By: Kirsty Eagar

Paperback

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Imagine there is someone you like so much that just thinking about them leaves you desperate and reckless. You crave them in a way that's not rational, not right, and you're becoming somebody you don't recognise, and certainly don't respect, but you don't even care.

And this person you like is unattainable. Except for one thing . . .

He lives downstairs.

Abbie has three obsessions. Art. The ocean. And Kane.

But since Kane's been back, he's changed. There's a darkness shadowing him that only Abbie can see. And it wants her in its world.

A gothic story about the very dark things that feed the creative process.

From the winner of the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for young adult fiction.

About the Author

Kirsty Eagar grew up on a cattle property in central Queensland. After studying economics, she worked on trading desks in Sydney and London before changing careers so she could surf every day. She travelled around Australia in a four-wheel drive, worked as a cook and personal trainer, and began writing fiction. Her first novel Raw Blue won the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for young adult fiction and her second novel, Saltwater Vampires, has been shortlisted for the Ethel Turner Prize in the 2011 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Kirsty is married with two daughters and lives on Sydney's northern beaches.

'There are images in this novel that take my breath away, dialogue that I envy and one of the most achingly real protagonists I've come across for a long while.' - Melina Marchetta

1 Winter

I run up the dunes with the wind howling at my back, my ears burning from its bite. It carries the sting of snow from faraway mountains and hooks under the tail of my surfboard so that I have to fight to keep it tucked under my arm. The sand is crusted over from the rain yesterday and crunches under my feet, and I keep telling myself it'll be warmer in the water. At the top of the dunes I stop long enough to check out the break.

A line of surfers is strung out like a necklace, from the point, all the way down to the south bank. The swell is from the east; each wave face held up by the wind for an impossibly long time; each crest ripped backwards into long strands of spray. One day I'm going to paint this place. Probably from this very spot. But only when I'm good enough to capture whatever it is that makes my soul open up every time I see it.

Storm tides have cut away at the dunes, leaving an abrupt sandy cliff on the other side. People further down the beach are going to lose their houses soon, but nobody feels sorry for them because they're rich if they can afford beachfront. As if the ocean cares that it's been zoned residential – what the sea wants, the sea shall have.

I head north along the dunes to an abandoned couch near a couple of old fence strainers. Since the last time I surfed here somebody's pulled the top post off and used it for fuel. It's resting across the remains of a fire, a big charcoal bite taken from its middle. There's a black dog lying on the couch, guarding a towel and a set of keys, staring out at the surf like she's worried. When she sees me, her tail thumps on the busted vinyl, and she licks her lips and wriggles, but she stays on that couch like she's been nailed to it. I croon nonsense to her for a while, running my hand over her head, feeling the silk of her ears. Seeing her makes my throat tighten.

She belongs to this guy, Greg Hill, an ex-big-deal from the eighties. He shapes surfboards under his own brand, but hasn't made it with that. All I know is he's a creep to his dog. I've seen him talking baby rubbish to her, holding her up so that she can lick him all over the lips and face. But when he's standing, she cringes beside him, tail jammed in between her legs like she's waiting to be kicked.

Greg Hill only comes here when it's good, but not because the surf's on. He comes because it's crowded and he's a psycho; forever mouthing off at anyone he doesn't know; getting physical if someone gets in his way. The sneaky things he does are worse, though, like letting down the tyres on cars he doesn't recognise in the car park. And there are things Greg Hill is supposed to have done that are worse than that.

I join the straggly line of surfers making their way up the beach, all of us walking with our heads turned to the right. It's amazing how the place can reinvent itself overnight. Dirty suds in the shore break are the only evidence left of the howling southerlies that were scratching things apart yesterday. The banks have been scoured out and the left is barrelling. Three guys take off on the same wave, and the inside two get crunched, making me wince. Only the guy playing it safe out wide makes it, and he has to work his way around the foam ball before he can do a couple of turns on the face.

