Aftershock Read online

  Keep your head out of the water for a week till these dissolve. And best to stay put for a bit, yeah? Where there’s folks that know ya.

  Already I was finding the headache crushing, but he wouldn’t give me anything strong, narcotics might make my brain bleed.

  I was willing to take the risk, but he still refused.

  SO, THERE I was, stuck in a surf lodge and barred from the water, with a raging headache that made me wince at the light and an untouchable raw and puckered golf ball behind my ear. I wasn’t used to this, to my body turning against me on so many fronts: nauseous, sore all over, constantly chilled. I’d managed to badly bruise an elbow, and all my muscles and my whole left side were wickedly stiff, like they’d seized when I fell.

  A conversation came back to me from one of those frustrating nights when I’d tried to get Jules to admit that her level of intoxication was too high, again, again. And Jules, slightly slurring her words, had tried to tell me that her body was, at best, when she could manage it, a remote machine, clunky and malfunctional, tolerable only with tinkering and troubleshooting, coaxing as you would a rundown jalopy or a stubborn mule, and that much of her waking life was devoted to maintenance that usually felt futile.

  I lamented the pills I’d stolen occasionally from her Oxy supply and wished I hadn’t wasted my last one on a particularly nasty dorm room hangover. All I had was sleeping pills, but for once sleeping was not the problem.

  Vivid near-drowning memories flickered though me at random times, awake or asleep, a pirate signal, static in my brain, swirling old nightmares of hyperventilating alone in a hallway, Jules almost catatonic as Nan berated her, my stuffed elephant Eloise still in my hand, its damp trunk the only thing left of the baby. The sound of someone close by, keening.

  I SPENT THE first couple days in bed, watching the sky change colour, struggling, when it got too bright, to find comfort without lying on the swollen side of my head. My brain had been given a good shake, and I found myself thinking things I’d never thought before: is this what Jules feels sometimes? And even: what would Jules do now? Not because I saw my mother as a role model, or wanted to be like her in any way. But because I couldn’t deny the ways in which I was like her, the tangible imprint Jules had made on my life, my coping strategies, probably even my personality if you wanted to get super dark about it. And it somehow made her less the demon who had sold her soul to the evil empire, and who had completely shut down her ability to feel. She was still all that, no question, but she was also human: fallible and fragile.

  LEE BROUGHT ME meals between surf sessions, sat on the end of my bed and played cards with me, or Jenga when I felt like getting up, providing stable islands of clarity and comfort. And distraction. Right about then I might have sorely regretted not having my phone, if I hadn’t had her trash-talking me as we played euchre, forcing me to fight back the laughter that made my head roar.

  You blamin’ that hand on a head injury?

  Um. I am, yes.

  But Lee’s attentiveness had a nervous edge to it. A couple days later, when I’d made it out to the porch to smoke a joint with Sean, she was checking out my stitches, and even as she joked about possible permanent brain damage, she was practically clucking, and I felt compelled to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault.

  It’s my own fault. I didn’t see that Belgian kid coming. Maybe partly his fault. But not yours. Just bad luck, really.

  When I was very little, I had gone to the pool with Mo-mo, watched her swim lengths up and down while I clung to the side in the shallow end, still deeper than I was tall, the pool edge chafing under my arms. Older kids flying over my head with jubilant hoots, splashing into the noisy expanse of chlorine-blue pool. It had all been unfathomable to my five-year-old self, and irresistible, and eventually I worked up the nerve to throw myself into the fray. In the bath-warm water I sank like a drowning kitten, thrashed and sputtered and my feet touched the bottom of the pool, but there was only water above me, a murky light. Until a hand grabbed me, pulled me back to the safety of the wall. Some other girl, my age and also clutching for safety, had just reached out and dragged me in. Mo-mo, steady and sure and unreachable on the far side of the pool, propelled herself up and down a marked-off lane and made it look easy.

  I told Lee and Sean the story, and tried to explain how once again I’d underestimated the water and overestimated myself. Lee paused her fussing and rested a light hand on the side of my head. I should have told you to lose your leash.

