Blue Water High (30 page)

The sand was still cold with the night air as Fly skipped across the beach. The sun was coming, it had cast its rays forward, but it hadn't yet shown its face. Fly scanned left and right along the beach, looking for some sign of life, for someone huddled on the sand, waiting for her. She finally looked to the water, and that's where she found him.
Simmo was standing waist-deep, his board floating under one hand at his side, his eyes closed, his body gently swaying back and forth with the pull of the ocean. It was Simmo, but she'd never seen him like this before. It was almost like he was meditating. She knew the Simmo who played the game and acted the goose, but this was different, this was just him and the water, soaking up a quiet, sacred moment with the ocean.

She felt a sudden desire to sneak back up the beach, to let him have this moment to himself, but maybe that was just more of the same. Fly putting everyone else first. Why was it so hard to think that he'd planned to meet her, and because he was early he was having a tiny patch of stillness before she got there? Maybe she'd just cough and see what happened …

Simmo opened his eyes and waved her on in. If she'd known what he had planned for her she wouldn't have coughed, she would've bounded in there and gone for his throat.

But before they got to it, Simmo made Fly stand beside him. He made her watch the waves for a full half-hour. He pointed out the main break. He told her where he wanted her to sit.

‘But that's where I sat yesterday, and I got pushed out,' she protested.

‘That's a choice, Fly,' he said. ‘And I want you to convince me you're ready to make a different choice.'

He fell forward onto his board and started paddling
hard. He yelled back over his shoulder, ‘This is a heat, Fly. You're competing against me.' He kept paddling away from her. ‘I want to see your inner mongrel, Fly, I want to see its teeth!'

And for the next two hours, while the sun inched its way above the horizon, Simmo gave her his worst. He paddled so close she could feel his breath on her shoulder. He flicked water in her face. He called her the kind of names she never wanted to be called again in her whole life. As she paddled for take-off he pushed the side of her rail down causing her to dig down to the left, veering completely off course. By seven, as a perfect right-hander was forming up behind them, she defiantly pushed him back and got onto the sweetest ride of her life. Simmo watched her all the way to shore, and he smiled nearly as broadly as she did.

Back at camp everyone was dying to know what they'd been up to. They both looked way too happy for people who'd been up since five o'clock. Fly kept her distance during breakfast. Simmo had warned her that she needed to keep her inner mongrel on a tight leash. He didn't want it bounding into camp, licking everyone on the face and flopping down on its back so it could have a good old tummy scratching. Simmo was dead serious about the whole inner mongrel thing. He made her pick a dog and see herself sprouting its fur, taking on its run, pulling her lips back to reveal its teeth. He didn't make her do it there and then on the beach, but he wanted her to know how it growled. The minute Stacey even blinked the wrong way at her, he wanted Fly to send her that growl. It didn't have to be a big, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck, howl-at-the-moon kind of job – just a low, warning snarl,
just enough to tell her to back right off. If he were her he'd snarl out loud, but that was a matter for Fly. Some people were happier growling in front of strangers than others.

On the walk back up the sand Fly had imagined her inner mongrel padding along beside her. When Simmo first asked her to think of a dog she'd thought about her dog at home. She was a kelpie cross, runt of the litter, but more than capable of holding her own in a stoush. But her name was Crunchie, and it just didn't feel tough enough. So she thought some more, and in the end she settled on Twinkie – okay, so the name wasn't any better, and then there was also the fact that she was a chihuahua, but Twinkie was the most terrifying and psychotic dog Fly had ever encountered.

Twinkie lived three doors up from Fly's old high school. Twinkie hated kids. She belonged to a grumpy old guy called Harvey. Not that Harvey was grumpy to Twinkie – he didn't beat her or anything – they just sat together on the porch not talking, day after day after day. But something had clearly happened in that little pooch's life to make her very angry. Every day was a nerve-shredding dash past Twinkie's house. Fly could still see her now, leaping off the old wicker lounge on Harvey's front verandah and launching herself head first at the front fence with enough force to knock most dogs out cold. But not Twinkie. All the tan and white hair on her body would be standing straight out and the skin over her snout was pulled so far back it almost hit her eyelids. She bit the
fence, she snarled frantically from the base of her belly and she did not draw breath until the hurrying schoolkid was almost at the school gate. Then she'd turn and snort her way back to the wicker two-seater, happy that she'd shown them what for. Fly wasn't going to go the whole fence-biting routine, but there was something about that ferocious little growl boiling forth from such a tiny body that appealed to Fly. Twinkie the inner mongrel it was.

As she watched Perri getting ready for her final, Fly wondered what kind of inner mongrel her friend might have. She thought it would be something sleek and beautiful … maybe a Doberman pinscher, they could still go you if push came to shove. But Perri's inner Doberman must've been sleeping off a big night out on the prowl because as she pushed up onto her first wave of the heat she slipped straight down onto the board and copped the full force of the wave right in the back of her head.

