The Day Of The Wave (27 page)

'Yes,' he says, laughing suddenly, pulling my hand away at the last second. 'I mean, no, Izzy...'

'Ben...'

'No, we have to wait.'

I sigh against him, kissing his nose, then his lips, till he groans in equal frustration. 'How long for?' I manage, but he doesn't answer. He lets me go a second time and dunks back under the waterfall, swimming out towards the oblivious elephant handler and our ride.

We're both exhausted by the time I tell our guide to turn around and take us back. The hot sun has made us sleepy and we're leaning into each other in the box, listening to the sounds of the jungle and the leaves swiping the sides. I'm so tired I barely notice we're going the wrong way until Khalua comes to a stop at the bottom of a wooden slope leading upwards in the middle of nowhere. 

I turn my head to the sky. A row of tree houses are sitting on a high wooden deck. What the hell?

Before I can say anything, Khalua is on her knees, Izzy's eyes have flown open and she's looking around us in confusion. A Thai lady in a hot pink sari hurries out from a small hut carrying a tray of fruit juice and small, white, wet towels. She beams as we both step to the ground, brushing down our clothes. I can see the sign now, pinned to a tree:
Tree House Resort.
 

'Welcome, welcome!' she gushes as we take the juice and towels we're offered. Izzy looks so impressed. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I yank it out. Sonthi. He's sent a text: 'Extra surprise! From me and Sasi.'

I can hardly say anything, but my insides jumble just looking at Izzy. She thinks I planned this. She thinks I planned this so we can sleep together here tonight.
That sneaky bastard!

Our guide orders Khalua to stand again. I slip him some cash as we both stroke Khalua's trunk one last time; then we're led up the ramp and onto the platform high in the trees. 'Ben, look at this! It's so pretty,' Izzy says in wonder, looking out with me over the treetops from the long balcony. We watch Khalua plod away into the jungle below us; the box we were just in is swaying and bumping up and down on her big back. 'I can't believe you did this, do we really get to sleep here?'

She looks a little nervous behind her excitement now. 'If that's OK?' I say, putting my hand to her lower back as the lady leads us into the wooden tree house. 

'Course it is.'

Course it is.
We got pretty hot and heavy in that waterfall this afternoon. My fault. I couldn't help it. The way her eyes glazed over as she pressed herself against me, almost begged me.... I almost gave in, too. Sonthi knows me too well; he would have been planning this since I asked him to arrange the elephant. I hate that he knows what I'd usually want; what I'd usually do. I hate how it hasn't even crossed his mind that I'd see Izzy any differently.

The room is tiny, no more than a soft white bed with a dozen cushions and a mosquito net tied up with ribbons. A fan is whirling above it, making it swish and billow out. We're led through to the bathroom. It's tiny too, with just a toilet and a shower, but with all its fluffy towels, shampoo and soap in containers it's a world away from the room we had to share on Phi Phi.

'Dinner at eight, tree house restaurant,' our hostess beams. She walks to the tiny canvas wardrobe, pulls a curtain aside. 'All your things.'

'Oh my God!' Izzy clutches my arm, laughing. Her pajamas are here, with her blue dress. So are a pair of my boxer shorts, plus clean shorts and a shirt. Holy shit. Sonthi and Sasi must have been here this afternoon, setting this all up. I'm pissed, yes, but I'm kind of impressed.

'This is the best birthday I've ever had, seriously,' Izzy says, rearranging her clothes by color quickly as our hostess leaves us to it. She looks at me almost sheepishly when she's done. 'Sorry.'

'Don't apologize.'

'I try to stop but...'

'Don't try.' I kiss her nose. 'You deserve this,' I say. She really does. She loops her arms around me. Her cheeks are rosy red now. Her arms and legs are even more tanned now; not the translucent white they were when I first saw her at all. She's so damn cute and innocent, only one guy in her whole life, some idiot who catches mosquitoes in jars, and now I have to share another bed with her. 

Nerves, shame, fear and excitement are a carousel inside me. They don't stop spinning as we shower and change, tiptoeing round each other in the small space, saying 'excuse me,' and 'sorry,' like we're dancing round another elephant in the room. They don't stop spinning while we're eating dinner either. We're fed king prawns with sweet chili sauce and fish cakes, which I avoid, and several other dishes we nibble at between giant sips of champagne. 

