Tell you what, he said. Let's take a break. We don't have to do this. We'll try something different.
I didn't look at him. I couldn't shift my gaze from the horizon. We were in a lull now, but that was no comfort. I sensed him paddling east but I kept looking south as though my neck was locked in position. He was gone; he was nowhere near the reef. And I was alone. On my own. The body understood before my mind caught up. I forced myself to snatch a glimpse. Sando was more than fifty yards off. He was right over in the safe deep away from the reef and he was waving and calling. There was nothing urgent in his tone. He sounded positively languid. I heard a calming authority in his voice, a familiarity that tugged at me. He looked so secure and comfortable sitting up with his hands on his thighs and his elbows out like muttonbird wings, and I felt doubly exposed out there by the break. I was caught. I stared back out to sea. I doubted I could move. Sando kept up some sort of banter across the distance, while the fear boiled up in me. I heard how nasty and ragged my breathing had become. I was lightheaded. And then, quite suddenly, I was too afraid to stay there. It was as if I'd pitched up against my own panic and bounced back. I swung the board his way, dropped flat and began to paddle. When I got there I was gasping.
Let's dive, he said casually. I'll beat you to the bottom.
Without another word he stood up on his Brewer and speared into the water between us. I sat up in a funk, alone again. I couldn't bear it; he must have known I'd follow him.
It was too deep out there to see the sandy bottom, especially without a mask, but I could dimly make out the soles of Sando's feet as he kicked down. I clawed after him and, after a few moments, settled into a steep, calming glide. I was already oxygen-soaked from all the hyperventilation and I didn't have the buoyancy of a wetsuit to contend with, so I caught up with him quickly enough, and within a few seconds I overtook him. Blood drummed at my temples. My chest felt as if it would implode. Every bubble tore at me. I felt like a dying comet. When I finally ran out of speed and conviction I levelled off, and when I looked up I saw Sando's blurry outline at some distance. Down here the sea was its usual quiet self, all sleepy-dim and familiar. Some kind of animal recognition jolted me back into myself. It was only the sea, the water. Didn't I know what to do underwater? Slowly, returning with the burning need to breathe, came the old confidence. I knew what I was doing. I had control. I saw Sando's hazy thumbs-up and pumped back toward the surface. We rose together in our cauls of fizz and light and when we hit the air a few yards from our floating boards a surge of heat went through me and I knew I was okay.
That day I went back across to the bombora and rode two waves. Together those rides wouldn't add up to more than half a minute of experience, of which I can only recall a fraction: flickering moments, odd details. Like the staccato chat of water against the board. A momentary illusion of being at the same level as the distant cliffs. The angelic relief of gliding out onto the shoulder of the wave in a mist of spray and adrenaline. Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.
Sando paddled up and held my hand like a brother or a father and I was babbling. I felt immortal and he just laughed. But already I wanted more. I was hankering for a third ride, something to make it real.
I sat for a few minutes while Sando took the next wave. He made it look easy and suddenly it did feel easy. I couldn't even wait for him to paddle back over. I paddled up to the impact zone and in a moment of overblown confidence put myself in the path of something the size of the Angelus town hall. I didn't understand how wildly I'd overreached until the moment I got to my feet and felt the whole edifice bulge and mutate beneath me.
For half a second I saw the shadow of the reef far below. The heavy board fell from under me like a leaf and I sprawled down the hard, unyielding face without it, bouncing from hip to hip, unable to break the skin of the water. I was falling down a staircase — one that never seemed to end, which collapsed on me and shot me skyward before snatching me down again so its rubble-spill might drive me headlong across the reef, rattling and wracking me all the way. I bounced and pinged and shot, winded and half blind, across the shoal, and when the reef fell away the turbulence ploughed me so deep and so fast I barely had a chance to equalize to save my eardrums. I knew not to fight it, but I was nearly gone when the sea let me go. I came up choking, sobbing, kicking at the surface as though I could climb into purer oxygen.
By the time Sando reached me I'd regained some composure but he'd seen it all. I was two hundred yards from where I'd caught the wave and my shorts were gone entirely.
Well, he said with a grin. That one rang your bell.
He pulled me onto his Brewer and said nothing about my bare arse. My board lay bright in the distance. He let me lie there a while before he swam off to get it and when he came back he called it a day. I paddled in after him and hoped there had been no witnesses.
We didn't go looking for Loonie that afternoon, but we knew he'd show up eventually. Eva fed us fish burgers and let us prattle until fatigue overtook us and we lapsed into stupefied silence. As the storm-front darkened the sky, we hung in hammocks on the verandah where the wind was eerie-warm. I was sore and so drowsy I kept falling asleep. The sound of magpies and wattlebirds was a conversation going over my head, a kind of chatter I felt I'd understand if only I kept swimming up from sleep towards wakefulness.
Later in the day the dog barked and Loonie came stumping along the rutted drive. It was raining by then. He pushed the dog away and hesitated before coming across the yard to the verandah steps. The plaster cast was slung like a weapon across his chest.
Come on, called Sando. Get outta the rain.
Loonie just stood there.
Don't be such a goddamn punk, said Eva, swinging out of her
hammock.
She stared at him a moment, hands on hips, before limping inside, and only then did Loonie come upstairs to stand against the verandah rail. His sunbleached hair was flat on his skull and the calico sling wet through.
Eva came back with a towel. He took it without acknowledging her.
Well? he said.
Eva snorted and went inside. She closed the French doors a tad too firmly. Sando considered Loonie for some moments and then lay back to swing a bit. Loonie glanced at me. I averted my eyes.
All this time, said Sando. Surfing the place on my own. Watching it, biding my time, keeping my little secret. Funny, you know, but it was nice to share. A real surprise but it felt good. So maybe the best part about having a secret is letting someone in on it. Eh, Pikelet?
I shrugged, unable to keep from smiling.
How big?
Sando sighed. Big enough to make it interesting, he said. Big enough to rip the boy-wonder's shorts off.