CHAPTER ONE
LUX
“Ever been down-under?”
I’ve heard better pick-up lines.
The plane dips. I’m gripping the sides of my seat so hard my knuckles are paper white. I flinch when a peanut packet pops behind me.
I’m not a great flyer. I much prefer to be on the ground, in the water. Planes are so… unstable. Quite a statement from someone whose life has been plunged into instability, I know.
“Australia,” the man beside me continues, “you been before?”.
This guy must be forty-plus wearing an Akubra that would make Crocodile Dundee proud. If there was an Aussie cliché convention, he’d be front and center.
I glance at him. “No. Never.”
“Big low coming up to the Island, probably accounts for all the turbulence.”
You’re not helping.
I love it how all Australians call Tasmania ‘The Island’ as if it’s a completely separate entity.
He squirms in his seat. Probably smuggling a python back home. “Say, why are you visiting again?”
It’s a good question. Why did I suddenly pack in my job, tell my boss to go ‘fuck himself with his inflated ego’ and sell everything I have to, what? Go surfing?
Imposter Dundee claps his hands together. “That’s right. You’re a surfer girl.” He waves his hand. “Hang ten and all that.”
Jesus. “Yeah, something like that.”
Normally, I’d think this was a come-on, but I saw the ring. Imposter Dundee’s happily married. With my beach-blonde hair and tanned features I’m a walking, talking Californian postcard—a target for every hot-blooded male on the planet looking for their very own beach babe.
Imposter Dundee continues to peck away with questions, but he’s got a point. Why have I come? To take up Dad’s words of wisdom and ‘live my life, seize the day’, Dead Poets Society and all that crap? If so, why do I feel so damn nervous, like I’m diving from a plane without a parachute.
Not a good analogy, Lux.
“You’re not travelling with anyone else?” Dundee asks.
“No,” I smile, “just little ol’ me.” Given I’m five-five, that’s quite literal.
“You’re what? Eighteen?”
“Twenty-three,” I correct, happy to take the compliment all the same.
Beside him, Dundee’s wife is drooling over her ‘Dance Moms!’ t-shirt. “Well,” he says, adjusting his belt, “I respect that. Best way to see the world is by yourself, no anchors to tie you down. I wish I did it when I was a more of a spring chicken. Where did you say you’re surfing again?”
Imposter Dundee has the attention span of a goldfish. I’ve already told him twice.
“Shipstern Bluff,” I tell him, not that he’ll have any idea what I’m talking about. No one does, not even the surfing elite. It may well be the last truly secret surf spot left on Earth.
“Oh?” he replies, looking surprised. “Sounds kind of sketchy. What’s so special about it?”
I swallow hard, fingers pressing even tighter into the pleather armrests. “Someone once told me it’s the gnarliest wave in the world.”
*
Shipstern Bluff—a multi-stepped surf break about as predictable as a two-year-old with a tommy gun. “The heaviest wave I ever surfed,” my father told me, and he would know. He’d been around the world before he was twenty-two, the same age as me. He used to surf all the popular haunts in California, was a celebrity at the Wedge. He’d been to Teahupo’o, Tahiti, when he was in his late teens and surfed a monster swell, but he never shut up about Shipstern.
I have a picture of him deep in a giant barrel from the nineties. The waves must have been forty, maybe fifty foot that day. We said one day we’d ride Shipstern together, but he died last year at the infamous surf break Mavericks. A fitting way to go, really.
So, here I am.
There’s a decided lack of humidity when I step off the plane. Storms are predicted later in the week, but from where I’m standing on the tarmac the skies are crystal and cerulean—island perfection.
I find a ride down to the south-west coast to a tiny town called Finke. I’m staying at a motel about a half mile from the break, not that you’ll find it on any map. When I arrive at the motel with single surfboard and backpack, I’m surprised to find the place is more or less deserted.
I pay the skinny girl chewing Hubba Bubba at the front desk, the last of my savings gone, and make my way up to a room on the second floor of the motel. Even from here I can see the swell is around ten feet—nothing insane but still plenty big. Dad never shut up about Shipstern. “It’s got these scalloped, sucking waves that defy physics,” he told me. “They bend out over a razor-sharp reef just twenty inches below. The volume of water behind you, over your head, is incredible. Wiping out is like being hit by a semi.”
