Finally the bloke piped up again. ‘Four fifty.’
Deb was back at him in a flash. ‘Five hundred.’ Was she mad?
Fly prayed for the man to bid again, she looked at him pleadingly, she couldn’t have peered up more puppishly if she tried. Pleeeeease bid. Pleeeaaassse?
But he shook his head.
Simmo seemed to be thinking the same thing as Fly because he was reluctant to call it a done deal.
‘Come on, sir. A man of your taste, you sure you can’t find a couple more coins in the old back pocket?’
But the man shook his head again.
‘Hmmm. Well, I guess that means you’re it, Deb.’
Fly couldn’t tell whether Deb’s smile was genuine or whether it was hiding a whole host of horrors.
Just then the shark alarm exploded above them. Fly understood that it needed to be loud enough for people in the water to hear it, but really, that noise was off its face. Everyone scrambled to get away from the speakers. Two rescue choppers suddenly swung around the headland, followed by a couple of coastguard boats. Fly could see the old tannery man talking into his mobile, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes. He was nodding and peering, nodding and peering. As soon as the alarm stopped the crowd clumped together again. You could feel the ripple of thrill dancing between them because as much as we all hate fear, we love it too.
The shark was a pregnant female, four-metre Great White headed north to give birth. The choppers and the coastguard were going to give it some encouragement to take a deeper route, one further from the coast, further from temptation.
They all stood watching, transfixed, until the boats grew small.
‘But how do we know whether the shark’s really gone?’ said Perri.
‘Or whether it’ll just chuck a U-turn and head right back to finish us off?’ added Bec.
‘And whether she’ll be angrier now because of all the harassment from the choppers?’ said Heath.
Deb spoke from behind them. ‘Guess you’re just going to have to test out the fear strategies.’
Fly turned and Deb was looking straight at her. ‘The board … I’m so sorry you got stuck with it.’
‘Really?’ said Deb. She wasn’t smiling so Fly had no idea where to go.
‘Shouldn’t I be?’
‘I think this assignment went quite well in the end. I want to use your board as an example next year. The academy will pay for it. We’ll call it a teaching tool.’
Fly couldn’t believe it. This was how her big stand ended? This was the result of her digging her heels in?
Deb was already headed to the car. ‘I still want what you said on paper, Fly,’ she called back. ‘Two hundred and fifty words. No less. And I want it by the morning.’
Fly just nodded. The way she was feeling right then, she would happily have sat up the whole night writing an encyclopedia about her fears.
At least she would have if she weren’t having some other, more exciting thoughts. Something had happened to Fly during the auction, maybe it was watching Bec and Edge inching awkwardly towards each other, maybe it was getting through Deb’s assignment, maybe it was the love story of Hinemoa and Tutanekai … But something made Fly decide there was another fear she wanted to face. She was going to bite the bullet and tell Heath she’d changed her mind.
Chapter 19
If Fly thought she had a few butterflies in her tummy after her ‘kissing Heath’ dream, she had a whole herd of the flappers down there now. She lay in bed that night trying to work out how to word her change of mind, but nothing sounded right. Every now and then she’d come up with something so ridiculous it made her giggle out loud. Maybe it was the nerves or something, but once she started she couldn’t stop, she sniggered and snorted until Anna threw a pillow at her … and then she had to fight to keep that naughty laughter at bay. She could feel it wriggling up through her belly and she had to hold her breath and squeeze her stomach muscles hard to hold it down. In the end, she decided to steal Heath’s own words. She would say what he had said to her in the caravan. She would say …
‘Heath. I only have nine words to say to you. I don’t think of you in a friendly – strike that – brotherly way.’
That way if he thought she was weird, he only had himself to blame. Right? She must’ve tired her nerves out because by the morning she was too tired to laugh anymore. Maybe she’d get halfway through her sentence and fall asleep in her dinner. Not that she was planning to make the big announcement at the dinner table. No siree. She needed to find a chance when they’d be alone together. She just needed to keep an eye out and seize the opportunity when it came up.