  Yeah, and then we might not have found her so quick. Or the board might have hurt the other kid.

  Sean gestured down the porch to where the three Belgians were sequestered in a corner. One of them had a nasty sand rash on his face.

  Anyway, you did tell me to.

  See, there you go, it’s a judgment call, if you keep the leash or not, and it was her first time out. If you’re not ready to get ragdolled, don’t get wet.

  You just seemed so confident. Lee gave a gentle squeeze to the back of my neck, then moved to the slingback chair in the centre of our trio.

  Seriously, though. I’ve been slammed into the hockey net so many times. Shit happens.

  Wearing loads of gear, though, yeah?

  Plus, I loved it. I can’t wait to try it again.

  Yeah, that’s it. Sean nodded his enthusiasm. Back on the horse, yeah?

  Lee snorted. Great. She got up and went into the hostel.

  It’s just a couple stitches, I said. Mild concussion.

  She just forgets. In her blood, yeah?

  Oh, right—her dad was a surfer?

  I thought about my own parents, what activities we shared. Drinking, maybe.

  Big-time, Sean said. Famous, like. Travelled for tourneys, took her everywhere. Got her started when she was wee. She never had to learn like the rest of us. Sean ducked his head. And then he died, of course.

  Died. Died surfing? Light moved upwards behind my eyes, blue and white and airless, liquid panic.

  You didn’t know? Sean looked uncomfortable. Any surfer over fifteen’s probably heard about it. He just hit the trough, right? At Pipeline. Hawaii. Solid wall just took him under.

  Sean depicted how this could happen with his hands, a huge rounded claw of wave crushing everything in its grasp. I pictured Lee’s tattoo, the wave that wrapped her bicep, the tiny surfer cutting through it.

  And she was on the beach, yeah? Saw it happen. Little nine-year-old Brit junior contender. Stayed away from the media after that, though.

  That Lee might have a terror of history repeating, and the possibilities for self-recrimination, resonated deep in my bones.

  IT ALSO MADE me question all the time Lee was spending with me. I wanted desperately to believe that the connection I felt with her, the excitement that made my stomach tighten every time she looked at me, was two-way. But it was difficult to ignore the worry that off-gassed, palpably, whenever she saw me take an ibuprofen or close my eyes for a few seconds. I tried to quiet the voice that made me doubt that she just liked me and wanted to hang out with me. I didn’t want her to feel like I needed looking after. I worried that getting injured my first time out had somehow diminished me in her eyes. We weren’t even together, and I was waiting for her to leave me.

  AT SOME POINT, I used the hostel phone to call David’s house in Christchurch, just to check in.

  Oh my god, Chlo! We’ve been worried sick! What’s the matter with your phone? Amanda was so much more direct than David.

  Lance didn’t tell you?

  All he said was that you’d call and you never did. Now he’s up in Wellington helping with all those beached whales.

  I had heard about this. Pilot whales, hundreds of them, had committed suicide on sandbars off the coast. Some scientist on the news had called it a harbinger of another “big one,” an earthquake to dwarf all the recent aftershocks.

  Well, my phone’s gone. Anyway, I had a bit of an accident—

  Gone? Should we try to—what’s it calle
d? Clean it or something?

  Wipe. Remote wipe. No, there’s no point.

  Doesn’t it have one of those tracking things on it? We could—

  No, you can’t track it.

  I lost mine once and we tracked it—to the trunk of the car! She laughed, and I had to laugh with her.

  But I know where it is.

  You know where it is? Where is it?

  Well . . . the ocean floor?

  Oh, sweetie. How are we going to keep track of you?

  Aw, don’t worry, Amanda. I can keep track of myself.

  IT WOULD HAVE been a satisfying conversation, a firm drawing of boundaries with parental units, if Lee had not overheard it.

  So you did have a cellphone, she said when I hung up and turned around to find her sitting there.

  I did, yeah.

  And you threw it in the ocean, she said, not as a question, her voice steeped in disbelief. You’re not one of these climate change deniers, are ya?

