Air

by Lisa Glass

  “Free money.” The boy touched the surfboard, appraising it like some sixty-year-old pawnbroker. “Double concave for control, extra beef for paddle power, four-fin quad set-up. You trashed it real good, but I’ll take it.”

  “There’s no fixing that, child,” Sephy said. “It’s gonna be surfing landfill.”

  “This board? Famous owner, yo. Might fetch a few hundred dollars on eBay if the crazy dude signs it. So I can have it, yeah? Yeah?”

  Zeke rubbed the blond stubble on his chin and then said, “Kid, it’s yours. You have a sharpie?”

  The boy didn’t have a marker pen but did produce a spray can out of his school bag. Zeke shook up the can and sprayed his name over the broken nose of the board.

  “Thanks,” the boy said, and grabbed the tatty board before running back to his friends.

  Zeke pulled off his shredded blue rash vest, and his bare chest looked awful, with a deep graze from the final wipeout, which must’ve smashed him against an underwater rock. He hadn’t even complained. Little rivulets of blood snaked down his abs and stained the white drawstring of his board shorts.

  “Oh lord,” Sephy said. “Let me get something for that.”

  She went in search of antiseptic cream while I took a clean T-shirt from my beach bag and dabbed the cut, hoping I could at least get the sand out of it, but Zeke flinched and turned away.

  “Leave it,” he said.

  “You’re bleeding. We need to get you cleaned up.”

  “A little blood is the least of my worries, Iris,” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. When he moved his hand away, I half expected to see him crying, even though he’d never done that in front of me before, not even when his nan died. His eyes though were dry.

  I looked around me. The narrow beach was packed with people who had come for the charity event, and at that moment it seemed as if half of them were staring at us. A hundred yards away, a cameraman was walking our way, his lens trained on Zeke.

  “Come on. We have to get out of here,” I said. “Or this is going to end up in the surf mags.”

  “Here.” Sephy was at our side again, dabbing antiseptic on to Zeke’s cut. I opened my mouth to ask him something else, but he pursed his lips. Message: Zip it.

  The commentators piped up with, “Drama aside, it’s been an awesome day and we’d like to thank the surfers who gave their time today for this great cause. Zeke Francis, if you need the number of a therapist, come see us and we’ll fix you up.”

  Saskia, who’d been very obviously keeping away from me, waved Sephy over to help teach a bunch of the older kids some yoga moves. “They’d like to learn how to do a headstand!” she shouted.

  “This is what happens when people hear you once had a yoga studio,” Sephy said, “even if it was fifteen years ago.”

  As soon as she left, I grabbed Zeke’s hand, which was sweating just as much as mine, but he wriggled free of my grip, raked his hands through his hair and said, “Everything is so messed up.”

  The cameraman got closer, and some other journos turned in our direction.

  “Seriously, Zeke, we need to go,” I said.

  Then he was right on top of us, shouting questions at Zeke, the other guys right behind.

  “Bad day, Zeke?”

  “No comment,” Zeke said.

  “Back on the juice?”

  “What? No.”

  “You were on it though, right? Just last year?”

  “Get lost. I don’t want to talk to you people.”

  “Golden boy off his head on . . . crystal meth, was it?”

  “Leave him alone,” I spat. “He said he has no comment, so bugger off.”

  But the questions kept coming.

  Zeke’s back was rigid, his fists clenched, and I dreaded him lashing out at the guy an assault-and-battery charge was all he needed.

  “Please, Zeke, let’s go,” I said, and then turned to the reporters, “Happy now? We’re off.”

  We went over to Saskia and Sephy, and Zeke said, “Mom, we have to bail. You need us to drop you at the airport? The organizers arranged us a car service.”

  “No, I’m gonna help Saskia a little longer, so I’ll find my own way. But I’ll call you when I land at Heathrow. I love you, baby. You too, Iris.”

