Yellow

I race home and change into my faded Kmart cossies, wiggle into Mum’s old board shorts, and I grab the Coolite under my arm. I’m still not talking to Mum and she’s usually in bed when I get home, her eyes vacant as though she’s somewhere else and it’s someone else lying there, wearing her skin. The wind has picked up and it makes me zigzag as I near South Beach, as though the ocean itself doesn’t want me near, and it’s pushing me away. The waves are big out near the reef, which is about a hundred metres from the shore. My stomach jumps to the upper cavities of my chest, and I want to walk back home again, but I made a promise. If I back out now, I’ll never get the guts.

The waves come in sets. A series of ten, maybe fifteen eight-footers break at the outer edge of the distant reef, gaining power as they barrel across the coral shallows, and then crashing hard like a tackled footballer, all force and spittle and fury, followed by a lull. The lull lasts a while, enough to almost make you forget the bombs were ever there, and I figure that there might be enough time between sets to cross the reef into the safe zone, where the waves haven’t yet broken.

Where Boogie’s supposed to be.

There’s only one other surfer out there; he’s a small silhouette, so small that if I close one eye and point I could make him disappear behind my fingertip. I spear the water with the tip of my board and duck dive under the smaller waves near the shore. Soon, once I pass the breakers, there’s no noise but my own hands slicing through the water and the sound of water splashing onto the board. After fifteen minutes of paddling the shore seems so far away, and I’m only halfway there. My breath is jagged, and the ocean swells and falls with its own deep lungs. I try not to think of the board’s shadow below me, which looks like a shark. There are enough real sharks to be scared of, and real sharks go unseen for the most part, right up until it matters, that is.

Slice.

My arms are two dull aches by my side. The shore seems small and unreal now, like a world that sits inside a snow globe, and all that truly exists is the water, swallowing the horizon in one fat gulp, and then the other surfer who emerges triumphantly every now and then from the liquid tunnel of a distant wave. I sit on the board near the edge of the reef and dive under the waves when they come, until it feels like my nose and eyes and throat are clogged thick with salt. All of my instincts are telling me to go back. I can understand why the men call the waves out here monsters – there’s something of the childhood beast in the way the wall of water forces forward, all liquid muscle and a fury that can’t be reasoned with or tamed. Maybe that’s why the boys are drawn here; maybe that’s what surfing is all about, facing up to the beast and becoming a man, like the rituals of olden times. Maybe that’s why boys aren’t as cruel to each other as girls are – they prove themselves to the ocean every day, this thing much bigger and stronger than themselves, and that’s enough. They’ve proved enough.

The set finishes and it’s my chance.

Slice.

I paddle as fast as I can with cupped hands, chin perched firm against the waxy board as the water slaps my face, salt-stung eyes steadfast, towards that spot behind the reef. I’m in survival mode. The adrenaline slows time and stretches things out, and everything is forgotten in this moment. Nothing else seems to matter, not school, not my parents, not even really Boogie. Nothing exists, except the sense of gliding across glass, and the need to be quicker than the next set. All I am right now is two arms, two hands, and the feel of water. And then the surge starts to suck the water from under me, so that my hands scrape sharp against the bottom of the reef, and I’m being pulled forward towards the crest of a wave that’s beginning to stretch its legs into the first of the next set.

I haven’t made it.

Shit.

I’m right, smack bang in the thick of it.

It’s too shallow to duck under, maybe two feet deep.

Panic tightens its fingers to pinch all my nerve endings, and on instinct I turn my board around and paddle with a furious intensity. The wave shoulder barges me, and my body remembers what Lark’s taught me over the years – there’s no room for hesitation or mistakes, and the next thing I know, I’m up on my feet, and the wave is feathering in front of me.

I’m doing it.

I’m really doing it.

My toes are clenched tight into the wax job.

It feels like a cross between falling and flying.

It feels like a goddamn exclamation mark.

We’re just past the reef now, and a barrel curls behind me, and chases until it’s at my heels.

I’m really doing it.

Until I’m not.

The maw of the barrel closes in on me, and the lip thwacks me on the back of the head, and the next thing I know the wave is stomping down, as I’m churned under the water.

This is what it feels like to drown, I think.

This is what it feels like.

It feels like being throttled by blue.

It tastes of blood, or is it salt? They taste the same in this moment, blood and salt, and I wonder if they always have.

My chest is screaming bloody murder.

The avalanche of water rumbles above me and I push, battle, thrash towards the surface.

Air.

A clump of blessed air.

And then the next wave thwacks down onto my head, and the light turns to black, and I’m back down, churning again in the ocean’s bowels.

I’m losing my strength.

I don’t know which way is up.

I heard once that drowning is the most peaceful way to die, that it’s something like a sense of euphoria that washes over you.

I’m not buying it.

There’s no peace, just undiluted panic. Panic and pain.

My lungs are clawing at me.

I grab my leg rope and struggle to climb up it.

Air.

I clasp onto my board and tumble along the angry clouds of foam, retching putrid water down my chin.

I’m alive.

I made it.

I roll the air around my tongue and drink it in, and I think I have never tasted anything so sweet in my whole entire life.

I’m alive.

I let the force and tumble of the waves batter me towards the shore, a bit of paddling here and there. I join the bedraggled clumps of seaweed on the shoreline, and close my eyes as I claw the sand either side of me, and feel the sun get softer as it starts to bleed into dusk.