  No, of course not! I tried to sound scornful, but the shame in my gut weakened my words. I just needed to get away from them, I explained.

  Lee was skeptical. Who’s “them”?

  So I told her about David and Amanda and my not-so-new half-sister, thinking she would understand my annoyance with people trying to control me, trying to rope me into family bonds that I wasn’t ready for, wasn’t sure I wanted.

  But as I finished talking, she was shaking her head a little bit sadly. I found being an only child unbearably lonely, she said. I might never understand you North Americans.

  My face burned with all the ways I felt myself lessening in her eyes. I wanted desperately to tell her that I’d been lonely too, and that even though I’d only known her just over a week, I felt like she got me. But I wasn’t ready to put either of those things into words.

  SEAN, LATE ONE too many shifts, lost his dishwashing job in town. We were out on the porch, watching the tide ebb at twilight, when he told us he was going to go work on a farm on the North Island. Lee looked alarmed. Sheep, he added. Up near Auckland.

  Can you surf up there? I asked.

  Lee shook her head. No, he cannot.

  But it’s close to Piha. I need the place to stay, love. Not all of us have trust funds.

  Sod off. I hate you for leaving.

  Why don’t you come with me? Nationals are next month anyway. You can’t stay off the radar forever.

  Watch me.

  Aw, c’mon.

  Nationals, mate? Fuckin’ zoo, that. Everyone just wants to talk about my pops. It’s exhausting.

  Only because you’re as good as he was.

  I’m better than he was. That’s why it’s annoying.

  Okay, okay. Well, you’ll just have to hang with the guys here, then. Or get this one up to speed faster. When can you swim again?

  Stitches are gone, so. Tomorrow, I guess. Technically.

  See? She doesn’t even want to surf.

  No, I do, I’m just . . . going hiking, remember? Maybe you should come with me?

  But Lee would not commit. Maybe, she said. Maybe.

  A FEW MORNINGS later, I heard Lee get up before the daylight and go downstairs for her wetsuit. I would follow in a couple minutes, go with the Dawn Patrol guys, her early morning crew, to wherever the surf was up. I loved watching them. Watching Lee.

  But Lee came back, dropped her wetsuit in a pile beside her own bunk, sat next to me on mine. Sean’s gone, she said.

  He’d left her a note and taken the overnight bus north.

  Don’t find many friends like him, travelling all the time. He’s a good one for sure, she said. I thought she might cry.

  I spent the day trying to cheer her up. We played some pool, walked along the beach, read and drank tea on the shaded porch. For hours she hardly spoke. Finally, as the sun weakened over the mountains, I tried one last thing:

  How about another lesson?

  Lee looked dubious. Then she smiled, and I couldn’t believe how happy it made me.

  We donned wetsuits and flip-flops and once again padded down the road a few hundred metres to the somewhat protected bay with its smaller swells.

  But as I approached the surf with my board, I found my feet moving very slowly, and when I was within three metres of where the water was just barely licking the sand, I stopped.

  The waves looked rough all of a sudden, not just white along their crests but churning and writhing with veins of foam. A noise came out of my throat, not quite speech.

  Lee, already up to her knees in the soup, looked back. Alright?

  Was it always like this?

  Like what?

  It’s like . . . stormy. I was also noticing for the first time the sharp rocks near shore, looming serrated edges of black boulders beneath the waves.

  Lee walked up out of the water, stuck her board in the sand, stood beside me. We watched the surf for a while. I tried to imagine paddling out, waiting for a swell, turning around, riding it in, standing . . . I shivered, convulsively, once. Visualizing the way I did for hockey was not going to work here. I’d swum most of my life. I’d never imagined I could be afraid of water.

  It’s okay, you know, if you don’t want to.

  There was so much understanding in Lee’s voice, so much tenderness, that I had the absurd thought that I loved her. And that I didn’t want to ever let her down.

  I do want to, I said.

