Blue Water High

by Shelley Birse

  He pointed to Edge.’Your boardies are so bright – lots of contrast for a shark to see. Perri’s wearing a kilo of jewellery, which flashes like silver fish scales. The rest of you were splashing in like a herd of injured potential prey.’

  He was as cool as an Arctic cucumber. ‘I got off my board because sharks eat turtles and, from below, your board – with a pair of arms and legs paddling on either side – looks like a turtle. Anyway, I went down to have a look. The fish were very relaxed, and if there was a shark about, they’d be jumping out of their skins.’

  Fly could see Edge was about to go into nuclear meltdown.

  ‘Would you stop saying if?!’

  Fly looked up the beach. A bunch of locals were about to head out. If they didn’t say anything about what might’ve happened, if they didn’t raise the alarm, were they prepared to wear those other surfers being dinner?

  Heath was clearly wrestling with the same dilemma. ‘If they got munched, it’d be less competition for waves for us.’

  In the end they told the lifeguards. And the lifeguards had clearly been having the same thought as Heath. They gave the Solar Blue crew a long lecture about how in the past surfers had been known to spread rumours about sharks in order to scare people away from their break. Edge didn’t like this theory at all. And now they were out of the water, away from the danger zone, the hassling began. Every shark joke Fly had ever heard came out. They made fins on the top of their heads, talked about the Fleshy Submarines, about Mr and Mrs G. White, they asked how Edge’s JAWS were feeling. Fly tried not to join in, she knew what it was like to be hassled, but she couldn’t help smiling now and then. Even Bec, who was on Edge’s side in just about everything these days, was hard to convince. She was the local, and in all the years she’d been surfing Blue Water Beach there’d never been a shark attack.

  Deb watched the hassling too. Fly could see her mind ticking over. She was cooking up something right there in front of them, they just couldn’t see that with each new hassle, they were actually making things worse for themselves.

  ‘They’re really enjoying themselves, aren’t they, Edge?’

  Edge wasn’t sure where Deb was headed.

  ‘Having a grand old time ’cause you got a scare.’

  Gradually they all went quiet. They could sense Deb was taking things in a new direction, and they knew her well enough to be wary.

  ‘And it’s given me a great idea for a new assignment.’

  She bolted away towards the office and started printing something from Simmo’s computer. She left the door ajar, so they couldn’t complain too loudly. They just stared at each other, counting down the seconds till Deb returned with the exciting extra work they’d managed to bring on themselves.

  Deb handed around a piece of paper to all of them.

  ‘You’ve all been paying Edge out for being spooked, but the truth is, there’s something that spooks you all, whether you know it or not.’

  The paper had the word FEAR written across the top, and then a quote underneath it. The rest of the page was blank.

  ‘So, the assignment is for you all to dig deep and work out what it is that freaks you most about surfing. Maybe it’s being held under, or speared by your board – maybe it’s failure – whatever.’

  Fly could see them all thinking, their minds already sorting through the possibilities.

  ‘Whether you know it or not, it’ll be holding you back in some way. And the good news is, once you have recognised your fear, there’s a heap of stuff we can do about it.’

  ‘Am I excused ’cause everybody already knows what freaks me?’ Edge asked.

  ‘You ready to get back in the water with that shark?’

  Edge flinched.

  ‘Right. So you’re not excused. I want you each to write two hundred and fifty words about what it is that scares you. You’re going to read it out to everyone and then we’ll come up with some strategies. Anna, Heath, Bec and Fly can present tomorrow. The rest of you on Monday.’

  They all stood there, staring at their pieces of paper. Fly could feel a huge ball of tension working its way up her throat. It’d been so long since she’d been pounced on by ‘the fear’ that she’d let herself believe that maybe it’d just dissolved by itself. Just when she thought her milk-can strategy was working very nicely, that shark came along and headbutted the lid until the fear was being invited to swim right on out again.

  The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from

  danger, but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm

  within that endangers him, not the storm without.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson.

