Ocean Pearl

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  MICKI

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  ACE

  MICKI

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  ACE

  MICKI

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  MICKI

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  MICKI

  ACE

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  MICKI

  ACE

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  MICKI

  ACE

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  MICKI

  ACE

  GEORGIE

  KIA

  MICKI

  ALSO BY J.C.BURKE

  ABOUT SELF-HARM

  J.C. Burke was born in Sydney in 1965, the fourth of five daughters. With writers for parents, she grew up in a world full of noise, drama and books, and the many colourful characters who came to visit provided her with an endless supply of stories and impersonations.

  Burke decided to become a nurse after her mother lost a long battle with cancer. She specialised in the field of Oncology, working in Haematology and Bone Marrow Transplant Units in Australia and the UK.

  A creative writing course at Sydney University led to an ASA mentorship with Gary Crew and the publication of Children's Book Council Notable book White Lies (Lothian) in 2002. Burke has since written The Red Cardigan, also a CBC Notable Book, and its sequel Nine Letters Long. The Story of Tom Brennan won the 2006 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year: Older Readers award and also the 2006 Family Therapists' Award for Children's Literature. J.C. Burke's latest books are Faking Sweet and Starfish Sisters.

  J.C. Burke lives on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Her teenage children now provide her with an endless supply of stories and impersonations! J.C. Burke loves writing for young adults, as they still have an optimistic eye on the world.

  Visit www.jcburke.com.au for more information about J.C. Burke and her books.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Ocean Pearl

  ePub ISBN 9781864714944

  Kindle ISBN 9781864717570

  Original Print Edition

  The author would like to thank Cloudy Rhodes, Tara Wynne,

  Victoria and Nick Shehadie, Zoe Walton and Vanessa Mickan-Gramazio.

  A Random House book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Random House Australia in 2008

  Copyright © J.C. Burke 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Burke, J. C.

  Title: Ocean pearl

  Series: Burke, J. C. Starfish sisters; 2

  Target audience: For secondary school age.

  Subjects: Surfing – Juvenile fiction.

  Dewey number: A823.4

  ISBN: 978 1 74166 161 3 (pbk.)

  Cover design by saso content & design pty ltd

  Cover images courtesy Photolibrary.com and saso content & design

  Typeset in Zapf Calligraphic BT 11/14.5 pt by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia

  J.C. BURKE

  OCEAN

  PEARL

  For Lily and Kel

  MICKI

  The train carriage rocked and bumped along the tracks, making my swollen eyes heavy. They were begging for the sleep they couldn't find last night. But I wasn't going to let them close. They were going to stay alert and focused, even if it meant me holding them open myself.

  No way was I going to risk being asleep as my carriage whizzed past Kia standing on the platform waiting for me.

  I had lived and breathed one hundred and thirty-two days, counting every second till I was on this train. I'd breathed. I'm not sure if I'd lived. It was more just existing. Existing and waiting.

  But I'd got through it, just.

  If it wasn't for my diary I don't know how I would've survived. How could've a scabby old book full of my messy writing become the thing that stopped me from going crazy? All I know is that it did. Every night, after I finished my homework and cleaned up the kitchen and made sure Dad was okay, I'd crawl into bed with my diary. Within minutes I'd be sucked into the pages, forgetting who I was and where I was. Suddenly it was January and I was surfing and laughing with Georgie, Kia and Ace and everything was okay.

  Some nights I felt so bad I'd read the whole three weeks of camp in one go. Even two or three times, if that's what it took to make the feeling that I was suffocating in a box go away.

  Reliving those days with my Starfish Sisters made me feel like I had air. And that there was hope. 'Don't live in the past,' that's what people say, but what do you do if that's the only way to survive? If my life was more like Kia's and Georgie's and Ace's then I wouldn't have to do these lame things. But it's not. That's just the way it is.

  I slid my fingers across the train carriage window, forming the letters 'SS' for Starfish Sisters. Now I could breathe. Now, because I was getting away from him, I could feel some hope tingling in my toes.

  It was okay, wasn't it, to think like that?

