Air (19 page)

“Lily?” I said, rushing to hug my sister. “Oh my God, how are you here? I thought you were traveling through Greece?”

“Zeke paid for me to fly out here as a birthday surprise for you. He wanted Mum and Kelly to come too, but Mum couldn't get the time off during term-time, and Kelly's got exams. Happy birthday, little sis!”

At which point, I burst into tears.

“Oh dear, what's wrong?” she said, putting her arm around my waist.

“Everything.”

“I thought something must be up. Zeke said he'd meet me outside, but he never showed.”

“It was probably when we were arguing on the beach. I don't even know where he is I think he left.”

“Come and tell me all about it,” she said. “And don't cry, because you're messing up your nice make-up.”

She ushered me into the toilets again, sat me down on a blue velvet armchair in the shape of a giant stiletto shoe and handed me tissues.

“So what's happening what's he done?”

“It just keeps going wrong. I don't even know why. It was like we had this amazing summer together but that's in the past and we can't get there again.”

“Don't be so melodramatic. Every relationship has bad phases. You probably just have to wait it out.”

Lily was giving me the pitying look. The one that usually appeared on her face when she remembered how young I was, and how clueless.

“Every time things are going well, one of us messes it up. We can't make it work.”

“But he's trying though, isn't he? Paying for me to come out here was sweet, and I'm seeing some impressive gems in your ears. It would have cost him thousands if Kelly and Mum had come out too.”

The thought that my mum and Kelly might have been with me too, if not for real life getting in the way, was painful.

“We're just not getting on. It's so much harder than I thought.”

“Do you think . . . ?”

“What?”

“Maybe it's neither of you. I mean, some people just aren't meant to be together.”

Me and Zeke were meant to be together though. The idea that we weren't was awful. We'd already been through so much. How could we walk away from that?

Just the
idea
of no longer being with Zeke was devastating. I'd see him everywhere on the surf-tour circuit. He could get a new girlfriend in about three seconds flat, and I'd go back to being alone.

“I can't talk about this,” I said, choking down sadness.

“I'm sorry. Take no notice of me. You sound like you need to have a proper conversation with Zeke. Let's find him. He's bound to be around here somewhere. He wouldn't just leave without telling you.”

But the truth was that I didn't know what Zeke would do. I thought I knew him, but the longer we spent together, the more I realized that there were parts of his history and his personality that he guarded.

Lily smoothed my hair, handed me some lip balm and said, “Pull yourself together, sis, and we'll go find him.”

A few paces down the hall we bumped into a young guy who looked like some Italian model in a sharp suit and tie. I didn't even recognize him until he said, “Hey, girl, nice dress.”

“Seb? Jesus, is everyone here?”

“Most of Miami, yeah,” he said, looking at Lily. “But my aunt works for the PR firm running the red carpet tonight, so she added us to the guest list.”

“Hello,” Lily said, shaking his hand, “I'm Lily otherwise known as ‘the sister.'”

“I see that. Same eyes. I'm actually here with my sister too. She wanted to meet some of the pro-surfers. I'm helping her get a few autographs. Here,” he said, passing me a small notebook and a fancy fountain pen, “I'll take yours too.”

“Oh, you charmer,” Lily said, smiling.

For a second I considered signing my name, but thought better of it, handed it back to him, and said, “Yeah, funny.”

“What? You're gonna blow up and be super-famous one of these days. I saw some videos of you surfing on YouTube. That vertical snap in the lip? Yew! You got game, girl.”

“You reckon? I still can't get the hang of airs.”

“You will. Scrawl there.”

Lily moved next to me to peer down at the notebook, and said, “Who else do you have in here?”

“Jordy Smith,” I read out. “Kelly Slater. Wow, you got Slater? We haven't even seen him yet. Nice. Joel Parkinson. Owen Wright. Adriano de Souza. Matt Wilkinson. Carissa Moore. Stephanie Gilmore. Coco Ho. Evan Geiselman. Gabriel Medina.” The list went on and on. The best surfers on the scene.

“You really want me to sign this too?”

“Iris,” Lily said, “just sign the bloody book.”

“OK then,” I said, and did my best signature, with an extra-long flourish on the F.

“Come find my sister? She'd be so stoked to meet you.”

“We have to go and look for Zeke,” I said, and Seb stuck his tongue in his cheek, probably stopping himself from making some smart-ass remark.

“He's really sorry about the other night,” I said. “Total misunderstanding, and I gave him hell.”

Lily gave me a look, obviously curious about what had happened.

“Forget about it. See you around,” Seb said.

“Seb is Zeke's friend?” Lily asked, and I shook my head.

“Mine.”

“Oh.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Nothing!”

Lily and I walked around the hotel, but Zeke was nowhere to be seen, so we ended up standing at the bar while Lily talked
about the Venezuelan guy she'd met on the flight over, and I stared at the drinks on the top shelf of the bar.

“Fancy a dance?” Lily said, nodding toward Seb, who was twirling a young girl I presumed to be his sister around the dance floor.

I didn't particularly want to dance, but it was better than agonized loitering at the bar, wondering if and when Zeke would show.

