Blue Water High (2 page)

When Fly finally tumbled out of the bus at Blue Water Beach, her hair hung in two long plaits. So it made her look younger? It was that or the toilet brush.

The driver wheezed as he dragged Fly's board and bags from the bus. She'd borrowed a backpack from one of her sisters and an overnight bag from her aunty. The letter inviting her to come and compete in the finals had instructed them to pack their bags ‘with a view to starting training immediately' if they were selected. It was just too weird an idea – that she would get on the bus, win one of the seven places, and not see the farm or her family for a whole year … Definitely too weird. She'd packed halfheartedly, almost embarrassed to pretend it might come true. And yet, here she was. After all the waiting, after all the nerves and the rushing and the portaloo, this wasn't a dream. She was here.

Fly shouldered her bags. When she looked up, the little one's mother was standing on the bottom step of the bus waiting for her. The woman pressed a ten-dollar note and a muesli bar into Fly's hand – not much, but all she had to spare.

‘Good luck,' she whispered.

Fly felt like she was going to need it.

Blue Water Beach wasn't exactly as shown on the website. It was bigger. It was jam-packed with people and bright blue waves smacked the sand viciously. There was a huge Solar Blue tent in the middle. Long, coloured sponsor flags played tug-of-war with the wind. Loudspeakers barked on poles.

And what they barked was that the fifth heat of the day was a boys' heat, which could mean two things. If it came after the last girls' heat (supposedly hers) then her day was about to go downhill fast. If it was before the girls', she'd better make like a rabbit.

Fly wrestled her stuff down onto the sand. There were clusters of people everywhere. Kids getting pep talks, being congratulated, being supported. She recognised the odd face from the preliminary trials held a month ago back home, but the truth was Fly stood on the beach, about to surf the most important heat of her life, and she was on her own. She could feel a small nugget of sadness forming. She swallowed it back hard. No time for that kind of rubbish … And then, right in front of her, Mr Simmonds appeared.

Simmo – as he seemed to be universally known – was the chief of all things surfing at Solar Blue Surf Academy and he'd played a big part in the culling process of the competition to get in. And there'd been a
lot
of culling. The first trials had reduced seven thousand hopefuls to three hundred very hopefuls who got to surf a second time. Those three hundred then surfed again and had an interview before they were hacked down to the fifty very, very hopefuls who were now on the beach praying, begging, pleading for one of the seven spots at the school. It reminded Fly of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
– these were the golden tickets.

Fly remembered Simmo from the interview. He was a funny mix, his long shorts and thongs and sunnies all screamed Mr Casual, but there was something serious about him too. Just when you thought he was going to make a fart joke, he came out with something surprisingly sombre.

‘Fly Watson,' he said. ‘Thought you were going to stand us up.'

Been here five minutes and in trouble already.

‘The bus was … held up,' she said. No point going into the whole portaloo drama. Even though it was true, Fly knew it sounded too much like ‘the dog ate my homework'.

‘Am I too late?' she asked.

Simmo shook his head. ‘You don't have time for a massage and a lie down, though. They'll call you in ten when the guys finish.'

Simmo winked at her and jogged away.

Fly stepped out of her thongs and wriggled her toes in this new sand. This was something she never tired of. During the day, while she was at school, she could feel her
toes busting to get out of those steaming lace-ups. To get into the clean, dry sand. She reached down and grabbed a handful … and found herself staring at a board. It was a five-footer. White with an intense design ripping right up through the middle. The shape was violent and soft, sharp black edges curling around each other – and the more she stared the more she could see that it wasn't just a pattern. It was a picture. The hint of a fishhook curling upwards, and then, snaking out of the top edge, a head. Belonging to a man or monster Fly couldn't be sure, but she couldn't stop staring at it, locked into its grave, gentle gaze.

‘Tangaroa.'

Fly looked up into a smiling, brown face. A boy. About sixteen, shirtless, big brown eyes. He seemed to be talking to her. And maybe because she was still thinking about the figure on the board, or maybe because she had a long history of muddling things up when it came to boys, Fly started her first conversation with Heath Carroll very much on the wrong foot.

She was right that the word – Tangaroa – was not an English word, but that the speaker was not English too? Well that's where the muddling up began.

He said it again. ‘Tangaroa.'

Fly shook her head and very slowly, very loudly, said, ‘SORRY. I. ONLY. SPEAK. ENG-LISH.'

Heath started to smile. Fly wasn't sure how to respond. You didn't meet too many people from overseas in Capel, population 750, two hundred k from the nearest 7-Eleven. Maybe she hadn't said it clearly enough? So she pointed to herself and said it again.

‘ENG-LISH. Sorry.'

‘Yeah I speak it too,' said Heath.

Fly could feel the blood bolting to her cheeks. She was a world champion blusher. She could cook up twelve shades of beetroot in under five seconds.

Heath didn't seem to notice. He thrust out his hand.

‘Heath Carroll. My mum's from New Zealand, but I was born here.'

Fly shook the hand and started blathering. She could hear herself trying to explain. She could also hear herself using the word ‘sorry' way too many times.

Heath just nodded and returned to waxing the board, fat lumps of beeswax pocking the design as he moved back and forth.

‘It's a Maori design. It's called a Tangaroa. Guardian of all things that live in the sea.'

‘Oh,' said Fly. She nodded for good measure. Stood there. Nodded some more. She was an excellent conversationalist some days.

Saved by the PA.

‘Stacey Jervis and Fiona Watson to the judging area. The last girls' heat will start in ten minutes.'

It took a second before Fly sprang into action. She was so rarely called Fiona Watson these days it hardly sounded like her name anymore. Unless she was in trouble for not cleaning up her room, or one of her sisters was deliberately trying to wind her up, it was just plain old Fly. But here it was – Fiona Watson to the judging area. She reached down and grabbed her gear.

