Blue Water High (28 page)

Now he wasn't sure it was going to be so good for him. Marley Beach was a good five-hour drive away and the plan had been for them all to make it a camping weekend. Just him and the seven of them. He was starting to seriously sweat. He pleaded with Deb to come. But Deb had taken him at his word that looking after the kids would be a piece of cake. She'd made plans for the weekend and she wasn't about to change them.

Simmo's plan to unsettle the girls a little was already working for Fly before they had even finished packing the
van. She could feel the nerves settling on her shoulders like a gentle mist, weighing her down ever so slightly. It wasn't so weird, she told herself. She'd been so high these past few weeks she could've bumped into a blimp.

She sat on her own in the van. It wasn't really a plan, it just kind of happened that way. Edge and Matt were in the middle of a dirty chess game when it was time to leave and Matt had insisted that the game come right on into the van and that Heath was in charge of watching out for illegal moves. Fly didn't mind, she was kind of happy for a little bit of silence. Not that there was anything wrong between her and Heath; she couldn't have been happier. She'd saved up a heap of coins last week and had the longest, giggliest download to her sister Nell. She'd admitted that all the romancey stuff was nice, but the nicest part was the sense that someone knew you, that they saw it all and liked you anyway.

The downside of being known was that it was hard to hide anything. After half an hour and a slyly won victory by Edge, Heath plonked down beside her.

‘Stop being so loud, Fly. We can hardly hear ourselves think.'

Fly gave him a small smile.

‘Anything I need to know about?' he asked.

‘Not sure,' she said.

‘Are we cool?'

‘Yep. We're cool.'

Heath went to get up. ‘Well if it's not about me, then you're on your own, sunshine.' But he didn't really get right up. He looked at her seriously. ‘If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were nervous.'

He got her every time.

‘Fly, you surf against the best three girls in the country every week. Why would you be nervous about surfing against the people who didn't even get in?'

‘Stacey Jervis is competing.'

‘Who's she when she's at home?'

Heath didn't remember, but Fly did. Stacey Jervis was the girl she'd surfed against at the heats. She was the girl whose life Fly had changed completely. And the truth was, she was a girl who still made Fly's eyes twitch. And for all she'd been through this year, Fly realised that there was still a little pocket of doubt about whether she had really earned her place.

Heath thought this was the biggest load of tripe she'd ever cooked up. That girl was an evil toad and she didn't deserve to be in the academy … He trailed off, thinking things through.

‘You know what?' he said. ‘I've changed my mind. I realised I actually like Stacey more than most people in my life – except you, of course.'

Fly frowned. What was he on about?

‘If Stacey hadn't holed your board, I wouldn't have lent you the Tangaroa and you wouldn't now be indebted to me for the rest of your life. Stavey Jervis is, in fact, my hero.'

He was sensitive enough to let it go. He just reached out and held her hand in silence for the rest of the journey. Which was a long time. It took seven hours in the end, with two stops for petrol, one for supplies and three for Edge to throw up on the side of the road. He'd never been car sick before and blamed Simmo's dodgy driving – Simmo was spending more time looking in the rear-vision mirror, checking for any sign of hanky-panky, than he was looking at the road.

The sun was on its way to the checkout by the time they pulled into Camp Simmo. It was a beautiful piece of land just by the beach – a humble old caravan on a subtropical garden block. Simmo had spent every summer there since he was a grommet. It wasn't that hard to imagine Simmo as a grommet. Everything except the wrinkles was still the same. He unlocked the back of the van and started pulling out the stacked deckchairs, trestle table and tents, keen to get set up before they lost the light completely.

He must've been kind of proud of the place because he seemed happy to let them wander, checking it out, while he did most of the unloading. The caravan was a pretty basic pad – tiny kitchen, single bunk. Simmo rolled an old tin tub out from the side of the van and set it up on the grass.

‘This is our kitchen sink.' He wheeled a gas bottle into place. ‘Our stove.' And finally he pointed to an old thunderbox and shovel. ‘Our toilet block.'

Everyone except Fly stared at that old thunderbox like it was from Mars. Fly knew outdoor bathroom equipment well, and this seemed fairly civilised to her.

Edge was still standing in the door of the caravan. ‘So I know where I'm crashing.'

‘Uh-uh,' said Simmo. ‘You lot are outside.' He chucked one tent bag at Edge and another at Matt.

‘One tent for the girls. One tent for the guys. But you guys get to put up both tents because you're not competing.'

There was a chorus of protest, but Simmo wasn't interested.

‘Get used to it, fellas. For the next three days you do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping – whatever it takes.'

‘We're support crew, not slaves!' said Matt.

‘Mate,' said Simmo, ‘if the girls say
Jump
, you just ask,
How high?
Got it? After you put up the tents, you're making dinner.'

Fly started to think the weekend might not turn out so bad after all.

And it got better. Fly hadn't noticed how much she'd missed the sky. When she'd first arrived in Sydney it had driven her crazy. Where were the stars? She knew it was the same sky she had at home, but when she stuck her head out the window it seemed half-empty. The black wasn't as bold and the stars weren't as bright. She'd talked about it one night at dinner, and Matt had explained that in the city there were too many lights. In a place that didn't really flick off the switch at night-time there just wasn't enough contrast to see everything that was up there. It was like watching the moon from inside your lounge room.