A few dances in, I was opposite Seb, when I saw some of the tour surfers approaching us. Behind them was Zeke.

Zeke clocked me dancing near Seb, and I saw the hurt flicker in his eyes. One of his friends, Danny, whispered something in Zeke's ear. Zeke shook his head and pointed to another guy I only knew by sight. He wasn't a surfer; he was a hanger-on who followed the tour. He was allegedly the boyfriend of one of the female coaches, but I didn't believe it. He was something to her, but not her boyfriend. Dealer was my best guess.

Lily spotted Zeke, waved at him, and leaned in to me, shouting in my ear, “Gosh, doesn't Zeke look different without all that hair? Took me a moment to even realize it was him. You know, I think I prefer it. He almost looks like a grown-up!”

“I'll be back in a mo,” I said to Seb and Lily. They nodded, and I walked back to the bar, where Zeke was waiting.

“That dude's here,” he said, steel in his voice.

“Who are you on about?”

“The jackass who had his hand down your shirt,” Zeke said.

“I told you it wasn't like that.”

“You arranged to meet him here?”

“Of course not. He's here with his sister. I bumped into him in the corridor.”

“And I see you ran into your own sister.” Zeke nodded at Lily, who was blowing us kisses from the dance floor.

“Thanks for bringing her here, Zeke,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, happy birthday.”

“I think I'm going to get a cab back now,” I said, as Lily appeared, grabbed one of Zeke's hands, one of mine, and held them in hers, as if she was trying to marry us off in some religious ceremony.

“Loving the new hairdo, Zeke! Right, now sort it out, you two,” she said, all bright and breezy, like it was just some game.

“We're fine,” Zeke said. But we so weren't.

I looked up, and walking across the stage in glittering heels, not even twenty feet from me, was Christina Aguilera. The place erupted in applause, Christina started singing “Beautiful” and I let go of Zeke's hand.

I thought back to my first contest of the tour, held in Hossegor, France. The week before the contest the beach breaks had been going off, courtesy of a huge Atlantic swell. When we arrived, it was lake-like.

Lay-day after lay-day, and finally the conditions were deemed good enough for the women's heats. Not the men's, of course, because they wouldn't paddle out for one-foot junky slop.

Sucky waves? Send out the girls.

I wasn't ready for my heat. Yeah, I'd done physical training, but mentally I was a joke.

For months afterward I couldn't bear to think about how badly I surfed that day. On my first day surfing with a foamie I surfed better.

The waves were short and so hard to read that I didn't know what they were going to do until I got to my feet, which was disastrous. I was flailing around like a kook, and with every mistake I panicked even more.

I knew the cameras were on me, and I could only imagine the freeze-frames of my wipeouts that were appearing on the webcast for the whole world to laugh at.

I walked out of the water, absolutely crushed. My score wasn't even in double figures. Wasn't even close.

I looked around to find Zeke, but the only person who acknowledged me was a girl with a microphone, who was walking toward me for the mandatory postheat interview, which would be broadcast live over the webcast. Even the cameraman behind her looked embarrassed for me. I tried to get myself together before they got to me, because the only thing worse than my performance in the water would be crying on the webcast. That would get me the sort of reputation I absolutely did not want: a bimbo who resorted to waterworks when things didn't go her way.

“This is Kaleigh Bryant with Iris Fox. Iris,
babe
, that looked rough. What went wrong?”

She had a strong South African accent and it took me a moment to tune into her words.

“I don't know. I just couldn't bring it.”

I could tell she was waiting for me to add to this stellar response, but I had nothing.

“What was the strategy out there today?” she asked.

I thought about how to answer this and came up blank. At that moment, if she'd have asked me my middle name, I'd have struggled.

“Was there a strategy?”

“Yeah, course.”
Please don't ask me what it was.

“And can you tell us what that was?”

“To do my best. You know. To, er, win.”

“Sure, sure, and what was running through your head? What things were you doing to make that happen?”

What was running through my head was that I'd apparently lost all my surf skills in one afternoon.

“Just trying to catch the best waves I could.”

I already knew I'd be bad at interviews, but I hadn't realized how bad.

“You
rarely excel
in these beach-break waves, probably because of the nature of your home break, Fistral in England, but what happened today?”

“I rarely excel in them?” I repeated, offended. “Little beach-break waves I can usually read pretty well, because Fistral actually has quite small surf in the summer, so I'm totally used to it,” I said.

She frowned at me, and then I realized that I had misunderstood her South African accent.
Really excel
, she had said; not “rarely excel.”

I tried to cover it with something else to take the focus off my error, but could only muster, “Beth was just better than me. Picked better waves, surfed them better.”

As tactical analysis went, it was about as interesting as a handful of gravel. I could almost hear her groan.

“OK, that's all from us down here on the beach. Iris Fox, bad luck out there today, but at least it wasn't a knockout round. We're sure you'll do better in your next heat.”

They cut back to the commentators in the box.

Kaleigh looked at me and shook her head.

“You could have given me something there,” she said, as if I'd been deliberately holding out on her. “You know, I think that was
the worst postheat interview I ever did. You must try harder. That kind of effort won't win you any fans.”