  Fly stared at the quote at the top of the page till she felt like the letters had come to life, like they were crawling ants darting back and forth across the page. She got that it probably meant something important, that old Ralph Waldo wasn’t a famous person for nothing, but she couldn’t quite nail it when it came to her. Was her fear in the milk can, her memories of that terrible dumping, a storm from within or a storm from without?

  Anna was already in bed, her fear sheet full of its own wriggling letters. She clearly didn’t have trouble ’fessing up to what gave her the shakes. But every time Fly picked up the pen she could hear the howl of the Cowaramup wind. She could feel the wave pushing hard on her chest and everything inside her screamed for her to run the other way. What she needed to do was think about puppy dogs and rainbows and hummingbirds and fairies. She did not need to think about nearly drowning. Maybe Ralph Waldo was right. Maybe he was the most interesting thinker of his time. But he could stand on his head and burp the words to Happy Birthday for all Fly cared. It didn’t mean he could make her go somewhere every fibre in her body told her to stay well clear of.

  At 11.30 she put the lid back on her pen and snapped off the light. She sat watching the waves roll in through the open window for another hour. Why was it such a big deal? Why couldn’t she stand in front of them and just tell them she’d had a bad experience, that she’d been held under too long, that she’d thought she was going to drown and she wasn’t too keen on the idea? No-one would think that was weird. She felt confident they were all fairly attached to being alive. But it was the next bit that worried her. It was the bit about the fact that she still picked small waves, that she deliberately limited herself because she was afraid of it happening again. That was the bit that made her feel like a baby.

  She knew it would freak Deb out that they’d selected someone who wasn’t up for doing what needed to be done. She thought it gave the other girls the kind of advantage a competitive person would say was outrageous – letting them see your weakness. And most of all, it sent her back to exactly what she felt standing at the busted old letterbox on the farm, the day she’d got the letter accepting her to compete in the finals. It made her feel like she’d faked her way in.

  An hour later she crawled into bed, telling herself that she’d get up early in the morning and try to have a stab at the two hundred and fifty words. So why did her alarm clock fail to go off?

  Then she promised that she’d work something out while she was in the shower. So why did she let her mind go blank during the long shampooing session her hair didn’t really need?

  Then she thought she’d skip breakfast and scribble something down before Deb got there. Four pieces of toast later she was still at the table.

  The truth was, Fly Watson was not going to do the assignment. And that thought was almost as scary as the one she kept in the milk can.

  Chapter 17

  For some people, not doing an assignment isn’t that big a deal. Sometimes it happens, other stuff just gets in the way. But for others, it’s a sign that something is fairly out of whack with the world. Fly was one of those people. Not that she was a swot; she just did what she was asked. It made sense to her.

  If she was one of those other people, the ones who regularly failed to do what had been asked of them, the fact that she hadn’t done the assignment probab
ly wouldn’t have felt like someone had drained out all her blood and replaced it with fire ants. It was like she had some massive firecracker inside her T-shirt and if someone came too close, spoke too loudly, said the wrong thing, she might just blow up there and then.

  Simmo had called them out onto the lawn. It was one of those brilliant days where the sun seemed totally excited to be alive and perfect surf curled onto the sand. Simmo had already had a coffee with the lifeguards – he knew about the shark story. They watched as the guards put up a new flag and huge NO SWIMMING signs, with appropriate pictures for anyone who couldn’t read English. The morning’s training plan was an arm-breaking paddleboard session. They’d been complaining about it all week and Heath and Matt could suddenly see an angle. Simmo listened intently as they batted the details back and forth about how long the shark was, about how close it came to nibbling on Edge’s leg, both of them cooking up a story too scary to possibly allow them to do the hardcore paddleboarding.

  Simmo didn’t dismiss the shark theory completely. He’d been around long enough to see stranger things happen, and, let’s face it, he wasn’t prepared to take the heat if one of them got munched.

  Then it dawned on them – no training in the water probably meant no surfing either.

  Simmo grinned broadly. ‘Nature’s a cruel teacher sometimes, boys.’