Breathing.

Not drowning.

Alive.

‘You are the bravest kook I ever saw, you idiot.’

I open one eye to see the sky eclipsed by a freckled head.

Noah.

I sit up.

He was the other surfer out there with me.

Shit.

He’s crouching next to me, all concerned looking, and all I can think about is how he blends into the beach, with his freckles like scattered sand, and eyes you could drown in.

‘You look like a sea monster.’

He reaches across and picks the seaweed out of my hair.

I look like a sea monster.

Shit.

I scramble for something to say.

Anything.

Nope.

Nothing.

Shit.

‘You’re a better surfer than you are a talker, huh?’

‘Yeah, almost drowning is what all the great surfers are doing these days, didn’t you get the memo?’

There’s a terrible, stretched-out moment when he looks at me like I’m an alien, and then his face breaks and he laughs, a soft laugh.

‘I’ve got the memo lots of times. See this?’

He shows me the scar on his shin where the reef got the better of him.

‘Ouch.’

‘Most kooks start out at Main Beach, you know.’

‘Stop calling me a kook. Anyway, I hate it there.’

He looks mock outraged.

‘You hate Main Beach, where everyone goes to be looked at? What kind of a show-off are you?’

‘A terrible one, obviously.’

We both chuck seashells into the ocean, not looking at each other.

‘You weren’t so terrible when you explained that book we’re reading in English, that Lord of the Flies.’

I concentrate hard on a pink shell I’ve picked up. I don’t know whether he’s taking the piss.

‘Mrs Thomas made me, I wasn’t showing off.’

‘You should’ve been. I would’ve, if I were you.’

I look over at him but his eyes are focused out near the bombies, near where I almost drowned. He goes on.

‘Those things you said, about that book, it’s what I was feeling when I read it, except I can never find the right words, you know? The only way I can ever really show how I feel is out there, on the ocean. Surfing is the closest thing I have to . . . I dunno.’

I look at him again, and he’s gone red in those small spaces of skin where there aren’t any freckles.

‘It’s the closest thing to poetry, I s’pose,’ he says.

He’s squinting back at the horizon like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. After a beat I reply, ‘If that’s true, then I’m a terrible poet. You saw me out there.’

He looks at me sideways, and a smile creeps onto his face. He laughs, and then so do I.

I’m laughing with Noah Willis.

Shit.

‘What did the conch shell mean, in the book? I couldn’t figure it out.’

He really wants to know my opinion.

Noah Willis wants my opinion.

‘It’s a symbol, kind of. It gives someone the power to speak, and the power to have the others listen to them.’

Noah mulls this over. I can see the thoughts swimming across his eyes.

‘A conch shell is a stupid reason to listen to someone, but you know, it’s not like it’s any worse than how everyone at school acts.’

I stare at him, and he squints like he’s thinking hard about something that’s far away as he keeps talking.

‘People at school listen to other people for the dumbest reasons – just ’cos you can surf, or ’cos you look a certain way, like Cassie does. It’s all fake. It drives me mad, the way that everyone listens real hard to the people who aren’t really saying anything at all, just ’cos they’re popular. I mean, I’ve got nothing to say, and everyone hangs off my every word. It makes me want to cut my tongue out, you know? It’s all a joke.’

I’m just staring at him now, like he’s the alien. It makes me think how you never really can tell what’s crawling around inside anyone’s brain, not really. He’s on a rant now.

‘I mean, if people in the book were smart, they’d have listened to Piggy. He’s the one they should’ve listened to, the one with the brains, but they’re all too busy with the stupid conch shell.’

Noah turns to me, and I smell that smell again. Male and sharp. He’s so close our shoulders are almost touching. I want them to touch. Please let them touch.

‘Sort of like you. People should listen to you, too,’ he says.

I don’t know what to say.

I’m like Piggy?

‘I don’t like to talk,’ I finally reply.

‘Maybe, but you say a hell of a lot with your eyes.’

I look down. I hate my eyes. I bite my lip and find my words.

‘People say that eyes are the windows to your soul, and if that’s true, I’m screwed. I’m like those rich people’s houses near Main Beach, the ones that are nothing but windows and you can see right in.’

He laughs that quiet laugh.

‘I hate people with those houses,’ he replies. ‘It’s kind of like they’re showing off their fancy lives to all the people walking down their street who can’t afford it. It’s like a fishbowl.’

‘Tell me about it. Imagine living with a fishbowl on your face.’

He shoots me a sideways glance again and then a smile scrunches up his face so that a bunch of his freckles touch, and I wish he’d just move over a little, so our shoulders touched too.

‘Your eyes are different, that’s for sure.’

‘Some guys at school once told me I could be pretty, maybe, if it wasn’t for my eyes.’

Noah’s grin disappears and all of a sudden it’s like a blind’s been pulled across his features.

‘Those guys don’t know what they’re talking about. Anyway, it’s getting dark.’

He stands abruptly, and picks up his board, almost a silhouette now that the sun’s just disappeared behind the dunes. I don’t know if he means that the boys are stupid for thinking I could maybe be pretty, or if they were stupid for saying my eyes make me ugly. I’m guessing it’s the first option because he’s halfway down the beach now, and I pick up my board and follow his shadow through the track home.