I wax my board and head out, keen to get this ticked off my bucket list. I’m not one to sit around pondering, um-ing and ah-ing. I’m all about the action, getting things done.
Dad talked about the bush trail to Shipstern so much I feel like I’ve been here before.
The skies lose a little of their luster as I walk, birds calling through the scrub, the vegetation so different, so dry compared to back home.
After half an hour of walking, I finally come to the ocean and the Bluff itself, a great headland jutting out into the ocean.
I’m not alone.
There are three guys on the rocks waxing their boards. They’re golden-skinned with short, dark hair as opposed to the beach-boy stereotype. They share similar features, with tattoos, bodies straight out of a Sons of Anarchy episode.
One of them sees me, elbowing the others. He stands, eyes falling to my bikini. “You lost, little girl?”
The condescending tone immediately has me on edge. I knew I’d cop some flack, but Jesus, I only just got off the plane.
I recognize the accent. “You’re American?”
They walk over side by side, boards in hand, every muscle sculpted out and glistening in the Tasmanian sun, wetsuits peeled around their waists like my own.
The tallest one extends his hand. “Once upon a time. Deacon.”
I shake it, his grip strong. “Lux.”
His eyes run from my chest to my stomach. “Let there be light.”
Someone get this guy a new playbook.
He straightens up. “Where you from, Lux?”
“Cali.”
“Hollywood, hey? That’s nice.” He nods. “But it doesn’t mean shit out here”.
Asshole.
The others step in to introduce themselves, Bo and Razor in turn, the latter sporting a large scar on his left cheek.
“Razor?” I question. “Is that your real name?”
He gives me a wink. “Because I’m sharp out there. Wait and see.”
“You’re related?”
“Triplets,” replies Deacon.
Bo looks to my board. “You are heading out, aren’t you?”
I nod.
Deacon’s still watching me carefully, his bottle-green eyes seeking out something in my own. “How’d you find out about this place?”
I shrug. “Family secret, I guess.”
Bo looks down at the crotch of my wetsuit. “Can’t see ’em, but you’ve got balls, baby. Never seen a chick out there before.”
Razor punches him in the shoulder. “Or a man.”
Bo punches him back. “Fuck you.”
But Deacon simply stands there, boring into me with that stare. “You’d be better off sitting it out. It ain’t Waikiki out there.”
Asshole, take two.
I tuck my board higher under my arm. “I’m not a grommet. I can handle myself.”
Bo smirks. “I bet. Come on then. You’ll be right.”
Deacon’s shaking his head as I run behind the others heading down to the ocean. I cop a nice look at those tight boardie butts and can’t help but smile.
Maybe things are looking up.
Paddling out to the break is torturous. We’re barely halfway and I’m already out of breath. I try to get to the coast as much as possible back home, but I’m out of practice. I’ve gotten sloppy and yet here I am at what Dad said was one of the most dangerous breaks in the world, miles away from civilization.
What the hell were you thinking?
It’s the sound that hits me first.
We sit on our boards at the corner of the break and watch. There’s a mild offshore breeze, a thunderous crash as the waves curl and pound into the rock and coral below. The water’s completely see-through, the reef watching on ominously.
It’s colder than I expected in the water, but it’s not the water temperature that has turned my nipples into arrowheads. It’s the nerves.
Deacon’s eyes seem to see through my wetsuit. He knows.
The sun shifts behind cloud, everything suddenly a little cooler and dark.
I watch the waves again, the hollow way they break. This is serious, Lux. You could really get fucked up out here.
Even Bo doesn’t look so convinced now that we’re waiting, poised at the edge. “You really sure about this, Hollywood?”
I nod with faux confidence.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m charging. Watch and learn.”
Bo paddles into the back of the break effortlessly. He just glides through the water, diamond pinpricks of light in his hair.
He paddles in and waits for the next set. I can actually feel the water surging below us, shifting and growing with instability. Dad and his pals called this place ‘the graveyard’. It’s also a great white breeding ground.
