Blue (18 page)

“Didn't it affect your surfing?”

“Sure. Methamphetamine gives your brain this intense high that makes you think you're invincible. I started taking crazy risks. Late drops, ignoring the shark flags at training grounds, trying to surf close-out sets. Slept with too many girls.”

“Yeah, I figured out that last part.”

“It was a crazy time. Before the thing in the Mentawais, Billabong had paid for a yacht for me and five of the other guys they sponsor. We lived on it for a couple months, sailing along the west coast of Australia. All we had to do was surf as much
as we wanted and show up for contests. Obviously we checked out a lot of bars and clubs too. Not just in the cities. We found all kinds of cool little towns.”

“So a group of six pro-surfers rock up to some small town bar? Girls must have been all over you.”

“It's weird. We felt this pressure to act up, give them a good show, almost? Because like for us it was just a normal day, but for them it was the biggest night in their social calendar. That sounds super-egotistical and sketchy, right? But I'm being honest here and that's how it felt. So we just went for it, I guess.”

“I kinda noticed you had a lot of girls' names in your phone.”

“You checked out my iPhone?”

“Yeah, I'm so sorry. I didn't exactly mean to, but I picked it up and saw it was open on the Contacts page, so I caught a few names. Then I accidentally dropped it in your hot tub. I'm really sorry.”

“Forget it. It's just a cell phone. Some of those girls are friends and some are girls I've dated. I keep their numbers in my phone so I know who's calling me. I've been blindsided a few times. I should just change my number.”

“Honestly, don't feel like you have to. I was acting crazy insecure. Stuff with Daniel screwed me up. But I don't wanna be that person anymore. I wanna be here for you. If you ever need to talk, I'll listen. I'm really sorry you had to go through all that stuff.”

“You know, I kidded myself that I was having the best time of my life. I was doing well financially. I paddled some monstrous waves. Got the covers of surf magazines. I picked up so many injuries, got more scars than I needed to get, broke bones, but somehow got through it alive. Anders sent me to rehab and got me
clean. Wes and Garrett helped. Now I have to pay them all back by winning the QS and getting on to the ASP World Championship Tour. So I couldn't give up surfing, even if I wanted that.”

“Right. So why can't we just see how it goes? Have a cool summer together?”

“Because I'm falling in love with you. And it gets worse every day. You're all I can think about. Even when I'm in the ocean, where I've always been able to relax and switch off, I'm thinking of you.”

Why?
I wanted to ask. Nobody had ever let me get into their head like that before. Daniel had been with me for ages and never even told me he loved me, and here was this amazing boy who was thinking about me when he should have been catching waves, and telling me that he was falling for me. It was nuts.

“If I'm ruining your surfing practice, we definitely shouldn't be going out.”

“No, it's not like that. You're good for me. I'm just, I don't know, like,
better
or something around you. I want to work hard, so you can know me at my best. But I'm not stupid. I know you're sixteen. I get that.”

“So what's the problem here?”

“I don't think I can do long distance. It's just not for me. I'd be no good at it.”

“You'd cheat on me.”

“No. I'd really miss you. It'd suck and I'd hate it.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Run away with you and travel the world?”

“No . . . Yeah. Maybe.”

“Like you said, I'm sixteen.”

“If you get sponsorship and parental approval, you can come on tour.”

“I'm up against Saskia. There's no way that I'm going to get sponsorship. I only started surfing a few summers ago. I'm not good enough yet.”

I didn't want to point out that I'd never in a million years get parental approval.

“You are good enough. Anyways, Lisa Andersen didn't start surfing until she was fifteen.”

Lisa Andersen lived rough under a pier, or on a bench or something, after running away from home. I wasn't tough enough for that. I also couldn't make my mom worry about me. She didn't deserve that. True, Lisa Andersen had gone on to win four World Surf Championships, but what were the chances that would happen to me?

“Anders thinks you have what it takes.”

“Anders thinks I look nice in a bikini.”

“Sure you do, and that does count. Looks are important in this business, and especially the female side of it. It's stupid, and my mom is totally right when she says surfer girls shouldn't have to be ‘the patriarchy's cutest dolls' or whatever. But it comes back to money. The surf companies run the major contests, and the whole surf industry exists through selling merchandise, mostly to non-surfers who want to look like surfers. Good-looking chicks sell stuff. Queebs do great in pro-surfing. They've got the looks and the own-it attitude.”

Queebs were queen bees who strutted around the beach like they were God's gift. I hated them. There was no way I was going to be one.