  Heads down, hands not touching, we left the beach, questions and camera flashes hitting our backs.

  chapter twenty-nine

  In our hotel room, Zeke switched on the enormous TV and flaked out on the bed. I sat beside him and tried to feign interest as he flicked through the news channels.

  All the way back in the car, I’d tried to get him to talk, and even though he’d made it very clear he didn’t want to, I felt like I had to give it one last shot.

  “So, you really have no idea why they were asking you those questions?” I said.

  He gritted his teeth and said, “Leave it. I told you already.”

  “It’s in the past though, yeah, the drugs?”

  “How can you even ask me that? You’re with me every damn day. What, am I shooting up every time you go to the bathroom?”

  “No, it’s just . . . I don’t know what you’re thinking anymore.”

  He shook his head and flicked the channel to CNN.

  The more I tried to break through to him, the more he pulled away. Eventually, when words had failed us, and both of us were exhausted with the effort of trying, we turned to our bodies.

  Afterward, in the stillness, sweat-cooled sheets beneath me, I realized that it had passed midnight. It was technically my birthday. I thought of home, the year before, on the day of my sixteenth birthday. Everything was so different then. Being with Zeke and winning the surf competition had changed my life so much I didn’t even recognize it.

  We fell asleep entwined in each other and I slept soundly, with no nightmares of a lifeless Zeke pinned down in black water.

  thursday

  chapter thirty

  In the morning I threw back the covers and noticed blood dotted around the bedding.

  My period. My implant meant they were totally irregular, but I could have really done without a period two days before surfing New Smyrna, which had the unfortunate title of “Shark Bite Capital of the World,” with more recorded attacks than any other beach on the planet.

  When I stood up, I saw blood smeared on the armchair, a finger-sized splotch of blood on the pillow and a few drops on the floor.

  Zeke had never once asked me about my periods since an excruciatingly awkward conversation, which included, “The blob? What the heck does that even mean? Oh . . .” and me burning with embarrassment.

  Ever since then, I had maintained silence on the subject, the sudden appearance of tampons on the toilet cistern being the sole communication to Zeke that I was in fact shedding innards.

  I couldn’t see that tacit silence continuing, now that I’d bled all over hotel property.

  I moved the duvet to cover the mess in the bed and went to the bathroom, cupping my nether regions with as much dignity as possible.

  The door was locked, and I could hear the shower running.

  Zeke never locked the door when he was showering, and it occurred to me that I’d probably bled on him.

  I felt a splotch of something on my cupped hand, and I rummaged through my bags.

  No tampons, no sanitary towels, and the toilet roll and hotel tissues were both in the bathroom with Zeke. I briefly considered using an old vest as a sanitary towel, but it seemed a bit gross. Desperate, I searched through the wastepaper basket, past the litter of Coke cans, Hershey bars and condom wrappers and found a used serviette.

  Twenty minutes passed, with me clamped around that scrunched-up tissue, until finally Zeke emerged.

  “Happy birthday! Why are you on the floor? You OK?” he said, coming out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his hair hanging wet on his shoulders.

  “Not really,” I said, pushing past him. “You took long enough.”

  “
Hey, what’s up? Are you sick or something?”

  I locked the door behind me, just as he had done, and tried to calm myself down as I sat on the toilet and had the heaviest period of my life.

  Ten minutes later, I still sat there, turning the toilet bowl crimson, when Zeke knocked on the door, and shouted, “I’m stepping out for a minute. You need anything?”

  “Yeah. Wait for me. I’ll be two seconds.”

  I made myself a makeshift sanitary towel from a bundle of bog roll, flushed the crime scene, washed my hands and opened the door.

  Zeke stood at the window, looking to the blue line of the sea. He wasn’t usually one for gazing at seascapes, unless he was sizing up the surf, trying to work out how the tides, sandbanks and rips were working.

  We’d once had an actual row about going for lunch in a room with a sea view. I wanted to go to the Headland Hotel, which had a gorgeous view of Fistral and Towan Head, but he kept suggesting inland places. Eventually he admitted he couldn’t stand to look at the ocean, because one glimpse and he’d need to go surfing that second, and if he couldn’t do that, he’d be in agony.

