Blue Water High (18 page)

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.

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 probably 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 comp 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.

Deb was still angry in the office, but she was trying to be soft about it. She wanted to know why Fly was being so stubborn. What could be so bad about doing the assignment that Fly would voluntarily throw points away? Fly could feel the answers bouncing about in her head, but they all seemed to lead to the truth, and the truth was the very thing she was trying to avoid. She mumbled that she didn't know, but she just didn't want to do it.

‘If there's something there, Fly, something you're so scared of that you won't even talk about it, then I guarantee you're doing yourself out of any chance of winning this thing.'