Bo sets it up perfectly, placing himself before paddling hard and fast, dropping down the face of the wave swiftly and drawing himself tight into the barrel. He tucks in and his brothers whoop and cheer behind me.
It’s a great ride. The lip bucks over his head thick as a concrete slab. He disappears and smashes out of the spray, fist-pumping the air.
I watch the other two follow. Razor lives up to his name, carving the water like a surgeon. Deacon almost comes unstuck on the drop-in but manages to pull it together and ride over the back before the close-out. He’s launched a solid six feet into the air.
Damn.
The trio paddle back. “Your turn, Hollywood.” Bo smiles, Deacon looks skeptical.
I’ll show you.
I take a deep breath of salt and brine.
I paddle into the impact zone.
The sound grows in my ears, the water churning and angry.
What are you doing, Lux? You’re out of your league here.
I push the inner critic away, try to dampen down the fear, but the closer I get, the more it rises up. I watch a wave break. The reef is exposed. It’s like the ocean has been sucked away completely.
I watch another form in the distance and start paddling. Here goes nothing, Dad.
It’s on me before I’ve even had time to register. I set myself up, but my board just drops away. I manage to get down on it, but everything’s disappearing, changing. I hurtle halfway down the face of the wave and know something’s wrong. The wave kicks out hard, a wall of water smashing into me. I go over the falls, trying to shield my head.
Shit.
I close my eyes and wait for the impact.
It comes like ten-ton hammer.
The water’s stone, compressing me down hard against the reef. I skim over the top spinning and rolling, trying to remain calm and hold my breath, but it’s terrifying, all sense of place and orientation lost.
I wait until the world stops moving and kick hard for the surface. I rise up spluttering, forced to dive back under as the set continues to pound through, the next wave crushing me back under.
I’m blown under the water again, feet looking for purchase and any sense of direction gone.
Again I surface and again I’m pressed under.
My lungs are hot, strained. I’m struggling for breath, to find the energy to get free again. Under and under I go, rolling, tumbling in the torrent.
Something firm wraps around my arm and pulls, but I’ve taken on too much water. The world becomes a pinprick.
Not like this.
I try to breathe, but I can’t, my lungs full.
The world slips away. Everything goes dark.
I open my eyes, hot lips pressed against my own. I see him, blurry, breathing into me.
My head snaps to the side. He holds it there as all the seawater and brine is ejected from my body.
I cough and splutter against the board, the taste of Sex Wax and salt in my mouth, eyes stinging and head numb. I’m shaking, conscious but caught in a strange limbo.
I dimly realize I’m in shock.
I can hear the break crashing in the distance.
It all comes back to me—the wipeout, the brothers now gathered above me like crows.
I’m so lost in the simple act of trying to breathe I haven’t even realized the top half of my wetsuit and bikini has been torn away completely by the reef. I’m more or less naked from the waist up.
Deacon throws a towel around me as I continue to convulse, brings me up into a sitting position while I shake and quiver.
“Fucking hell, you almost drowned out there!” he shouts, angry. Behind him Razor’s holding two sections of what used to be my board.
My throat’s hot and dry. “I… I don’t know what happened.”
“You wiped out, hard. That’s what fucking happened. I fucking told you. This break’s not for you.”
He doesn’t seem happy he just brought me back to life. He seems positively livid about it.
“Thank you,” I offer, throat scratchy and dry.
He points to the horizon. “You can thank me by flying back to fucking Hollywood.”
“I—”
Bo stands with his hands on his hips looking down at me. He speaks to Deacon. “You should take her to a hospital, bro.”
Razor laughs. “The nearest hospital’s a half-hour boat ride and two hours on the road after that. The town doc will have to do.”
Deacon stands in between his brothers, the three of them watching me. I’m just sitting on the board, knees to my chest, convulsions racking my body no matter how much I try to stop them.
Deacon shakes his head. The anger has dissipated, but he’s still not happy about it. “You know, I’d say you’re lucky to be alive, but luck’s got nothing to with it. I’ll take you back into town, get the doctor to look over you, but after that I suggest you find your way back to Hobart and a proper fucking hospital. The last thing we need out here is another dead kook who thought they were Kelly fucking Slater.”