  I waited for him to allude to menstruation, and when he didn’t, I nodded at the sea and said, “Charts make it even flatter today. What is it you call it tarmac?”

  “Asphalt.”

  “It’s doing my head right in. You must be gagging for some decent waves.”

  “It’s kinda nice to have some time off.”

  Nice to have some time off?

  “Who are you, and where is my boyfriend?” I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  “It’s been a real long year.”

  “We’re only in April.”

  Zeke moved away from the window and began searching for something in his rucksack. When he couldn’t find it, he looked in mine. I’d never seen him do that before. One thing I’d learned about traveling with my boyfriend is that there seemed to be weird unspoken rules about touching each other’s belongings. So much of our privacy had gone, but our baggage was ours alone.

  “What are you after?”

  “Razor. I need to shave. Look at you. You have beard-burn.”

  I touched my chin, felt the soreness and got up to check it in the mirror. My chin and upper lip were pink and chafed.

  “Don’t worry. It’ll calm down in a bit.”

  “Fricking stubble. I hate that I hurt you.”

  “It’s fine. Honestly.”

  Suddenly Zeke laughed. “Um, you wanna talk about this?” he said, holding up the teddy he’d found in my bag.

  “I don’t know how that got in there,” I said, trying to look unconcerned that Zeke had found something so deeply personal and mortifying.

  “You don’t need to feel bad about it,” he said. “We’ve all been there.”

  I shoved it back in and moved a jumper to cover it. I could feel my cheeks burning up.

  “I didn’t bring it. It must have got in there by mistake.”

  “Don’t sweat it. It’s no big deal.”

  “My mum probably put it in there, for a joke.”

  Zeke fished it out of my rucksack again.

  “Uh-huh. Your mom. Does it have a name?”

  I coughed. Tried to buy myself some time, but my mind was coming up with nothing. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “It so has a name. Let me guess. Er, Maverick? No? Fistral? Something watery for sure.”

  He was holding it between his thumb and forefinger, like it was toxic. I had to admit it looked quite gross and battered, but still. I snatched it away from him and held it behind my back.

  “Come on, tell me already.”

  “No way am I telling you that.”

  “It’s Teddy, right?”

  The jig was up.

  I walked my tiny stuffed bear over to the bed and placed him on my pillow.

  “Teddy says get stuffed.”

  Zeke started laughing so hard that his knees went weak and he fell back on to an armchair, eyes streaming. At last I started laughing too.

  chapter thirty-one

  “So I really have to run out now,” Zeke said, opening the glass doors to the balcony.

  “All right.” I waited for him to tell me where he was going, but he said nothing.

  “I won’t be long.”

  “Are you going to see Chase?”

  “No, he has to work. He’s helping his dad with the sale of some sky-loft condos. We probably won’t see him until your contest.”

  “Did your mum ring yet?”

  “Yeah, her flight was on time and she made the train from Paddington. She says hi. So, I’m gonna go grab us some breakfast. You have any requests?”

  “Anything that looks good. I honestly don’t mind. If you’re going past CVS, can you get me some, um . . . Actually I’ll come with you.”

  “I can pick up whatever you need.”

  “No, it’s fine. I need . . . girl stuff.”

  “Like tampons or something?”

  “Honestly, don’t worry.”

  “Well, I can buy that. I mean, it’s clear they’re not for me, so—”

  “Zeke, I can buy my own tampons. I’ll come with you. When are you leaving?”

  “Now. Don’t sweat it. I’ll get your tampons. Here,” he said, turning the TV on again, “chill.”

  And with that, he practically ran out of the room, only pausing to grab his wallet from a side table.

  When Zeke got back, he was grinning from ear to ear. The walk and fresh air had obviously done him good.

  “Damn, I love this place.”

  “What happened?”

  “Miami happened.”