At home, Fly had had a long romance with the night sky. She knew all the major stars by heart and she checked in with them, followed their course, knew their patterns as closely as if they were friends. It was only now, as she lay with her head out of the tent, far away from the city lights that she understood how much she'd missed them. Maybe it was the sense that she was back amongst friends that allowed her to think about what was really bugging her. Stacey was part of it, but it didn't feel like the whole deal. Maybe it was something Simmo had said as they'd gotten into the van.

He'd looked at each of the girls seriously. He'd told them that there would be a lot of people watching them, and some of those people would be half-hoping the academy girls wouldn't perform. It was this way for anyone who was at the top of their field – there were going to be people hoping they'd fall. He didn't want to put any extra pressure on them, but he wanted a winner. Yeah right, no extra pressure.

What bothered Fly now was that the first thought she'd had was that there was nothing for Simmo to worry about, because one of the other girls was bound to win. Not her, one of the others. Maybe all Deb's ‘psychology of winning' talks were starting to rattle her, but what she realised, staring up at the blazing Southern Cross, was that besides getting into Solar Blue, she'd never won anything in her life.

She knew people said that all the time. On the news or those stupid game shows, clutching their new toaster ovens, they gushed that they'd never won anything in their life. But if they really thought about it, they probably had won a raffle at the RSL or something on the school fete's chocolate wheel … But not Fly – she'd checked and checked and checked again, just to be sure she wasn't faking it. And no, she had definitely never won anything in her life. She had a swag of Best and Fairest, and a drawer full of green third-place ribbons, but the blue ribbons? She only got them on the ice-cream lids. Was it so weird, then, that she was handing over the responsibility of winning to one of the others? She didn't have any of those ‘winning memories' to call on – trooping up to the podium … accepting the trophy … making a humble speech …

Sometimes you had to love boys. Just when you were veering dangerously close to thinking something to death, along came a boy and flour-bombed you right out of the water. Tonight's flour bomb was fish-flavoured. One minute all was quiet, the next the boys' tent exploded with shouting. Someone moved around madly inside.

‘Why are there pilchards in my bag? Heath!' Edge shouted.

‘It wasn't me, man!'

Fly could hear Matt laughing. It was a bad move.

‘Edge! Chill, man. It wasn't me either. It was that bishop you stabbed in the eye!'

The bishop? Then Fly remembered the chess game.

‘That's it! You're dead!' Edge roared.

Things deteriorated to physical violence quickly. Fly could hear wrestling and the tent rolled savagely from side to side.

And then Fly saw a torch emerging from the caravan. It was Simmo and he wasn't happy. He marched right over to the tent and ripped the zip open.

‘Knock it off, you guys. You're keeping everyone awake.'

Edge tried to defend himself, but Simmo couldn't have been less interested.

‘Listen to me. I don't want any more horsing around. I'm serious. The girls need to do well here this weekend and they need you to help them. Any more goofing off and I'll start to get angry. Real angry.'

Simmo flicked the tent flap back down and stomped back to the van. The door probably slammed louder than he'd planned. They hadn't ever seen Simmo angry. This was on the way but you could tell it was only a halfhearted performance. Fly didn't think she ever wanted to see the real thing. She definitely didn't want to be the cause of it … but sometimes you get the very thing you don't want.

They couldn't have asked for better conditions for the first day of the carnival. The stars had shown themselves so brilliantly last night because there wasn't a cloud to be seen. There was just a hint of a breeze and perfectly formed five-foot left-handers slipping into the shore. It was a bigger event than Fly had imagined. She'd surfed in local carnivals before, but never something like this. It reminded her of the entry heats – there was a big tent and loads of people buzzing back and forth like there were very important things to be done. A huge banner flapped over the main tent proclaiming that the Marley Beach Junior Girls' Surf Titles were proudly sponsored by the
Marley Beach Gazette
. She was only halfway through reading the sign when a microphone popped up like a submarine periscope right between her and Bec.

‘G'day – Darren Crocker –
Marley Beach Gazette
,' the young guy behind the periscope said. ‘You'd be the girls from Solar Blue, right?'

Thank God Bec was there.

‘We sure are. I'm Bec Sanderson. And this is Fiona Watson.'

‘You're up against some of the top girls in the country here – how do you think you'll go?'

‘I'm surfing really well at the moment,' said Bec, ‘so I
should have a good chance. No prizes for second, are there?'

The reporter smiled and suddenly turned to Fly.

‘How about you, Fiona?'

Fly stood there. She could hear the question prancing around in her brain, but she couldn't manage to get a grip on it. The emphasis kept shifting.
How
about her? How
about
her? How about
her
? She had no idea what he wanted.

‘Um, I, um.'

That's what she managed.

The reporter stared, Fly grinned feebly, and then bless the announcer's cotton socks, he called them down.

‘Heat number four. Perri Lawe, Jade Mason, Emily Cameron and Anna Peterson to the marshalling area, please.'