Blue Water High (32 page)

Heath had been standing at Fly's shoulder for moral support, but Fly guessed he must've thought she needed more than that.

‘She beat you fair and square, Bec,' he said. ‘It's not like you haven't shouldered people in the past.'

Fly glared at him. She knew he was only trying to help, but she hadn't shouldered Bec. She'd bumped her!

‘Only if they got in my way.' Bec was arguing with Heath now. Fly might as well have not been there at all.

‘So you got in Fly's way!'

Bec shook her head. ‘You know what? I don't need this.' She was already heading across the room.

When Fly looked up she realised that Anna and Perri had been drawn to the fight. They didn't know which way to go.

‘Don't let her get to you, Fly,' said Anna. ‘She's just upset.'

No kidding.

Something must've snapped inside Fly. Maybe it was the safety net holding her back against the old island, stopping her from swimming too far. She didn't know what it was, all she knew was that there was a wicked African beat coming from the jembes and she was sick of feeling bad. She looked at Heath.

‘Do you want to dance?'

It was rare that Fly took Heath by surprise.

‘Now?'

‘Sure,' she said. ‘What's the alternative? We walk back to camp, talk it over on the way, don't reach a decision, same old stinky story in the morning.'

She had a point; maybe they could stay for half an hour.

But half an hour crept into an hour, and then it crept into two, and three hours later Heath was still trying to peel Fly off the dance floor. He didn't know what she was doing, but he suspected it wasn't just youthful exuberance. There was something sad about the madness of her
dancing. Something manic about her smiles. And Heath didn't buy it for a second.

At one o'clock he told her he was going back to camp whether she was coming or not.

‘Stop being a party pooper,' she complained.

But Heath wouldn't be swayed. It was now or never. What was she trying to do? Deliberately sink her chances of winning?

Fly agreed to go home, but she half wondered whether she needed to hang out with someone who wasn't quite as sensitive as Heath.

‘Rise and shine, my little Twinkie.'

It was morning. It was Simmo's voice.

Fly wished she'd never given him the inner mongrel details. She felt like she'd been run over.

‘Twinkie's dead,' she said, her eyes still jammed shut.

Fly finally made it out of the tent. The sun blinded her. It gave her headache an almighty power surge. She blinked and groaned and felt like she might throw up. Simmo smiled at her in a scary way.

‘I don't feel so good. I don't think I can surf.'

Simmo smiled harder. ‘Of course you can. You are going to compete, Fly. And you're going all out to win.'

Why was he smiling so much?

‘Honestly, Simmo. I feel terrible.'

‘Then you shouldn't have stayed up all night acting the goat, should you?'

He kept right on packing the van for the comp.

‘You've got two choices, Fly. You can pack your stuff and head back to Western Australia or you can get out there and surf like there's no tomorrow. It's up to you.'

He wasn't smiling anymore.

No-one was really smiling. Perri was still grizzling about having been knocked out. Heath had had almost as little sleep as Fly. Bec clearly hadn't had some dream-time encounter with forgiveness. And Edge? Edge was back at the pit, not smiling the hardest of all of them. The hotter temperatures that morning did nothing for the fragrance of the task and Edge had tied a bandanna around his nose and mouth.

Ten minutes before it was time to leave for the finals Simmo called the rest of them together.

‘How're we all feeling about Edge?' He was looking at Perri; it was her call really. ‘Do we think he's suffered enough?'

Fly reckoned he'd suffered enough about ten minutes after he started. She had always been hopeless at vengeance.

Then she heard a clicking sound. Clicking on, clicking off. It was Simmo's magic torch, there on the table beside him. Simmo pressed the light on and off, on and off.

‘Isn't that the torch Edge is looking for?'

Simmo looked down, gave it one more click for good luck. ‘So it is,' he said with an evil smile.

Edge had been elbow-deep in the kind of sludge Fly didn't even want to think about and the torch wasn't even there.

‘It's not always about the destination, Fly,' Simmo said. ‘Sometimes it's just about the journey.'

Perri must've been feeling like a softie too. She thought Edge had paid enough – but she wasn't getting in the van
with him until he'd had at least two showers.

‘Edge! You've got ten minutes to have two showers!'

Simmo turned and looked at Fly. ‘How's my little winner feeling?'

Fly thought on it a long time. ‘I thought you just said it's not always about the destination, Simmo. So really it doesn't matter whether I win or not.'

He shook his head. ‘Not even close, Fly. Not even close.' Fly had been to plenty of finals days, but by this stage she was usually just part of the crowd. Today she was one of the final four – her, Stacey Jervis, Emily Cameron and Ally Henville.

