‘Are you Stacey or Fiona?’ Heath asked. ‘You didn’t say before.’
‘Sorry.’ There it was again.
‘I’m Fly – Fiona.’ And then, because it was only just hitting her, ‘I’m Fiona Watson and I’ve just been called to the Solar Blue judging area. I’m competing for a place at the best surf school in the country.’
Heath nodded slowly back at her. ‘Um, yep. That would appear to be the case.’
Fly knew how weird she’d sounded, but the sheer brilliance of what she’d just realised won out. She grinned hard and took off. Because they’d just called her. Fiona Watson. Not Mandy Dyer or Liv Simpson or Amelia Worth or one of the thousand other girls whose name it could’ve been. They called her.
Chapter 3
The judging tent was buzzing. Swarms of young funky types in official Solar Blue gear were chattering into mobiles, collecting judging forms, talking calmly to the unhappy parents of kids who’d failed to make the grade. On the other side of the tent Simmo was talking to another man. He looked up, waved Fly over.
‘Fly, I want you to meet Andrew,’ Simmo said. ‘He’s the reason we’re all here.’
Andrew smiled and shook Fly’s hand. He was young and tanned. Younger and more tanned than the head of a multi-million dollar company should look.
Solar Blue made surfboards and wetsuits and sponsored some of the best surfers in the world. The Solar Blue Surf Academy was Andrew’s baby – he felt like he was giving back, giving kids who mightn’t otherwise get a shot, a leg-up. But Andrew wasn’t all heart, there was also the fact that whoever won the comp would be prancing around the world for a whole year wearing a Solar Blue T-shirt.
Then Simmo waved over another girl.
‘This is Stacey Jervis. Stacey, meet Fly.’
Stacey Jervis. Fly had heard the name. She was the favourite coming in. Solar Blue had been watching her for years. Stacey smiled at Fly, but it was one of those smiles they talk about on those documentaries about chimps, the ones where they bare their teeth ‘cause they’re pretending to be non-threatening.
Simmo held out the competitors’ numbers for them to take.
‘So,’ Simmo said, getting down to business, ‘two ten-minute heats. Best of each added together gives us a winner. Any questions?’
Both girls shook their heads.
‘Better get on with it then.’ He gave them a grin and waved them away.
As they pushed through the back flap of the tent, Stacey turned.
‘You know what to do, don’t you?’ She wasn’t smiling now … and it wasn’t really a question.
‘Um, yeah, I think so,’ said Fly.
Stacey leaned down to tighten her leg-rope, pausing on the way to stare straight at Fly, her voice just a whisper. ‘You need to stay right out of my face. ‘Cause this spot is mine.’
Stacey stood back up and turned sharply, giving Fly’s board an almighty whack with her own. Fly looked down. There, wedged into the rail of her board, was Stacey’s fin.
Stacey reefed her board away angrily. ‘Watch out!’ she snapped, like it was Fly’s fault.
But Fly was too busy to respond. She was too busy staring down at the nasty gouge in her board. Her single, solitary board.
Stacey tested out her own fin to see if it’d been damaged too. But somehow she’d escaped. She stared at Fly, daring her to complain.
‘What happened?’
Heath was standing at the edge of the tent. How long he’d been there, Fly had no idea.
‘Stacey, um … the fin went through my board,’ she stammered. She’d never been any good at dobbing.
Heath was on the move straightaway. ‘Where’s your board bag? I’ll get it.’
Fly could feel the blood heading for her cheeks again. Her board bag was out the front of the tent. But it didn’t have anything in it. Fly didn’t have any other boards.
She thought back to the number of extra weekends she’d worked on the farm to earn this board. She’d worked it out one day: nine hundred sheep dipped to get the deposit, and another two thousand four hundred to pay it off. The smell of sheep dip was still in her nose every time she took the board out of the cover. It was old school, no question, but she hadn’t really noticed until today – until her board saw all the other boards, with their designer lines, and started shouting, ‘Hey! Look at me! I’m out of the Ark! I’m prehistoric! I’m a plaything of the cavemen!’