  My hand dropped into my lap and twisted itself around the other. 'Your father is not your responsibility. You are thirteen, Micki. You're still a child.' Reg's words whispered gently in my head. 'Now you have to do what's best for you. Your dad wants that as well. More than anyone.'

  But there was a difference between my dad wanting it and my dad actually being able to cope with it. If anyone should know that it was Dad's best friend, Reg.

  Reg was the one who was trying to change everything and I was grateful, but how did he really think it was going to work – long term?

  The first time I left Dad was at the January surf camp. It was a lousy three weeks and he didn't exactly cope. He busted and started using again, which landed him in hospital then back in rehab. And they're only the things I knew. It was the things I didn't know that scared me more. Reg knew those things.

  What should've made me suspicious was that the Saturday morning I got home from camp, our neighbour Annie was standing on the footpath outside her house, fiddling around with the garbage. But garbage night wasn't till Wednesday.

  I remember the way Annie dropped the lid of the bin and started walking towards me as I appeared at the corner of our street. Yet, no alarm bells rang. I s'pose I was still
on a total high.

  'Hey, Annie!' I'd waved like I hadn't seen her for years. I was so pumped to tell her my news.

  'Where's your board, Micki?' she asked, taking my bag from me, which was good 'cause I was starting to get a dead arm. 'Did you leave it at the station?'

  'It snapped,' I told her. 'Yesterday in the final contest, it snapped in two. Can you believe it?'

  'So, how come you're laughing?'

  'You haven't asked me yet!' My grin was stretched so wide it felt like my cheeks would snap too.

  'What?'

  'I got selected. I made the Australian Junior Team Training Camp!' Annie threw out her arms and hugged me. But she held on for just a second too long.

  'What is it?' I said, breaking out of her grip. 'Annie?'

  'Well – well, you know your dad hasn't been so good while you've been away.' Annie's cautious voice now had the alarm bells screeching in my ears. 'I just don't want you to get a fright when you see him, love.'

  'Why? Has – has something else happened?'

  'Davo had a nasty fall just before he landed himself in hospital. He's still a bit . . .'

  But I was running through the gate, fumbling through my pockets for the key.

  I pushed open the front door to see Dad sitting on the couch in the dark, snoring, as a morning cartoon bounced around on the telly. Every now and then light flickered over him but not enough for me to see the damage.

  'Dad?' I whispered, tiptoeing across the room, being careful not to tip over the empty cans of beer and full ashtrays spread across the floor. 'Dad? Davo?'

  I switched on the lamp. Dad opened his eyes. Or rather one eye. The other one was swollen shut.

  'Micki, you're home,' he said, smiling like it'd been waiting for me in the corners of his mouth. 'I missed ya, love.' Brown, crusty scabs sat along one side of his forehead. 'You made the team, eh? How about that.' Across Dad's jaw was a grubby piece of sticking plaster that was doing a poor job of hiding stitches. 'I knew you'd make it. I'm so, so proud of you.' Dad wrapped his skinny arm around me and kissed my cheek. 'Hey, you still my girl now you're a hotshot surfer?'

  'Yes, Dad.' I rolled my eyes at him like I always did when he went gooey. 'Of course I'm still your girl.'

  'I'm still your girl,' I whispered to the train carriage. But now it didn't sound right. I swallowed down the words and went back to staring out the window.

  I was his girl. But I was his carer too. I was the one who washed his filthy clothes; who made him eat at least one meal a day; who walked him home from the pub when he was being a nuisance; who made sure he got to the clinic on time; who told the teachers and anyone else who asked that everything was fine at home and I was managing.

  Who was going to do that now?

  I stood up, taking off my hoodie and tying it around my waist. I needed to move; I needed to break up my thoughts, otherwise I'd find myself trapped and not able to breathe.

  My diary was in my bag. I could get it out and read it here on the train. But if someone sat behind me or next to me they might start reading it and then they'd know I wasn't really the chilled-out girl I might have seemed – the owner of the surfboard with hot pink fins.

