Blue (21 page)

More and more I'd been thinking about Nanna and her relationship with the sea, and how it had lasted until her final breath. My mom once told me that, from the very first days of my life, she and my dad would take me to the beach whenever I was teething or sick, and the noise of the waves would soothe me. And if it was nighttime or too cold to take me outside, they'd make the sound of the sea to calm me down, just ssshhhssshhhssshhh, and I'd stop crying and fall asleep in my dad's arms.

I was making a point of listening to the sound of the sea as Zeke and I were carrying our boards back up the beach. Then he surprised me by saying, “Wanna come to my apartment? I got the keys yesterday, and Garrett doesn't move in until next week.”

“I thought you said it was best if we, you know, avoided temptation and all that?”

I turned my back to him so he could unzip my wetsuit. He did this slowly and he helped me pull my arms out, so that I could fold the suit down to my waist and peel it off, as for once I had a rash vest, board shorts and a bikini on underneath.

“I dunno. I guess I was thinking we should forget that.”

“Aren't I supposed to be in strict training for the biggest day of my life next month?”

Or maybe the biggest day of my life was today, I thought, feeling a rush of something in the pit of my stomach.

Zeke turned around and I reached up to grab the zip of his suit, moving the wet blades of his hair that had grown longer and were starting to graze the top of his shoulders. The zip stuck a little and it took me a moment to loosen it and thread it down his back, the tanned skin opening up in a triangle beneath the wet rubber.

My board clattered on top of Zeke's and he turned around and held me in his arms. The strong arms that teeny-bopper surf groupies had been so eager to touch, just for a second, just to say they had.

I decided right then. I was going back to his apartment.

I was going to end up there eventually. Why couldn't it be when I was crazy emotional and amped?

“OK,” I said to him. “I'll come.”

I texted my mom to say that I was staying over at Kelly's.

She was bound to be getting suspicious, but like she'd always said to me, she'd done her fair share of crazy stuff when she was a teenager and she didn't have her mother hovering over her like a helicopter. My grandma had trusted my mom's instincts and, despite all appearances, my mom trusted mine.

Zeke had bought a second-floor apartment in a brand-new development just off North Fistral. There were only seven apartments in the building and the architect had obviously gone for Californian beach-style, with massive windows, fancy cedar boarding and timber-decked terraces. It was the coolest building in the whole of Newquay.

The apartment had its own front door and Zeke led me up a flight of stairs and into a bright and airy living room, empty apart from a mattress in plastic wrapping and three surfboards, which had been delivered the day before and were still zipped up in their soft silver covers.

A huge kitchen was set off to one side, and on the island in the center there was a vase of yellow roses and a bottle of champagne. Zeke walked over and plucked a small card off the granite worktop.

“Don't suppose that's from Garrett,” I said.

He looked up and shook his head. “No, just the lady who sold me the apartment. Let's crack this open, huh?”

The cork rocketed out and hit the art deco light fitting, champagne fizzing over pristine floor tiles.

“You have any glasses?”

“Don't think so.”

“Swigging time, then.”

I took a deep gulp of warm champagne and it fizzed up and out of my nose, leaving my eyes streaming. “Never had that before,” I said, rubbing my face on my rash vest. “It's kind of rank actually.”

“Gets better the more you drink.”

We walked into the living room, which didn't even have a sofa. Zeke docked his iPod in the inbuilt surround-sound system and loaded
An Awesome Wave
by alt-J.

“Love this album,” I said. “Especially . . . ‘Tessellate' . . . is it called?”

He nodded. “Garrett got me hooked on them. They look like these really goofy skinny guys, but, wow, their music is insane. I've been listening to ‘Dissolve Me' all week, like, on repeat.”

He put on “Dissolve Me” and the music hit us in small ripples at first, but then the song built in power—the speakers in Zeke's new place so perfectly positioned that it sounded like the band was in the room with us.

I sat down cross-legged in the pool of light by the window. Zeke stretched out on his back, his head resting on my thigh.

“Are you, er, prepared?” I said.

“I swung by Garrett's room earlier, yeah,” he said.

I remembered the glass jar on Garrett's nightstand which was overflowing with condoms.

“He won't miss them?”

“I doubt he keeps count.”

“Cool.”

“Uh, Iris?”

“Yeah?”

He looked over at the new mattress, lying on its side by the front door. “I don't have a bed yet.”

“Beds are for wimps,” I said.

He grinned, got up, tore the clear plastic off and dragged the mattress over to me, letting it fall to the ground with a thump.

I crawled on to it and flaked out on my back. He was still standing and, as he looked down at me, I cocked my head to try to see him the right way up, though even from that weird angle he still looked totally sexy. Then he knelt and quickly kissed me
upside down, which felt surprisingly nice. He walked around and rested on me, his knees on either side of mine. I kept my eyes open, still not quite believing that this surf god was actually putting the moves on me; but there he was, his face bearing down on mine, his eyes sparkling with a hunger I recognized.

This was it.