The deep is that solid dark blue you get when the water temperature is low. So far, this is supposed to have been the coldest July for sixty-four years or something – not that I'd know. I've only seen seventeen winters and I haven't really been a fan of any of them. Give me summer. Give me dry, hot northerlies and green water that's oily with sunscreen and sweat. Summer makes me feel sexy. Although the sad truth is, I don't know much about sex.

The recent rain has swollen the lagoon, and frothy brown run-off is gushing into the ocean. I stop there among the other surfers, throwing my board onto the sand. This spot is like a launch pad, everybody zipping up their wetsuits, stretching. I fasten my leg-rope, looking across the lagoon mouth at the tidal pool and headland reserve on the other side. Something's different, but it takes me a while to work out what: the highly original LOCALS ONLY!!! is gone. It was slashed in black spray across the face of the concrete retaining wall that gives this break its highly original name: Walls. The council has painted over it in prison-grey.

Then I'm distracted by a flash of colour. A surfer in a red wetsuit is picking his way down the boulders of the sea wall further back. When he reaches the bottom, he chucks his board down on the sand and zips up. He's too far away for me to see his features clearly, but the red wetsuit makes me hope. But I'm being stupid. It's not who I think it is. Can't be.

I hit the water with a gasp, and my scalp tightens in shock as I duckdive. The rip's running strongly and I start heading diagonally across to give the Right a go, just because there's hardly anybody on it. Today, it's the Left that's pumping. I pull up on the outside of two kids and they get the first two waves of the set, and then I move across into position where it bowls up. My first wave's steep enough on the take-off and I come out of my bottom turn with plenty of speed – but by the time I begin drawing the curve of my cutback, the wall of the wave has already fattened out and died away.

When I paddle back out again, the surfer in the red wet-suit is ahead of me, and seeing him gives me a jolt. He has the same powerful shoulders, the same big reach and effortless paddle. But this guy's hair is shaved short. He glides up to the pack of surfers in peak position.

Confident.

Or stupid.

Before I know it, the sweep has pulled me over in front of the guys at the head of the line-up, right in the impact zone. I start to paddle back across but I don't get very far before a big set comes through and I have to change direction, paddling out wide to avoid being wiped out. It's a struggle to get over the first wave in time.

Two surfers are hassling each other like crazy as they both try to make the wave. The guy on the outside, the one closest to me, is Greg Hill, instantly recognisable with his big barrel chest, chunky neck and white-blond hair. He blocks my view of the other surfer – and I'm trying to see who it is, because I've never seen anybody do that to Greg Hill before. The wave pitches sharply, the guy on the inside takes the drop, but Greg Hill pulls back. Spray hits the water around me with a machine-gun rattle. From the back, I can't see if the other surfer made it or not, but he must have because there's nobody in the white water.

Greg Hill punches the water and shouts, 'I'm gunna faarkin' have you, mate,' in a hoarse, bellowing voice, and nobody looks at him, because that'll set him off, too.

Then another set is coming and I've got to paddle forward like everybody around me. This sucks. I'm completely in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's such an angry buzz in the atmosphere today. All these guys at the head of the line-up are in their twenties or older. Their faces are hard and they're looking around all the time but focusing on nothing; you notice the whites of their eyes. Some of them are from the boardriders' club, or they've surfed here forever, or they're good, or were good once; they've all got some chunk of history they're using to hammer out a claim on the water. It's because this break is always better. One wave here is worth ten anywhere else. Things are sharper here. It's not like life on land where people are so insulated from each other that there's no danger of being scratched – other than a bit of road rage, somebody giving you the bird out of their window. Different element, different rules.

Turns out the other surfer was the guy in the red wetsuit. I see him now. He made it all the way in, and he's jogging along the beach towards the rip, board tucked under his arm. Guys in the pack are looking back at him, probably wondering what will happen when he paddles out again. Greg Hill turns around and gives him a nice long stare, swearing and hissing under his breath like he's got Tourette's. And I wonder if he ever thinks to give his poor dog a drink before he leaves her sitting on a beach for hours.

'Thought it was crowded enough already, but then you show up. Now, I'll never get a wave,' a man's voice drawls.

