Salt Water

Chapter 1

I could see where the day was going. Dad was already out on the water and Jack had woken up late. He was hurling abuse miserably at everyone especially me. I couldn't help myself. I slammed things and spoke louder. Jack was more annoying than most brothers – at least in my opinion he was. He was ratty, self involved and on the rare occasion that I saw him, he seemed irritated by everything any of us did. Don't get me wrong – he had his moments when he would astound me with filial support and shockingly kind acts. But on the whole, we just seemed to annoy the living daylights out of each other.

'What did you do that for?' he yelled as I bumped a dish over.

'Like that was on purpose, Jack!'

'Bite me,'

'Not unless you have a tetanus shot up your sleeve.' I muttered

He barked at me to shut up and I bit back that I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary and that if he didn't like hangovers, he shouldn't drink.

'That's enough, Catherine!' Mom shot an angry look at me.

She would side with him. Weren't mothers supposed to have a thing for their sons? And fathers for daughters? Well, if that was the case, our family was the quintessential family stereotype.

I grabbed my backpack irritably and stormed out the house. Some holiday I was going to have when school finally ended. I shoved the sound of my iPod in my ears. Jeffes' Perpetuum Mobile soothed my irritation and blocked out my family and the people around me. I focused more on the nature of my environment and my breathing eased. North Beach was a small holiday town. Dead out of season, but noisy and crowded in season. The town had a few main roads and you could probably walk around the whole town in just over an hour, but development was picking up, and sometimes I was sorry to think that it would change. The houses seemed to be built right up to the very edge of the encroaching sand of the beach. The beach was heavenly. A wide expansive of yawning white sand stretched up and down the coast. Walking to the left of the beach, you eventually reached protrusions of black rock circling their arms around secret rock pools that resembled man made swimming pools. The sea was wild and ferocious. Swirling currents dragged and battered anything foreign until only fragments washed to shore as unrecognisable bits of shell. Swimming was completely out of the question unless one ventured into the pools. It seemed ironic that those jagged rocks served more as protection than destruction as long as you were inside the pools and not on the outside. To the right of the beach was an area surfers flocked to. The rocks were slightly less daunting and the sets of waves curled with a glorious temptation and a monotony that made all bleached blondes salivate at the mere sight. There was just one exception in this utopian surfer location. Dead Man's Gulley. Legend said that every leap year swimmers or surfers who dared to venture near Dead Man's Gulley were never seen again. The warning was so ingrained in the local psyche that not even fishermen ventured near the spot during leap year.

As I walked I breathed the fragrant fynbos in deeply. I loved the smell. I loved how in the heat of the day, the fragrance grew stronger and always seemed to be an open invitation to the beach. The fynbos stood like a giant green wall at the brink of the sand. Gaps in the 2m high bushes revealed paths to the beach and it was along one of these that I saw the body.

I stopped dead immediately. Oh, this was typical. Dad had warned me about walking around alone. What did I do now? Go and find help or check if the body was still alive? I couldn't help myself – as nervous as I was that the body might be a repulsive corpse, I walked forward anyway. At this point, I must just say that I do not stop at road accidents to watch – in other words, I really don't have a morbid fascination with death and disaster. I walked up to the boy. He looked older than me. His skin was dry and flaky and I instinctively put my hands behind my back. His lips were dry and cracked with blisters on his cheeks from the sun. In spite of obvious dehydration and sunburn, he had the whitest skin I had ever seen. I leaned closer to check if he was breathing – it was shallow and he was close to death. His eyes shot open and I yelped and jumped back, pulling the phones out my ears at the same time. His eyes were shocking. They were a deep rich viridian colour – far too dark for his pale complexion. I reached into my pack for the water bottle and tipped it gently into his mouth – but his reaction surprised me. He gagged and spat the water out as if I'd fed him brak or sea water. He gripped my arms with surprising strength, interrupting me smelling the water to check that it was okay.