Number 8 (10 page)

The boys go on looking at her and sweating into the sand. I just don't get it—boys never sit still, even in class. They get detention for not sitting still and here they are now, lying around like garden gnomes while the great goddess Lilly speaks.

Well, I can't stand it anymore. “Who's going in?” I say, looking at Jackson.

He hesitates, glancing back at Lilly.

“Not yet,” says Lilly. She's frowning, annoyed at being interrupted. “I like to get totally fried before I do.” And she strokes her smooth, silky stomach. “I want to get so hot, you could fry an egg right here,” and she points to her perfect navel. Everyone has to look of course. Mitch is staring, then he has to rearrange his board shorts.

She smiles her special smile at Jackson. He smiles back. Oh, God almighty, she's got him, too. It's just not fair—what's she going to do with the two of them?

“Well, I'm going in,” I say and stomp off. I don't look back. I'm not going to think even for a nanosecond about whether my bottom looks like a blob of shuddering custard as I run. Screw them.

I'm halfway down the beach when Jackson catches up with me.

“You've still got your sunglasses on your head,” he grins.

I feel the top of my head. My face gets even hotter. Oh, I hate this dating business. It makes you do such stupid things. Why can't we just hang out like normal people?

“I'll take them back for you,” he says, and sprints off.

I keep going. I can't wait for the cool silence under the waves.

When I was little, I was amazed by the way the world changes as you dive underwater. At first, the quiet is like dropping off a cliff. Sharp. Voices disappear as suddenly as a door closing. It used to scare me. Now I look for it. My mind goes as clean and empty as the silence. I keep my eyes open underwater and look at things. Tiny fish flit past my fingers, weeds grow like lettuce, open fields stretch to New Zealand. I let it fill my mind. It's a bit like singing. You only hear the notes, nothing else.

Jackson reaches me just as I come up. We're so near, my chin almost grazes his chest on the way. I move back quickly.

“Oh, you're beautiful with your hair wet,” he says in a rush. He reaches out and touches the hair lying plastered over my neck, across my shoulders. “You're all outlined in
black—like a painting! You look even more like
you,
if you know what I mean!”

I'm nervous and I don't know what the hell he's talking about. But I've never felt such a stab of pure happiness as right now. I give a snort of laughter and splash him.

He leaps back, gasping. He's only in up to his waist. Spray makes tiny pearls on his chest. He hasn't been right under yet.

“Dive in,” I tell him. “It's so good.” This jittery excitement makes me want to leap around, be an idiot. I dive under another wave, and feel the glide of sea on my skin. The water parts for me and I hold my breath, swimming deep as a fish, so deep my stomach almost scrapes the sand. When I pop up, I'm far away, two sets of waves ahead.

“Hey there, Jackson!” I shout. I can see him, still in the same spot. He's hugging his arms. The waves jolt him, but he's standing his ground. His toes must be digging into the sand. I start to make my way back.

“Why don't you come out further?” I call. “We'll go out the back and catch some waves.”

I'm only a wave away now. He looks hesitant. He's peering back at the beach. Oh, it's not fair, how does Lilly's power stretch this far?

Then it dawns on me.

“Can't you swim?”

He makes a rueful face, his lips twisting to one side. “Yeah, not that well. I'm okay but not great. I don't know how to catch waves.”

I thread my way back to him. I'm thinking about all the different places he's lived. The city apartments, the desert, he's even flown over the Atlantic. But I've never heard him talk about the beach.

He laughs. It's an uneasy laugh. “I was late this morning because Mom was going off at me. ‘You're not a strong swimmer, Jackson. In fact, you're oceanically challenged. Who's supervising? What if there's a rip, a hurricane, a tidal wave? I won't be there to save you! Can't I come, too?'”

He does this hysterical croak at the end, and we crack up. He's caught her worried expression perfectly. “
You're all I've got, Jackson!
”

I look at him and think again how different he is. Since kindergarten we've all pretended we're so tough we don't even hear what our parents say. Badman says “What's eating you? Wake up on the wrong side of your mother?” as his regular insult.

