At one o’clock he told her he was going back to camp whether she was coming or not.
‘Stop being a party pooper,’ she complained.
But Heath wouldn’t be swayed. It was now or never. What was she trying to do? Deliberately sink her chances of winning?
Fly agreed to go home, but she half wondered whether she needed to hang out with someone who wasn’t quite as sensitive as Heath.
‘Rise and shine, my little Twinkie.’
It was morning. It was Simmo’s voice.
Fly wished she’d never given him the inner mongrel details. She felt like she’d been run over.
‘Twinkie’s dead,’ she said, her eyes still jammed shut.
Fly finally made it out of the tent. The sun blinded her. It gave her headache an almighty power surge. She blinked and groaned and felt like she might throw up. Simmo smiled at her in a scary way.
‘I don’t feel so good. I don’t think I can surf.’
Simmo smiled harder. ‘Of course you can. You are going to compete, Fly. And you’re going all out to win.’
Why was he smiling so much?
‘Honestly, Simmo. I feel terrible.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have stayed up all night acting the goat, should you?’
He kept right on packing the van for the comp.
‘You’ve got two choices, Fly. You can pack your stuff and head back to Western Australia or you can get out there and surf like there’s no tomorrow. It’s up to you.’
He wasn’t smiling anymore.
No-one was really smiling. Perri was still grizzling about having been knocked out. Heath had had almost as little sleep as Fly. Bec clearly hadn’t had some dream-time encounter with forgiveness. And Edge? Edge was back at the pit, not smiling the hardest of all of them. The hotter temperatures that morning did nothing for the fragrance of the task and Edge had tied a bandanna around his nose and mouth.
Ten minutes before it was time to leave for the finals Simmo called the rest of them together.
‘How’re we all feeling about Edge?’ He was looking at Perri; it was her call really. ‘Do we think he’s suffered enough?’
Fly reckoned he’d suffered enough about ten minutes after he started. She had always been hopeless at vengeance.
Then she heard a clicking sound. Clicking on, clicking off. It was Simmo’s magic torch, there on the table beside him. Simmo pressed the light on and off, on and off.
‘Isn’t that the torch Edge is looking for?’
Simmo looked down, gave it one more click for good luck. ‘So it is,’ he said with an evil smile.
Edge had been elbow-deep in the kind of sludge Fly didn’t even want to think about and the torch wasn’t even there.
‘It’s not always about the destination, Fly,’ Simmo said. ‘Sometimes it’s just about the journey.’
Perri must’ve been feeling like a softie too. She thought Edge had paid enough – but she wasn’t getting in the van with him until he’d had at least two showers.
‘Edge! You’ve got ten minutes to have two showers!’
Simmo turned and looked at Fly. ‘How’s my little winner feeling?’
Fly thought on it a long time. ‘I thought you just said it’s not always about the destination, Simmo. So really it doesn’t matter whether I win or not.’
He shook his head. ‘Not even close, Fly. Not even close.’ Fly had been to plenty of finals days, but by this stage she was usually just part of the crowd. Today she was one of the final four – her, Stacey Jervis, Emily Cameron and Ally Henville.
As the Blue crew stumbled down onto the sand – almost late because of Edge’s double shower requirements – Fly saw that Stacey was near the judging tent talking with Darren Crocker of the Marley Beach Gazette. Stacey was lapping it up. She could do limelight with her eyes closed. As she headed down to the white water Fly could feel herself letting it get to her. She could hear the old monkey grinder cranking up in her head, spitting out a boring old tune. It went something like this: Fly Watson is shy. Fly Watson can’t string a sentence together. Solar Blue want a spokesperson for the brand, someone who can perform in the spotlight, someone who could come up with more than old Fly ‘Um, I, um’ Watson …
And then she heard it, faint but scary as hell – Twinkie’s growl. Snarling and frothing at the mouth at Fly’s own bad thoughts. Without even trying, she’d Twinkied herself, and those boring old self-doubts had scrammed right on out of there. She smiled at the memory of the tiny tan and white mutt – there was life in that little bag of bones from beyond the grave.