He was right about them bringing in money though. So many surfer girls were growing their hair long, getting nose jobs, even boob jobs. In the past it didn't matter so much what you looked like. No surfer was a mainstream celebrity. I guessed people like Kelly Slater and Lisa Andersen had changed that. You had to look good now, especially if you were a girl.

It wasn't easy though. Surfing builds up muscle, which is why so many female surf pros are built like brick shithouses. They're not at all fat, but once you hit twenty, it's hard for all that strength training not to bulk you out. So if you want to be a celeb surfer, a pin-up girl, you really have to break out while you're still a teenager, while you're still at your lightest and leanest. I knew from reading
Surf Girl
magazine that the pressure to be thin and pretty had destroyed careers.

“OK, so just say we
can
run off together, what then?”

“Then life happens. We see a lot of really cool places, catch a lot of sweet waves and have the time of our lives. What's not to like?”

I thought about that. I would miss my family and Kelly. But this would be an incredible opportunity and I'd be stupid not to consider it. But then the sensible side of my brain kicked in again. I imagined myself after a fight with Zeke, stranded somewhere like Morocco. Not knowing the language, and not having any money, or any way of getting home. All my female acquaintances would be my competitors. I'd have no Kelly. No Lily. No Mom. I'd be totally reliant on a boy. This boy I'd only just met. I'd rushed head first into an intense relationship with a boy once before and it had ended in disaster.

“What if we split up?” I said.

“Let's just live for today and see what happens. I wouldn't be suggesting this if I didn't think we had a really good shot of making it work.”

I sighed and stretched back on to the cold grass. The crazy thing was that we were discussing things that were months and years ahead and
still
he hadn't properly even kissed me. How much longer could this go on?

And then the stars were darkened by his silhouette leaning down to me.

I can remember the kisses I'd had with other boys quite clearly, and lots of the vanilla kisses with Daniel. But it wasn't the same with Zeke. Something different happened with Zeke.

It was a really deep kiss and I remembering thinking,
Wow, our mouths and noses fit together perfectly
. No awkward readjustment; just totally in sync with each other. But there was more than that. It was the most hardcore intense feeling. I wasn't thinking about what to do with my mouth, or if my breath smelled of coffee, or wondering how many other girls Zeke had kissed and how this kiss compared to them. I was just totally one hundred percent in the moment.

I was still kissing him when I rolled so that I was on top of him. I could feel that things were getting serious when we were interrupted by a drunk old man who'd walked quite close to us and shouted, “Young lovers.”

Then he added, “Should get a room.”

We laughed and sat up. Zeke's lips had a faint stain of my dark lipstick.

“So, are you my girl, Iris?”

“Damn straight,” I said, laughing and reaching to move a strand of hair that had fallen across his face.

It was a killer high. And I realized that the more I was around him, the more comfortable I was becoming with him physically. I was even getting used to that gorgeous face, although I still got butterflies whenever he looked right into my eyes and smiled.

Still, I knew we had to accept the fact that if I didn't succeed at Wavemasters and grab the sponsorship from Saskia, Zeke and I would be over. He would go back to his life as a surf champ, adored by zillions of girls the world over, and I'd go back to my life working in a shop and being completely ordinary.

Something I'd learned from being around someone extraordinary, someone with extraordinary talent, was that it was addictive. I wanted a bit of Zeke's magic to sprinkle down on to me and make me extraordinary too.

I looked at him, at those eyes, which for once weren't full of laughter but were deadly serious. And I felt the pull between us, the air rushing away and sucking us closer together. He fell away beneath me and the ache in me was lost to the feel of his body under mine, and my lips on his throat and down to that stomach, which I'd first caught a glimpse of in a yoga class forever ago.

We rounded second and third bases, but stopped it there, as neither of us was prepared, figuratively or literally.

When the sun came up, I saw him at the edge of the grass staring out to the sea.

He was watching the surf, figuring out how it was working, where the peaks and rips were, how the wind was moving, and how the tide was affecting everything. To plan his next surf was in his blood.

When he turned to me, his look of pure happiness showed me that I had been wrong. He wasn't weighing up the surf after
all. His eyes were just drifting as he thought about something else. Us.

Then I knew that, for now at least, I was his and he was mine and it would take a lot to mess that up.

If I could just win sponsorship, the years ahead of us could always be this golden.

But how could I do that?

The Saltwater Pro Junior Men's Contest was in full swing. Me and Kelly were on a stripy beach blanket with a picnic and an umbrella, and about fifty thousand other people had the same idea. The skateboard contest was heating up behind me, with all kinds of lunatic stuff going down in the half-pipe, including a broken leg. To my right, the
Nuts
magazine Wet-T-shirt Competition was being judged, and there were more news cameras at work there than in any other area of the beach. Only five long lenses were on the men's surf event and not many beach-goers seemed to be watching the contest either.

