Air (22 page)

I must have dozed off, and I woke to the memory of Pop's face. I remembered the words he'd spoken to me, heard them in my head as if he was right there with me.

The sun came up and Seb was right, it was spectacular. We watched a flock of birds circle around us, a million of them, it seemed, and I breathed in the beauty. The trees behind us exhaled their pure oxygen and it gave me a head rush to finally be in this place, even if it was during one of my most terrible screw-ups to date.

But, within an hour or so of sunrise, the heat intensified and soon the rays were beating down. I wanted to stay by the road so that Anders would see us when he passed, but the road didn't offer much shade. In my sticky dress, with no water, I could feel my skin begin to prickle with heat rash. As a further indignity, my tampon needed changing, but I'd already used up my two spares and I knew it wouldn't be long before it started leaking.

Seb had run out of words, I had run out of words, and Lily was asleep. We just sat there in silence with the angry noises of
a grievously injured tegu for company. A couple of hours into the wait, Seb turned to me and fanned me with his hand.

I was so thirsty I had vivid daydreams of swimming underwater through a reservoir with my mouth open; half girl, half basking shark.

Seb had a banging headache, which I suspected was a migraine, as he felt sick and faint and even had a five-minute spell where his vision had gone funny.

Eventually Anders drove past in a top-of-the-range BMW at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour. He reversed to our position and I waited for the onslaught.

“Oh, hello there!” Lily said, as if this were a perfectly normal occasion.

“Only you would come to the Everglades in a cocktail dress,” Anders said to me, and then, “What the fuck is that under your arm?”

The tegu chose this moment to hiss, but it was a sad, lethargic noise that just made me feel even worse for it.

“It's a tegu. We're taking it to a vet,” I said. “I ran it over.”

“That beast is not coming into this car,” Anders said firmly. “No bloody way.” He passed me a bottle, and two more to Seb and Lily. We drained them in seconds and I felt giddy with the relief of pure joyous water.

“This isn't even yours,” I said.

“Get in the bastard car before I change my mind about this,” he said.

I'd never heard Anders swear so liberally, and then I zoned in on the thing I'd noticed, but hadn't processed: his breath smelt of whiskey.

I didn't ask. I didn't want to know. All I wanted was to get back to Miami.

“Righty-ho,” Lily said, getting into the back.

“You know what, Iris?” Seb said. “Now I know you guys have a ride, I think I'm gonna wait for roadside service.”

“But it could be hours yet and you're not well,” Lily pointed out helpfully. “I'd cancel it. You can figure out what to do about your truck later. It's not going anywhere.”

Anders said, “Lover boy, get in the fucking car.”

Seb shrugged and did as he was told.

“
In the back.
Iris, give him that prehistoric abomination, and you get in the front.”

Anders did what had to be an eight-point turn and we set off back toward Miami.

After about ten miles, Lily asleep again and Anders still scowling, I turned back to Seb and said, “What are you gonna do about your truck?”

“Well, I'm sure as shit not gonna be driving it any time soon.” He sounded as if he was going to add some choice personal insults, when Anders surprised me by saying, “Lay off her. Can't you see she's half-dead with heatstroke?”

I looked at my chest, where red streaks of heat rash were undeniable.

“It's all right. I'm fine.”

“I've scraped better-looking Hubba Bubba off my shoe,” Anders said.

“Thanks.”

Even in the midst of so much crap and chaos, I couldn't help feeling embarrassed about how bad I looked. About the fact that
Zeke would have to see me like this; Zeke and the entire surf world.

All the girls were expected to manage without wetsuits for the tropical contests, as the water was so warm. At New Smyrna, I'd be the lesser-striped Cornish lobster.

“You should probably get something on it,” Anders said. “We'll stop by Walgreens.”

“I'm burned too, y'all,” Seb said.

“You can all share your calamine lotion like good little children.”

“It's fine, Anders. Really.”

I was playing it down, but I wanted to cover my body with cool cotton and stay in a cool, dark room for a week. The very next day, however, I'd have to put on a tiny bikini, walk across a baking beach and step into saltwater in front of the world's surf press, and my family, watching at home.

