Blue Water High (27 page)

This was Heath alright – he was a category two goofer.

‘And maybe they're struggling and they're too embarrassed to ask for help so they balls things up deliberately instead.'

Fly heard Heath clear his throat. This was a bad sign. Heath always cleared his throat before he came up with a corker.

‘No offence, Mr Savin,' he started, ‘but in the version of this I'd imagined, Michelle Pfeiffer played the crusading teacher.'

There was a long silence and then Fly heard Heath's chair being pushed back. Suddenly he was there in the doorway, his face like thunder. It shocked Fly. Heath was such a happy camper most of the time you just forgot that he was allowed to go dark on the world occasionally too.
He didn't seem surprised to see her.

‘Thanks for waiting.'

She just stood there. Was he going to launch his attack now, fully fuelled up on a big dose of humiliation?

‘I need to eat something.'

Sure you do, thought Fly, nothing like a good old scare to get those stomach juices really pumping.

‘You coming?'

The fish and chip shop on the promenade was one of the only shops which hadn't been ‘tastefully renovated'. There were no chrome chairs and tables, no Balinese-style floor cushions, no aromatherapy candles in the window, no would-be models working behind the counter. It was cheap and greasy and it made the largest hamburgers Fly had ever seen. It was run by a friendly old Vietnamese couple. She watched them flipping patties and frying Pluto Pups and wondered what they must think about the people weird enough to eat this kind of rot. Traditional Vietnamese music tinkled out of a cassette player on the counter and an ultraviolet fly zapper exploded above the deep fryer every two or three seconds, almost keeping time to the music.

Heath downed his hamburger in under two minutes. Fly was sure that was a record, and from the way the Vietnamese woman was staring at him, Fly guessed she probably thought so too. He sat back frowning and rubbed at his stomach.

‘Ate too fast.'

No kidding, Fly wanted to say. There were a billion things she wanted to say, but she just didn't know where things were at. It was like the ground had disappeared beneath them and neither of them were sure if they took a
step forward that there'd actually be anything under their feet. The fly zapper exploded once, twice, three times and when Fly looked up she saw that a dragonfly had managed to slip through the bars. It was fighting that light, its tail arching backwards, writhing to get away. She couldn't keep her eyes off it, willing it to buck free. After one more zap it went still and fell to the bottom of the tray.

‘I'm sorry about how I've been about the Jane thing,' Heath said.

This was the last thing Fly was expecting. She was so relieved she jumped right on in without waiting for him to explain.

‘No,
I'm
sorry about how
I've
been about the Jane thing. I've been a total schizo.'

‘Shhhh!' Heath held a finger up to his lips. ‘Your number hasn't been called yet.'

Fly nodded.
Oh-kay
.

‘And I think what you did yesterday was really gutsy.'

‘You do?'

Heath nodded. Then he seemed to daze off. Fly didn't know whether he'd finished or whether all the blood in his brain had gone to his stomach to try to dismantle that hamburger.

‘Is it my turn now?' she said finally.

Heath waved her through.

‘I just wanted to say sorry for acting so weird … I don't know, I just thought – we're supposed to be friends and then you couldn't tell me the truth about her. And I thought, that's not really what friends do.'

Heath nodded. ‘You're right. And it won't happen again. Anything you want to know, I will give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me Gloria.'

Fly sat there a moment wondering what she wanted to know. It had all been guesswork up till now. Maybe it'd be good just to get it right from the horse's mouth.

‘Is she nice?' she asked softly.

Heath nodded. ‘She is.'

It stung a little. Fly wasn't sure why. She wouldn't want Heath to hang out with someone who wasn't nice, but it still stung. Anyone in their right mind would have left it there, but Fly couldn't help herself; she wanted to touch the hotplate again.

‘And you like her a lot?'

Heath thought about it a long while. ‘I thought I did.'

Fly frowned. What was with the past tense all of a sudden?

‘Her boyfriend likes her a lot too.'

Her boyfriend?

‘You see,' Heath explained, ‘he's been overseas for a couple of weeks. Got back on Sunday. Jane brought him down to the beach to meet this great new friend she'd made at school.'

Fly was starting to wonder if she'd gotten the wrong end of the stick entirely. If Jane had a boyfriend, why was Heath lying to Fly about spending time with her? Heath could see her confusion.

‘She was feeling a bit lost. New school, didn't know anyone. She thought I was just being friendly and I was too dumb to ask if she was already hooked up.'

‘You didn't know?'

‘Nope. Not until Sunday.'

That's why he'd surfed so appallingly. He'd just had his heart smashed.

‘Oh,' said Fly. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘You know what?' he said. ‘I'm not. 'Cause at some point on Sunday night I worked out that I was only trying to distract myself anyway.'

‘Like you need any more distractions in your life. You've got a heap of catching up to do at school, and things are only going to get more full-on with training and –'

‘Fly!' Heath cut her off. ‘You didn't hear me. Go back to the last sentence.'

Fly tried to run it back in her head, but she couldn't get there.

Heath pressed an imaginary button on the side of his jaw and made a garbled rewinding sound. ‘The third sentence was:
'Cause at some point on Sunday night I worked out that I was only trying to distract myself anyway
.'

Fly stared, her eyebrows furrowed. She could sense a shift. Heath was staring at her intently and she couldn't hear the fly zapper explosions anymore.

Heath said impatiently, ‘Now you say,
Distract yourself from what, Heath?
'

Fly just nodded.

‘And then I say …' said Heath, drawing it out, hoping she might join the party at some point, but Fly was frozen solid. He was going to have to do all the work here. ‘And then I say,
Distract myself from you, Fly
.'