  They all stared at the perfect surf they weren’t allowed to play in.

  ‘But,’ Simmo smiled, ‘because I am a man of compassion I’m prepared to cut you some slack.’

  He had their attention now.

  ‘You can have one of the treats I’ve been saving up. In the back of my van are seven blank, unresined boards. They’ve been donated by a local maker. You guys are in charge of design and they’re going to be auctioned at the surf club bonfire on the weekend. And …’ Simmo mimicked a drumroll, ‘you guys get to keep half of whatever people pay for them.’

  There was a ripple of approval – all of them could do with a little cash injection. Fly felt Perri nudge her. She pasted on a smile, since it seemed like the right thing to do. But the truth was, the only numbers Fly was thinking about were the numbers of minutes between now and when she became that person who DIDN’T DO THEIR ASSIGNMENT.

  There were one hundred and eighty of them to get through. One hundred and eighty minutes. Ten thousand, eight hundred seconds. Not that she was counting. While everyone else got to work on their board blanks, making sketches, choosing colours, thinking themes, Fly was ticking those numbers down, wondering what it was going to be like. Deb wasn’t one to be messed with, but it was like the course had been laid and Fly had no choice but to follow it.

  Anna could tell she was distracted and made lots of suggestions about what Fly could draw, but her hand was frozen. She wandered between the other boards, watching what was going on. She paused by Heath’s shoulder.

  ‘What are you drawing?’

  Heath didn’t raise his head. He was sketching something out on a large piece of butcher’s paper.

  ‘Don’t think you’d get it, mate.’

  Since their time down the coast, Heath had taken to using the m word and Fly couldn’t help feeling there was always a barb beneath it. She’d talked it over with the girls – in fact they had all started talking over ‘stuff’ a bit more lately. Anyway, the girls reckoned she was being paranoid.

  ‘It’s a Maori story,’ Heath said.

  ‘So why wouldn’t I get it?’ Fly asked. ‘I might not be Maori, but I’m a human.’

  Heath nodded. ‘It’s a love story.’

  Fly swallowed hard – that’s why she wouldn’t get it. She would have a thing or two to add to the next conversation she had with the girls.

  She wandered back to her own blank board.

  ‘Hey, maybe we should keep the designs secret from each other. Have a big unveiling like an art competition,’ said Perri.

  Everyone thought that would be pretty cool.

  ‘Fly?’ Perri asked. ‘You in?’

  ‘Yep, sure.’

  Not that she had anything on her board to be secretive about. She stared down at the blank white surface until the one hundred and eighty minutes ran out. They must have because Deb suddenly appeared, chirpier than anyone overseeing a ‘fear’ assignment had a right to be, and called them inside.

  Deb had chosen the lounge room for their discussion, as she wanted them to be comfortable. She’d set out seven glasses of water and a box of tissues, just in case any of them got weepy. Fly could feel herself seizing up just looking at them. They all flopped onto bean bags and draped over couches. Heath wondered aloud if anyone wanted their teddy bear. Deb ignored him and explained that they’d all just share their fears first, and then together they’d work on strategies for how to deal with them. They’d all help each other find a way to give the thing that was holding them back a new perspective.

  Bec was first cab off the rank. She didn’t want to steal Edge’s glory, but the shark thing was her fear too. She’d sat up last night and realised it was something she thought about every time she got in the water. And she knew that sometimes it made her paddle for the shore earlier than she might otherwise, especially if she was surfing on her own.

  ‘Okay,’ said Deb. ‘What specifically is it about sharks that scares you?’

  Bec pulled a face. ‘Um, getting killed?’

  Everyone laughed. Everyone except Fly. Fly was too busy hoping they could string this whole thing out and maybe then she wouldn’t be called on to speak until Monday. Then at least she could have another stab at writing something tonight. Even as she thought this, she knew she wouldn’t. Something had snapped inside her. She wasn’t going to do it tomorrow, or the next day, or next year.