‘Are you Stacey or Fiona?' Heath asked. ‘You didn't say before.'

‘Sorry.' There it was again.

‘I'm Fly – Fiona.' And then, because it was only just hitting her, ‘I'm Fiona Watson and I've just been called to
the Solar Blue judging area. I'm competing for a place at the best surf school in the country.'

Heath nodded slowly back at her. ‘Um, yep. That would appear to be the case.'

Fly knew how weird she'd sounded, but the sheer brilliance of what she'd just realised won out. She grinned hard and took off. Because they'd just called her. Fiona Watson. Not Mandy Dyer or Liv Simpson or Amelia Worth or one of the thousand other girls whose name it could've been. They called her.

The judging tent was buzzing. Swarms of young funky types in official Solar Blue gear were chattering into mobiles, collecting judging forms, talking calmly to the unhappy parents of kids who'd failed to make the grade. On the other side of the tent Simmo was talking to another man. He looked up, waved Fly over.

‘Fly, I want you to meet Andrew,' Simmo said. ‘He's the reason we're all here.'

Andrew smiled and shook Fly's hand. He was young and tanned. Younger and more tanned than the head of a multi-million dollar company should look.

Solar Blue made surfboards and wetsuits and sponsored some of the best surfers in the world. The Solar Blue Surf Academy was Andrew's baby – he felt like he was giving back, giving kids who mightn't otherwise get a shot, a leg-up. But Andrew wasn't all heart, there was also the fact that whoever won the comp would be prancing around the world for a whole year wearing a Solar Blue T-shirt.

Then Simmo waved over another girl.

‘This is Stacey Jervis. Stacey, meet Fly.'

Stacey Jervis. Fly had heard the name. She was the favourite coming in. Solar Blue had been watching her for years. Stacey smiled at Fly, but it was one of those smiles they talk about on those documentaries about chimps, the ones where they bare their teeth ‘cause they're pretending to be non-threatening.

Simmo held out the competitors' numbers for them to take.

‘So,' Simmo said, getting down to business, ‘two ten-minute heats. Best of each added together gives us a winner. Any questions?'

Both girls shook their heads.

‘Better get on with it then.' He gave them a grin and waved them away.

As they pushed through the back flap of the tent, Stacey turned.

‘You know what to do, don't you?' She wasn't smiling now … and it wasn't really a question.

‘Um, yeah, I think so,' said Fly.

Stacey leaned down to tighten her leg-rope, pausing on the way to stare straight at Fly, her voice just a whisper. ‘You need to stay right out of my face. ‘Cause this spot is mine.'

Stacey stood back up and turned sharply, giving Fly's board an almighty whack with her own. Fly looked down. There, wedged into the rail of her board, was Stacey's fin.

Stacey reefed her board away angrily. ‘Watch out!' she snapped, like it was Fly's fault.

But Fly was too busy to respond. She was too busy staring down at the nasty gouge in her board. Her single, solitary board.

Stacey tested out her own fin to see if it'd been damaged
too. But somehow she'd escaped. She stared at Fly, daring her to complain.

‘What happened?'

Heath was standing at the edge of the tent. How long he'd been there, Fly had no idea.

‘Stacey, um … the fin went through my board,' she stammered. She'd never been any good at dobbing.

Heath was on the move straightaway. ‘Where's your board bag? I'll get it.'

Fly could feel the blood heading for her cheeks again. Her board bag was out the front of the tent. But it didn't have anything in it. Fly didn't have any other boards.

She thought back to the number of extra weekends she'd worked on the farm to earn this board. She'd worked it out one day: nine hundred sheep dipped to get the deposit, and another two thousand four hundred to pay it off. The smell of sheep dip was still in her nose every time she took the board out of the cover. It was old school, no question, but she hadn't really noticed until today – until her board saw all the other boards, with their designer lines, and started shouting, ‘Hey! Look at me! I'm out of the Ark! I'm prehistoric! I'm a plaything of the cavemen!'

Fly frowned at her board, willed it to shut up. Because she loved it, for all its dings, it had history, it'd had many bellies pressed against it … and now it had a giant bite out of the side, a hole the size of an apple, a hole which was going to take seawater at a scary rate. There was no way she could compete with it.

Stacey was still staring. ‘So are you forfeiting or what?'

It took a while for Stacey's words to filter through. Forfeiting? Was that what she was doing? But what other choice did she have?

‘She's not forfeiting,' Heath said, waving Stacey away with his hand.

Stacey shrugged – whatever – and bounded off.

Before she knew what was happening, Heath had Fly by the arm and was leading her away from the tent and towards the car park.

‘What do you mean I'm not forfeiting?'

Heath let go of her arm as they reached a battered Kombi van.

‘You can use my shortboard.' Heath banged loudly on the door of the van.

‘Mum!' He banged some more. ‘Wake up! It's an emergency.'

After a moment the door of the van ground open and there was Heath's mum, plump with sleep, dreadlocks tumbling down to her waist. She was the most beautiful woman Fly had ever seen.

‘An emergency? Really?' said Heath's mum.

Heath started rifling through the jungle of clothes and books and cooking utensils jammed into the back of the van.

‘Really,' said Heath. ‘Fly needs my shortboard. Pronto.'

The woman stretched out her hand to Fly. ‘Hello, Fly-in-need-of-a-shortboard. I'm Moana,' she said.

‘Hello,' said Fly.

And then Heath dragged a board bag from the guts of the Kombi. An empty baked beans tin and a pair of undies landed on the road at Fly's feet. Heath snatched up the underpants and shoved them back inside.

‘‘Scuse the mess. We've been on the road a while, and the cleaning lady's pretty slack. Isn't she, Mum?'