The buzzer had just gone for Zeke's first-round heat. He was in the blue jersey and a Brazilian surfer called Silvio was in the yellow. Word in the pro-tent was that Silvio had a reputation for dangerous charging and a bad attitude. He was currently placed fourth, and Zeke was placed sixth, due to him missing
a contest while he was convalescing and hanging around in Newquay with me.

Despite the general lack of interest in the surf contest, Zeke still had a following. At least a dozen girls made a guard of honor for him to walk through on the way to the waterline. They didn't care about surfing. They wouldn't care less about what he did in the water. They just cared that he was relatively famous guy with a hot body and a gorgeous face. As the days went on, Zeke had been getting noticed more and more around Newquay, probably because of the
Cosmo Girl
feature.

I wondered how many girls had that picture on their walls. I hated the way girls would look at Zeke, even when I was right there. A couple of girls had even gone in for the blatant ass-pinch, which I thought was just sad. I totally got why girls were attracted to Zeke, but it was still horrible to see how they threw themselves at him. Garrett told me that this kind of thing happened to Zeke pretty much everywhere they went and that certain girls who followed the surf scene were always desperate to get a one-second grope of a high-ranking pro-surfer. More, if they could.
Pro-hoes
, Garrett called them, which I thought was a bit strong. Zeke shrugged off the attention, but after the ass-gropes I could tell he was embarrassed and fed up of being treated like that. Like some brainless piece of meat.

I looked over to Kelly, who was texting on her phone, saying something flirty to Garrett by the looks of it. Then I turned my eyes back to Zeke and Silvio and watched as the two of them dipped through the impact zone, Zeke reaching the line-up first. He took the first wave, threw a really sharp turn on the steepest,
most shreddable part of the wall with a vertical snap off the lip, but whitewash was coming at him from two directions and there was nowhere to go. It was a bad wipeout, with him twisting kind of funny as he hit the water. He came up after a couple of seconds and went straight back out. That wave was scored a 4.79. Silvio took the next wave—the biggest in the set—made the drop and got tubed. The judges awarded him a 7.68.

Zeke had a lot of ground to make up. In the lull I could see him talking to Silvio, laughing about something. So much for the Brazilian's bad attitude.

Silvio went for another wave, gathered speed and found a ramp for the air section, but mistimed it and did a backflip while his board went in the other direction. Wipeout. 3.92 score. Then a beautiful right-hander peeled away and Zeke was in the perfect position on the perfect wave. All of his grace and flexibility came together in a sequence of moves that he'd practiced on our first surf together when we'd paddled out after yoga class.

I couldn't believe that was my boyfriend out there. He was incredible. I knew he had a serious work ethic and said the ocean was his office, but seeing him work those waves, my whole body ached with longing for him and I knew for sure that I was the luckiest girl in the entire world.

I crossed my fingers for a big score but was pretty confident, because that last wave had to be considered a “wave of consequence” and Zeke's ride would surely be scored in the excellent range. I was right. 8s and 9s from all five judges, averaging a 9.23. The buzzer sounded again. Zeke had won the heat and would advance to the next round. The Brazilian looked annoyed, but that was to be expected. He shook Zeke's hand and ran off
to the competitors' tent, where he was greeted by a couple of big-boobed massage therapists in polka-dot bikinis.

I jumped up to greet Zeke. I went for the fist bump, but he swept me off my feet and kissed me. I could tell he was psyched. He was literally trembling with the high of winning. After two years of pro-surfing, I thought all the contest craziness would be normal to him. Apparently not.

Zeke set me down and said hi to Kelly. Then he looked around and said, “Have you seen my parents? They said they'd swing by for my heats.”

“No, sorry.”

“I guess they lost track of time. It's OK. They've watched me surf a million contests.”

He had a few hours so I bought him a veggie burger, chips and Coke as he was ravenous and needed all the calories he could get for the next round heat. All eyes were on us in the cafe. I wasn't sure if Zeke was recognized, or whether the stares were because he had stripped down to just his boardshorts. I had bought a strappy orange dress from the Quiksilver summer sale and new flip-flops, but even at my most glam I still felt like a total trog next to Zeke. As usual, he was ignoring the stir he was causing, and I wasn't going to flag it up.

“You were great out there,” I said. “You really knew how to read those waves.”

“I came down to the beach last night with Garrett to watch the water.”

“Couldn't sleep?”

