I nodded before it was over, leaving a little crack open between us. Blair smiled and then we left school together. She waved goodbye as I got on my orange bike and pedaled away.
9
_________
Axel
Her bedroom door was still closed.
She had been in my house for three weeks, and every day when she got back from school, she would eat whatever I prepared for her in silence, without protests or objections, then shut herself up between those four walls. The few times I entered, she was listening to music on her headphones or drawing with a fine-point pen, nothing interesting, just geometric figures, repetitions, pointless sketches.
Probably the longest sentence she spoke to me was on the first night, when she told me tea had caffeine. After that, nothing. If there hadn’t been an extra toothbrush in my bathroom and I hadn’t started to go grocery shopping now and then, I would hardly have noticed her presence. Leah only came out to eat lunch and dinner and go to school.
Naturally, my mother came by a few times with food, even though I had dropped by the café several times to tell her everything was fine, eat a free piece of cake, and spend some time with Justin, who was supposed to take over the business if my parents ever gave up their addiction to work.
“How are things?” he asked me.
“I guess fine. Or not. What the fuck do I know?”
“It’s a tough situation. Be patient. Don’t do your usual thing.”
“My usual thing?”
“You know the kind of dumb shit that crosses your mind.”
I laughed and downed my coffee in one sip. I had never been close to Justin; we weren’t the type of brothers who go out together and hang or get drunk. We didn’t have anything in common, and probably, if we weren’t bound by blood, we would have been two strangers and would never have spoken more than a few words to each other. When I was little, it often struck me that he was stuck in the life we left behind in Melbourne, as if they’d jerked him away from there and dropped him in the middle of a place he didn’t really understand. For me, it was the opposite. This stretch of coast was mine, almost made to measure for me: the freedom, being able to go around barefoot whenever I wanted, the relaxed life, the bohemian atmosphere, everything.
I walked around Byron Bay after saying goodbye to my brother and bought some organic fruit. Then I called Oliver on my way home. We’d talked the day before, but he had to hang up right away after just a few words because someone told him he had a meeting.
“How’s it going?” he asked me.
“I’ve got some more questions.”
“I’m all ears,” he replied.
“Leah spends the whole day shut up in her room.”
“I told you, she needs her space.”
“Can I take that space away from her?”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“What are you trying to tell me, Axel?”
“You never asked her to just stop locking herself away?”
“No, that’s not how it works, the psychologist told us…”
“Do I have to go along with all that?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s a matter of time. She’s had a hard time.”
I held back the impulse to contradict him and bit my tongue. Then he talked to me about his work out there, the organizational stuff he’d been doing for those three weeks. If he was lucky, maybe he’d be able to cut his stay in Sydney a few months short. I didn’t want to let myself feel relieved before I knew for sure.
* * *
It was Saturday. She’d spent the whole morning shut away, and it was starting to try my patience, even though Oliver would arrive on Monday and I would have my normality back for seven days. It’s not that I didn’t understand her––of course I understood her pain––but that didn’t change things, didn’t change the present. According to the psychologist Oliver had taken her for numerous sessions with, she wasn’t working her way through the phases of grief properly. In theory, she was stuck in the first, denial but I didn’t agree with all that. Maybe that’s why I knocked on her door.
Leah looked up and took off her headphones.
“The waves are nice; grab your board.”
She blinked, confused. That was when I realized that every time I proposed something to her, it came across as a question. A question Leah felt justified in saying no to. But this wasn’t a question.
“I’m not in the mood. Thanks though.”
“Don’t give me that. Move your ass.”
She looked at me with alarm. I saw her chest rising and falling in time to her accelerated breathing, as if she hadn’t seen the attack coming after all those days of calm. I hadn’t planned it either, and I had promised my best friend I wouldn’t do something like this, but I trusted my instincts. And I had an instinctive need to get her out of that room, a desire to drag her away from that place. Leah sat up stiffly, tense.
“I don’t want to go, Axel.”
“I’ll wait for you outside.”
I lay in the hammock stretched between two beams on the porch, where I normally read at night or closed my eyes while I listened to music. I waited. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. After half an hour, she appeared, nose wrinkled with distaste, hair in a ponytail, face uncomprehending.
“Why do you want me to go?”
“Why do you want to stay?”
“I don’t know,” she answered softly.
“Me neither. Let’s go.”
Leah followed me in silence and we crossed the short distance separating us from the beach. The white sand received us warmly under the midday sun, and she took off her dress and stood there in her bikini. I don’t know why, but I looked away and stared at the surfboard before passing it to her.
“It’s short,” she complained.
“Like it should be. Makes it more agile.”
“Slower,” she replied.
I smiled, not at her answer, but because it was the first time in those three endless weeks that we were having what you might call a conversation. I went toward the water, and she followed me without complaining.
The city was a mecca for surfers, but the waves weren’t usually big. Still, that day the phenomenon known as “the Byron Bay wave” was on display. It happened when the three points came together at high tide, creating one long wave that advanced to the right, starting at the edge of the cape and entering the bay in regular, synchronized tubes.
I never missed an opportunity like that.
We headed out toward the depths. Once there, we didn’t say a word, just sat on our surfboards and waited, waited for the perfect moment… Leah reacted and followed me when I made a sign and took off, smelling a good wave on its way, sensing a growing energy in the calm water.
“It’s coming,” I whispered.
Then I swam out to sea, hurrying, and stood up on my board before sliding into the wave, skirting it, gathering speed to make my move. I knew Leah was following me. I could feel her behind me, opening her way on the wall of the wave.
Happy, I looked over my shoulder.
A second later, she was gone.