In the convertible, my hair flipped around and Anders handed me his Panama hat, which I pulled low over my face.

Anders was never great at respecting speed limits, or any limits for that matter, but maintaining fifty-five in a fancy BMW, while pissed, was absolutely beyond him.

Not even an hour later, I was jolted out of a doze by the wail of sirens.

That morning we learned that Florida state police do not appreciate drunk Englishmen speeding on their roads while transporting a coat-wearing lizard.

In short order, Anders was booked, the car was seized, and Seb, Lily and I found ourselves nestled up with the tegu in the back of a police car.

Lily was making notes on her smartphone for her upcoming Facebook post, despite my protests, and Seb was silent, too exhausted to speak.

At the police station I watched through the glass door as Seb used the small change in his wallet to pull various drinks and snacks out of the vending machine. He shared them with us and we feasted in a silence that had at least become companionable. This was a fiasco, we'd accepted it as such, and now we just had to ride it out.

Lily used her credit card to book an Uber that would take us to Miami. It would cost a packet, but I said I'd reimburse her. Anders would be in the system for a little while before he could
be released, and we'd hatched a plan to tell Zeke that he had been called away on urgent family business and would join us the following day for the contest.

“I have to tell him,” I'd said. “I don't want to lie to him.”

“Don't you dare. He's already in a state without you making things even worse.”

“He'll find out eventually.”

“Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But for now, zip it.”

I tried to argue the point, but he was absolutely adamant that Zeke was not to hear a word about this.

We gave the tegu some water, then fed it a Cadbury's Creme Egg, which it devoured. I was astonished that Creme Eggs were even a thing in America, but they were, and apparently tegus loved them; them and the eggs of endangered bird species. It revived a little after that and I made a call to a local veterinarian, who agreed to pick up the animal and administer whatever care it needed and then arrange transfer to a local wildlife shelter for a small fee of fifteen hundred dollars, which would severely deplete my current account.

But I didn't care I just wanted that animal fixed and in the condition it had enjoyed before meeting the front wheel of Seb's truck. “Are you sure?” the vet said. “Euthanasia is eighty dollars.”

She took payment over the phone, and I could have sworn as I read out the digits of my card that the tegu looked at me in gratitude, still licking Creme Egg off its face.

True to her word, the vet came to collect the tegu, and I reflected that I'd just had the most expensive driving lesson
imaginable, before I even factored in the cost of Seb's truck, which would take all my savings.

Finally the Uber arrived, we climbed in, rolled down the windows and I stuck my head out into the fifty-mile-an-hour wind.

When I arrived at the hotel, Zeke had still not got back. The room smelled musty and I opened the balcony door to let in some air. I drank some water, took a long cool shower, changed into tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and flicked on the television to wait for him. I didn't know how I'd keep my Everglades trip a secret, or how we'd smooth over what had happened at the party, but I knew I couldn't face another row.

I flaked out on the bed and tried to distract myself with a reality-TV show, but I couldn't get comfortable my head was aching and my heat rash was painful. I searched through my toiletries for Ibuprofen, but could find none. Eventually, I found some Advil in Zeke's bag. He also had a bottle of his vile-tasting vegetarian multivitamins, which I grabbed too, as I thought they might help with the skin-healing.

I popped the cap, tapped a few out on to my hand, and was confronted by two different types of pill. One a huge, green vitamin that I recognized; the other a small, white oval tablet.

It took me a while to figure out what I was looking at. Aspirin, I told myself. Paracetamol. Because I didn't want to see what I already knew was true. It had been so much easier to stuff my head in the sand and forget what my instincts had been telling me over and over.

He'd hidden them in with his multivitamins, which I'd bought for him, and which he'd assumed I'd never take, on account of me trying one and declaring it tasted like vomit.

I held the white pills up to my eyes, and that's when I knew for sure. There was no drug name. The place where the drug name should have been was filed down. He, or the person who sold him these, had gone to the effort of hiding this information.