As the Blue crew stumbled down onto the sand – almost late because of Edge's double shower requirements – Fly saw that Stacey was near the judging tent talking with Darren Crocker of the
Marley Beach Gazette
. Stacey was lapping it up. She could do limelight with her eyes closed. As she headed down to the white water Fly could feel herself letting it get to her. She could hear the old monkey grinder cranking up in her head, spitting out a boring old tune. It went something like this: Fly Watson is shy. Fly Watson can't string a sentence together. Solar Blue want a spokesperson for the brand, someone who can perform in the spotlight, someone who could come up with more than old Fly ‘Um, I, um' Watson …

And then she heard it, faint but scary as hell – Twinkie's growl. Snarling and frothing at the mouth at Fly's own bad thoughts. Without even trying, she'd Twinkied herself, and
those boring old self-doubts had scrammed right on out of there. She smiled at the memory of the tiny tan and white mutt – there was life in that little bag of bones from beyond the grave.

She bent down to put on her leg-rope and a pair of feet appeared in front of her. She was expecting Stacey, but it was someone she was more scared of. It was Bec.

‘I've been watching the swell. They're coming in sets of three. Last one's usually the biggest.'

This was Bec in full-scale apology mode.

‘Thanks.'

They stood there a while.

‘You can beat her, you know.'

‘You really think so?'

At last Bec smiled. ‘I know so.'

Fly turned and saw Simmo heading towards her, no doubt to give her one last rocket of advice. But he stopped a few feet short of her and just gave her a nod. She knew what to do.

Stacey was on Fly's case the minute they got over the first wave. She reefed back on Fly's leg-rope. ‘Make sure you stay out of my way, right?'

‘I don't want to be anywhere near you,
right
?‘

There was enough spin on the return to pull Stacey up short for a second. But she wasn't so easily put off.

‘Oooohhhh. She's up for a fight, is she?'

Stacey gave Fly's leg-rope another yank before they both duck-dived under the next wave. As she waited for the pressure to pass overhead, Fly could feel that she had the shakes, but they weren't ones born of fear this time; they were just her body dealing with the nervy new thrill of standing up for herself.

She was going to have to do a lot more of it. Ally and Emily seemed to be battling it out further down the break. Fly knew that Ally, being the local, had probably picked the most reliable take-off zone and she'd be protecting it like mental. No point heading there. But Stacey was driving her nuts. For someone who wanted Fly to stay out of her way, she might as well have been on the same board. Fly started to feel like she was in a soccer team and Stacey had been coached especially to be all over her like a rash. Could Stacey be more interested in stopping Fly from winning than she was in winning herself? Fly managed to fight her way onto two ordinary waves. She did her best, but the brief look to shore, at Simmo and the others standing there, told her she needed to do better – a lot better.

She sat out the back, Stacey breathing down her neck, as the clock wound down. If she was going to go with Simmo's plan she would have to let that little snapper off its leash and, given Stacey's mood, she could tell it was going to be ugly. It was funny, but just knowing it was an option made her feel strong, and it made her feel strong enough to work out there was something else, something smarter she could do.

Fly suddenly reached down and fiddled with the quick-release mechanism on her leg-rope. Some smart cookie had obviously been dumped one time too many and had decided to do something about it, because much as they all loved their boards, sometimes staying attached to it was going to get you seriously injured. She reefed the leg-rope up out of the water and tossed it to Stacey.

‘Here – you want it so much, it's yours.'

Stacey was completely stumped. She sat there holding
the leg-rope like it was some dripping length of animal gizzard. She had no idea what to make of Fly now. Then Fly started paddling away from the take-off zone. It took all her effort not to look at the beach. She knew what she'd see – Simmo and the others looking at her like she'd finally lost her mind – and she didn't want to see that, not if she was going to go through with her plan.

If Fly had had eyes in the back of her head, they would've been firmly trained on Stacey. But she couldn't turn back, she knew that would give the whole game away. Instead, Fly kept right on paddling, like she knew something Stacey didn't.
Come on, take the bait, take the bait
…

After a nauseatingly long moment Stacey swung her board around and started to paddle out to where Fly was. As soon as she arrived, Fly gave her a wink and took off back to where they'd been. Stacey looked completely baffled, but the crew on the beach knew exactly what was going down. Technically it was called a wild-goose chase and Fly had managed to bluff Stacey this time, but it was a gutsy strategy to pull. You had to be surfing well enough for it not to matter if your competitor didn't follow. And you had to be sure enough of your own strength, because once you'd used up a heap of energy leading them out there, you had to have enough puff to get back to the zone in time to make the next wave.

As Fly carved down the face of the wave she could hear the crew on the shore explode – she'd done it! She could make out Bec screaming as hard as she could've wished for and Simmo had both hands in the air. The truth was, even if she hadn't made the wave, even if she hadn't surfed like an absolute animal, Simmo would have felt his job was
done. That she had the guts to have a go at that kind of strategy? It made him a proud old coacher. The fact that she scored so well? Well, that was the cream, wasn't it?