Appreciation by Liam Pieper

Author:Liam Pieper [Pieper, Liam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760144890
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Chapter Forty-Three

The waves dump Oli before he can get out past the breakers. He shoots – tumbling driftwood of a man – to the seafloor. Sparkling foam and effervescent panic consume him as he searches for the surface. Oli is sure that when he bobs up he’ll find himself doomed, whipped out into a rip, where he will expire, cold and alone, as the briny sea consumes him.

But no, he finds himself still in the shallows, unhurt beyond his pride. He is struggling to mount his board again and the boys are laughing at him. They paddle over and haul him back onto the board, but they won’t let him go back to land, instead urging him further out to sea. Oli is helpless to argue – the pot has affected him tremendously.

He is too high to be out on the water, too old and unsteady to be trying new things. How has he found himself here? What is he doing with these children? Why doesn’t he have children of his own? He’d always assumed he would have a family, one day, although the mechanics have escaped him. He does not want to drown alone in the world, but he will, almost certainly. A human being has never been as alone and afraid as Oli Darling on that board, about to submerge and expire in the absolute obscurity of the ocean floor.

The whole experience is the worst thing that has ever happened to Oli, but only for the first ten minutes. After that it is glorious.

The ocean batters Oli: down he goes, again and again. It is unbearable. Then some circuit deep in his soul shorts out and, all of a sudden, he is having the time of his life. Each time he emerges from the waves he feels born again, newly energised, invincible. He has learned something about the water that most people figure out decades earlier – you can be dumped and mauled and tossed about, but you will always find your way to the surface.

Before long, he is out past the breakers, waiting with the boys for an ideal wave. The two of them sit astride long, shining monoliths of fibreglass, built like old American cars – their own boards from their homes in Bronte. Oli is riding on a boogie board that belongs to the camp, a chipped and sun-blasted slab of foam roughly the size and shape of a tombstone.

He can peer down over the lip into the perfect blue below, where shoals of fish dart and play. Oli is entranced by a magnificent wing of whiting spiralling far below. It is the weed, maybe, but in the submarine ballet he can see the divine pattern to the world, all of nature’s glory, the golden ratio of the silver fish sailing in unison like starlings. The boys catch him staring and, without the words to express all this beauty, he simply points down into the depths.

The blond follows his gaze and frowns. ‘Shit. That’s not good,’ he says.

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