The butterflies took off again as soon as they got to school. Heath and Fly were in the same maths class and, as unromantic as algebra was, it might be the only chance she had. Unfortunately their teacher, Mr Savin, was selfishly pursuing his own agenda and sat them in groups to solve a savage set of calculus problems.
The flutterbies stayed in flight all of lunch. She sat with the crew and nodded when she thought it was appropriate, but she didn’t hear a word they said and even looking at her lunch made her want to throw up. It was a kind of nice nausea though, if such a thing were possible. It made her feel all trembly and excited.
It was bizarre. Absolutely nothing on the outside had changed. But everything had changed too. Because of one thought inside her head, one thought, Fly’s whole body was popping and snapping, sending volts of new and strange feelings all over the shop. How was it possible that a thought you had in your head could make your stomach turn, or your hands sweat, or your heart take off like a rabbit? Maybe it was the same thing Matt was talking about; if having fearful thoughts sent your body a whole heap of fear signals, why wouldn’t having – she could hardly even think the word – love-ish thoughts send your body some love-ish signals?
The last two periods of the day were double science. It could’ve been double Swahili for all Fly was taking in. She knew if she didn’t do this thing she had decided to do before they got home, it wouldn’t happen at all. There was a house Scrabble comp on tonight. The winner got to shirk their washing-up duties for a month so no-one was going to miss it. Heath was in a different class up the hall for science, but Fly figured if she got to the bottom of the main entrance stairs quickly enough, she could catch him on the way out.
Fly was up and out of her chair before the end of school siren was halfway through its weary cry. She banged hard into the corner of her desk getting out of there but she didn’t feel a thing. It was like all the blood had gone to her brain, an army of red blood cells up there egging her on, making sure she didn’t forget what she had promised herself she would do.
Fly made it to the bottom of the stairwell in twenty-three seconds. Her heart pounded. Her feet itched and she shifted her weight between them as the roar of the rest of the school came barrelling towards the top of the stairs. They cascaded down towards her, a flood of chatter and energy at the thought of being finally free. Perri was in the first platoon.
‘You stand there much longer, Fly, you’re going to get massacred. You’re standing between two hundred school-kids and their weekend.’
She stood her ground as the second wave flooded past. Edge was amongst them.
‘The swell’s up at Longbeach today. Gonna get Simmo to drive us over. Don’t make us late,’ he called.
Fly waited until the third set of kids came barrelling towards her. Where was Heath? It was killing her … And then she saw him, loping down at the back of the pack, taking the stairs two at a time. He gave her a nod as he reached her but he kept moving, he didn’t click that she was waiting for him.
Fly had to shoulder her way like a footballer past a bunch of Year 10s to catch up. ‘Hey, Heath! Wait up.’
Heath turned, a question on his face.
‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.’
Heath nodded and slowed his pace so they could walk together. It wasn’t quite how she’d imagined. In her mind the
re hadn’t been two hundred squawking kids bumping around them like dodgem cars. She took a deep breath. Oh Lord, was she ready for this? Was she ready to dive into the bucket of maple syrup?
She knew she should probably look at him, but she just couldn’t manage it. And if she had looked, she would’ve seen something she wouldn’t have liked anyway. What she would’ve seen was Heath staring at a brown-haired girl walking gracefully against the tide, back into the school building. He didn’t mean to stare. He didn’t have any choice. Heath had been struck with a bout of what they bang on about in the magazines. Heath was experiencing love at first sight.
‘Heath …’ There you go; she’d started. It was on. ‘Heath, the thing I wanted to talk to you about …’
She stared at the ground, at her feet, which were still dancing from side to side. She heard herself telling those feet to chill because it wasn’t a good look. And then something must’ve let her know he wasn’t paying attention. Some weird invisible signal must’ve told her to look up.
Heath was staring at the doors of the school, completely and utterly entranced.
‘Heath?’