There, it was out.

Fly could feel the maple syrup creeping up her legs. Heath was watching, waiting for a reaction. But Fly's mind was racing back through the past few days, through the board auction and the sunscreen session and the whole Hinemoa and Tutanekai fiasco. How was it possible that she'd missed it so badly? And when she thought about it, she'd missed it by about twenty-five seconds.

‘That is too weird,' she said at last. ‘You know how I wanted to talk to you on Friday afternoon? I was about to make a speech and in that second, just before I said it, that's when you saw Jane. If I'd been twenty-five seconds earlier none of this would've happened.'

‘What speech?' Heath asked.

Fly stared. She might've been ready for it then, but now, just on the spot, she was so not ready.

‘Oh, just – you know. Just what you said. You know, that maybe there was no need for you to be … distracted anymore.'

Heath's eyes narrowed. ‘That was your speech?'

‘Well … no, not really. I mean, I didn't even know about the distraction, but you know what I mean.'

‘So what were you going to say?'

Fly could feel herself blushing, but it was a light pink one. Just good healthy ‘rose in the cheeks' style.

‘I want a speech.'

Fly started to laugh.

‘I'm serious.' He turned and sang out to the Vietnamese woman behind the counter. ‘Make her give me a speech!'

The old woman smiled and clucked and shuffled away. Heath was in here every second day, she was used to his outbursts.

Fly folded her arms, she knew there was no escape. ‘I was going to say …' She took a deep breath. ‘Heath, I only have nine words to say to you. I don't think of you in a brotherly way anymore.'

‘That's ten.'

Fly laughed.

‘And,' he declared, ‘it is
such
a cheat. You just stole exactly what I said to you!'

Fly laughed some more.

‘Nope. It won't do. I want a new speech. I want it to be no less than three hundred words and I want it to include at least five or six of the things you find completely irresistible about me.'

Fly put her head in her hands. This was what it was going to be like – hanging out with Heath.

He let her sit there for a while and then he said softly, ‘I'm very happy.'

Fly looked up. She nodded. ‘Me too.'

Heath leaned forward, and this time, Fly moved forward to meet him. It was a soft kiss, a gentle one. They didn't have to rush anything, because somehow, after all that had happened, they'd finally made it home. After ten seconds the Vietnamese couple started to clap. They broke apart.

‘You finally got her!' the old man called out in stilted English. ‘Good boy.'

Fly blushed for real now. How did he know?

Heath got up from the table. ‘I've been in here whinging about you from day one.'

Fly didn't think she'd heard a sentence that made her beam more in her whole life.

Fly and Heath were the culprits. They were the ones who brought it into the house. And once it was in, the dreaded kissing disease snaked its delicious way into every corner of the place. Maybe it had just taken someone to break the ice – to go public and call a thing a thing. And suddenly it was on. They held hands on the lounge, they sat together during all meals, they did ‘nice little things' for each other, they texted goodnight messages from either side of the bedroom wall. Not that Fly had a phone. Heath sent his sweet night-time nothings to Fly via Anna's mobile. Anna had read them out to Fly for the first week, enjoying the soppy sweetness her friend was being smothered in. During the second week she started to sound tired as she read Heath's messages out. By the third she said it was starting to make her feel sick. By the fourth she put her foot down and turned her phone off the minute Fly stepped into the room.

But for all the hassle they were getting, they had also inspired the others to come out. Matt had plucked up the courage to ask Perri to the school formal, Bec and Edge
were finally happy to stop pretending that they weren't truly, madly and deeply … and even Anna admitted that there was a reason she no longer spent so much time on the internet to Germany. And that reason's name was Joe. She'd been frightened of Bec's reaction. She had a brother in Germany and she knew how important it was to get the sister's nod of approval. Bec couldn't have been happier. Joe was finally starting to think that not getting into the academy was a positive thing – if he'd gotten in, Anna would still be in Germany, and he was very glad she wasn't.

Spring had sprung. Not that Deb and Simmo were surprised – it happened every year. You couldn't put a bunch of hormonal teenagers in the same house for twelve months without expecting some tongues to tango. Strangely enough, Deb was a lot more chilled about it than Simmo. Simmo had taken to wearing a whistle around his throat, which he blew at full pitch every time he caught anyone canoodling. At one point he even printed out signs with a picture of a big pair of lips in the middle of one of those red circles with a line through the middle:
NO KISSING ZONE
, it read.

Deb, on the other hand, gave them a more reasonable talking to. She understood that it happened, and part of the reason it usually happened at this time of year was because the pressure was building and one of the ways people dealt with pressure was to distract themselves. She didn't want to kill off the romance completely, but she
needed them all to realise that it could be a trap, a way of tricking themselves into thinking that they'd done all the hard work and they'd earned the chance to play a little. If they thought this way, they were definitely missing the point. The finish line was just over a month away and whoever lost focus now might as well pack up and head home. They all nodded and smiled and went right back to it. Fly had never heard so many cures for pash-rash in all her life.

So unsettled was Simmo with the whole ‘Love is in the Air' vibe that he was having serious second thoughts about his plan for the weekend. The biggest girls' regional carnival of the year was on at Marley Beach and Simmo had entered his girls. He thought it'd be good to snap them out of their comfort zones. They'd all gotten very comfy competing against each other. They knew what to expect and plonking them down in the middle of a whole bunch of strangers – girls who would've given their eye teeth for the chance to train at Solar Blue – was going to be good for them. He also thought it'd be good for the boys to have a solid bash at being support staff; it'd snap them out of their ‘star' mentality.