  ‘But it’s not just about being killed is it?’ said Deb. ‘Other wise we’d stop driving cars. Maybe there’s something about being chased or hunted …’

  Fly thought there was something in this. There were lots of animals that could kill you – snakes and spiders and stuff – but the ones we make a big deal of are the ones that eat us, like bears, crocodiles, lions, sharks.

  ‘Maybe it’s some old memory of when we were sneaking about with the dinosaurs,’ said Anna.

  Heath lifted his head off the lounge. ‘But what about the hippo, eh? Kills more people every year than any of the other animals, but we don’t shiver in our boots about old Mr Hippopotamus.’

  ‘Its name is too silly to take seriously,’ said Perri.

  Deb let them joke for a few minutes, then she reined them in. She’d done this before and knew that some of them would be nervous and looking for ways to stop the discussion veering too close to the stuff that really counted.

  Anna was up next. She launched straight at her fear. No big nervy build-up, no trying to work out whether anyone would think she was weird. Anna was scared of losing. She’d been doing it a fair bit this year, but it didn’t make it any less scary. Anna had been kiteboarding seriously since she was eleven and in all that time she hadn’t lost. She’d been winning so long she’d forgotten losing was even a possibility. And then she arrived at the academy and she couldn’t get away from it; she’d been drowning in a tidal wave of loss. When she really thought about it last night, she realised that when she looked ahead at the number of chances to lose, most of them with her name on them, she felt like one day she might just give up surfing altogether because she was addicted to coming first.

  Fly glanced around the room as Anna read her piece. She noticed that ever so slowly people were starting to settle. Everyone gave Anna their full attention, they listened and nodded and let her know that it was alright to feel like that. Maybe she could do it, maybe she’d just get up there and ramble off something about being scared of never being able to do an aerial. But she could almost hear her sister Nell reminding her what a shocking liar she was.

  Deb stood up, gave Anna a pat on the shoulder. She’d done well and, not that it made any difference, but she knew Anna was as capable of winning their co
mp as any of the others.

  Then Deb smiled at Fly. ‘You’re up.’

  Fly took a deep breath. ‘I’m not doing it,’ she said.

  It was like saying words that someone else had written and which they hadn’t bothered to soften up. There was no ‘Would you mind terribly if I gave it a miss?’ or ‘Would it be cool if I did something else?’ Just a I’m not doing it.

  Everyone stared.

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ said Deb.

  ‘I’m not going to do the assignment.’

  The room went very quiet. Bang out of nowhere, an A-grade stand-off was happening right before their very eyes. And from the girl least likely. Nobody breathed.

  ‘Maybe we’ll talk about it during the break, Fly.’

  ‘We can talk about it. But I’m still not doing it.’

  Deb’s eyes narrowed. You didn’t push Deb. Fly knew this, but she couldn’t help herself. Her fear of prising open the milk can of fear for all of them to see was worse than her fear of what Deb would do to her.

  ‘This isn’t optional, Fly. This is an assignment. It’s for points.’

  Fly felt the strange thrill of disobedience rising up inside her. She managed somehow to hold Deb’s stare.

  ‘So I’ll miss out on the points.’

  Deb kept her cool, but she wasn’t happy. ‘We’ll have a bit of a chat after this, Fly.’

  She turned to Heath.

  Fly sat numbly through Heath’s talk, trying to work out how it was that for such a complete and utter goody-two-shoes, she’d managed to spend more time in trouble this year than she had in her whole life. She didn’t have an answer. Plugging back in she heard that Heath’s fear was that he would go nuts and become a bum. She couldn’t be sure whether Deb’s confused response was because she was busy cooking up some terrible punishments for Fly with the other half of her brain, or if she really was just confused. Heath always seemed to wrong-foot Deb. He spent so much time joking, she was never quite sure when to take him at his word. Heath looked earnest enough, and he offered to try and think of something more related to surfing if it’d make it easier. Deb shrugged. If that was his fear, that’s what they’d work with. And then she let the others go and looked at Fly. Fly didn’t need an interpreter to know the look was an instruction to go directly to Deb’s office, not to pass Go, not to collect two hundred dollars.