20
I T’S hard to believe that only yesterday the ocean was still.
The wind has shifted, blowing straight into the sea, carving perfect ribbons of waves through the omnipresent rips, but doing nothing to abate the heat.
My hair is a wet tangled mess on top of my head, and I can feel some loose ends dripping down my back.
The water was almost biblical when I swam two minutes ago, although, I don’t think what I did could ever be described as swimming. It was more of a roll into an oncoming wave at knee height. I mean, I can swim, but I’m no match for the strength of these waves.
I can’t believe I can even put a toe in the water after last summer’s almighty dunking.
I’d had literally no idea which way was up.
Not a clue. The ocean was trying to kill me, I swear it.
The waves ripped my elastic clean out of my hair.
It wasn’t just my hair elastic that was missing.
I lost my top in that hammering. Mortifying!
This summer, exposing myself isn’t something I have the time or headspace for.
Especially when Paul GD Lightwood is on the beach.
When the waves are up, I’m not leaving the shoreline.
I’ve also said farewell to the type of bikini that deserts a girl when she needs it the most. Mum gave me the best set ever for Christmas.
This top isn’t going anywhere. A nuclear bomb could go off right here on the beach and there’ll be nothing left but the cockroaches and my skeleton, still wearing this top.
Even though Miller Point sits on the other side of the Surf Beach, less than a five-minute walk, it could be in the middle of nowhere.
It’s unmanned, not a red and yellow flag in sight, which keeps the families away, and so it’s popular with walkers, surfers and fishers.
Today, it’s too hot for fishers and walkers.
I sit at the base of the sand dune and count fifteen surfers and body boarders bobbing on the water, lined up out the back like kids waiting for the school bus.
My brother’s on his board next to Paul, and even from here I can see Matty’s mouth going a gazillion miles an hour.
The surfers love it for the reefs and rips that create pockets in the water for waves to form.
Or something like that, anyway. At low tide, reefs are exposed, a kilometre of jagged rocks down the length of the beach.
They’re slippery and prone to errant waves that scrape the skin off limbs.
I have scars on my leg to prove it. It’s Miller’s reefs and the rips that make anything other than a splash in the paddles a no-go-zone for me.
Dignity be damned. That, and the spectre of the sharks beyond the breakers which only last week attacked a surfer at a beach less than half an hour away.
Matty looks so little next to the guys, and among the waves he’s but a speck.
I mean, if the waves can smash a big guy like Paul into a sandbar as effortlessly as swatting a fly, what could they do to Matty?
Still, Mum or Dad must have given him permission to bodyboard here.
Maybe it’s safer being on his stomach rather than standing on a board, trying to balance.
Paul’s supine, his head swivelled towards the horizon.
The waves move in lines across the water, so defined and thick they look superimposed.
They’re big, far too big. They descend on my little brother. The air leaves my chest.
The first simply rolls under him. Paul has a hold of Matty’s arm rope, keeping him close.
Two surfers take off on the same wave, grappling for position, pushing and shoving each other out of the way.
One takes off; the other falls forwards, sucked down beneath the wave, his board high in the air.
The leg rope goes taut, then the board cuts down just as the surfer emerges coughing up seawater and it hits him square in the face.
Blood gushes and streams through his fingers.
He stumbles to the shore holding his nose with one hand, his board under his arm.
Out the back, Paul is pushing Matty forward on his bodyboard, facing the beach, setting up for a wave.
The size of it sends me to the water’s edge, waving my hands above my head in a way that is so embarrassing.
Matty is absolutely going to kill me, but what can I do?
It’s like I’m out of my own head. My brother balances precariously on the tip of the wave, just for a moment, and then plunges down its face.
He’s gone in the tumult of foam and white water, but there he is, bouncing across the surface as the wave bellows its way into shore.
He reaches me in the shallows, lit up, eyes wide. ‘Did you see that?’
‘That was the freakin’ worst.’ I yank his arm rope as the water splashes up my legs.
‘What are you doing?’ He turns to paddle back out. ‘Let go, you fuckwit.’
‘You’re the fuckwit. And you’re not going back out there.’
‘Yes, I am, let me go!’
‘They’re too big for you, shithead!’ I pull him to the shore.
‘You broke my nose, you freakin’ loser!’ The surfer has the other guy by the throat, blood pouring down his face; he snarls and there’s blood in rivulets between his teeth.
‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ He punches him, a hard undercut to his side.
We hear the thud of his fist against wetsuit and then they’re down in the shore break, punching and wrestling.
The whitewash is bloodstained, the splashes of pink against the white turn to rust against the sand.
A surfer rides a wave right into them, jumping off his board and pulling them apart, shouting obscenities.
‘Matty, that was awesome!’ Paul appears in front of us, his board under his arm. He raises his hand in a high-five, but I move between them.
‘That was anything but awesome!’ I yell. ‘I don’t give a shit if you’re a fuckwit who wants to kill himself but keep my brother out of it.’ I grab Matty by the arm and drag him out of the water.
Like a toddler, he pulls all his weight against me.
‘What are you on about?’ says Paul. ‘We had him. He just had a wicked wave.’
‘Yeah? How are you with him when you push him down a freakin’ eight-foot wave? Do you realise how that sounds?’ I turn to Matty. ‘We’re going home.’
Matty flings his arm out of my grasp.
‘I’m not going.’ He drags his bodyboard out of the water, rips off his arm rope and flings it all on the sand, his lower lip trembling.
‘Listen, I’m sorry I yelled at you,’ I say, ‘but there’s blood in the water, those tools are fighting, and you take off on a massively big wave and disappear.
I might have panicked a bit, but you’re too little for this.
’ I move closer and put my arm around him but he flings me away, turning his back on me.
Paul’s shadow consumes me.
‘Have you finished calling me a fuckwit?’
I cross my arms across my chest. The remnants of a wave breaks across my ankles and my feet sink into the wet sand. I step back, the sand relinquishes its grip, and the space left behind fills with water.
‘Have you finished being a fuckwit?’
‘Cat, I was watching him. The boys were watching him. He knew to stay on the centre line and to keep it steady while it broke. He was fine. Hey Matty, were you scared?’
The disloyal little traitor shakes his head.
‘Let’s go back out?’ Matty grabs his board and pushes past me into the shallows.
‘Too easy, mate’ Paul says. ‘Listen, you’re a smart chick but you don’t know everything. The way you were all yelling and hysterical, you could put your brother off the water for life.’
‘I think I know everything? Don’t call me a chick and don’t you dare tell me how to behave. He’s my brother, not yours.’
‘Jeez, Cat, I know that. Do you really think I’d let anything happen to your brother?’
‘Whatever. The ungrateful little shit can drown for all I care.’ My feet crunch the sand with each stomp.
When I reach the point, I realise I’ve left my towel, thongs and dress at the base of Miller’s dunes.
I either have to hang on the beach and wait for Paul to leave, or I get to do a walk of shame through the streets of Batter’s Cove in my bikini.
Freakin’ awesome. I’m tossing up between getting home as fast as my tender feet on the asphalt will let me when I see my mother waving to me, Tommy digging at the sand at her feet.