days we spent together, everything was perfect. I was the best I'd ever been. I lost my mind for this girl and then she was gone; obsession-shaped wreckage to add to the rest. Part of me felt like I deserved it.

  I chew on my cheek for a second. 'Everyone here has lost something, or someone,' I say. 'It feels a little selfish sometimes to talk about yourself. I guess everyone kind of helps everyone else to carry on, even when we're not saying a word about what happened. Does that make sense?'

  She nods slowly. 'That makes a lot of sense. Who's that?'

  I turn my head to the path where she's pointing and see Kalaya coming towards us. She's changed from her Dream Dive shirt into a short flowery sundress. I turn back to Izzy quickly.

  'I should go,' I say. The last thing I need is for Kalaya to see us in the middle of a heart-to-heart - I can still feel the sting on my hand where she scratched me. 'You should get some rest. I think we'll be eating at Pete's tonight if you feel like meeting us later? It's easy to find.'

  'OK,' she says. 'Thank you, Ben, really, this is all so great of you. You have to let me know what I owe you for the room.'

  I wave her words away. 'If you need anything there's WIFI in the resort restaurant, y
ou can Skype me from your iPad. Bennyboy789 is me.'

  She laughs. 'Bennyboy789. Nice. What's your last name? I never found out.'

  I stop mid-way down the steps. 'It's Edwards,' I say, looking back to her. 'And yours?'

  'Sullivan,' she replies.

  Sullivan.

  A moment passes, silent like the breeze with her brown eyes fixed on mine.

  'Ben!' It's Kalaya. I tear my eyes away quickly, run the rest of the way down the steps and path. I meet her outstretched arms and kiss her pretty lips and I don't turn round to see if Izzy's watching us. For some reason, the thudding of my heart won't let me.

  ISLA

  'So, this boy, stealing you away from us,' my mom said, raising her eyebrow at me over her plate of eggs and toast. 'He's from America, isn't he?'

  'Yes.' My cheeks were flaming. I stuck my fork hard into a pineapple chunk and tried not to look at her, or my dad. Ben and I had been spending pretty much every second together since the moment he got his uncle Charlie to loan me the mask and flippers. I'd left them to their candlelit beach dinners three nights running now to eat with Ben, sometimes on our own at the market, or at another shack that we'd cycle to on the pushbikes with Toby. They only set me free so much because Charlie was never too far away, although to be honest, he pretty much left us to it.

  They needn't have worried anyway. Ben made friends wherever he went. I loved how everyone in Khao Lak seemed to love him. Everything we did was an adventure and I'd never met a boy like that in England - who saw the world as some giant playground. They were all too cool for school.

  'Why don't you bring him elephant trekking with us?' my mom said. Dad rolled his eyes, turned his head back to his newspaper. I knew he was keeping out of it. My dad never talked about boys with me like my mom did. She wanted to know everything, whereas I think my dad would've preferred it if his only daughter never looked at a boy, ever.

  'He can't come with us today,' I said, casting my eyes over to the swimming pool. There were people out sunbathing already. 'He's taking Toby for his first fun dive and then Ben's helping out in the shop again. Oh, what's the time? I told them I'd go say bye before they leave.' I put my fork and my napkin down, stood up, looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine a.m. 'I'll be back in a bit.'

  'They're picking us up at eleven, don't be late,' my dad told me, looking up. 'Meet us back in the room, OK? You'll probably need to change your shoes.'

  'OK,' I said, looking down at my flip flops and my new red sundress. 'Are you bringing the video camera?'

  'You'd better believe it!' He broke out into the smile I loved. 'I wouldn't miss you and your mother getting hosed down by an elephant. YouTube doesn't know what's about to hit it.'

  Mom picked up her napkin and whacked him round the shoulder with it. I laughed as my dad pretended to start a fight with his newspaper and the banana still on his breakfast plate. I rolled my eyes, left them being silly in the restaurant. Then I ran off onto the beach and walked the seven or so minutes up the sand to the dive shop.

  The sun was blazing hot already. I watched three kids playing frisbee and a warm, happy buzz in my belly manifested as a grin on my face at the prospect of riding an elephant. Or was it more at the prospect of seeing Ben in less than twenty seconds? Who was I kidding? Ben was my entire world.

  I'd already decided he was going to be my next kiss. I'd had just one before, with Tim Smith - the result of a spin-the-bottle game at my friend Charlotte's birthday party. I was pretty relieved afterwards to have gotten it out of the way, but it didn't exactly rock my world. I'd been picturing how Ben might give me his. The night before would have been perfect - it was Christmas Day after all. I thought he might have done it when we were sitting on the boat and he was telling me about his uncle and all the amazing places he'd been scuba diving. My lips were tingling at the thought of it while he talked. My palms were itching to touch him more every time his leg brushed mine, but yet more moments passed and so did Christmas Day.

  I considered that maybe he was building up to it, somewhere romantic. Maybe he'd spring it on me when I least expected it. I frowned to myself. Ben wasn't always as outgoing as people thought; he was shy sometimes too, like me, especially when we were alone and things went quiet. I just had to be patient.

