Blue Water High

by Shelley Birse

  Fly stared down at her feet. This was not somewhere she wanted to go.

  ‘Don’t tell her, but I’d rather catch the bus with you than Perri any day of the week.’

  Fly smiled off the compliment. ‘You don’t have to be nice. It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’

  ‘Yes you are. You’re just trying to make me feel better.’

  Heath took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Fly. I’ve only got –’ he did a quick count on his fingers, ‘nine words to say to you.’

  Fly was slightly alarmed at the suddenly serious tone.

  ‘I don’t think of you in a sisterly way.’

  Yep – that was nine. Fly felt the butterflies take off downstairs.

  ‘I’m, um, not sure what that means.’

  ‘Think about it. If you’re so grown up, you can read between the lines.’

  And before she knew what was happening, she and Heath were staring at each other, they were in that frozen moment where they both knew they were about to kiss. There was no crowd of jeering schoolkids, no-one counting them down. Just Heath and Fly moving slowly, deliberately towards each other. Their lips touched and Fly felt like all the blood in her veins had been replaced with maple syrup …

  She let herself enjoy the lovely warm sensation for all of five seconds before she reeled backwards.

  ‘Oh,’ she stammered. ‘That was definitely …’

  ‘That was definitely what?’ Heath asked, clearly confused.

  ‘That was definitely not meant to happen.’

  If Fly had hung out for another couple of seconds she would’ve seen the hurt on Heath’s face. But she didn’t. She was out the door in a flash.

  It was bucketing down. She stood where the annexe used to be, in the pouring rain, blinking and regretting and wishing it was her fifteenth birthday all over again. She pined for that G-rated film. She forgave those cartoon pyjamas. She wished it wasn’t raining so hard.

  Heath left her out there for a good fifteen minutes before he couldn’t stand it any longer. When he got to the door she was wrestling with her board bag.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked from the doorway.

  ‘I’m just getting my board bag,’ she said.

  ‘Yep I can see that. I’m not sure that now is such a good time to surf …’

  Fly slipped her board out of the silver bag and slid it into the van. She picked up the dripping bag and squeezed back in past Heath.

  ‘You know what?’ she said brightly to no-one in particular. ‘I’m completely stuffed. I’m just going to get in my bag and curl up on the floor.’

  She was already standing in the bottom half of the bag, and leaned down and dragged the zipper upwards, wriggling and jiggling to get her arms inside.

  ‘There’s a bed, Fly. The table goes down. You can have it, I’ll take the floor.’

  Fly shook her head. ‘No need, I’m going to be snug as a bug.’

  Heath watched, bemused, as she finally got the zip up to her neck and started hopping like some huge, crazy sardine towards the other end of the van. It was harder than she thought to get down onto the floor now that she no longer had the use of her arms. She crouched as low as she could, and then let herself flop on her side. It was as if someone had just reeled her in and flung her onto the bottom of a boat.

  ‘God, I hope the aliens are watching,’ Heath said to himself.

  He headed back to the other end of the van to get to work on the table–bed.

  Fly lay there for a long time after she heard Heath’s breathing signal he was asleep, really quite amazed at just how uncool an individual she was growing up to be.

  Chapter 14

  After what had gone down, it wouldn’t have been unexpected for Fly to have found it hard to sleep, or at least to have been haunted by dreams, a night-time rerun of her goofy behaviour playing over and over in a loop. But that’s not what happened at all. Fly went to sleep straightaway. She slept hard and deep. So hard that she failed to stir as a pair of headlights swept across the outside of the caravan. She didn’t roll over as the car pulled up right next to the van. Not even a sleepy snuffle at the sound of two men talking getting closer and closer to them.

  It wasn’t until they were hooked up and speeding down the freeway that Fly even had an inkling that something might not be quite right. The van took a hard, fast corner and Fly’s silver board-bagged body rolled bang into a storage cupboard. She opened her eyes.