As he kissed me, my body started to respond to his, my hips moving in a rhythm of their own. He pulled my vest over my head, and fumbled with the knotted draw-cords on my board shorts, which I slithered out of, leaving me in just my black bikini top and bottoms. He took off his T-shirt, so he was just in his boardshorts. Then he kissed me again, the feel of skin against skin upping the intensity.

“Iris,” he said, bringing me back to reality. “What are we doing here? Because if we keep at this, in about three seconds I'm gonna, umm, y'know, in your belly button.”

“Sorry,” I said, a bit embarrassed. “Maybe I was getting carried away there.”

“Hell, I don't mind. I just don't want you to do anything you're not ready for.”

I thought about that for all of one second.

“I'm ready.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“You won't be mad at me tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Totally sure?”

“For God's sake! Yeah, I'm sure.”

“Awesome,” he said and gave me the most beautiful smile.

I stayed the night at Zeke's. In the end, I didn't even lie about it to my mom. I called her up and told her exactly where I was, and promised I'd keep my phone ringer on at all times.

She wasn't happy, but as she said: “I'm glad you're being straight with me. I'd rather know you were safe with someone you trust, than drunk at a party with some opportunist sleazebag.”

I put down the phone and smiled at Zeke.

In a luxury apartment with no furniture except a mattress was not how I'd imagined my first time would be. But then I never imagined I'd meet someone like Zeke.

I thought it would hurt. Or that I'd be sore afterward. But Zeke was really slow and patient and I was relaxed enough that my body didn't tense up. I always thought surfing was the most intense experience a person could have. I was wrong.

Zeke left at 5 a.m. to do circuits with his brothers on Great Western Beach and grab a morning surf. I lay by the window, curled up on the mattress with a silver surfboard cover for a sheet, and I watched the sun arc across the sky.

Normally I would have gone with Zeke for a dawn workout, but I wanted some time alone, some quiet to adjust.

I felt different, knew that if I looked in the mirror my face would be different.

It was.

Something in my eyes was new. Serious.

It had been a trippy experience and I was really happy we'd done it, but I still had a lot buzzing around my head. After a couple of hours of chilling, I was ready to go surf it out.

I was looking through the window at the break when I saw Daniel jogging down Headland Road. He must have sensed he was being watched, because he looked right up at Zeke's window, and I could tell he recognized me.

It wouldn't take long for him to realize what had happened. I was standing in a four-hundred-grand beachside apartment that nobody from Newquay could possibly afford. Daniel would know it was Zeke's and he'd know I'd stayed the night. What else would I be doing there at eight thirty in the morning?

I strung up my bikini, and pulled my shorts and tank top on.

Then I ran down the stairs two at a time, flung open the front door and slammed it behind me.

“Daniel!” I called, but he didn't look round. I only had flip-flops, so I couldn't run properly and I wished I had a skateboard with me.

I jogged behind Daniel all the way to Towan Headland. I knew where he was going. It was obvious from the moment I'd opened Zeke's front door, when I'd heard the deep pounding.

Finally, at the cliff-edge, Daniel turned to me. “You slept with him, didn't you?”

I didn't have to answer that. He had no right to ask.

“Yes,” I said, because even if I hadn't spoken the word, my face would have said it.

“Knew you would. Knew it the first time I saw you with that dude.” He smiled grimly, shook his head and then said, “Oh well, see you on the other side.”

“You can't be serious.”

The Cribbar waves were breaking due to a tropical storm that had occurred thousands of miles away. Distant low-pressure weather systems affected oceans like pebbles dropped into a pond. The ripples were swells that traveled for days until they made landfall. In this case, the landfall was the Cribbar reef, and the waves were enormous. Faces that were twice the height of the ones I'd watched at the Headland Hotel with Zeke. They were pushing forty feet, at least.

And Daniel wasn't even wearing a wetsuit, let alone a flotation vest. Just a black rashie and some blue baggies.

“If your poser boyfriend can do it, so can I,” Daniel was saying, clutching an electric-green board that looked familiar.

“Uh, he grew up in Hawaii.”

“So? I've been surfing all my life. I get the sea. I'm, like, connected to it or something.”

“You've been surfing beach breaks. It's not the same as a crazy reef break. Wake up to yourself. This is the Cribbar. You'd be surfing a mountain.”

“Yeah, well, who says that's impossible? I can snowboard great.”

“On a dry slope. And this is a mountain of water that wants to crush you. A mountain that you have to jump off at the scariest possible moment and somehow survive.”

“Your boyfriend does it like twenty times a year.”

“Come on, Daniel. You know that's junk. It's not a competition.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“And what's the prize?”

“You, probably.”

“Don't be so psycho. You can't win me.”

“I'm doing it anyway.”

“Where did you get that board?”

“Found it.”

“Where?”

“On your boyfriend's camper van. So what?”

“So first you're now a thief, and second you are actually contemplating riding the Cribbar on an unfamiliar board?”

“I can do it, Iris. I know I can.”

“Yeah, like you thought you could beat Zeke Francis in the Saltwater Pro?”

“What? I was just unlucky.”

“No, you lost your cool and it all went wrong.”

Suddenly, he smiled and said, “Eddie would go.”

