Blue Water High (29 page)

‘I have to go,' said Fly.

Darren Crocker stared at Fly, confused. The announcer, blessed cotton socks and all, hadn't in fact called her.

‘I thought you were Fiona Watson?'

She was. She was Fiona Watson whose great contribution to the investigative reporting of the
Marley Beach Gazette
was ‘Um, I, um.' She raced away anyway. That tremendous speech rang through her ears during the entire heat she hadn't been called for.

Perri surfed like an absolute master, making mincemeat of her competitors. Anna, on the other hand, was having a shocker. Sometimes it just happened and there was nothing you could do about it. On the beach Simmo and the rest of the Solar Blue tribe looked on – the rest of the crew except Edge, who lay on a towel with his eyes closed. Simmo looked down and gave Edge a serious nudge with his foot. Edge's eyes blinked open.

‘A support crew supports, remember?'

Edge pulled himself up onto one elbow and held an arm in the air.

‘Go, girls, go!' he yelled pathetically.

Simmo would've been better leaving him where he was.

None of them were exactly surprised when the announcer read out the scores. ‘Anna Peterson – five. Jade Mason – 6.5, Emily Cameron – 6.5, Perri Lawe – eight.'

Fly watched Perri moving in through the white water. She punched the air when she heard the result. Perri had no problem winning. Why should she? She was through to the finals. She'd worked for it and she deserved her moment in the sun … even though her team-mate was out of the race? It made Fly feel uncomfortable. Was it okay to celebrate when other people were feeling like losers? She saw Perri reach for Anna's hand.

‘Hey, bad luck,' she said.

Simmo was supportive too. He gave Perri a pat on the back but he walked most of the way up the beach with Anna. He told her she'd done what counted. She'd surfed one hundred per cent even though it wasn't one of her better days. Fly hoped it wasn't going to be one of her off days too. If her performance in front of the mike was anything to go by, she had reason to worry.

‘Bec Sanderson, Corin Hardy, Stacey Jervis and Fiona Watson to the marshalling area,' the announcer called.

After her last pre-emptive move Fly ran through the names again in her head. Yep, one of them was definitely hers this time. All thoughts about media performance got bumped right out of town the moment Fly saw Stacey in the judging tent. If anything, Stacey was more pumped
than last time they'd met. Maybe she'd spent all her spare time lifting weights, preparing for exactly what she would do to Fly next time their paths crossed.

Even if Corin and Stacey weren't friends, they'd clearly had enough of a pre-heat chat to put them together as allies against Fly and Bec. Corin shouldered her way past Bec as they headed out of the tent.

‘You Solar Blue girls are going down,' Corin snarled.

‘Yeah? We'll see,' Bec snarled back.

Fly was glad the comment had been directed at Bec. If it had come at her, her answer probably would have been ‘Um, I, um.'

The starter hooter blasted out across the sand and Bec, Fly, Corin and Stacey took off for the water. It was a serious paddle battle for first place in the line-up. Bec won it. She could be an animal out there. Fly didn't blame her, she just felt relieved one of them was trying to make Simmo proud. She watched Bec make the wave, and then make a meal of it. She saw the rest of the crew on the beach with their arms in the air.

When Fly looked around it was just her and Stacey. Corin had paddled out wide, hunting for a less crowded take-off spot.

‘Enjoying life at the academy, are you?' Stacey asked.

She didn't seem too interested in the answer. She kept her eyes behind Fly, watching and waiting, watching and waiting, until it was time. Stacey turned sharply and started paddling like crazy. Fly looked behind her and saw the wave of the day powering its way towards them. It was huge. And Stacey was doing all the right things to make it hers. Fly took off after her.

Fly paddled like mental. She dug down deep into the
water, scooping huge handfuls of water and flinging them behind her. Somehow she managed to paddle herself right around Stacey and into critical position. Deb must've been right with her capacity theory. All this training had snuck up and increased Fly's capacity enough to make a serious difference. Back at the beginning of the year they'd been neck and neck for paddling strength but today she'd outpaddled Stacey with ease.

Stacey clearly wasn't expecting to be outpaddled because it took her by surprise too. She watched as the wave heaved up, lip forming, with Fly in the perfect position to make it. There was only one thing to do.

Fly paddled for take-off, the sun glistening so hard off the top of the wave she could hardly see … and then something went wrong. She felt an almighty yank. It stopped her dead in her tracks. She turned to see Stacey with her leg-rope in her hand.

‘What are you doing?!'

Suddenly Fly went from centre stage to front row seats as Stacey used Fly's leg-rope to launch herself forward onto the wave Fly had earned. Fly sat there watching as Stacey carved her way to shore. It shook her, no question about it. It spooked her even. There was no other reason to explain why, for the rest of the heat, she was waiting and hesitating, picking off the second-rate waves like they were crumbs at the royal table. She didn't look to the beach. She knew what they'd be thinking, but every time she went to step up for one of the strong waves of the set, Stacey was there, rubbing Fly's face in her own kind and gentle nature.

Fly couldn't wait for the hooter to signal the end of the heat. She had watched Bec do well and she hoped that would keep Simmo happy. She was struggling in through
the white wash as the announcer called out the scores.

‘Stacey Jervis – 7.5, Corin Hardy – 7.2, Bec Sanderson – nine, Fiona Watson – six.'