  Where was she? Why did they seem to be moving? What was that steady humming sound? Why did her arms appear to be totally unavailable to her? After a moment she remembered she had placed herself in the board bag, but the answers to the other questions? She didn’t have a clue.

  As the van swung back and forth across the lanes, Fly struggled to her feet and managed to get one of her arms out of the bag. She lurched forwards and pulled back the curtain over the kitchen sink. Yep, there was no mistaking it. They were roaring along the highway at a million miles an hour, the dark landscape screaming by. Fly wrestled out of her board bag.

  ‘Heeaattthhhhh!!!’ Her voice got higher at the end with panic.

  She raced down to where Heath was snuggled up on the bed–table. Even though he’d claimed Fly was mad, she saw he had followed her lead and zippered himself into his own board bag for warmth. She shook him hard.

  ‘Heath! Wake up!

  Heath opened one eye.

  ‘Someone’s hooked up the van! We’re driving somewhere!’

  Heath obviously didn’t remember he’d joined the fish-impersonating crew, because instead of getting up he rolled straight onto the floor.

  ‘Help me with the zip, Fly.’

  Somehow she managed to help him to his feet so she could get at the zipper. It was stuck solid and as the van whipped around a bend, they were both sent backwards. They crashed into the table, which busted right off its hinges and landed on the floor. Fly, as fate would have it, landed right on top of Heath, their faces just inches apart.

  ‘Are you alright?’ she asked.

  And right there, in the midst of the crisis, there was a small moment that could’ve gone all romance on them.

  ‘Apart from the fact that I can’t breathe, I’m excellent.’

  Fly rolled off him and helped him to his feet again.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’

  Fly shook her head. ‘I only just woke up. We could’ve been driving for hours.’

  She moved to the front of the van, pulled the curtain back again so she could scan the whizzing scenery for a clue.

  ‘I dunno. We’re on a highway, but whether we’re going north or south …’ It was anyone’s guess.

  ‘Bang on the window. Maybe they’ll hear us.’

  Fly banged her heart out, yelling at full volume, but the car just sped on.

  ‘What about jumping when they slow down?’

  ‘If they ever slow down.’ It felt like they were doing a hundred and fifty at least.

  Fly banged and yelled some more but there was no response. Then the van fishtailed again. This guy definitely needed driving lessons.

  ‘What about the torch? Try and use it to get their attention.’

  Fly grabbed their romantic spotlight from the table and started flashing it straight into the back of the car.

  ‘Keep trying. He’ll have to look in the rear-vision mirror sooner or later.’

  Heath had a point. It was something to hold onto. It helped Fly feel a little bit less like she was about to explode. It was going to be alright. This would all work out before they ended up in Uluru.

  Then the torch died. Fly’s head dropped. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She banged the torch a couple of times, which only made the front fall off altogether. She moved back to the kitchen drawers and started rifling through them. Bingo! She held up a candle and some matches.

  ‘Are we having a candelight vigil now?’

  ‘Shut up, Heath, unless you’v
e got a better idea.’

  The next corner was a big one. It sent Fly and her newly lit candle crashing into the curtains above the sink. They were acrylic lace and spectacularly flammable. They were on fire in a flash.

  ‘That’ll definitely get his attention. Burning down the caravan.’

  ‘Heath!’ She didn’t need the grief right now.

  Fly grabbed the stiff tea towel and started madly flapping at the flames as they licked their way towards the ceiling. Maybe some of the spilt noodles had soaked into the towel because the flames started to die down.

  And then the driver suddenly hit the brakes in a big way. Heath fell hard and slid back along the floor of the van. They heard both doors of the car open and then close. A flashlight flicked around the edges of the doorway. Fly and Heath looked at each other – Heath in his board bag, the table splintered around him, the caravan half-filled with acrylic curtain smoke.

  ‘We’re in so much trouble, aren’t we?’ said Fly.

