CLICKS - The Dolphin Prophecy

CHAPTER 10

The Saturday of the Relay Competitions came around faster than I expected. It began with hazy, gray skies, but the sun finally made an appearance. Now, it shone almost too brightly for me—the clouds had suited my mood because, I wasn’t ready for this event. The Guard and the Surf Lifeguarding Commission were still arguing over new regulations for the Surf Carnival events, given the two deaths in the Ocean Swim. They moved the relay up, because it didn’t require any long distance swimming and people worked on teams, so they felt the danger was mitigated a bit. For many, these events were the most fun in the Surf Carnival. They moved fast, had many winners, and awarded multiple certifications, depending on how may competitions you did.

I’d originally planned to take part in only two. The Dash & Swim should have been an easy competition for me, one I’d won frequently as a Junior. But, this time, I came in third.

“The difference between first and third was four seconds,” Blake said to me after I’d finished my heat. “And you missed over a week of training, so don’t be too hard on yourself.” Pep talks from Blake at competitions weren’t new to me. He’d been captain of the Junior Guard team, and the role of cheerleader came naturally to him. But this was the first competition where I wanted him around on a different level. While I wasn’t about to start a full-on PDA at the event, I couldn’t stop  the tiny touches, that meant almost as much as the PDAs, to me.

The Canoe Relay was always fun because, we got to compete as a team of seven, going backwards in the waves. While it required an iron stomach and quick hands, it was one event that we trained for extensively all together. We were down Shay and Darwen, who we had practiced with, so Billy and Stella were in the canoe with us. I still hated Stella, because of the way she’d flirted with Blake at the pool right after we got together. As the most experienced of the group, they sat in the two seats facing us.

It was bad form to turn around and look at the waves, so we took cues from their expressions. When their eyes got big, we knew there was a big wave coming from behind. Using all my senses, I felt and heard where it came from in order to steer my portion of the boat in the most advantageous way. There were twelve boats in the water, besides ours. Three capsized in the big waves, and we ended up coming in second. It wasn’t too bad, considering we’d only practiced with Stella once.

But the Rescue Relay competition was not my strong suit. It required knee boarding, lassoing an object with a buoy, and dragging it back in. It was the middle part that caused me so much trouble. And I’d had all day to worry about it. Last-minute instructions from Mica crowded my brain. For extreme rescuing, we needed to know how to lasso like a cowboy, and my brother was an expert. His dude ranch was the entire ocean. He caught fish by tossing nets, while I struggled just to wrap the silly rope around a pole.

I stood off to the side, waiting for my heat to begin. A combination of nerves and the newly bright sun brought tears to my eyes. I held them in, seeing prisms on the sea as the sun picked just that moment to dip into the afternoon sky. Thousands of points of light dispersed, bounced off the water and burned. I kicked the sand, angry with myself for forgetting the shaded goggles I usually wore on days like this.

It hadn’t mattered in the earlier events, but now, when I had my hardest challenge, the bright light made me that much more nervous. When Blake bopped up to me, I no longer had to pretend my tears were caused by the sun, because they were. I couldn’t see a thing over the water, and I felt my chances for lassoing the buoy and reeling it in, were nil. It was going to make me lose the whole thing.

Blake moved to the beat in his head that always seemed loudest before a meet. It was one of the things that used to drive Kaleb crazy, because he had to hear it, too, every time Blake got ready for a competition. They both had drummer’s disease: always using whatever surface was around as a drum. He took off his shaded goggles after I explained the reason for my tears.