She hung her head as Stacey moved past with Corin, her face a picture of scorn.

‘Can't believe they let her into the academy,' Corin said. She obviously knew the story. The whole beach probably knew.

‘Tell me about it,' said Stacey. ‘She's still hopeless.'

Fly didn't have time to dwell on it for long, because suddenly Simmo was storming down towards her. Even at ten paces Fly could see Simmo's eyes were blazing in a way she'd never seen before.

‘What the hell happened?'

Fly shrugged. ‘It was pretty aggro out there.'

‘This is a regional competition, Fly! Of course it's aggro. You have to find a way to deal with it.'

She nodded. She knew. But that didn't mean she had the answers. Simmo was still standing there dumbfounded, hoping for more of an explanation. But the only one she had, the one about the leg-rope incident, made her too embarrassed about not being able to handle herself. So she opted for silence.

‘I don't know how, but somehow you still managed to qualify for tomorrow. Don't blow it.'

That would be Simmo really angry, she guessed.

Fly stewed on the ride back to camp. But something had changed in her. It was a different kind of stewing. Today's pot of stew was not the kind of dish she'd cooked up all those months ago when she'd first encountered Stacey Jervis. Today's pot was hot and boiling and it wasn't flavoured with all kinds of excuses for other people's behaviour. Today's pot was angry. Fly was angry with Stacey, and she was angry with herself for taking it.

The others must've sensed Fly was in an altered state because they let her have first turn in the solar shower Simmo had set up and they made sure she was the first they called when the boys brought home takeaway pizza. Jilly would not have been pleased. But Jilly wasn't the official support crew, so what Jilly thought, according to the boys, didn't count.

As they quickly munched their way around the pizza circles, Matt and Heath decided they had put enough distance between themselves and the ‘pilchards in Edge's sleeping bag' incident to start hassling him again. They thought it was the greatest joke of all time that they'd got
Edge and he hadn't been able to come up with anything to get them back.

Edge boiled. If Fly had needed any lessons in boiling an angry pot she should've just gone straight to Edge. He was an expert. Fly knew it because she watched Edge. She didn't write him off as an angry young rabbit like the rest of them. She'd watched him deliberately make himself something of a loner amongst the boys. He reckoned they goofed off too much and he didn't need them dragging him down, but Fly thought there was something else going on. She saw the way Heath and Matt had paired up, right from the start. And for all Edge's aggro, she saw his shyness and she could understand how it would look to him – Heath and Matt were peas in a pod, there wasn't room for him, so why not pretend you wouldn't be part of their team even if they'd asked you? Which they hadn't.

Fly caught herself halfway through the Edge reverie. There she was again, thinking about other people's feelings when she had a good, solid pot of anger she was supposed to be keeping on the boil herself. She picked up her plate and headed for the beach.

Just between the edge of the camp and the sand there were a couple of gnarled logs. She picked the one with the natural dip in it and parked her butt. It didn't take Heath long to join her. They sat together for a long time, watching the sun burn its way towards the edge of the earth.

‘She leg-roped me,' Fly said finally.

‘Why didn't you tell someone? You could have lodged a protest.'

‘What am I going to do? Protest every time someone calls me a name, looks at me the wrong way?'

Heath was confused. ‘She didn't call you a name. She leg-roped you, and that's out of order.'

‘I know. But I didn't handle it and I should be able to, that's the point. I let it get to me, Heath. I caved in.'

Heath could see that she didn't really want an argument here. She needed to be right. And that was cool.

‘Okay, you caved. You're a wimp. Anything else you want me to confirm for you?'

‘Where's Simmo?' she said.

Simmo was sweating. He had wrestled that old thunder-box into position over a deep hole and he was banging star posts into a circle around it. There was a large roll of hessian lying on the ground nearby which would serve as their privacy screen.

Fly stopped short five metres before she reached him. The smell was truly spectacular. Simmo looked up.

‘Bit rank, isn't it? Don't think last year's pit has fully composted yet.'

He let her stand there a while, banging away at more pickets.

‘So what's happening, Fly? You been having dangerous thoughts?'

How did he know?

‘I want to win,' she said.

Simmo nodded, not even pretending to be surprised. ‘Why?'

‘Why?'

‘Yeah. Why?' He banged a couple more times.

Fly wasn't sure what he wanted her to say. ‘Because I know I can.'

Simmo gave her a look – it wasn't enough, it was one of those textbook answers and he wanted more. ‘And?'

‘And because …' she had no idea where she was going here, and maybe that was a good thing. ‘Because I let people hassle me out of things. I'm too polite. I want to be tougher.'

Simmo didn't look up. ‘You need to connect with your inner mongrel.'

‘My what?'

‘Meet me at the beach at five. I'll introduce you.'

It's not light at five in the morning in spring. Fly had set the alarm on her watch. The other girls had groaned and rolled over but by the time Fly snuck out of the tent she could hear them already breathing their way back into dreams. Simmo was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he'd forgotten? There was no sign of life in the caravan and without the sun it was still less than ten degrees. It would have been so easy for Fly to assume Simmo had forgotten and slip back into that warm sleeping bag. But Simmo had promised her a date with her inner mongrel. It was too tempting to resist.