Fly frowned at her board, willed it to shut up. Because she loved it, for all its dings, it had history, it’d had many bellies pressed against it … and now it had a giant bite out of the side, a hole the size of an apple, a hole which was going to take seawater at a scary rate. There was no way she could compete with it.
Stacey was still staring. ‘So are you forfeiting or what?’
It took a while for Stacey’s words to filter through. Forfeiting? Was that what she was doing? But what other choice did she have?
‘She’s not forfeiting,’ Heath said, waving Stacey away with his hand.
Stacey shrugged – whatever – and bounded off.
Before she knew what was happening, Heath had Fly by the arm and was leading her away from the tent and towards the car park.
‘What do you mean I’m not forfeiting?’
Heath let go of her arm as they reached a battered Kombi van.
‘You can use my shortboard.’ Heath banged loudly on the door of the van.
‘Mum!’ He banged some more. ‘Wake up! It’s an emergency.’
After a moment the door of the van ground open and there was Heath’s mum, plump with sleep, dreadlocks tumbling down to her waist. She was the most beautiful woman Fly had ever seen.
‘An emergency? Really?’ said Heath’s mum.
Heath started rifling through the jungle of clothes and books and cooking utensils jammed into the back of the van.
‘Really,’ said Heath. ‘Fly needs my shortboard. Pronto.’
The woman stretched out her hand to Fly. ‘Hello, Fly-in-need-of-a-shortboard. I’m Moana,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Fly.
And then Heath dragged a board bag from the guts of the Kombi. An empty baked beans tin and a pair of undies landed on the road at Fly’s feet. Heath snatched up the underpants and shoved them back inside.
‘‘Scuse the mess. We’ve been on the road a while, and the cleaning lady’s pretty slack. Isn’t she, Mum?’
Moana smiled lazily. ‘I sacked her and gave the job to this spunky young thing named Heath, but he’s pretty slack too.’
Heath ignored the jibe, unzipped the board bag and pushed a board at Fly. She was eye to eye with the Tangaroa.
‘She needs the Tangaroa? Must be serious.’ Moana looked steadily at Heath.
‘Her competitor deliberately holed her board.’
Moana went very quiet, murmuring something Fly couldn’t understand. Was it Maori? Was it a prayer? Were things really so bad that Fly needed to be prayed for?
Heath glanced up at her. ‘Don’t let Mum spook you; she’s getting very superstitious in her old age.’ Then it was his turn to get serious. ‘It’ll be heavier than you’re used to. But if you keep your weight back you’ll be right.’
Fly stared at the board, held there in mid-air, but she didn’t move to take it.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It must be worth a fortune.’
‘I’m pretty friendly with one of the world’s great board makers. I got a good deal.’ He put the board into her hands. ‘Now, go!’
The first wave hit her hard, pushing Heath’s board right back into her chest. Nice to meet you too, Pacific Ocean. And it was cold. Even though it was mid-January and the air was hot and wet and burned as it dragged up Fly’s nostrils. Punters thought when it was hot the water should be warm, but any real surfer can tell you, the water always runs late.
Fly’s teeth chattered with the cold – or maybe it was the nerves. Whatever it was she needed to get over it, ‘cause Stacey was already out there hunting for the sweet
spot.
Fly glanced down at the Tangaroa. It didn’t feel right to rest her weight against this god – this guardian of all things that lived in the sea … After all, Fly didn’t live in the sea. Not really. And maybe old Tanga was actually here to voice some protest about her wading in and using the sea critters’ home as a playground. Maybe he was actually like some kind of vengeful eco-warrior out to rid the planet of the pesky human plague?
But there was a big set coming and Fly needed to put the question on hold. She needed to paddle hard to get over this lot, or she was going to pay.
She cruised down the back of the first wave and found herself with front row seats for the Stacey Jervis Show. Stacey was on fire, carving her way down the second wave of the set. She screamed down the face, sucking up every ounce of speed before making the turn, sending a wave of spray out the bottom that most grommets only dreamed of.
