Indigo Girls

by Penni Russon

  I shouted out, with a burst of euphoria. I glanced back to see Zara, the ghost of her, this pale figure in the golf club lights, skimming the surface of the same wave. Maybe it was my imagination, surely it was too dim to see, but I could have sworn a huge grin was on her face. I spun back around.

  That’s when it all went horribly, horribly wrong. Maybe I slipped a bit or lost my balance, maybe my weight distribution changed. All I knew was that the board flipped up, right into the air, and spun me around. There was a moment where I swear I saw the board hovering in the sky and I thought it was going to crash down on me. My eyes had a moment to look at that board in the sky and then I was down, under the black water. It burned my throat and my lungs. I plummeted like a stone, down, down to the sand. I cracked my head on a rock; I felt it tear into the skin of my scalp. I tried to swim up, but my head was thudding. I think I might even have lost consciousness for a second. My chest was tighter than a drum and I kept wanting to breathe except some glimmering instinct told me I was still underwater and breathing was a really, really bad idea.

  Finally I managed to push myself upwards. I broke up through the water’s surface and tore my lungs apart with oxygen. The lights from the golf club shone blinding white, searing my retinas. I searched the water with my hands, looking for my board, but it was gone. The water swallowed me again. Sobbing, I pushed myself back up out of the water.

  And this time when I surfaced everything went utterly, terrifyingly black.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Zara

  Having Tilly out there with me, for some reason, made me feel lonely, like how the stars in the sky look close but really they’re all millions of miles apart, each of them drifting in empty skies.

  At first I hadn’t wanted Tilly to come. But as we’d paddled side by side through the water, I’d started to feel the same excited anticipation as last time, and having Tilly beside me seemed to enhance it rather than detract from it.

  But I could see that she didn’t get it. Tilly was being pounded by every wave, and the longer we stayed out there, the harder she took it. She was tense, fighting the waves. She was trying to be the boss of the sea. I tried to explain about surfing by feel, to describe how I did it, but she just seemed to get more frustrated.

  ‘I need my eyes,’ she argued. ‘I can’t just do it by feel. My body doesn’t get what to do.’

  I was relieved when she said she was going back in. I watched her paddle away. The waves were building. It wasn’t till I was standing that I realised Tilly had chosen to surf one more wave. It was a good wave, she was steady on her feet. I was elated on her behalf. I laughed as I surfed behind her. I knew what she was feeling ’cause I felt it too. We were both there, at the same time. Zara and Tilly, Tilly and Zara. It didn’t matter anymore; we were the same.

  I don’t know what happened. Suddenly the big white board flipped up into the air, reflecting the golf club lights, doing one spin in the air before dropping back down.

  ‘Tilly!’ I dived into the water. I swam up and got my bearings, swimming out as hard as I could with the board beneath me, searching for Tilly and her board. But I couldn’t see any sign of her.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and called out to her.

  ‘Tilly! Til-ly!’

  I’d done surf rescue at school, but this was different. This was real. There wasn’t someone just bobbing around neatly in the water with their arm straight up like they knew the answer in a maths class. Where was she? Had she hit her head, or was she caught under the water somewhere, her arm or leg trapped between rocks or tangled in seaweed? Was there a shark? Where exactly had she gone down? Was she actually metres away, in any direction? Would I be able to find her?

  ‘Tilly!’ I called. Shit. Shit. Should I dive in? Should I detach myself from the board and search for her under the water? No, that was crazy, I’d just exhaust myself. I sat up on my board, looking around wildly, thinking every lump, every wave, every sparkle of foam was her. I couldn’t act. I just didn’t know what to do.

  And then the lights went out.

  I cannot tell you how dark it was when that happened.

  It wasn’t just like night dark. It was like the world had ended. It was like when the lights went out, everything had gone. Tilly, her surfboard, the golf club, everything in the world, vanished. Suddenly I knew I had to go in and get help. If I kept paddling around searching for her in the pitch black I’d exhaust myself, get disoriented, get lost as well and then I would never be able to save her.