“Sorry,” I said, and meant it. I'd made her look like a rubbish interviewer when the fault was all mine. “I'm not with it. Weird day.”

“Iris, the whole world is having a weird day. Woman up.”

“I'll try.”

She rolled her eyes and walked off, mumbling something about amateurs.

Zeke had come running over then, tried to congratulate me on the one half-decent wave I'd picked off, and I said, “Don't bother. I was useless.”

He looked shocked and said, “No, you weren't. I've had way worse heats than that.”

“Yeah, when you were five,” I said. “I shouldn't have come here. I'm just going to embarrass you.”

“Don't talk that way, Iris.”

“It's true.”

“No, it isn't. You can win this! I know you can.”

He'd always believed in me, always thought the best of me, always trusted me.

Sitting on a curb in Florida, I wondered if I'd ever really trusted him.

I sat, my legs bridging the gutter, waiting to hail a cab, but the roads were quiet, and when I finally did see a taxi and wave for it, I realized its light was off and it was already carrying passengers. The driver looked at me with pity. Defeated, I sat down again, wishing I'd thought to bring a coat.

Tropical fabric appeared in front of me.

Lily had followed me out.

“Ditching me?”

“I thought you'd want to stay and watch Christina.”

“Not my kind of music, sis, and anyway, she only did three songs. You missed your shout-out.”

I frowned at Lily, waiting for her to elaborate.

“Someone got Christina to dedicate a song to a girl called Iris, which I presume is you, dearest sister. She wished you a very happy seventeenth birthday, by the way.”

Zeke. He must have got his backing singer friend to sort it out. My boyfriend had got Christina Aguilera to dedicate a song to me, and I'd missed it. Worst girl-friend ever.

“Which song? Don't tell me: ‘Keeps Gettin' Better,'” I said, cringing at the irony.

“Incorrect. Guess again.”

“Just tell me which one, Lil.”

“It's obvious, isn't it? ‘Fighter.'”

“Oh God,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and wishing I was anywhere else in the world. “What did Zeke do?”

“He didn't hear the song he left just after you did.”

“Was he really pissed off?” I rubbed my eyes and tried not to imagine the expression on his face.

“Put it this way: I've seen him look happier. Why didn't you stay? I thought you liked that sort of music.”

It would be hard to explain this to Lily. The truth was I couldn't stand to hear Christina sing “Beautiful.” Those lyrics burned.

“I just . . . couldn't listen to it. Not tonight. Lily, leave me here. Honestly, go and enjoy the party.”

“Enjoy watching a bunch of gold-painted girls in thongs and nipple covers do an interpretive dance of a wave? I came here to spend some time with my sister. We can get a taxi back together.”

She sat down next to me and we were absolutely silent for at least five minutes, while I tried to process the idea of Christina Aguilera knowing my name and singing a song for me and me totally ruining the moment by running off and spoiling another nice thing my boyfriend had tried to do for me. The only reason I was even on the tour was because of Zeke. The thought struck, with great pain, that maybe it would have been better for Zeke and me if we'd never crossed paths. I'd tried to be something I wasn't, and that had made us both miserable.

Finally Lily broke the silence with, “Do you like it, Iris? Being a pro-surfer.”

Lily had always possessed the ability to put her finger on my weakest spots. She saw through the armor that fooled other people.

I nodded. “Yeah, but it's so hard, Lil.” It was so much harder than I'd ever expected it to be. I'd imagined the tour as a surf junkie's paradise; I hadn't understood how difficult the pressure, fear and exhaustion would be.

“It's no little thing, Iris. Winning that competition. Of course it's hard. Working as a professional surfer, competing on a world stage. Yeah, maybe you're not at the top of the points board, but what you've achieved is incredible and it's sad you don't see it.”

“Is it incredible? Because I feel like I'm failing. Failing at professional surfing. Failing at being a girlfriend. Failing all my friends and family at home who want me to do well.”

Lily shook her head, exasperated, as if I was missing something very important. “Don't you remember Dad's favorite Beckett quote? Something about trying and ‘failing better.'”

“Failing better is still
failing
, Lil. I'll probably crash and burn, and finish this tour in last place. No sponsor will want to touch me. I'll go home and back to working in the shop.”

“Working retail isn't the worst thing in the world. But you're not through yet, and even if it does all go wrong and you do finish in last place, you're still one of the best young female surfers Billabong could find.”

“Or maybe I was just in the right place at the right time. I don't think I have what it takes to be good at this. I don't have the stuff. I'm not dedicated enough.”

“So get dedicated,” she said. “Really try, Iris. Give it everything you have.”

If only it was as simple as that.

She stood up, and pulled me up too. “Let's get out of here,” she said.

“What about Zeke?”

“Leave him to cool off. He's big enough and pretty enough to find his own way back to your hotel.”

“How will we get back?” I said. “Every cab's already taken.”

“Give me five minutes.”

Lily disappeared inside the hotel and, when she reappeared, she had Seb and his sister in tow.

Seb jangled his car keys and said, “I hear you ladies need a ride?”