  The door suddenly flung open and they were blinded by a huge searchlight. A rough man’s voice yelled the kind of thing the farmhands at home said when they were bitten by bull ants in their swags.

  The door swung shut again and they could hear muffled conversation – a man yelling out to call the cops. They heard metal scraping on the outside of the door. They heard themselves being locked in.

  Heath nodded slowly. ‘I think we’re probably in a fair bit of trouble. Yeah.’ He wriggled around on the floor. ‘Help me up, will you?’

  Fly did as he asked, but she wouldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘Can you have another go at getting the zipper down?’

  As she struggled with the zip, Heath saw she was fighting tears.

  ‘Fly?’

  But she wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘Such an idiot.’ She pulled frantically at the zipper. ‘And I wonder why people treat me like a kid.’

  It didn’t matter how hard she tried, the zipper was just not budging. She gave up.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Can you try again? Maybe rub some of the candle on it. I can’t very well give you a hug like this.’

  Fly didn’t move.

  ‘A friendly hug. The kind you give a mate when they’re blaming themselves for everything that’s ever gone wrong in the world.’

  She couldn’t hold the small smile back.

  ‘And then there’s the fact that I’m busting to take a leak and if you don’t get me out of here fast, it’s not going to be pretty for anyone.’

  Fly hadn’t had much experience with the police. She knew it was kind of cool to slag them off, to call them pigs and talk about how they were agents of the fascist state – that’s what she’d read on T-shirts, anyway. But it always struck Fly that the police were probably the first people those angry T-shirts called when someone broke into their houses or flogged their bikes.

  Heath, on the other hand, appeared to be totally comfortable in the back of the police car. He tried to make small talk with the young officers, but they made it clear that he could save the talking for the station. Heath didn’t seem to think this was a bad sign.

  They were, as it turned out, about a hundred kilometres further down the coast than they’d started. The owners of the van, two brothers named Vince and Charlie, had been up late drinking and decided to take a spur of the moment fishing trip. The police weren’t too happy about the drinking bit and they made Vince and Charlie both take a breathalyser test right there on the side of the road. They only just passed and Heath whispered to Fly that he thought the beer breath might work in their favour, it might take the edge off the kind of words Vince and Charlie were throwing about – words like vandals, hooligans and juvenile detention.

  As they dipped in and out of mobile range, Heath’s phone rang. It was Matt, and he was clearly unhappy about Fly and Heath not making it home. He couldn’t hear Heath very well and Fly could hear music and yelling coming through the phone. Heath was just starting to explain what had happened when the policewoman in the passenger seat glared him into finishing the call.

  ‘What was all the noise?’ Fly asked.

  Heath turned and stared out the window. ‘They invited a couple of people around.’

  A couple of hundred.

  Chapter 15

  By the time the police car pulled into the boarding house driveway there were no longer a couple of hundred kids from school there at all. It was like they could sense the police car was coming or something, because even as they entered the street, Fly could see them hurrying away from the house. They were still crawling and scurrying out of windows by the time the policeman knocked hard on the door. The other weird thing was that, for a party, the house was very dark and very quiet. It was almost like the party had come to an end before the idea of the police had even popped into anyone’s head.

  And that’s kind of what had happened. Part of Anna’s grand celebration plan had been that while the others had Fly safely out of the way down the coast, she and Matt would organise a surprise party to remember.

  The boarding house and parties weren’t two ideas that Jilly was prepared to put even in the same sentence. But Jilly had won a trip to the Blue Mountains for Saturday night, leaving Simmo and Deb in charge, and Anna reckoned there would never be another opportunity like it. She and Matt had lobbied Simmo hard. They promised it would be over by eleven o’clock sharp. They promised the house would be tidier than when Jilly had first moved in. They had bought Simmo two tickets so he could take Deb to the movies to ensure there wouldn’t be adults lurking about to kill the vibe. It was the going-to-the-movies-with-Deb part of the plan that Simmo seemed to struggle most with. He and Deb hadn’t always seen eye to eye.