  I paddled towards the shore, turned my back on the sea. I hated doing that. Like I was turning my back on Tilly. I knew it was the right thing to do, but another part of me felt like I was giving up on her.

  Suddenly, in my mind, I saw Rio in the back seat of the car, Dante outside the car, Lochie dragging him away. ‘We’ve gotta go. Come on, man. We’ve gotta go.’ Dante pulled away from Lochie. When I think about all this, I don’t know where I am. I can’t see me, but I was there. I know I was there. The back doors were crumpled in. Both of them were jammed. Dante must have climbed over the front seats to get out.

  I dumped my board, clawing off my ankle strap – why hadn’t I insisted Tilly wear one? Why hadn’t I given her my board and I could have taken Ivan’s, since I’d had more practice? I was about to take off up the beach when suddenly it occurred to me to dig my lurid pink surfboard into the sand over the tideline so we would know where to look for her. I did it as quickly as I could, though fear made me clumsy. Leaving the surfboard behind, leaving Tilly was hard. It was so hard.

  Dante rang the ambulance. Why did it take so long to come? And then the police came. Lochie was furious, he was kicking the car while they tried to get Rio out, swearing at the ambos, trying to pick a fight with one of the cops, but it was Dante he was really furious with, Dante who’d betrayed him, going back for Rio. It was so ugly. So blunt and awful. And Rio, I couldn’t tell then that she was okay. Where was I? They’d both forgotten about me, Dante and Lochie.

  Then my dad showed up.

  I ran up the beach, past the beach boxes, up towards the campsite. Running again, always running, running away from, running towards. Running just to run. Running to go faster. Running like a kid, running with the wind inside me. Everything so dark, jumping at shadows, like there was somebody there, waiting for me, waiting to get me alone, stepping out of the shadows. Pricktease. You know you want it. No. Run faster. Run for Tilly.

  I missed the path to the campsite twice. There were no lights now, except for the feeble streetlight above the beach box, nothing to guide me. I was crying by the time I found it, stumbling back and forth on the beach, searching with my eyes and my hands in the beachy scrub and ti-trees for the narrow path.

  The campsite, at least, was lit, the toilet blocks and the occasional street light making Mum and Dad’s caravan easy to find. I went to the annexe and woke Ivan. He rubbed his face and blinked his eyes open.

  ‘Zara? What? What is it?’ he mumbled.

  ‘It’s Tilly,’ I said. ‘She’s missing.’

  ‘Missing?’ He wasn’t sitting up. I shook him. I knew he was only half awake.

  ‘I can’t find her. Ivan, you have to come back to the beach with me. We need to go now.’

  ‘The beach?’ He sat up. ‘You’re wet! Have you been swimming? What time is it?’

  I was pulling at him, half dragging him out of bed. ‘We have to go now. They turned off the lights. Please, Ivan –’

  ‘Zara, you have to calm down and tell me exactly what’s happening. Where’s Tilly?’

  ‘We were surfing, in front of the golf club. I couldn’t find Tilly and then they turned off the lights . . .’

  ‘You couldn’t find Tilly?’

  ‘She’d fallen in, or . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. We just have to go.’

  Ivan looked at me for one second, as if everything I just said to him was rushing into his brain all at once. Then he turned and thumped twice on the side of the carav
an.

  ‘Dad!’ he shouted. ‘Dad!’

  I covered my mouth and backed away, huddling against the canvas wall of the tent. I was shivering. My damp rashvest and boardies still clung to me, but I didn’t feel anything. Dad came out and Ivan explained in short urgent rapidfire what had happened.

  Dad grabbed his keys from inside the caravan door. ‘I’m going up to the golf club to get them to turn the lights back on. Ivan, get everyone you can down on the beach. You’ll need torches and blankets and as many first aid kits as you can get in case . . .’ For the first time Dad looked at me. His face was like stone. Then his eyes snapped away again. ‘Go now,’ Dad said to Ivan.

  I ran outside after Dad as he unlocked the car. ‘I have to go too. Please.’

  ‘Stay here,’ Dad said, curtly. ‘Get dressed.’