  Toby ran up to me as soon as I reached the dive shop, took my hand. 'Come with us, Bizzy! You can snorkel while I dive!' he said as he led me over to where Ben and Charlie were testing the pressure of the scuba tanks. My heart was skidding already at the sight of him.

  'Bizzy can't come, she's riding elephants with her family today,' Ben told his brother, standing up as I approached and taking in my sundress, and hopefully my newly painted fingers and toenails. He brushed his hair off his hot face and lifted his shades. Our eyes met and the fairies started fluttering again. I knew I'd rather ride the waves with Ben on the dive boat than ride an elephant. I'd rather do anything that involved Ben. But I also knew that Toby getting qualified was a family milestone for them. Besides, I could see at least six other people getting their gear together - there wasn't any room on the dive boat to take extra snorkelers.

  I put a hand to Toby's head. 'But I'll be right here when you get back, so you can tell me all about it. Are you excited?'

  Toby beamed at me; his crazy brown curls, so much like Ben's but darker were falling over his forehead. 'I want to see turtles,' was his reply. 'And parrots!'

  'Parrot fish. Real parrots would drown,' Charlie said, tutting jokingly. 'Come on then merman, let's get moving!' He held out his hand out to Toby for a high-five and then did the same to me on the way past with a tank over his shoulder. I remember the anchor tattoo on his arm. The sun was glinting off his shaved head, as well as off the mask around his neck. He was just like a real life Action Man.

  I watched the other divers climb onboard. Ben walked me down the sand to where the boat was waiting and envy stabbed at me like needles watching the three Thai guys, Van, Tee and Dao securing the tanks to the middle with straps. They were laughing and talking and joking. I wanted to go.

  'What color starfish should I get you?' Ben asked me, throwing his flippers up and climbing up after Charlie.

  'A blue one?' I said, smiling.

  'OK, a blue one it is. You can only stroke it though when I bring it in, you can't keep it. It's not Christmas anymore.'

  'What was my Christmas present? I must have missed that,' I told him, surprising myself with my teasing. Ben leaned back over the side, reached for my hand again and brought it to his mouth. His deep blue eyes were sparkling like two more pools of secrets as I stood with the surf up to my knees.

  'Maybe I'll have to give it to you when I get back,' he said, staring straight at my lips. Then he looked sheepish suddenly. 'Are you really going to wait here?'

  'I'll wait here,' I told him quickly as the fairies flipped somersaults in my ribcage, over and over and over. Relief washed over his face and he grinned. Then he let go of my hand and I watched the boat speed off out of sight.

  *

  I wake up slowly, then bolt off the bed. Crap. It's not only dark outside, but someone's knocking for me. I can hear the ocean lapping close by; the noise of the jungle twenty times louder. I scramble up, pull the door open. The water is still a safe distance away, but there's a Thai guy with a basket full of cleaning products standing in front of me, wearing a white uniform.

  'Turn down service, ma'am?' he says.

  I stare at him, half asleep. He throws me an apologetic look as I ram my hands through my hair and look down at the crumpled clothes I fell asleep in. 'What time is it?' I ask him. He shrugs like he has no clue and I hurry back to my iPad. It's after seven. I'm missing dinner, I'm sure of it. They must think I'm so rude. I race to the wardrobe, grab a dress. It disrupts my pile so I have to refold everything quicker than I normally would. 'Give me five minutes? I'm going out,' I say to the guy and he flashes me a cheery smile.

  When I come out in a long green dress, I find the other small purse I
brought with me and stash some notes into it quickly. 'Pete's?' I say to the cleaner, still hovering outside. 'Where's Pete's, please?'

  'Up!' he says, motioning to my right. 'It good restaurant.'

  'Thank you.' I start down the steps in my flip flops, steel myself. I haven't been onto the beach yet; never this close to the ocean. I feel sick instantly but I push my way forward. The sound of the waves gets louder. In the distance I can make out a light but the only other things I can see are the stars in the sky and the silhouettes of the rocks and the headland. I start to walk. I have to get to Pete's else they'll all think I'm an idiot. I didn't mean to fall asleep for so long. My body clock is clearly still screwed. Or maybe it's the dreams.

  Breathe, Isla. Just walk. It won't happen again.

  I look down. A tiny ghost crab runs in front of me, making me jump. I clutch my purse to my chest as my heart keeps hammering. From out of nowhere, water rushes up and over my foot. I shriek and freeze, readying myself for the onslaught, for the slam dunk and battering. It's happening again.

  A hand on my arm makes me shriek again. 'Izzy! God, I'm so sorry, I should've come to get you!'

  I open my eyes. Ben's right here in front of me. 'I was wondering where you were and then I realized maybe you didn't want to walk on your own, I'm sorry.'

  The wave laps over my foot again and I stumble forwards. He catches me, put his hands to my waist. 'It's just high tide!' He's looking at me in such concern my cheeks heat up instantly. I turn around, start walking back the way I came. Idiot.

  'Ben. I can't do this.'

  'Yes you can. Please.' He catches me, stands in front of me. 'It's just high tide, it's no big deal, Izzy. Take your shoes off.'

  'What?'

  'Take your flip flops off, stand in the water.'

  'I can't.'

  'Yes you can. I'm right here.'