  While Bec, Perri, Edge, Fly and Heath were enjoying the best the South Coast had to offer, Matt and Anna were working hard. They sent group texts, they did the shopping, they decorated the house and built a campfire in the front yard. And then, because Anna didn’t know any better, she invited Mitch Campbell and Simon Gardiner: The meatheads of Year 10.

  Beyond hassling Mr Exeter, Mitch Campbell and Simon Gardiner spent most of their time getting into trouble. They were louts of the highest order and their invitation to the surf school party was like a gift from the gods. They sent messages to a huge crew of unsavoury types from other northern beaches schools. They brought beer. They accidentally-on-purpose dropped a full can of the stuff into the fire. Ten minutes later the can exploded, taking half the fire four metres into the air with it.

  Bec had already figured out that Fly and Heath must be stuck down the coast an hour before the bonfire incident, but that kind of nailed it. She’d called the others together and suggested they shut the party down so they could do something about their missing friends. With burning embers having to be stamped out all over the lawn, there was no arguing with her.

  Perri was the only one who’d been hard to convince. She worried about the social impacts of calling the party off so early. None of the others gave a toss, but she did have a point that it might just inflame the Campbell/Gardiner gang even more.

  Matt had come up with a plan to save their reputations and their bacon. He got Perri to send a group text at the same moment he cut the electricity. One moment the boarding house was full to the brim, party vibes spilling out through every window, the next it was dark and silent. And then, in the midst of the dark confusion, fifty mobiles all piped up at the same time alerting everyone to a party at the surf club. And now that this party seemed to have gone suddenly downhill, it wasn’t too hard to move the swarm on – and there was some small element of revenge in delivering eighty screaming school kids onto Casey Ryan’s doorstep.

  It was Matt who opened the door. Heath hadn’t gotten to the part about the police in his phone call, so Matt was fairly shocked to see Heath and Fly with them.

  Heath glanced around. ‘Cranking party.’

  Matt glared at him, then looked earnestly at the police officers. ‘There is no party. There wa
s a party. But everyone’s gone home now. Well, almost everyone.’

  The male officer didn’t seem to care. ‘We’d like to speak to Mr Simmonds. And perhaps you could turn the lights on too.’

  Matt was about to explain when a second pair of headlights pulled into the driveway. It was Deb and Simmo back from the movies. Things were about to go further downhill. Turning the lights on had been a terrible idea. It just allowed them to see the thoroughness of the Campbell/Gardiner demolition team’s work. There were plates of dip stamped into the carpet. There were overturned beer cans and chip packets everywhere. A lamp had been broken. The rest of the crew slipped quietly away to begin the salvage operation on the house while Deb, Simmo, Fly, Heath and the police retired to Simmo’s office in order to talk about ‘the situation’. Behind the door Simmo boiled and Deb fumed and, when they’d run out of puff on that, they swapped, and Deb boiled and Simmo fumed. Fly and Heath sat silently while the police told them what was going to happen. In Heath’s opinion they were making a meal of it. Not that anyone was interested in his opinion at that point.

  Once the police had arrived and convinced Vince and Charlie to unlock the van, Fly and Heath had explained how it was that they came to be holed up in the caravan in the first place. It took a long time to convince the police that the damage to the caravan wasn’t deliberate; that it was, in a funny sort of way, caused by Vince’s erratic driving. The more Heath described how each incident had taken place, the more the police seemed interested in Vince’s driving history and the less interested Vince seemed in pursuing the matter.

  But the rules were the rules, and even though Vince wanted to drop the whole thing the police had certain procedures to follow. Fly and Heath would have to go into the local station in the morning and give a full statement. Then they would decide what should happen.

  By the time they came out of the office, the house was looking slightly less like a war zone. The police officers nodded to Deb and Simmo and headed out of there.