She bent down to put on her leg-rope and a pair of feet appeared in front of her. She was expecting Stacey, but it was someone she was more scared of. It was Bec.
‘I’ve been watching the swell. They’re coming in sets of three. Last one’s usually the biggest.’
This was Bec in full-scale apology mode.
‘Thanks.’
They stood there a while.
‘You can beat her, you know.’
‘You really think so?’
At last Bec smiled. ‘I know so.’
Fly turned and saw Simmo heading towards her, no doubt to give her one last rocket of advice. But he stopped a few feet short of her and just gave her a nod. She knew what to do.
Stacey was on Fly’s case the minute they got over the first wave. She reefed back on Fly’s leg-rope. ‘Make sure you stay out of my way, right?’
‘I don’t want to be anywhere near you, right?‘
There was enough spin on the return to pull Stacey up short for a second. But she wasn’t so easily put off.
‘Oooohhhh. She’s up for a fight, is she?’
Stacey gave Fly’s leg-rope another yank before they both duck-dived under the next wave. As she waited for the pressure to pass overhead, Fly could feel that she had the shakes, but they weren’t ones born of fear this time; they were just her body dealing with the nervy new thrill of standing up for herself.
She was going to have to do a lot more of it. Ally and Emily seemed to be battling it out further down the break. Fly knew that Ally, being the local, had probably picked the most reliable take-off zone and she’d be protecting it like mental. No point heading there. But Stacey was driving her nuts. For someone who wanted Fly to stay out of her way, she might as well have been on the same board. Fly started to feel like she was in a soccer team and Stacey had been coached especially to be all over her like a rash. Could Stacey be more interested in stopping Fly from winning than she was in winning herself? Fly managed to fight her way onto two ordinary waves. She did her best, but the brief look to shore, at Simmo and the others standing there, told her she needed to do better – a lot better.
She sat out the back, Stacey breathing down her neck, as the clock wound down. If she was going to go with Simmo’s plan she would have to let that little snapper off its leash and, given Stacey’s mood, she could tell it was going to be ugly. It was funny, but just knowing it was an option made her feel strong, and it made her feel strong enough to work out there was something else, something smarter she could do.
Fly suddenly reached down and fiddled with the quick-release mechanism on her leg-rope. Some smart cookie had obviously been dumped one time too many and had decided to do something about it, because much as they all loved their boards, sometimes staying attached to it was going to get you seriously injured. She reefed the leg-rope up out of the water and tossed it to Stacey.
‘Here – you want it so much, it’s yours.’
Stacey was completely stumped. She sat there holding the leg-rope like it was some dripping length of animal gizzard. She had no idea what to make of Fly now. Then Fly started paddling away from the take-off zone. It took all her effort not to look at the beach. She knew what she’d see – Simmo and the others looking at her like she’d finally lost her mind – and she didn’t want to see that, not if she was going to go through with her plan.
If Fly had had eyes in the back of her head, they would’ve be
en firmly trained on Stacey. But she couldn’t turn back, she knew that would give the whole game away. Instead, Fly kept right on paddling, like she knew something Stacey didn’t. Come on, take the bait, take the bait …
After a nauseatingly long moment Stacey swung her board around and started to paddle out to where Fly was. As soon as she arrived, Fly gave her a wink and took off back to where they’d been. Stacey looked completely baffled, but the crew on the beach knew exactly what was going down. Technically it was called a wild-goose chase and Fly had managed to bluff Stacey this time, but it was a gutsy strategy to pull. You had to be surfing well enough for it not to matter if your competitor didn’t follow. And you had to be sure enough of your own strength, because once you’d used up a heap of energy leading them out there, you had to have enough puff to get back to the zone in time to make the next wave.