I suggest we head for the next set of waves where we can still stand, and watch for a bit. We look at each small wave as it swells, rises into a peak (or a
crisis,
as his mother would say), breaking into foam. I teach him to look for the moment just before the break—that's the best time to leap onto the wave—no use when it's already broken. I catch a couple to show him how to keep your head down, one arm out straight, the other paddling for speed.

After a while we try a wave together. He stays on and almost reaches the shore with me. He's grinning all over his face.

“Look how far we've come!” he shouts, shading his eyes like a sea captain.

“You're a natural!” I say, and cuff him on the shoulder.

He grabs me and lifts me clean out of the water with both hands. We're staring face to face and his teeth are so white and his mouth so wide. I don't think he knows what to do with me then so I jump out of his arms and leap back into the water. He follows me into the next set of waves.

“You're a good teacher,” he says. He's so pleased with himself he can't stop smiling.

“Well, you just need someone to show you the first steps.”

We laugh together. The surf is behaving perfectly. Maybe for once the weather is on my side.

Isn't it strange the different things people are afraid of? For me it's fractions and decimal equivalents, Lilly in a bikini,
me
in a bikini—so much scarier than a six-foot wave.

We go out farther. I peek at his face as a bigger wave looms above.

“Dive under now!” I yell. I find his hand in the water and we pull each other through the waves.

Now we're catching loads of them. We're flying, dodging people like bullets.

“This is faster than public transport,” he jokes. “Miss one, there's another right behind it!”

I bump into a man built like a canoe. I stop, winded for a moment, and watch Jackson shoot past, arm pointing straight as an arrow, his feet kicking madly. He really is a natural.

While I wait for him, I float on my back. It's so lovely, letting your body go with the swell. I feel as boneless as a jellyfish, a piece of seaweed. My heart slows down. But my ears are beginning to ache from the cold water.

“Think I'll get out now,” I tell him when he comes back.

His face falls.

“You don't have to, though. Keep going if you want, you're doing great!”

“I just have to catch one more wave. That'll make a set of four.” He shrugs, laughing at himself. “It's one of my
challenges—I have to do things in sets, and finish on an even number.”

“Okay,” I smile at him. “Whatever gets you through the night.”

“That's a line from a song, isn't it? An old blues number.”

“Yeah. Have you ever noticed how truly great lyrics say everything about life in just a few words?”

We smile at each other.

I decide not to tell him about Badman's favorite line: “Eat crap and die.” It's from some heavy metal band, Knife Edge, or something. Sad, really. But on a bad day, I know exactly what he means.

The sand burns my feet as I pick my way through the towels and umbrellas. I find poor old Mitch still sweltering on the sand. And his shoulders are pretty red.

“The surf is awesome,” I say. Energy is tumbling through me. I feel bold, electrified by the waves. “Come on, Mitch, I'll go in with you again if you want.”

Mitch sits up, his eyebrows going
yes!

“Oh, no, I'm just about ready,” Lilly says. She turns to Mitch. “You want to come in with me, don't you?” And she starts playing with his hand, stroking his fingers for a second before letting them drop onto her leg.

We buy fish and french fries for lunch. I'm starving, and the french fries are just about perfect. Delicious! I like them best when they're crispy like this. I hate those cushiony fat ones, with no crunch. Tasteless. Especially when they're gray and mushy at the ends. “Hate is a very strong word,” my mother always says, frowning. Well, I hate a lot of things, with a passion. It's okay to say you
love
things
though, isn't it? Then you're being positive and polite, and everyone approves.

Jackson seems to
love
the crunch factor. I watch him carefully peel off all the golden fry and leave the naked fish in the box. Slowly, he devours the strips of crackling batter.

“Aren't you going to eat the fish?” Lilly asks him, peering over his shoulder.

“No, do you want it?” he says.

“I've eaten mine.” Lilly picks up a piece of Jackson's batter and examines it. She studies it like a food scientist. “This stuff is lethal for me—just total fat. I haven't eaten calories like that for ages. Doesn't it always just go straight to your hips, Ez?” and she looks with sympathy at my midriff.