  But still I couldn’t move. After a moment Lee sat down on the sand beside me. Reached up, grabbed my hand, pulled me down and didn’t let go.

  I pretty much forgot about surfing at that point, all of my psychic power directed at the grasped hands on the sand between us. The fear in my stomach didn’t go away but became less mortal terror and more cliff-jumping adrenalin. I thought about kissing her. I really wanted to. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her staring steadily out at the surf. But her eyes weren’t tracking the waves, so I knew she wasn’t really watching them. Was her heart pounding the way mine was? If I tried to kiss her now, would I be wrecking everything? Or would I be missing my chance if I didn’t?

  Then some new arrivals from the hostel, three Australian women, came over the rise from the next bay over, walking along the beach with their surfboards. Lee withdrew her hand and jumped up.

  Watch my stick. Gonna see if someone’ll buddy up for a bit. Don’t mind, do you?

  Course not.

  She took off jogging down the sand. I stared after her wetsuited form, cat-burglar sleek.

  I felt a tiny tear inside, and the feeling was familiar.

  When Lee came back for her board then took off again to surf with the Australians, I found myself shuffling back to the hostel and logging on to the computer. Inexplicably fighting tears. The flickering screen making my eyeballs vibrate painfully.

  I’d told myself not having any contact with Jill was letting me heal, but the taste in my mouth was so foul I had to wonder if the wound over our breakup was just festering, an infected open gash in my heart. Maybe I was attaching too much to Lee because of it. Maybe I was misreading all the attention, the jokes, the significant eye contact. Maybe holding hands was just her being friendly.

  I HAD NO new emails that weren’t spam. Jill was still Single on her profile, although I took the time to peruse several new photos of her with the somewhat too cute Rachel. Couple-selfies, unmistakably: Rachel’s head leaning back on Jill’s shoulder, arms extended out towards her camera. They were even kissing in one, hilariously looking sideways out at the lens. At me. I wondered if Jill was texting me and felt a sour gratification that no one but the orcas would even know.

  There was also no email from Jules, which made me worried for three and a half seconds, and then my worry turned to deep irritation. I’d emailed when I’d landed, and Jules had never responded. She was probably trying to track me through social media. Or maybe she wasn’t. It wouldn’t be the first time she wasn’t there when I needed her. Not that I needed her now. But what if I had?

  I f
ound myself on a web page called socialmediasuicide.com, which I’d heard about from someone at school. I’d had reason to consider the possibility once before. I entered my Socialink profile name (Chloe In Net) and password (0goalsagainst) and hit Enter. I watched animated clips of a little man in a top hat hanging himself by a noose, blowing his brains out with a pistol, dropping a toaster into his bath and slashing his wrists open, which sprayed blood all over the inside of the computer screen, as my Socialink account and all the connected accounts that made up my interweb presence were systematically deleted. Until, over the now-solid blood-red screen, appeared the torn-out black words:

  CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE DEAD.

  It was a satisfying, bitter pill.

  A QUAD OF Russians had left town that afternoon, so Lee and I had the dorm room to ourselves. I stayed away well into the evening, past the time when the early morning surfers usually went to bed. After a long late walk on the beach, I returned to the hostel and changed by the red glow of the emergency exit sign.

  How long do you think you’ll stay mad at me?

  I looked at Lee’s bunk. I saw the glint of her eyes, the outline of her neck and cheekbone against her pillowcase. The shape of her, stretched out on the bed.

  What? I’m not mad. Realizing as I said it that I had been but wasn’t anymore. Jealousy was ugly, an insidious fungus on my heart.

  Could’ve fooled me.

  Neither of us moved. We stared at each other across the shadows.

  You’re so beautiful. I hadn’t meant to say it, but I meant it.

  Lee half laughed and rolled over, leaving me with the wall of her back.

  If it’s just ’cause I went surfing, we’re gonna have a problem.

  I stared at her dark form, my heart pounding in my ears.

  I didn’t want to have a problem.

  A moment later I sat on the edge of Lee’s bed, right beside her bare arm and back, the line of tank top across it.

  Lee.