  I grabbed his arm but he shook me off.

  Dad climbed into the car. ‘Stay here,’ he barked. ‘Jessica, get her inside.’

  Mum was behind me. She wrapped her arms around me, more to restrain than comfort. Ivan had roused Tilly’s family, and Ivan and Tilly’s dad were going from tent to tent, caravan to caravan, while Tilly’s mum and Teddy headed straight down to the beach with a torch. Tilly’s Mum was holding Teddy close to her side. I watched other people emerge, carrying torches, blankets and first aid kits.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said to Mum. I was still shivering and my knees were weak. I tried to wriggle out of her grip, my legs buckling, but she held on with surprising strength.

  ‘Come on, Zara,’ she said. ‘Come on, sweetie.’ She was pulling me back into the annexe. Ivan and Tilly’s dad walked past me. Neither of them looked at me. I realised I was making this weird high-pitched sound with my breathing. I scared myself with it, it wasn’t me.

  I kept begging. ‘I have to help them look. I have to find her. Please. Don’t make me stay here. Let me find her. Please let me find her.’ But I collapsed against Mum. I was too weak to actually follow them. The words kept tumbling out, as if I was praying, ‘Please, let me find her.’ Over and over again.

  Mum got me inside the caravan. She rubbed me down with a towel, pulling off my wet surf gear and making me put on trackies and a fleece and thick socks. She gave me two small white pills and I took them without even asking what they were. Within about twenty minutes I felt a hot glueiness spread through my body and I curled up on Mum and Dad’s bed. I lay there watching Mum who was sitting at the kitchen table reading by lamplight, looking anxiously from time to time out the caravan door. I must have gone to sleep because when I stirred later she wasn’t there. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t make my body work and I drifted off to sleep again.

  When I finally woke, the day was bright outside. The caravan was empty. My head throbbed, my body ached. I lay there for a moment. They’d left me to sleep. Did that mean Tilly hadn’t been found? Or did it mean she had?

  I was gutless. I was too scared to go out at first. As long as I stayed in the caravan, already heating up in the morning sun, then I could believe anything I wanted. Finally I got up. I peeled off the clothes I’d slept in and pulled on underwear and a T-shirt and denim skirt that were laid out neatly by the bed.

  The door to the annexe was zipped open and I squinted at the sunlight pouring in. Outside, Dad was crouching over some fishing gear.

  ‘Tilly?’ I asked. My mouth was dry and hardly any sound came out. I licked my lips. ‘Tilly?’ I asked again. ‘Did you find her?’

  Dad stood up. ‘We found her.’

  ‘Is she –?’ I couldn’t finish the question.

  ‘She’s at the hospital.’

  ‘The hospital?’ I repeated numbly.

  ‘They want to keep an eye on her. She was developing hypothermia, they were worried about a head injury . . .’

  ‘Head injury?’

  ‘She was conscious, Zara. That’s all I know. Ivan found her.’

  I sat down on one of the camp chairs. Dad barely looked at me. He went back to untangling his fishing line.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes, Zara?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘It’s not me you need to apologise to.’

  ‘I know.’

  Dad shook his head, not even looking up. ‘I just don’t understand you, Zara. You have everything. A beautiful home. A stable family. Everything you’ve ever asked for, we’ve bought you.’

  I covered my face with my hands. Those pills Mum had given me had turned me to liquid. I was soupy and slow but everything else seemed harsh and bright.

  ‘I scrape pretty girls up off the street every day. Just like you. They think they’re indestructible. They think it won’t be them in a car accident, or overdosing on drugs, or raped. It won’t be them that gets into trouble. I don’t get it. What makes them so special?’

  Was he talking about Rio? But Rio had been okay in the end. I’d seen her a week after the accident, at the movies. She was fine. Scratched and bruised, but nothing that wouldn’t heal.

  Dad drove me home that night. The night of the party. One of the uniforms must have called him and he’d shown up in our car. He hadn’t said anything, that night or since. The silence between us was shattering. It was the same silence, the things he wasn’t saying, that I heard now. I knew he didn’t mean Rio or Tilly. He meant me.