All the sleeping. The drinking. His surfing performance being so up and down. I had known something was wrong. Why had I just let it go?

Zeke was using again.

But using what?

I sat down, put my head in my hands and tried to think.

Zeke had promised me he was done with drugs, but he had a secret stash of mysterious pills. If he was on drugs, again, he'd lose his sponsors, his career, his main reason to live. His joy. The time of his life as a successful pro-surfer would be over.

He'd have made himself a hypocrite. He'd been out on beaches the world over with DFS scrawled large on his surfboard: Drug Free Surfer. And he'd been secretly chucking down pills?

What the hell was he thinking? How could he let his fans down like that? His family? Anders?

How could he do that to me?

I left him a note. One word, surrounded by pills.

Liar.

And then I packed my rucksack and walked to Lily's hotel.

After six hours of talking it through with Lily, she convinced me to go back and confront Zeke. My head was still in bits, but I'd left my passport in the room safe and had to go back for that if nothing else.

“Where the HELL have you been?” he said.

“Road trip.”

“A road trip, huh? Who with?”

“Like you even care.”

“No, I clearly don't care about you at all, which is why I've been going out of my mind all day, while you ignored my calls and didn't return my messages.”

“You just care about you. Oh, and drugs.”

“Shut up already. They're not even real drugs.”

“What the hell are they then, Zeke?”

I chucked a handful of his pills at him, which I'd taken to show Lily, and they scattered at his feet.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, they're definitely something.”

“You can't even call those drugs. Zoloft. It's, like, hardly stronger than an Advil.”

“Why are you taking them?”

“To help me relax.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“A doctor.”

“A doctor prescribed you something to relax? What doctor? When did you go and see a bloody doctor?”

“In Steamer Lane, while you were busy with the contest.”

“You snuck off to get stress medication?”

“I didn't sneak anywhere. I just didn't tell you.”

“Why doesn't it have the brand name on it?”

“OK, the doctor was actually a med student. I guess he was trying to cover his tracks, in case his roommate found his stash.”

“If you don't tell me what Zoloft is, Zeke, right this second, I'm going to google it.”

“It's nothing. Like some antidepressant that a million people take.”

“You're on antidepressants?
Why?
”

His face was contorted and I could tell this conversation was excruciating for him.

“Because . . .”

“Because you're depressed? Brilliant.”

“No. I don't know. The med student thinks maybe. I couldn't sleep. These help me sleep.”

“You've done nothing but sleep since we arrived here! Now I know why.”

“Iris, I've been thinking maybe we should take a break.”

“You're
dumping
me? Now? The minute I find out you're on pills?”

“I love you. You know I do. I love you so much. But we have to change things up; we can't keep doing this. All this arguing is too much. It's gotten way too intense.”

“You're blaming ME for this shitstorm? I had nothing to do with it.”

“No, I don't blame you. How could I? But I think we need some time out. From dating.”

Dating? It was weird to hear him call it that. Because I thought what we had was a relationship. A serious one.

“There's an article about me coming out. It's gonna be bad.”

So after all of Anders's plotting to keep even the rumor of this article from Zeke, he knew.

“Methsurfing,” I said.

“How long have you known?” he said, looking at me as if I'd betrayed him.

“Only last night. Daniel told Kelly.”

“So everybody knows. Perfect.”

“Not everybody, and most people won't even care.”

“My sponsors will care. Iris, it's not working. I can't handle all this fighting. We need some time apart to figure things out.”

“
You
need time apart, you mean. You're making out that this is for me, but you're the one who just got caught with illegally prescribed drugs, and now you want to run away.”

“It's not just me I'm thinking of. You're so young to be in such a big thing. And I'm not in a good place right now. I'm a total screw-up. All of this will wash back on you if you don't get away from me. Your career shouldn't suffer too.”

“I'm perfectly capable of deciding what's best for me.”

Zeke stood up, twitchy and tense, and avoided looking me in the eye.

“So we're splitting up?” I said. “Just like that?”

“I'm sorry I just don't know what else to do.”