'Why don't you ever eat fish?' Izzy asks. She's noticed I avoid it. 'Are they still, like...' she trails off, scrunches up her face. I know she's thinking about what I said at Lawan's.

I smile. 'No, but fish are our friends,' I say. 'Without them I'd be broke.'

The restaurant is high in the trees on another platform. Glowing lanterns are strung up all around, swinging in the breeze. The only sounds are the cicadas and frogs, buzzing and croaking, rhythmic like the beat of my noisy heart, watching Izzy in her blue sundress. She's making me laugh and smile and remember how we were when we met on that beach, with no cares in the whole damn world, but I'm drowning like I never did, like I should have done with Toby. Every night now... every night I see it all again.

She taps on her glass with her nail thoughtfully as the rain finally starts and the waiter clears our plates. I lean forwards in my seat.
Pull yourself together. 

'You're being very quiet,' she says eventually.

'So are you,' I counter. She sweeps her hair back and across one shoulder, studies me with those all-seeing eyes in the flickering candlelight. I can see the red marks on her arms from the sun. 'Did you get burnt?' I say.

'A little, but I'll live.'

'I'm sure.' I take another swig of my champagne, and another till the bubbles burn the back of my throat. I'm about to say something else, anything, when my phone buzzes again. Sonthi: '
Condoms in drawer. Have fun my friend.
'

I swipe it off the screen but my mom decides to call. Of course she does. We must have just got a signal back after a whole day. I dismiss the call quickly, but Izzy's seen. 'Aren't you going to talk to her?'

'Now's not exactly the time. She probably just wants to ask about the London trip.'

'Are you going to go?'

'I doubt it.'

Her eyebrows shoot up. She sits back in her chair, picks up her glass, says nothing; not with her voice anyway. 'Shall we go?' I say quickly. I'm so anxious I almost knock my glass over in my hurry to get up. She follows me and together we walk along the balcony to the decking. The stars are so bright this high up. We can see them in spite of the rain.

It's hot inside the tree house. The fan is blowing the mosquito net around wildly. Izzy stands, hugs her arms around herself the way she does, eyes me as I cross the room and close the bathroom door. 'Got to stop as many mosquitos getting in as we can,' I say. 'Come on, get on the bed.'

She does as I say and I untie the nets, letting them drape down around us for protection. She watches me, lies down with her head on the squishy pillows, still in her blue dress. I lie down next to her under the whirring fan. I close my eyes. I can feel her watching me, feel her fingers lace through my mine against my chest.
Boom, boom, boom.
My heart's never worked this hard.

'You're still being very quiet,' she says after a moment.

'Sorry.'

'Do you want to talk about it?'

'About what?'

'I don't know, Ben,' she says, almost in frustration now. 'Why don't you ever talk about that day?'

Shit. My heart lunges under her hand. 'What do you mean?'

'What happened out there on your dive? And why don't you ever want to talk to your mom? She calls and calls and calls, and you hardly ever talk to her. What's going on? Did you fight?'

I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter. 'You really want to talk about this now?' 

Izzy sighs again. Her head is just an inch away. 'There's never a right time, Ben, but I can see you're hurting. Even today, on an amazing day, the best day of my life perhaps, you're hurting. Aren't you? You can't get it out of your head.'

'Izzy...'

'You've helped me so much, more than I ever dreamed anyone could help me. I just want to know what's in your head, so I can...'

'So you can help me? Izzy, no one can help me.' I turn to her now.

She props her head up on her hand quickly. 'Really? Or have you just never let anyone try?'

'Sorry,' I say. Fuck. I move my head against hers, kiss her forehead, then her lips, pulling her into me and breathing the shampoo smell of her just-washed hair and the champagne still on her breath. 'Izzy, I'm sorry.'

'What for?' She's looking at me like I'm a head-fuck now, and I probably am. What else can I possibly be? I don't want to talk, but I don't want to lie here on the best day of her life and fight. Maybe I can tell her some of it.
Maybe it'll help
. 

*

'How are you going to pick up a starfish?' Toby asked me as I tightened his BCD straps. 'Is that even allowed?'

I laughed. He'd been listening to me talking to Izzy. My heart was a hopping rabbit at the thought of her sitting back at the dive shop, waiting for me. I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to get her the starfish either, but I was determined to try and do it without Charlie catching me. He always told me never to pick anything up from the ocean floor. 