Fly was going to be cooked before she even got into the pot. So, instead of cruising over the last of the set’s waves, she turned, pointed her board to shore and paddled like a maniac. Her arms cartwheeled until she could feel that her paddling was surplus to need. This wave was taking her with it now, no matter what she did.
The energy of the water surged up behind her, growing and growling, and then it was time. Push up with the arms, spring to the feet and hold onto the escalator to heaven (or hell, depending on what happened at the bottom).
It didn’t matter how many times Fly did it, this was the moment, this frozen crystal in time, where nature and physics and gravity were in charge. It never failed to make her beam.
She flew towards the turn, her toes digging into the wax Heath had so carefully rubbed onto the board. She leaned forward, arms out, and willed herself through the bottom turn. There was a millisecond of reprieve. A moment where she was actually ahead of the wave. She spliced to the right and waited for the wave to catch up again, then zigged and zagged across its face, the wall of water now something to dance with, to dip in and out of as she pleased.
As she flicked out of the back of the wave she caught sight of the Meat Wagon – the red rubber duckie full of all the kinds of lifesaving equipment you didn’t want to think about needing while you were out there. Heath sat in the nose of the boat, a small digital video camera held to his eye.
He whooped at Fly. ‘Way to go, girl!’
As uncomfortable as she was in front of any kind of camera, Fly was too high from the ride to mind too much. She gave him a quick thumbs-up and turned back to line up again.
There was something warm in the pit of Fly’s stomach as she paddled back out. She’d arrived on the beach without a cheer squad – no parents or friends watching, waiting, willing her to do well – but somehow, in a matter of half an hour, she’d managed to get someone on her team.
She pushed over the last wave and paddled up beside Stacey.
‘Moron,’ Stacey hissed.
Fly looked up. Was she talking to her?
‘Absolute, total, stupid, bloody moron.’
There was no-one else that Stacey could be talking to, and even though everyone said she was hard to get a rise out of, Fly had her limits too.
‘Look! I don’t know what you think I’ve done …’ Fly trailed off because she saw that Stacey had tears streaming down her face. She wasn’t talking to Fly at all. She was talking to herself.
‘Always stuffing things up.’ Stacey added another nail to her own coffin.
Hmm. What to do? ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Fly. It was lame, but it was the best she could come up with.
They sat there in the awkward silence, another perfect wave passing beneath them. Stacey was caught in the jaws of a full-blown performance anxiety attack. Fly tried to think of something to say to move things along.
‘I don’t know how you usually surf, but that last wave was awesome.’
Stacey just glared back. If she had had a fork out there, Fly was sure she would’ve copped it in the eye. Another gorgeous wave rocketed, riderless, to the shore.
Heath broke the reverie, screaming from the rubber duckie. ‘FLY! Are you gonna catch something, or what?!’
Fly jumped, what could she say? Her competitor was having a nervous breakdown?
‘I can’t!’ And Heath knew why she couldn’t. Stacey was in critical position. It was like right of way in the water. She had first pick of the waves and there was nothing Fly could do but wait until Stacey was ready to take one. The rules were the rules. You didn’t just barge in on the queue at the supermarket ‘cause someone was upset and taking their time unloading the trolley … Did you?
Heath did.
‘So go around her!’ he barked. ‘You don’t have time to be so polite!’
Fly bristled. Who was he to start calling her polite? He’d only talked to her for ten minutes and he reckons he’s got her pegged? But before she knew what she was doing, Fly had paddled her way onto a wave she knew was too big for her. Way too big.
The thing about surfing is knowing which waves are good for you and which waves are not. It’s not the only thing, but it’s a big thing. And the other big thing is commitment. Once you have committed to a wave, even if it’s one of those waves you know is probably not good for you, you’ve got to commit – one hundred per cent. The other big thing about surfing is that even when you commit one hundred per cent to the wave that might not be good for you, sometimes you’re going to get hammered anyway.
