Kook

She stood, took my plate to go and fill it up again. She smiled.

“It won’t interfere with your surfing too much?” she said, gently teasing.

“No,” I said. It wouldn’t either. But even so, I said to myself, maybe I should go a bit less.

That’s what I told myself.

*

And I did go a bit less. A bit.

But then, one sunny, windless autumn day, when the waves were waist high, I stumbled to my feet just as the wave broke. And didn’t fall off. The board cut loose from the white water before it crashed, and I was on the green unbroken part of the wave. The board got this speed in it, like the brakes were suddenly off, and I was gliding along glass, ahead of the white water, feeling the energy of it surge up and into me.

I watched it wall up. I crouched down, got more speed and felt the rush.

I’d liked surfing before, but riding a green wave was a different kind of ‘like’. Once I’d got a hit of that, I wanted more. I wanted as much as I could get.

The waves were easy going. Good to catch and not closing out. I got a load of them.

And every time I got a good wave I had the same thought: What would Jade think? What would Jade say? I was looking forward to showing her. I imagined I’d paddle up to her at Tin-mines and surprise her, or she’d be paddling out and see me gliding along a wall of water.

That’s how I imagined it. But what I planned for and what I got turned out to be two different things.

*

A week or two later, after I’d been a bunch of times and got used to riding green waves, there was a different forecast on the website from what I’d seen before. Three feet at fourteen seconds wave period, with a secondary swell of two feet at sixteen seconds. The guy who did the report on the website was raving about how good a day it was going to be. There’s gonna be some thumping waves, he’d written. Autumn’s started late, but it’s here now. That seemed odd. Three feet didn’t seem that much. And anyway, I’d got used to seeing a good forecast, then turning up and seeing next to nothing.

Still. Winds were light. It’d be an okay size, but not so big I’d get in trouble. It would be a class day, according to the web guy. I reckoned I was ready for a day like that. I knew I was. I was making progress fast. I even thought maybe better than a learner usually did, but as I was always alone, or out with a couple of surfers who really knew what they were doing, it was hard to tell.

At the beach I saw a couple of surfers heading in. I kept my distance though. I didn’t want to bang into them, or them into me, so I walked right down the beach, to get my own space.

I paddled out easily, there were really long gaps between the sets of waves, but when they came through they were bigger than I’d guessed they’d be, bigger than I wanted and way bigger than I’d been out in before.

They were breaking fast too, really fast. I was a little nervy, but I still had this itching feeling, this twitchy, bursting energy running through me. The same muscles that had screamed ‘enough’ when I’d got out of the water the last time were now begging for more.

Rag was right. Surfing was addictive. Day by day, wave by wave, I was becoming a surf junky. So right then I was crapping myself and excited as a dog chasing sticks on the beach.

When my wave came, I knew it. I’d been in the water enough times that I could see it was no way going to slip under me or break in front. I was exactly where I needed to be. But when it got close, my stomach flipped. It was rearing up, sucking the water into it.

It was vicious looking, and fast, but peaking, with a shoulder, breaking a way to my right, and there was a good stretch between the breaking point and the unbroken hump of green. A rideable shoulder. So I turned and paddled, and gave it one hundred per cent. I dug my hands into the water. I just went for it. For a second I thought I’d imagined it, thinking, It should have hit me by now. Then the water I was in dipped, and I was being sucked backwards, upwards. I put all my strength into getting the board moving, making sure it went a bit to the right, not just straight down, and as soon as the wave’s energy took over, thrust my body upwards.

My feet connected with the deck and I pointed the thing down the wave and dropped, turned, raced up the wave, along it, spun the board, digging the fins into the back of the wave and riding straight back into the heart of the thing. It was like a line of energy, and all I needed to do was follow it. It wasn’t even me surfing the board. I’d connected with something. Something with more power than my body could ever have. It filled me up. Pure freaking juice.

I didn’t plan the carves, twists and turns; they just happened.

Finally it got steep, heaping power on power into an arc of a wall, faster and faster. No need to turn now; I just pointed the board and shot like an arrow, true and fast into the heart of the wave as it jacked up. As it closed, it covered my head. I tried to dive into the wall, to come out the other side. But it ate me. It beat me sideways, churned me over. Walloped me. When I stood, I was in waist-deep water, dizzy and breathless as a kid who’s just got off a rollercoaster. I held the board steady and pointed it through two walls, each one pulling me backwards, then stepped forward, threw myself on to the board and paddled like crazy.