As Fly carved down the face of the wave she could hear the crew on the shore explode – she’d done it! She could make out Bec screaming as hard as she could’ve wished for and Simmo had both hands in the air. The truth was, even if she hadn’t made the wave, even if she hadn’t surfed like an absolute animal, Simmo would have felt his job was done. That she had the guts to have a go at that kind of strategy? It made him a proud old coacher. The fact that she scored so well? Well, that was the cream, wasn’t it?
Fly couldn’t quite believe it when the announcer read out the final scores as the girls were pushing in through the white water. That last wave had scored her a nine – and that nine had pushed her into a place she had never been before. She had won.
All of a sudden she was surrounded by a rush of people. Some of them she knew, some of them she didn’t. But they were all beaming and telling her she was a star. Then she was lifted up, high in the air, someone took her board and they marched her right across to the judging area. When she looked down she could see Heath walking along behind her, smiling proudly. And Bec behind him, she seemed to be smiling proudly too. In the middle of it all, she felt Simmo close by, talking up at her. She couldn’t quite catch the words, but she got that they were built on pride too.
There was no time for nerves. As soon as her feet touched the ground the announcer was calling it out. ‘In first place, with a total score of 27.5, Fiona Watson. Congratulations, Fiona. Would you like to come up and accept the award?’
Fly looked up at Heath, standing beside her. ‘You can’t accept on my behalf?’
But it was only half a question. Twinkie was already up there strutting around proudly, so she might as well join her. As she made for the podium there was a flash of cameras and suddenly the trophy was in her hands. She held it high, and everybody cheered their brains out and she loved it.
Stepping down from the podium, there he was again – Darren Crocker of the Marley Beach Gazette.
‘First under-seventeen regional win, Fiona. How does it feel?’
‘It feels … great.’
Darren Crocker nodded, and after their last in-depth interview he probably reckoned this was about as much as he could hope for because he gave her a nod and started walking away.
‘Darren?’ Fly called after him. ‘There was something else I wanted to say.’
Fly Watson? Something else to say? Calling back a reporter? Asking for more limelight? Darren was up for it.
‘I just wanted to say thanks to Solar Blue for the opportunity. And to my friends at the academy for their support, ‘specially to Heath, and special thanks to my coach, Simmo.’
In the van on the way back they had all declared her an A-grade suck. But the hassling was good-natured and Fly didn’t care. All she cared about were the words ringing in her brain, words Simmo had called up to her as they’d carried her to the judging tent … words that came back to her clearly now.
‘You surf like that in a month, the spot is yours.’
Chapter 25
You surf like that in a month, the spot is yours … You surf like that in a month, the spot is yours … She played it over in her head first thing in the morning. She gave it a rerun at lunch, she gave it a burl in the evening, and – why not? – one more time before bed. She couldn’t get enough of it. For the first time in her life, she was looking ahead at something and she thought she could win it. Not just do well, not do her best, not give it her best shot, WIN IT!
Everyone noticed the change. And for a week they hassled her about having a head the size of an elephant. They all claimed to miss their old friend, to wish they’d left her behind at the servo on the way back, but for all the hassling, they loved it. They loved that she nipped them back when they hassled her and they loved that she wasn’t so quick to take the blame. But it didn’t really matter whether they loved the new improved Fly or not – she was here to stay.
They hassled Heath too about whether he could cope with having such a bossy girlfriend. Heath played along with the joke, but Fly could see there was something else on his mind. It was Heath’s turn to be haunted by the numbers. The ones that came back on the bottom of his assignments. The ones that said he was so close to failing that all his worries about whether he could beat Matt or Edge in the water were a big, fat waste of time.
As the siren blared out that school was finally over Mr Savin walked along the rows in their home room handing out big white envelopes containing their results.
‘Most of you have made me very proud.’ He paused in front of Heath then kept going. He kept going with Heath’s envelope in his hand until all of the others had been handed out. They’d made a pact at breakfast that they would open their results together, but suddenly things weren’t going quite to plan. Most of the class were piling out the door, but the rest of the crew hung back, not knowing what to do. Mr Savin looked up at them.