  He handed me a carrier bag that contained three boxes of tampons in “Lite,” “Regular” and “Super” and four packs of sanitary towels, two with wings, and two without.

  “Wow, err, thanks,” I said. “That should keep me going for a while. Probably until Christmas.”

  “I didn’t know how many you needed. Don’t girls bleed a lot?”

  “Not quite that much.”

  “It’s not like I had sisters growing up. I just guessed.”

  “Well, thank you. Weren’t you embarrassed buying all of that?”

  “No. I just told the chick on the register I manage a strip club.”

  “Zeke!”

  “I’m kidding. I said nothing. She said nothing. It was fine.”

  “Did you do what you needed to do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you didn’t run into any aggro reporters?” This was a weak joke, admittedly, and he didn’t even acknowledge it.

  “I might need to run out again later. I forgot to buy a razor.”

  “You were literally just in CVS.”

  “I got distracted by absorbencies and flow charts.”

  Zeke’s iPad started playing the familiar Skype ringtone.

  “It’s for you,” he said.

  When I accepted the call, I saw my mum’s face, huge, right in near the webcam.

  “HELLO, MIAMI!”

  “Hi, Mum.”

  Before I could say anything else, the sound from the iPad speakers started to distort, due to various unseen people belting out:

  “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU SQUASHED TOMATOES AND STEW,

  BREAD AND BUTTER IN THE GUTTER HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.”

  Zeke looked over at me, one eyebrow raised.

  “Don’t ask,” I said.

  My mum moved her head out of the way, and I saw her hand come down to pick up the webcam, which panned around the room.

  Squeezed into my living room were Aunt Zoe, Cara, Uncle Keith, Wes, Elijah, Garrett, Kelly, Zeke’s stepdad Dave, my mum’s elderly aunt and uncles, plus a few of my neighbors. And standing right at the back of them all, in a room he hadn’t been allowed into for a decade, was my dad.

  He had even less hair on his head than the last time I saw him, but had grown an alarming mustache to make up for it.

  He gave me a little wave and I waved back at him, and was then hit
by a wave of homesickness.

  My mum’s face filled the screen again.

  “Aunt Zoe has something she wants to tell you.”

  Aunt Zoe’s face replaced my mum’s, and she was beaming with excitement.

  “Guess what?”

  “Hi, Aunt Zoe!”

  “Guess who has another cousin on the way?”

  “Oh my God! You’re expecting too?”

  My mum’s face shot into view again. “What do you mean, ‘too’?”

  “Calm down, Mum I wasn’t talking about me.”

  “Phew. As you were.”

  Aunt Zoe came back into view.

  “Congratulations! You must be so excited!”

  “I am! I’m only ten weeks, but I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer. So who else is pregnant?”

  “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say . . .”

  I heard Zeke’s stepdad in the background cough and say, “Sephy is!”

  The camera panned around them again, and I could see them all firing questions at Dave, except Garrett and Wes, who had evidently already had the news.

  “Two babies coming into the family,” my mum said. “How wonderful. Iris, don’t go making it three, and I’m talking to you too, Zeke.”

  “Mum. Please.”

  “Now we have that lovely bit of business out of the way, here’s your real present.”

  She picked up the webcam again and took it to the living room window.

  On the drive was a yellow camper van.

  “It’s yours,” she said.

  “Oh my God, really? I have my own van!”

  I heard my dad’s voice say, “Yeah, and it’s not a shitheap either.”

  “Wow, I love it. Thank you all so much. Woohoo!”

  “Your dad’s been working on it all year,” my mum said, with a slight grimace. “Now, when are you going to come home and learn how to drive it?”

  I looked at Zeke, who said, “Your British contest?”

  “Mum, it’s the Billabong contest final at Fistral on the twenty-third of June.”

  “That’s the earliest you can come? Two months?” The disappointment was obvious in her voice.

  I heard my great-uncle say, “If the maid’s short of money, I’ll pay for a plane ticket. Her chap can pay for himself. I hear he ain’t short of a bob or two.”