I thought of the Eddie Aikau tribute tattoo on the top of Daniel's butt, which had those exact words.

“Eddie
did
go. And Eddie damn well died, remember?”

“If I die, I die. But I'm gonna go.”

“Go home.”

“No way. This is my day. This is it. I'm riding the fucking Cribbar, and if it kills me, at least I'll have gone out doing something awesome. Something I love.”

It wasn't even Kodak courage, because there was no one watching except me. He wasn't trying to get his picture on the news or on the cover of
Surfer
magazine. He was just going.

He picked up the board, a leashless ten-foot gun, and started jogging to the cliff-edge. Just the clamber over those crumbling rocks to the water was dangerous. I ran after him and caught him at the ledge.

I grabbed his arm, digging in my fingernails.

“Don't do this, Daniel.”

“I have to. I have to find out.”

“What?”

“Who I am. What I'm made of.”

“Oh
come on
.”

“Don't worry. I got this.”

“Please don't waste your life. It's pointless.”

“Nah. You'll see,” he said.

I looked at him. He was looking out at the set, which was feathering out just beyond the cliff. His whole body vibed with determination. Nothing I could say would get in the way of that.

“You just get as far down the face as quick as you can before it sucks you back up again, OK, and if you wipe out, cover your head near the bottom, because if you don't, your head is smashed in and you're dead. Do you hear me?”

“Gotcha.”

Then he went over the cliff and clambered down toward the rocks.

“Be careful,” I shouted. Either it was lost to the wind and he didn't hear, or he didn't give a shit, because he didn't answer. He was totally committed. He climbed down the rocks and pushed off, stroking powerfully out to the channel that would take him around the reef break and out the back. I saw when the rip took hold, pushing him fast out to sea.

He looked so small and hunched, bobbing out there like a seabird.

The first set came through. Daniel let the first wave pass, and the second, trying to tune in and sense which would be the best wave, I guessed. Then, as the line of the third wave approached, he swung around and stroked hard to take off. It was cresting, and still he was paddling hard to get up enough speed.

Then he started the vertical plunge, carving down the face, this gray wall of water rearing up behind him, getting bigger and
bigger. The right rail dug in and he was off, riding down the curl of the wave. It was the wave of his life, no doubt, and it seemed like he was riding faster than was possible. But it was a jerky ride, the wave rising up with weird kinks, drops and lifts, and the board's tail shaking because of the wave gurgles, which were totally unpredictable. All this was happening in the blink of an eye.

Daniel hung on, but suddenly his positioning looked all wrong to me—too much speed, the tail of his board whipping left and right like he was about to lose control. I don't know what he was thinking about out there in that awful moment, but if it was me it would have been my life flashing before my eyes, because those would probably be the last seconds of it.

Then, as he shot the curl, it reduced in size to double-overhead, then overhead and suddenly it was just a normal wave. Daniel was hollering, “COWABUNGA” and “BANZAI!” like some kid in a cheesy beach-blanket movie. And he rode that wave all the way to the channel and then he hopped off the back, bellied down on his board and paddled.

He'd made it. I couldn't believe it. No one would believe it.

For a brief moment he looked toward the cliff where I was standing and did the shaka sign with his hand, and that was when I saw it. Line after black line stacking up much further out to sea.

He was too far away to hear me shout, so I started jabbing my hand toward the horizon. He stared at me. I waved my hands some more, flicking my index fingers to show him what was behind him, but he couldn't hear, and in the dip of the swell he couldn't see.

Daniel broke the first rule of surfing: never turn your back to the ocean.

Finally he saw it, but by then it was too late. The line-up had changed. A sneak set was approaching and Daniel was caught inside, deep in the new impact zone. All he could do was stroke out hard toward it. He was on full RPM, going as fast as if he was trying to take off on a wave, but in the other direction, paddling desperately out to sea, hoping that he could get to the other side. The first wave he made and I watched him bob over it, just. I hoped that the speed and momentum he'd built would take him to the next wave. The next wave was twice the size and it was jacking up, monstrous. Daniel was like a stickman desperately trying to paddle over the top of it. For a second I thought he'd made it, thought he was over it, scratching for the next one. Then I saw him sucked backward. Going over the waterfall.

Holy shit.

I knew he was dead. No one could survive that wipeout.

I screamed because I couldn't help myself. It was just this primal noise that came out of the depths of me. My eyes scanned the sea, but there was so much whitewater that everything between the cliff-face and the break was like frothy cream. Then I saw a board pop up and a head and shoulders appeared not far from the boneyard. The body wasn't floating face down. I saw arms working furiously, heading away from that rocky graveyard and toward the calm waters of the channel. On the waves of the wind I could have sworn I heard laughing. He was alive.

His rash vest had been sucked right off him, and his baggies too, I noticed when he kicked up to swim. It took a scary amount of force to rip the clothes off a surfer. The wave would have been like a tornado in the water. His board, or rather Zeke's board, was somehow still in one piece and swirling in
circles about fifty feet from him and I watched open-mouthed as Daniel swam for it, hopped on, and rather than head for shore to go to hospital, he paddled out again in the lull to catch another wave.

He had lost his mind.