‘Off you go,’ he said. ‘Heath and I need to have a little chat.’
Fly let the others lead her out of there. They waited at the bottom of the stairs.
‘What do we do now?’ said Edge.
‘He could be in there for hours. I don’t think I can wait,’ said Bec.
They looked for Fly, waiting for a nod.
‘Open them, he won’t mind.’
They ripped through the white paper and scanned the pages. There were big sighs of relief, slapping of backs – they’d all passed. But with Heath still hanging over the cliff it just didn’t feel like they were expecting it to.
Fly kept staring up at those empty stairs.
‘I just want to go and …’ she trailed off, but they all knew what she needed to go and do.
Fly took the stairs up to the home room three at a time. She must’ve been puffing so hard by the time she reached the closed door that Mr Savin heard her.
‘Come on in, Fly.’
Fly froze. And then the door opened and Mr Savin nodded her inside. She didn’t know what was going on, but she went with it.
Heath was sitting at his desk, a blank look on his face. Blank wasn’t a good sign.
‘You don’t mind, do you, Heath?’ asked Mr Savin. ‘You usually enjoy an audience.’
He walked slowly to the front desk and picked up Heath’s envelope. Fly didn’t know whether she should stand where she was in the doorway, or go and sit by Heath and hold his hand.
Finally Heath spoke. ‘Mr Savin, if you’re gonna fail me, I’d rather you made it quick.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re right on the line, Heath. I could give you forty-nine per cent, which means you fail or I could give you fifty per cent and you’ll pass.’
Fly could see Heath’s gut start churning, but he tried to make light of it. ‘So my whole future’s in your hands.’
‘Oh, no, Heath. You can’t palm it off that easily. Your future’s squarely where it’s always been. Entirely your responsibility.’
Fly wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not.
‘The real problem with you, Heath, is that you push your luck.’
Heath was starting to tire of the gam
e. His nerves were stretched and when they were stretched he played back, said things he probably should’ve kept to himself.
‘The way I see it, Mr Savin,’ he started.
‘Heath?!’ Fly said. She couldn’t help it. Her nerves were stretched too and she didn’t want to see him smart-talk his way into the forty-nine per cent corner.
‘It’s alright, Fly,’ said Mr Savin. ‘I want to hear the way Heath sees it. It won’t make any difference to the outcome, but I’m curious.’
He looked back at Heath, nodded for him to go on.
‘I was gonna say, the way I see it, you go with the flow in life and then luck decides if you win or lose.’
‘You also have to put yourself in a position to take advantage of the luck when it comes.’ Mr Savin pushed up off the desk and moved to the blackboard, rubbing the last words of the year away.
‘Homework and study, for example,’ he said, ‘so you’re ready to get lucky in the exams. Training and practice, so you can get lucky in a surf comp.’
Heath shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
Mr Savin reached into his pocket.
‘Let’s put your theory to the test, shall we?’
He opened his hand to reveal a coin. ‘Heads you pass, tails you fail.’
Fly could see Heath starting to spin out. ‘You’re gonna toss a coin to determine my results!?’
‘I agree. Not exactly Education Department policy.’
‘But if it’s tails …’ Heath was panicking now. ‘If it’s tails, it’s all over for me with Solar Blue.’
‘That’s luck, Heath. Right? So here’s to your future.’
He spun the coin high into the air. It spun as if in slow-motion … Suddenly it hit Mr Savin’s outstretched palm and he cupped his other hand over it. Fly and Heath stared at those hands, transfixed.
‘Okay, Heath. Let’s see what luck’s delivered you this time.’
Mr Savin slowly pulled his top hand away to reveal the coin in the palm of his other hand. Heath leaned over to see his future, but Fly was too far away. She stared at him – nothing on his face.
Blue Water High Page 22