'I'll figure it out!' I told him. 'Now, come on, get your flippers on!'

The ocean was clear and calm; a flat blue lid on top of everything I couldn't wait to show Toby underneath. Charlie was helping the Japanese guy, who was having trouble putting his mask on. I was helping Toby myself. We were set to be dive buddies. He was so excited, but there was apprehension in his eyes as he looked over the side of the boat. 

'You're going to be fine,' I told him. And he was.

It was a pretty smooth descent. I was right opposite Toby, making sure he equalized OK. Charlie was looking at him too, keeping another eye on the Japanese guy. Dao, Van and Tee were close by with another Australian couple, pointing out fish already. The elation in Toby's eyes when we touched our flippers to the sandy bottom was unreal to see. He gave us the thumbs up and did a little dance around some coral. I was smiling and laughing around my regulator; I was so proud of him.

For the first few minutes the dive site was amazing. We all drifted together, right along a rocky ridge full of pinks and purples and green coral structures shaped like lanterns. We spent some time poking the water round the anemone, getting the clown fish to come out and say hi. They swam right up to our masks and tried to nip the plastic and I could see Toby laughing; his eyes shining in the patches of sunlight through the blue. 

At first I didn't realize the fish were behaving abnormally. We were focussed on just a couple, but Charlie banged his tank, made us turn and what I saw made my eyes bulge in my mask. All the fish were going wild; racing round and round in circles. I turned to Dao. He was watching a school of snapper go completely crazy, banging into rocks like they were possessed. I gestured to him: 'what's happening?' but he shrugged and laughed. Then the anemone beside me fell completely flat. 

I reached for Toby's hand as we were both flung hard against the wall, then the sharp coral. His eyes grew wide right next to me. That's when I saw the huge dust cloud that was moving straight towards us on the seabed. Instinct told me something was wrong. Very wrong. Rocks were floating around. Fish were bumping into us now. Where the hell was Charlie? 

I followed my bubbles up.
There he was
, racing after the Japanese guy, who was floating upwards in a current that hadn't existed before. I checked my air. I was still OK, but my gauge said we'd dropped a few meters and when I looked up again, I couldn't see anything except Dao, hurtling towards me, slamming against the rocks right next to me. His flipper just missed my face.

Toby's regulator was trailing out behind him. Dao and I both scrambled to put it back into his mouth and I grabbed his tank to hold him steady as he sucked for air and coughed into it. His eyes were terrified, making me terrified too. Dao tried to get us to hold onto the rocks, but the rocks were moving everywhere and we couldn't get a real grip in the cold, dark, sandy fog that was now the dive site. We grappled to hold onto each other by whatever we could; tanks, arms, flippers. The water was hurtling us about like someone had switched on a spin cycle. I still couldn't see Charlie. 

Another surge.
 

It was all I could do to keep hold of Toby. Dao started pulling us upwards to where the buoy line was barely visible. 'Hold on!' his eyes screamed in the moment of faint light that crossed his mask. I kicked as hard as I could. I could barely pull Toby with me as well; the current was so strong. I motioned for him to grab the buoy line with me. He signalled OK and I let go of his hand.

One second; not even that. That was how long I let go of his hand. 

I thought he'd grab the line too, like Dao did. Like I did. 

Another surge. 

In a split second I saw the mask leave Toby's face, saw his regulator fly out, saw the tornado of sand and white foam heading for me. Then, nothing.

When I finally opened my eyes he was gone. It was just me and Dao, clinging to the buoy line in a sandy haze of broken coral and swirling rocks. Neither of us had our masks anymore.

'Up!' Dao signalled. I inflated my BCD, shot to the surface with him. I spun around, coughing wildly, spluttering, my throat burning, my eyeballs stinging like crazy. The boat was gone. 'Toby! Charlie!' 

They were gone. 'Where are they?!' I spun towards the land. 'Toby!!!'

And that's when we saw the bodies floating towards us. 

*

'Bodies? My God, Ben, I had no idea, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry,' Izzy's crying now. 

'They were coming from the beach,' I say. I'm crying too. I'm crying so hard I'm shaking but she holds me and lets me hold her, which is good because I feel like I'm floating somehow, half here, half there, back in that water with all those bodies.