Fly was going too fast and she knew it. She could faintly hear Heath yelling, ‘Keep your weight back!’ Yeah right, try remembering that the next time you’re free-falling from a six-storey building.
At some point during the fall, Fly could feel her feet lifting away from the board. She’d lost contact with the world completely and, as scary as that might sound, she knew it was actually the safest she would be for the next five minutes.
The wave curled furiously and let forth a gut-wrenching roar. The last thing Fly saw above the surface was Heath’s board shooting skyward and the leg-rope arcing away from her. Tighter and tighter. Slowing down only as it reached its own critical position, before it began the return journey, spearing straight towards Fly.
The board hit her right in the face.
The monster crashed down on top of her.
White water exploded.
Chapter 4
Somewhere out of the blackness Fly sensed the pinching fingers of pain. Horribly familiar. She felt like she was being hugged to death by an angry grizzly bear – roaring and rolling, coral scratching at her thighs one moment, her shoulderblades the next, and then her chin. Even at four metres below, Fly thought this was a bit out of order.
This was exactly what Fly had planned not to happen. Since that awful afternoon a year ago off Cowaramup, she had spent a lot of time and energy making sure this did not happen. She was very careful about choosing her waves so this did not happen … But somehow, she had let Heath talk her right out of her safety zone and it had happened.
The grizzly squeezed her hard again and then, suddenly, it let go. The thing to do was to swim towards the light, wasn’t it? She just needed to follow the bubbles – ignore the knives in her lungs and follow the bubbles.
She could see the surface approaching, could sense the sweet air oh-so-close. Maybe she was too keen, too interested in breathing, because Fly opened her mouth that second too early and sucked back half the Pacific.
She got the briefest glimpse of the crowd on the beach, the fluttering flags, the Meat Wagon, Heath calling out to her – warning her about something? – before she was slammed back down again.
Another bear wrestle, but this one seemed less interested in squeezing the life out of her. It toyed with her for a few seconds, and batted her away, rolling on to find something more interesting to play with.
And it was only then, through the murky bubble bath, that Fly saw she was still attached to Heath’s board – or at least half of it. The Tangaroa’s head had been split in two, and the one remaining eye glar
ed at her. It scared her. It made her shiver. It made her race for the surface to escape its angry gaze, even though with every stroke she knew she was pulling it right up behind her.
The buoy landed right near Fly’s head. In a matter of seconds, the Meat Wagon was beside her and Heath was reefing her aching body out of the sea. She was vaguely aware of the driver yelling at Heath – not the actual words, just the urgency of the tone, something about more waves coming – and then the sudden surging arc of the boat pushed her against Heath’s body.
And then everything suddenly felt very calm. The warmth of the sun on her face, the pleasant rush of the wind. The smooth brown skin of the boy peering down at her. It was all rather nice. She could stay here all day, she thought … and then she passed out.
Fly floated high over the boat as it roared for shore. Maybe this was one of those near death experiences she’d read about somewhere? As the boat speared up onto the sand, a small crowd formed. That was nice, she thought, that people cared. She saw Stacey head in from the water, a small satisfied smile plastered over her face. Then there was a shooting pain as Heath dropped her legs getting out of the duckie. More pain as they pumped on her chest. As they rolled her onto her side she saw that one edge of her bikini bottoms had crept way too far north. She had a lopsided wedgie and she wished someone would slip a pinkie under the edge of the elastic and flick it out. But then again, when she looked at the candidates, maybe not.
And then it started to bug her. Seeing all this. Maybe she was dying?
‘Fly Watson! Stop being so dramatic.’
That’s what her mother would’ve said if she were there. Because being dramatic was worse, so much worse, than complaining in the Watson household. Fly’s mother would’ve rolled her eyes and looked to Fly’s dad for agreement.
‘You’re not dying, for goodness’ sake. You’ve just fainted.’ That’s what her parents would’ve decided. And they would’ve been right.
Blue Water High Page 2