“Oh, I was super-sleepy, but I knew I'd be starting my heat at midday, so I thought I'd come take a look at midnight, to see how that tide level worked against the ocean floor.”

I smiled. That was just classic Zeke: always trying to learn more and figure out ways to surf better.

I offered to pay for a beer from the downstairs bar for Zeke, but he was absolutely against that. He couldn't even risk one bottle of beer, he said, because even that small amount of alcohol could screw up his balance. We walked back down to the beach and the results board showed that Zeke was up against a wild-card entry, who would be wearing a white jersey. Zeke was getting suited up again and pulling his blue jersey over the top, when I spotted the wild card.

Daniel.

He had been invited to compete in Saltwater? Every year they invited two locals, but the organizers had picked Daniel? Maybe his new lifeguard crew had arranged it for him. Whatever, this was mega. The whole of the professional surf scene was here. All the sponsors, all the agents and promoters. If Daniel caught a perfect wave here, things could change for him overnight. All that stood in his way was Zeke.

Zeke spotted Daniel about two seconds after I did, and I saw the realization pass over his face. Daniel waved, but Zeke only gave him a chilly nod.

“He's just a wild card,” I said.

“I know.”

“I guess if you'd pressed charges then he wouldn't be here.”

“He'd be here.”

Daniel came over, put his hand out and Zeke shook it. Daniel could barely make eye contact.

“I didn't know I'd be up against you, man,” Daniel said. “I didn't expect to win my first heat.”

“No sweat.”

“I feel shit about what went down, but I still have to beat you here, OK?”

“Well, you can try, dude.”

Daniel shrugged and said, “May the best man win.”

“Yeah,” Zeke said. “He's gonna.”

The buzzer sounded and they ran down to the water. Kelly and Garrett were walking up from South Fistral, where they had been surfing, judging by the beginner foamie under Kelly's arm and the fish board under Garrett's. Kelly's eyes were popping out on stalks as Zeke and Daniel ran into the water.

They came straight over.

“Am I tripping or is that the guy whose nose I broke?”

“Yeah, he's the wild card.”

“He's like scabies,” Kelly said. “He gets everywhere.”

“Gross, but accurate,” I said.

Daniel caught the first wave, but a big section closed out and sent him flying. Zeke was on the second and almost took off Daniel's head as Daniel surfaced in the zone. Somehow Zeke missed him and turned toward the lip, floated on the crest and dropped back in. At 7.33, Daniel would find the ride difficult to beat. Daniel punched through and made the line-up, took off too fast and wiped out again. It was embarrassing. He had to calm down, or he was going to score zero. Zeke stayed away from Daniel in the lull and looked toward shore for a moment. I waved but he couldn't find me in the crowd and he didn't wave back. The next set was pristine and breaking in one long beautiful curl. It was slightly outside, so Daniel and Zeke stroked out to position themselves for takeoff. Whoever reached the crest
first and got to their feet would have right of way, so it was a full-on race. Zeke had better paddle technique and his board skimmed perfectly through the water, but Daniel had desperation on his side, and they were neck and neck.

Daniel messed up the turn to shore, and Zeke got to his feet first. Zeke had priority, but Daniel went for it anyway and was flagged for interference. Daniel slid down the back of the wave, and watched, just totally humiliated, as Zeke pulled a frontside grab-rail reverse aerial, which was something I'd never seen any surfer manage. It was a highly technical aerial trick, where a surfer grabbed the edge of the board and then did a 360 high in the air, but rotating in the opposite direction from whatever momentum they'd built. It scored Zeke a 9.62.

With only one minute left on the clock, Daniel scratched for the next wave but it was junky slop with no power and he was only riding for five seconds. He managed a 3.90. That was his only scoring wave. It was a total hammering. Daniel had been humiliated by Zeke in front of the entire competitive-surf community. He'd choked and blown it, big time. The buzzer sounded again and Zeke paddled in, but Daniel stayed out there, desperate to catch another wave to redeem himself. He was being warned over the loudspeaker to come in but he just ignored it. An overhead wave reared up and Daniel took off, only to wipe out once more. It was not his day. He should have quit when he was told, because now a lot of people were watching.

Eventually he came in, tore off his white jersey, threw it on the ground and went straight to his car without saying a word. Bad, bad loser. Zeke was trying not to grin, but failing. His
fan club surrounded us, the cameras on their phones clicking overtime.

Zeke never got to surf his next round heat.

Running up the beach were Wes and Elijah.

“Come on,” Wes urged Zeke and Garrett. “We've gotta get to the hospital.”

And then he said it:

“Nanna's had a stroke. It's bad.”