There were frowns all round on the beach, most furrowed from Matt – this was not Perri's form. What was going on? But today Perri just couldn't stay on a wave. She slipped and slid all over the shop, until finally they saw her turn and paddle for shore. Fly could see Edge starting to panic.

‘Where's your board, Matt?' he asked.

‘Back at camp,' Matt said.

‘So why is your board cover here?' Edge's voice had gone all tight.

‘Perri's cover had a rip in it, so I lent her mine for the day.'

Perri puffed her way up to them. ‘There's something wrong with my board. I need to borrow someone's.'

Bec was already reaching for hers. As Perri bolted back
to the water Simmo ran his fingers across the surface of Perri's board. His face went very red. Fly was sure Simmo's inner mongrel was one of those Brazilian fighting dogs, a street Rottweiler. It might not get let out of its cage very often – but there was a reason for that.

‘Someone want to tell me how come Perri's board is covered in soap?'

Edge was already green around the gills.

‘I'm really sorry,' he said. ‘It was in Matt's board bag. I thought it was his board.'

Simmo really understood the power of silence.

‘After last night … and the pilchards thing … It was meant to be a joke.'

Simmo just stared, until they heard the hooter blast the end of the heat. They didn't really need to wait to hear the scores to know the outcome, but Simmo wanted Edge to hear it.

‘Mari Knox – 6, Ally Henville – 7.5, Katie Gordon – 8, Perri Lawe – 4,' the announcement rang out over the beach.

‘Is there anything I can do?' Edge asked feebly.

‘Can you get Perri back into the comp?' said Simmo.

Edge shook his head.

‘Go back to camp, Edge. You and I will deal with this later, but for now, I don't think Perri should have to look at your stupid face.'

Edge was going to get a savaging. That was for sure. Simmo waited till he was out of earshot before he turned
to Heath and Matt.

‘And you two,' he said, ‘have the task of explaining to Perri what happened and why it was exactly that Edge was ticked off enough to do it in the first place.'

No-one was escaping today, and with Perri now out of the race, the pressure on Bec and Fly was all the greater. Simmo turned to both of them as the announcer called them down.

‘Take no prisoners.'

Fly pushed out hard against the break. She wasn't surfing against Stacey this heat, but she'd decided to give everyone the Twinkie treatment. She hadn't met any of their eyes once and already she was getting the tiniest thrill of what it might be like to not always come into things bowing and scraping and apologising for being alive. Fly and Bec were competing against Corin Hardy again, and a girl from the mid-north coast. Her name was Sonja and she was big and buff and she didn't look like she'd bluffed her way into the finals.

The four of them wrestled their way out to the line-up. There wasn't much time for chit-chat – the first of the sets was pounding down towards them. Bec let Sonja take the first wave; she'd been watching long enough to know the second was going to be bigger. Corin had tried to push for it too, but Bec hadn't given her an inch, which meant Corin was back there with Fly. She looked up and opened her mouth. ‘Grrrr …'.

It took Fly a second to register that she'd actually done it, and that she'd done it out loud. Corin might've been about to ask for the time, or about to warn her about a bluebottle for all Fly knew, but she wasn't giving her the benefit of the doubt.

Corin looked completely dumbfounded. ‘Did you just growl at me?'

Fly was glad she didn't have time to answer. The third wave was rearing up and it was a ripper. She might've paddled so fast to get onto it out of sheer embarrassment but it didn't matter – once she was on board Fly snapped, crackled and popped all the way to the end of the wave. She looked briefly to the beach. She could see Simmo standing there, leaning back, his arms folded across his chest in satisfaction. Even if she didn't win it, she felt like she'd made him proud.

Three average waves later, Fly knew the clock was ticking down. She'd surfed well, but she wasn't over the line yet. She just needed one more good ride and maybe, just maybe … She didn't let herself think ahead; she needed to concentrate on now. And now there was a perfect wave heading towards her. She took off, paddling hard. Looking back, she realised that she had sensed Bec paddling equally hard beside her. But at the time, nothing else got a look in except her need to get on that wave.

It had more speed in it than the rest of them, and that meant you didn't get an entry ticket unless you worked hard for it. Fly's arm muscles screamed as she tried to keep up with the wave. She was so in the zone that she didn't really notice Bec on her inside until she was almost on top of her. Suddenly there was a bash of fibreglass, and Bec's face was close and confused, right next to hers.

‘Fly!'

But Fly was too far down the track to stop now and workshop the misunderstanding. She dug deep one more time and managed to get onto the wave. She skimmed down the face, cutting deep into the wave as she pulled off
a radical bottom turn. She skipped back towards the top and railed it for a second time before she flicked out of the back. Her mind was so focused that she had no idea what would be waiting for her when she got in …