I’d ridden a proper wave. Not a lump of white trash, not a two-foot wall, but a proper, over-your-head, make-your-knees-tremble, green, clean wave.

I only had one thing on my mind. More. Now.

Every five minutes or so, another set came in. Curving walls of turquoise crystal. How long would it last? Who knew? When you have a great sesh, you milk the fun out of it till your muscles turn to jelly. After I came off one, I raced out to get another, then sat outside, scanning the horizon, twitching like a landed fish, hungry – no, desperate – for the next one. I surfed long after the juice had been squeezed out of me. But when I really had nothing left, I still wasn’t done. I caned it till I was stumbling on each wave, falling and floundering every time I tried to get one more.

It was late now, the sun was getting up. I wasn’t going to school that day. I’d missed that bus. And I’d have to make up some bullshit for Mum, like a flat tyre on my bike or something. I didn’t even worry about it. Detail. I’d sort it out later. I knew it was worth it. Because I’d never had it like this. In the weeks I’d been surfing, I’d never even seen it like this.

One more, I thought, and kept thinking, after every wave. Just one more. Then, when I’d got it, one more again, over and over. There was no ‘last wave’, no ‘done’, no ‘over’. It went on and on and on, till I was so drained I could barely paddle.

At the end, when I had to finally admit it was time to go, I sat as far out as I could and just waited for the killer wave to end on, even though I was so knackered I knew I’d struggle to even stand on the thing.

When it came, it was way bigger and meaner than any wave that day. But I wasn’t going to let it go. I couldn’t tell which way it was breaking, so reckoned I’d go straight and see what happened, then turn. I paddled with all the energy I had left. The board rode up, lurched forward, fast. I was looking down a cliff of water. There was no shoulder, either side. There was only one thing going to happen – getting nailed. I didn’t even try to stand. I pushed the board away, put my arms over my head and went down.

It battered me into the water like it was concrete, sending a shock through my body. It got a grip on me and then spun me over, wanting me to know what a sap I’d been for even trying to ride it. It didn’t let go till I’d been turned over and over so hard I didn’t know which way was up. I tried to swim up, but another one hit before I got near the surface. When I did make the surface, I got a good lungful of air, tried to reach out for the board, but as my fingers brushed against it, I got hit by another wave. This one held me down longer. When it let me go, the wave and the board stayed glued together like they were mates in this Sam-battering routine, dragging me backwards and under.

I began to get scared. Fear rose up in me like sick. I tried counting, holding on. But I couldn’t make myself do it. I was too afraid. A small voice in my head was telling me I didn’t have enough juice left to cope. The waves were getting stronger and bigger, and I was getting weaker. By the second. And the sea was going at me like it was personal.

I flailed about, swimming, not knowing if I was even going up.

I hit the surface.

“Please! Please!” I shouted. I didn’t know who to, and anyway, they weren’t listening. I got hit again, went deeper, again. I couldn’t seem to stay above the surface for more than a second or two. Half of me didn’t accept the sesh had gone from great to pear-shaped in a heartbeat. But the other half of me knew I was beginning to drown.

Bang. Another wave. I hit the bottom. Got rolled along it.

But then…

I got to the surface. Pushing my feet downwards, they connected with sand. A whole set had washed me in. I was standing in waist-to-chest-deep water. I almost cried with relief.

There was no way I was going back out so I waded in. Another one got me, knocked me over, but I gave in to it, grateful for every bit further it took me towards the beach.

I had a hold of the board, and half body-boarded in, gripping it, and letting it drag me to the shore.

Right up to two pairs of wetsuited legs.

“Hello, Kook,” said Jade. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

I stood up, staggering and reeling. Just great, I thought. Total humiliation.

Skip was with her. “All right, Sam?” he said. “We been over at Gwynsand. It was getting big, so we came here. My choice; Jade wanted to stay. Good job we did. You’re really keen to kill yourself, aren’t you?”

“You saw me?” I said.

“I did. Jade didn’t. She was way behind me.”

“Oh.”

Jade’s eyes were twinkling, and the side of her mouth was curling into a smile. She looked pleased, but also like she was trying not to laugh.

“Aaaaw, Kook. You’re a surfer! Why didn’t you say? You could have come with. Loads of times. Might have been safer. Did you learn much today?”