‘Listen, um, I’ve forgotten that stupid novel we’re doing for English.’
It was Pride and Prejudice. Fly had read it three times.
‘Don’t worry, you can borrow mine.’
Heath now started doing the side to side shuffle, his feet anxious to get moving. ‘No, I’ve – I’ve made some notes in it.’
‘You actually made notes? For English?’ This was big news.
‘Yeah … A couple. Anyway, you go on. Catch you later.’
And before she could say another word, Heath was bounding back towards the main building. Fly slumped. This wasn’t how it was meant to go at all. This afternoon they were all surfing together, tonight they were all Scrabbling together, and if she had to sit on this thing any longer she thought she might accidentally get launched to the moon. Maybe she would just wait for him, just chill out and wait and get it over and done with.
Then a new thought hit Fly. Heath’s copy of Pride and Prejudice was at home. And she knew it was at home because she was with him when he dropped it in the pool. They had all been sitting at the outside table, gobbling up the last warm rays of sun before winter really white-knuckled them. They were doing some study together – at least most of them were. Heath was juggling with his English novel and a couple of oranges. Which was all faintly amusing until he stepped back into one of the canvas chairs and Jane Austen went sailing through the air and into the pool. They watched as the book swam left and right, its pages fluttering as it made its way to the bottom. Fly had lifted it out of the water with the pool net and stuck it in the dryer. And that’s where it still was.
Fly turned and skipped up the stairs. She didn’t want him searching through his locker, wasting her precious confession time, when the book wasn’t even there.
As her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness she saw him. Standing by the lockers. He wasn’t searching for a book. He was smiling and chatting and batting his eyelids, for goodness’ sake, as a pretty brown-haired girl wrestled with her own locker. Fly had never seen the girl before because she was new. Today was her first day. In under three seconds Fly was wishing this girl had stayed wherever the blazes she’d been getting her education before today.
The girl was balancing her new pile of textbooks in one arm as she fought the locker key with the other. Heath – what a gallant soul he was – took the key from her hand, and in the process the pile of books came crashing down onto the floor. Fly watched them both crouch down, stumbling over each other to apologise first.
‘I’m Jane,’ Fly heard the girl say. ‘I’m such a klutz.’
‘Me too,’ she heard Heath answer back.
She wanted to throw up.
‘I dropped my English novel in the pool yesterday. Totally ruined,’ Heath added.
And in that instant, Fly no longer wanted to throw up. She wanted to smash something. Heath hadn’t forgotten where the book was at all. He’d stared her straight in the face and lied to her. It was a kick in the guts. And that he’d lied to her for a girl? Double kick in the guts.
And here he was, grovelling around on the floor in front of this new chick, telling her that anything she needed to know about how the school worked, he was her man. And she was going with it, handing over her books, letting him carry them like she was somehow incapacitated? Fly hated that, when girls came over all weak. It made her want to do something strenuous, it made her want to pull a heifer out of a dam, something hard, something she was proud that her sinewy muscles could manage. But there were no heifers loitering about in the school entrance, and rather than smash something she might get into trouble for, she ran instead.
Fly was puffing so hard by the time she got home she thought she might throw up just from sheer physical stress. But the running was good. Hard to think too much while you’re running. The problems all came when you stopped. By the time she swung into the driveway Edge and Simmo were tying the last of the boards onto the top of the van.
‘Where’s Heath?’ Edge asked.
Fly snapped back, ‘How should I know?’
‘We are talking about Heath here,’ said Perri. ‘Unless you write it on his head, you can forget about it.’
Without thinking Fly just climbed into the van.
‘Are you planning to surf in your uniform?’ Simmo asked.
‘I got her stuff,’ said Anna, holding up a spare bag.
Fly wanted to smile, but she just didn’t have it in her.
‘How long do we wait for him?’ Bec asked.
‘Let’s just go, alright?’ said Fly. ‘If you can’t get your act together, then, you know, sometimes you just miss out.’