It's Vince, one of the old guys, paddling past me. If I had a dollar for every time he makes a joke about me getting a lot of waves, I'd buy him some new material.

'Hey Vince.'

The first wave of the next set looms, and I start paddling forwards, following Vince. I'm wondering if I shouldn't just go in, come back for a late one. I live for late surfs, especially in summer. Thanks to daylight savings, you can surf until eight-thirty at night before it gets dark. It's crowded until around seven, and then people start going in because they've got to get home for tea, or to help bathe the kids, or whatever it is they do.

Just before dark everything gets beautiful and most people aren't even looking. The ocean starts to glass off, the sky becomes pink and purple and orange, and you can see the lights of La Roy down the other end of the stretch of beach, shimmering like a mirage in the sea mist. In summer, I surf until I can't see anymore, and I don't seem to get the hollow ache in my guts that I call the ending sadness. Ever since I moved in with my mum and step-dad it's been getting worse. But now it's winter, things get dark around five-thirty and I have to go in too early. The ache usually catches up with me on the way home. The other thing that gets rid of the ending sadness for me is painting or drawing. Unless, of course, the work is about the ache: kind of hard to forget a bruise exists when you're prodding at it.

Vince stops paddling and I let my board drift until I'm beside him.

'Been out for long?' I ask him, which is the surfing equivalent of talking about the weather. Talking about the weather doesn't qualify as small talk in surfing because the weather is all-important.

'About an hour.'

'Try that again, mate, and I'll send your mouth down your throat to kiss your arsehole!'

Vince and I turn to see Greg Hill splashing water into the face of the surfer in the red wetsuit. Greg must have parked himself at the back of the pack to wait for him to paddle out again.

A buzz of shock rings through me as the surfer in red paddles straight past Greg. It's because I've finally seen his face.

It's him. His hair is shorn, he has darker skin, but it's him. He's back. Early.

Greg screams, 'You don't belong here. Got that, shithead?'

Another set is coming and people start paddling forward, looking left to see what happens next.

I haven't moved. It's only when I hear Vince say, 'Big one out the back, Abbie', that I start paddling again.

Greg's right beside him now, getting in his face, hissing a continuous stream of abuse in a low monotone, which is worse than shouting.

Then the first wave of the set is on us and I just make it over, spearing towards the sky before hitting the water with a solid slap on the other side. I bury the nose of my board deep into the face of the second. The third wave looms, and I should be pulling hard to make up ground before it, but I'm paddling on automatic pilot, staring at the two men who are facing off. Something's not right. Something is not right. But then the threat of violence becomes the act and nothing is heightened anymore, only flat and ordinary and harsh. Greg Hill is punched so hard that he spins around, arms flung out, eyes squinted shut, blood trickling from his nose as bright as the red wetsuit. The wave shuts down, falling like a line of dominoes between them and me, and I duckdive, but I've left it too late to go deep, and there's a curious moment of stillness before the turbulence hits me like the afterburn from a jet.

I surface in a sea of foam with a couple of others who didn't get through, the water around me fizzing, and I slide back onto my board and start paddling hard. I'm waterlogged, sinuses salted, hair pulled loose and sticking half over my face. Vince is looking back to see where I ended up and I head towards him, wanting to get clear of the impact zone.

Just before I reach Vince, I duckdive to smooth myself out. It's only when I've surfaced and I'm sitting up on my board that I look around to see what happened.

Greg Hill and his smashed nose have disappeared; he must have been swept in by that last wave. But the surfer in the red wetsuit – his name is Kane – remains. Collected, cool as a cat, he paddles lazily our way, ankles crossed, face expressionless, and everybody except me careful not to look at him.

'I think it's picking up,' Vince is saying. 'Supposed to build to six foot. ..'

His voice trails off and I know he's wondering what's about to happen. My teeth are chattering.

Kane flicks his head at me. 'I'm done here. I'm gonna catch one in and head home. You coming?'

ISBN: 9780143206552
ISBN-10: 0143206559
Audience: Children
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 324
Published: 26th April 2012
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 13.1
Weight (kg): 19.7