  ‘I get it, Dad,’ I said, flatly. ‘I’m not special.’

  ‘You’re just like your mother,’ Dad said, standing up with his fishing rod. ‘You only hear what you want to hear. You twist everything I say.’

  Is that why you stopped talking, I wanted to ask him? Is that why you stopped talking to her? To me? But he was gone before I’d even opened my mouth to speak.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tilly

  Usually I’d be kind of into being in hospital. You know, doctors and nurses fussing around, bringing jelly and icecream, people visiting with flowers and magazines, sneaking chocolate past the nurses. If it had just been my appendix or my tonsils it might have been kind of fun.

  As it was I just felt lumpish and stupid, propped up on the hospital bed. I was sure the nurses thought I was a bit of a pest, that I’d brought it on myself and I was taking up a perfectly good hospital bed that could have been used by some poor old dying person or a lady having a baby. I felt guilty about how worried Mum and Dad and Teddy were last night, hovering over me. I squirmed with embarrassment when I remembered that someone – had it been Ivan? I remembered he was there – had pulled off my wet clothes and wrapped me in blankets. I think Sawyer had been there too; I have this vague memory of him standing over the couch, frowning at me, while I was waiting for the ambulance. Why was he frowning? Was he still angry with me for pulling away from our kiss?

  After the golf club lights went out, I’d heard Zara calling me. I tried to call back to her but I couldn’t; my lips and face, even my larynx all felt numb. So I just kept swimming towards the sound of her voice. But then she must have decided to go in, because her voice wasn’t there anymore, and there was nothing to swim towards. The darkness was complete and terrifying. There was no sound except the sloshing sea and my own rasping breath.

  Can I tell you that I almost gave up then? I kind of did give up in a way. I turned onto my back and floated. I think – surely it’s impossible – but I think I even slept, only for seconds at a time because the water would tug my legs down and I’d have to kick them back up to stay afloat. I was so cold. I couldn’t remember if you could die of being cold, which is stupid because we did hypothermia last year in first aid. After a while, I thought I remembered that the moon had been in the opposite sky from the golf club, so I lay with my feet pointing at the moon, and keeping my eyes fixed on it, I kicked my legs.

  Turned out I was right about the moon. The waves helped to carry me back to shore. When I hit sand, I thanked all the gods and goddesses profusely as I turned around and crawled up onto the beach. That’s when I found Zara’s board. I knew she’d left it like that so she could come back
for me, so I collapsed underneath it, planning to catch my breath and then head up to the campsite.

  But I couldn’t catch my breath. There was ferocious stinging pain coming from my head. I reached up to touch it and – you know how you think these things at the weirdest times? – I remembered I’d cut my hair. I even felt kind of sad about it. I couldn’t quite remember what I looked like, and if I couldn’t remember maybe nobody could and maybe that meant that no one would find me.

  I found a sticky spot on my head, and I was investigating it with my fingers when I realised it was blood. I think that was when I threw up. I rolled over onto my side. I don’t know how long I lay there. I’d like to say I slept, but I didn’t. I just kept torturing myself with these awful thoughts, that I would bleed to death, that children would find me on the beach in the morning, that the tide would take me and I’d be eaten by something.

  Then the golf club lights came back on. I remember sitting up, trying to call out. Then I blacked out. It’s crazy because this is the good bit, this is where Ivan found me and I was rescued, but I don’t really remember it very well. I remember all the bad stuff, but I don’t remember him discovering me, or carrying me in his arms, or laying me out on the couch. (I’m kind of glad I don’t remember him undressing me, though.)

  Mum came in with a cup of coffee. ‘Hey, you’re awake again. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Okay.’

  She sat down by the bed. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I knew Mum wouldn’t buy that. She’s a psychotherapist, remember? Which is why I added quickly, ‘Can we not talk about it?’

  Mum burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Mum. Oh, don’t cry. I’m sorry.’ I floundered about looking for tissues but couldn’t find any.