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If you’d said they had a leader, they’d have laughed at that too, especially Big G. But if you saw more than two of them together, Big G was there, in the middle, towering over them, looking a good two years older than he was, talking about what the waves were doing.
I didn’t know them, but from the little I’d seen, I could tell he was the most sensible. Little Skip was a bag of energy, not knowing where to spin off to next. Rag was a stoner and a joker. Big G was quiet and strong, with a rep for fighting. And Jade? I didn’t really know yet. But she seemed like trouble.
I think Big G kind of levelled them out. They looked to him to organise them. So he’d stand, arms folded, eyes staring through his mop of long, dark hair. If he didn’t reckon the surf was ‘on’, one might go, but most didn’t. If he said it was good, they all found a way. Before school, after school, weekends. Homework, family meals, out-of-school jobs delivering papers or working in cafes – none of it mattered when the waves kicked up. Once they were all off school sick, and turned up the next day suddenly better. Everyone knew where they’d been, but no one could prove it. And even if they could, no bollocking from a teacher or parent could wipe the glow away. For that gang, it was always worth it. Surfing came first. It gave them an edge, something different. They even seemed older than the others in my year. It was like everyone else was going through school, waiting to start life proper. They’d already started. In some ways, at least.
I would have liked to have been a part of it, after that first day at Tin-mines (all the spots had names – it was part of the surf thing), but if you didn’t surf, you weren’t in. And even though Skip and Rag were friendly on the first days of term, they pretty much ignored me after that.
I hadn’t conned myself into thinking I’d be their mate, but I’d hoped for something different with Jade. Largely because she was the hottest girl I’d ever seen. We got the school bus together; we lived next door. But at the bus stop was the only time she seemed to remember I existed. Apart from when we got difficult homework. Then she became my friend all of a sudden, and didn’t even try to hide why. Jade wasn’t thick, but to get what you needed to do at home you had to listen in class. And unless it was English or Art, Jade didn’t listen. At all. School bored her. The teachers bored her. The other kids bored her. She was friendly with the other girls, but none of them were like best mates. She only really talked to the other surfers. I took my notes in class, half focusing on the class, half watching her dream the day away, with her mind in the sea, knowing that later we’d be on the bus and then she’d wake up to the fact that she’d been at school for the last six hours, and she’d shove a textbook under my nose and say, “What does this mean?” Especially if it was science. My speciality. Which was half good, half bad, as I hated looking like the geek I truly was. But I also liked helping her out.
So I didn’t make friends with the surfers, but I wasn’t Sammy No-Mates either. I made two friends. Mike and Harry. They liked my Xbox, and stargazing through the telescope, and sometimes we kicked a football around. But the truth is, when I played Xbox with them, I was thinking about sitting around the campfire with Jade and her mates. I was thinking about another sunset at Tin-mines. But I didn’t surf and Jade never invited me down to the beach again.
The idea of surfing crossed my mind, but I couldn’t really swim well and we were too hard up to buy things like surfboards and wetsuits. And Mum wouldn’t have been keen. Not after Dad and what happened. So I pushed the idea away. But it nagged at me. Every time I went to sleep, listening to the sea.
*
I’d been there three weeks or so, when, on a sunny Sunday morning, Jade appeared at our front door with her dog, Tess, asking me to go for a walk. She wore trainers, jeans and a hoody, with the same denim jacket she always wore and no make-up. London girls tried a lot harder than that. Jade didn’t need to.
“No surf today then?” I said, standing in the doorway, trying to act like I wasn’t keen on the whole walk idea. She brushed the hair out of her face and looked away, in the direction of the sea.
“Honestly? Yeah, there is. But I stayed out late last night…”
“How late?”
“About two o’clock late. So Dad kind of grounded me. He’s locked my boards away, the twat. If I go off by myself, he’ll know I’m borrowing gear and going surfing, but if I’m with you…” She shrugged. That was why she was asking me to go for a walk. There were no other options. I could take it or leave it. I didn’t like it, but the alternative was homework.
We went to the sea on our bikes, with Tess following. Not Tin-mines this time. We hit the coast path, locked the bikes to an old railing and walked towards Whitesands.
She led me along the cliff and down a steep, rocky path, over the dunes to the deserted beach. We walked where the sand met the dune grass. White-grey granite cliffs stood at one end of the beach with a headland at the other. Inland the honey-coloured moor was spattered with soft purple heather. I’d started to love Cornwall by then, its beauty and its wildness, but I knew better than to go on about it to Jade. She took all that for granted. She didn’t know any different.
The sea was a mass of wind-smashed white peaks and dark blue troughs, with the odd shoulder-high wave trying to make a shape in all that anarchy. Jade looked at it. Hungry.
“You know, you’re mad to live here and not surf,” she said.
“I don’t like the water much.”
“What? Why?” She frowned like I’d said the most stupid thing possible. I thought we might get into it then; I thought I might tell her about Dad. But then we heard a loud cry. The scared cry of someone in trouble.
At the far end of the beach was a young girl – maybe eleven or twelve – in a wetsuit, standing knee-deep in the shore break. She was shouting and waving at the sea. A surfboard lay on the sand behind her.
“That’s Milly,” said Jade. “She’s far too young to be out by herself. Where’s her mum? What the hell is she doing?”
Jade started running. I followed.
The girl was shouting at her dog, a Jack Russell, which was caught in the surf, drifting out, really quickly, like it was being pulled on an invisible rope. Its eyes were wide with panic. Tess started barking like crazy.
“The dog’s in a rip,” said Jade.
My blood iced. “Um, we should… er…” I said. I sounded weak, feeble. I felt that way too. Jade gave me a look like a whiplash.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said, starting to strip, chucking her clothes on to the wet sand.
“No! I’ll go,” I said.
And that was it. Three simple, stupid words. I didn’t think about it; I didn’t weigh it up. I just didn’t want to look as pathetic as I felt right then. So I went. Because drowning’s better than looking weak, right?
“I’ll come too,” said Jade, undoing her laces.
“No!” I said. “It’s okay. I can do it.” I was acting like Clark Kent, ripping off his clothes to reveal his Superman costume. But there was no Superman underneath. Just my weedy, shaking body. Every inch of my skin screamed at me not to do it, but I watched myself like in some out-of-body trip, kicking off my boots, picking up Milly’s sponge surfboard, and running in.
It got deep, quickly. The cold water shocked me, its energy washing round my legs, soaking my clothes. Even the sand turned to liquid under my feet. The shore was only a few feet away, but once my feet lost touch with the sand it might as well have been a thousand miles.
I jumped on the board, dug my hands in the water and paddled. It was frenzied and clumsy, but somehow I moved forward, wobbling side to side, gasping and spluttering as I crashed through the chop, salt water catching in my throat and smacking me in the eyes. I had no idea what I was doing.
I must have been caught in the same rip as the dog, because I went a long