Free Raw Blue by Kirsty Eagar Page B

kicking, wriggling, clawing for the surface, and I keep bumping up against him, hitting him with my arms and legs. The drag doesn’t let up and I’m really losing it, going crazy claustrophobic, thinking he’s going to drown me.
    I break through the surface and suck back air and he’s there beside me saying, ‘Easy, easy, easy …’
    I gasp, still struggling, trying to find a foothold, pushing him away from me.
    Sharper now. ‘Take it easy, mate. Just hang on a second.’
    I go under again, thrash my way up, gulp water, start to cough.
    ‘Jesus, settle down ,’ he barks.
    He finally gets a foothold, leaning back from the pull of the sweep running down the beach, and I’m wrapped around the back of him like a piece of seaweed.
    ‘Bloody leg ropes are tangled.’
    Our boards are knocking against each other, tomb-stoning in the sweep. He pulls his board towards him, which drags mine with it. I’ve managed to stand by this time, reaching down to undo my leg rope which must be wrapped around his legs somehow.
    ‘You all right?’ he asks.
    ‘I was trying to get out of your road.’ I start coughing and water streams out of my nose.
    He undoes the mess our boards are in and pushes mine across to me. ‘Well, yours is screwed.’
    I see what he means. The front third of my board is snapped, the fibreglass hanging by threads, the stringer broken clean through.
    ‘Wonder what shape mine is in,’ he mutters, pulling his own board through the water towards him. He runs his hand up the side of the board, his face grim. ‘What a shit. New board, too.’
    I see his shattered left rail. For a moment I forget everything else because this is bad enough. I’ve wrecked someone else’s board, paddling in front of them like a bloody idiot. The whole crew is probably watching, just shaking their heads. Stupid, stupid girl.
    ‘Oh shit, I’m so sorry.’
    The reform sucks up behind us and thumps down on me so I lose my footing and go under again. When I surface he’s climbed on his board and is catching the next line of white water. He rides on his stomach to shore.
    I follow him, feeling worse than awful. I want to be swallowed up by the sea, to disappear.
    He’s on the beach, checking his board.
    I hurry across the sand towards him, carrying my broken board. ‘Look, I’m really sorry.’
    ‘Yeah, you keep saying that.’ He’s picking at the crack in his fibreglass. He turns the board over and halfway down I see the big crease running across the width of it.
    I dump my board on the sand. ‘I’ll pay for it to be fixed. I didn’t mean –’
    ‘What did she do, mate?’ Shane’s standing behind us, his board tucked under his arm. His eyes are too bright and they’re fixed on the ding. ‘New board and all. Aw , that sucks, mate. That’s the pits.’
    Oh God, let me rewind time. Take me backwards so I can never have come here.
    He steps too close to me with those wide mad eyes and smiles. ‘You’ve fucked it.’ He says ‘fucked’ so hard that spittle sprays my face.
    ‘Piss off, Shane. This has got nothing to do with you,’ Ryan mutters.
    Shane’s eyes don’t blink.
    ‘ Shane . Get lost, mate.’
    Shane looks from me to Ryan and then back to me again with a maniac’s grin, then walks off.
    ‘ Whoo-eee. Ha ha ha . She’s worked ya over, Rhino!’ he shouts without turning around.
    Ryan squats down, staring at his board, his pale freckled forearms resting on his knees. He’s wearing a T-shirt instead of a rashie and it clings to the solidness of his shoulders. It’s strange to me that I can have knocked up against his body like that when I don’t even know him.
    For some reason I think of a Sunday afternoon when I stayed out in the surf after sunset, the headland becoming a dark silhouette against a purple sky, the water turning grey. The floodlights at the tidal baths looked like showers spilling gold onto the sand and I was humbled with wonder at so much beauty. But it was all a trick. Because now