My mouth is full of french fries so I don't say anything for a moment. I just go on chewing, hoping the moment will disappear. I hold my breath, trying to suck in my stomach seeing as everyone seems to be so busy examining it right now. Unfortunately, the mushed fry decides to go down with the gulp of air and I start spluttering and coughing like a blocked drain. I sound just like Jackson on a bad day. I think of Valerie telling me about Mama Cass, that folk singer who died from choking on a ham sandwich. But at least the old Mama had a few hit records before she kicked the bucket.

Jackson jumps up and starts thumping me on the back. Mashed potato shoots out of my mouth. Relief floods me—maybe I can still have a hit record. I look down at my knees covered in white goobly spray.

“Ooh, gross,” says Lilly, wrinkling her nose.

Mitch laughs till he just about wets himself. Jackson is still thumping away, although the thumps are turning into
concerned pats, making neat circular patterns on my back. I smile at him. He's doing them in sets of four.

When we're about to go home, Jackson asks me if I want to come back to his place.

“Hey, can we come, too?” asks Lilly, giggling at him. “Ez tells me how great your house is.”

“Oh, no, it's not that great,” I say, right away. I'm shaking out my towel and catch Jackson's expression over the top of it. Oh, God almighty, what have I said? “No, what I mean is, oh sorry, well…” I stop. It's useless, blabbing on. I fold the towel over and over, smoothing it down before I stuff it in my bag. How can I make it better?

Jackson just shrugs. He doesn't look at Lilly or me. “Yeah, whatever,” he says.

We walk along the asphalt path, past the surf club. The sun glints like a welder's hammer, sparkling on metal bits in the road. I find my sunglasses. Sometimes the sun is just too much, making your feelings heavier, louder, booming away, blinding you. There's no shadow, no shades of meaning, nowhere to hide.

I didn't
mean
it that way.

All the way home in the bus I'm fuming. I want to scream like the dying lady in
La Traviata.
I could punch myself in the mouth. Damn Lilly. It's just—I can't bear the thought of sharing Valerie with her. She won't see how special Valerie is. She'll just spoil it somehow, dull it. Make it hers. I consider trying to tell Jackson this, that I wasn't badmouthing his house—oh, but some things are just too hard to say.

I sneak a glance at him. He's quiet, looking out the window. I can only see his profile. The long straight line of
his nose, no little bump of indecision. He can play dead, like a statue. Scares me sometimes, the way he closes up. Mostly, he's so open, tumbling over himself to tell you about his past, his ideas, his number thing; but if you hurt him somehow, or he disapproves of you, you won't find him anywhere. He disappears inside himself like those little soldier crabs that burrow into the sand at the bay behind Pelican Beach. No matter how hard you dig or how loud you call, you won't find out what he's thinking.

We troop through the front door in single file after Jackson, and he goes to the fridge to get drinks. He tells us to throw our things down in the hall. We stand around in the kitchen, looking at him pouring lemonade. It's stifling inside—the windows and the back door are closed as if no one's been home all day. But I saw Valerie's car outside.

“Phew, it's like an oven in here,” says Lilly, wiping her face.

I lean over the kitchen table to open the windows.

“Open the sliding door, too, will you, Ez?” says Jackson. “And you can turn on that fan in the living room.”

That's better. I like it when he singles me out, acts as if I'm one of the family. He must have forgiven me.

As I come back into the kitchen, Valerie is wandering in from her bedroom. She looks dazed, as if she's just woken up.

“I was just reading,” she murmurs. “What's the time?”

There's a crease along her cheek where she must have fallen asleep on her book.

Jackson hands her a glass of lemonade. “Five o'clock.”

“Heavens!” she says, her eyes widening. “And you've been at the beach the whole day?” She grabs his shoulders. “You're okay?”

Jackson wriggles out of her hold, turning his back on her. “Yeah, yeah,” he mutters. “Didn't you go to work?”

“Yes, but I left early. Told them I was sick. I am, actually. Exhausted.” She smiles around the room. “Hi, Esmerelda, how are you doing?”