Everyone stared at her, puzzled. Simmo climbed into the driver’s seat and turned to face the rest of the crew.
‘Is that the decision. Heath misses out?’
Slowly they all nodded.
Fly felt the smallest murmur of guilt as they backed out of the driveway, but the minute Jane’s face, her swinging brown hair, came into her mind, the guilt disappeared in a flash.
Longbeach was cranking. It was churning out long, smooth curves of water as predictably as one of those tennis machines spitting yellow balls over the net. Fly didn’t think she’d surfed so many waves in her life. It didn’t matter how many times she turned and paddled back out, there was always something just out of the oven, steaming and fresh, ready for take-off.
Sometimes the ocean makes you play to its tune, and sometimes it lets you dump your stuff all over it – all your anger, your frustration, your nuttiness; it just takes it on and washes it away. Fly wanted to reach down and kiss the water today because it let her moan and wallow to her heart’s content. By wave seventeen she was even starting to feel reasonable. When she thought about it, this strange jealous sensation she could feel scratching at her chest, it didn’t actually make sense. In the caravan she was the one ducking and weaving like mad to get out of the hot seat with Heath. Could she blame him for looking somewhere else? It’s not like she gave him any reason not to … These kind of thoughts made her feel calmer. It was the ones about Jane, the ones where she saw Jane flicking her mane, crossing her dainty toes either side of the line like a horsewalk model, that threatened to do her head in. If she could just stick to the ducking and weaving ones and steer clear of the coltish ones, maybe she’d be okay.
At 6.45 Simmo called them in. They’d been blessed this afternoon, they needed to say thanks and call it a day.
Jilly was busy preparing dinner by the time they trooped in. She’d listened to the surf report and experience had told her they were going to be home way too late to cook for themselves.
‘Mmm, smells good, Jilly,’ said Edge.
‘We’ve actually taken a vote, Jilly. You’ve been elected to cook every night,’ added Bec. Edge and Bec seemed to be singing the same tune a lot these days.
‘Thanks everyone, but I’m sor
ry to tell you this house is not a democracy.’
‘Spoilsport,’ said Matt. ‘I’m going to set up the Scrabble board.’
No surprises there. Fly wasn’t even sure why they were bothering to play. Matt might as well hang up his washing gloves now, because they all knew there was no chance of beating him without some serious cheating.
As the rest of them wandered off, Fly lingered close to Jilly.
‘Have you seen Heath?’ She hoped it came out casually.
Jilly pointed up above her. ‘Upstairs. Being domestic.’
Heath was being all domestic, was he? Thinking about the fact that he might get a visit from someone who wouldn’t be impressed by the rotting oranges under his bed, or the fact that he hadn’t changed his doona for ten weeks.
‘I’d be careful, Fly. It’s probably not a pretty sight,’ Jilly called after her.
But Fly wouldn’t be put off. She didn’t know why she was going up there. Maybe she just wanted to give him a chance to explain. Maybe she’d got the wrong end of the stick. Heath might’ve remembered that he dropped the book in the pool the minute he’d gotten through the school doorway. The brown-haired girl might’ve been his cousin for all Fly knew.
If that was true, there was no reason for her to be clutching Heath’s copy of Pride and Prejudice, its pages all fat and wavy with dried pool water. There was only one reason she had it, and that was because she wanted to test the lie.
Fly arrived in the doorway to find Heath lurching back and forth across the room, trapped inside his own doona cover. He flopped down onto the floor and hunted around for the opening.
‘Come on, you mongrel,’ he cursed. ‘Where are you?’
Fly watched him a moment, a little part of her happy to let him suffer.
‘Do you need a hand?’ she offered finally.
‘The opening would be good. It’s Velcro and it seems to have re-attached itself.’
Fly moved across to the doona monster on the floor.
Heath was sweating by the time she birthed him from the cover, but he didn’t let that slow him. He turned right around and whipped that Velcro shut tightly again.
Blue Water High Page 15