  It'd always been staring me in the face but last night it hit me over the head. Last night, two things caught me off guard and one of them was reading what I'd written one hundred and thirty-one days ago, the last time I put a pen to my diary.

  Saturday 27 January, 11.09 pm: Home from camp

  Not good. Got a bad fright when I saw Dad coz his face is pretty smashed up. He said he fell over the night before he went to hospital. Maybe it's true coz the bruising's gone yellow. But I don't know. I don't wanna know.

  Actually I don't wanna write anymore.

  Good night

  Micki

  Reading that really, really hurt. It made me feel like a hand was squeezing my throat, tighter and tighter.

  At first I thought I was being a wimp, 'cause it's not like what happened when I got home was any great shock. I mean, Dad being like that was part of my life. I was used to it.

  But then I figured it out. The reason it hurt so much was 'cause the girl who wrote those words all the way back in January wasn't me. Not anymore. Not the girl I am now.

  Somewhere on that page dated January twenty-seventh, I changed. In the middle of writing those words, Miss Micki left the building and the girl I am now took her place.

  The minute I'd seen Dad with his face all smashed, it was like surf camp hadn't even existed. In three seconds flat that happy, light feeling had drained through the soles of my feet.

  'Miss Micki', the chilled-out girl that I'd become at surf camp, was suddenly a sick, pathetic joke. Who was I trying to fool? Miss Micki couldn't exist in this house. Not with a father like mine.

  But what I realised now was that I missed Miss Micki. I really did. She had hopes and a future. Now I was on my way back to surf camp I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find Miss Micki again. And if I did, would she be the same?

  That's why it hurt so much.

  If anyone could help Miss Micki come back it was my Starfish Sisters. After all, they were the ones who found her in the first place.

  But there were only going to be three of us 'cause Ace hadn't made the training camp.

  It was huge that Ace hadn't been selected. I could still hear everyone's gasps 'cause the last name they called out was mine and not hers. Everybody expected Ace to get picked for the training team. She was the only one out of all of us who was sponsored.

  Ace only made the reserve position. It was better than nothing but Kia, Georgie and I were gutted. When I closed my eyes I could still see Ace down below in the audience looking up at us three on the stage. It sounds weird but it sort of felt like a giant crack had suddenly opened up in the floor and wedged its way between us.

  How could we be the Starfish Sisters without Ace? That's all I could think about.

  It really was. But on that first day back home, my thoughts did a total three-sixty. I started to feel unbelievably relieved, like sick-in-the-tummy relieved, that it was Ace who'd missed out on making the team and not me.

  That didn't make me a bad friend. I had to look after myself. Kia would understand. She was the only one of the girls who knew about my dad. I couldn't tell the others. Well, maybe Georgie. But not Ace. Never Ace.

  If Ace found out about my real life, Miss Micki could never show her face again. In some ways it was good that she was just spending the weekend and not the next two weeks with us. I needed to concentrate on my surfing, not on every word that came out of my mouth.

  It was so important, like live or die important, that all my focus went into this fortnight. The four girls who performed the best would be selected for the Australian Junior Female Surfing Team. That meant competing overseas and representing your country, which could set you up for being fully sponsored and turning professional.

  That situation was seriously beyond awesome. It was like everything I had dreamt of and now I could almost touch it.

  Miss Micki or no Miss Micki, I had to make this. Without it I had nothing.

  The muffled voice on the loudspeaker announced that Kia's station was next. My tummy somersaulted at the news. I had waited so long for this and now it was here I wasn't sure if I wanted to burst into tears or vomit.

  I got out my hairbrush and fixed up my braids. There was nothing I could do about my puffy no-sleep eyes.

  Last night I put so much energy into not crying that I ended up staring into the darkness for most of the night. At least until about four o'clock, when Dad decided to have a shower and took down the shower curtain and almost half the bathroom with him.

  After that I got out of bed and started packing up my room. Better now than after camp.

  One carton of schoolbooks and folders, a garbage bag of clothes, a shoebox full of photos: me when I was little, Dad, school friends, surfing contests and the only picture I had of my mum – she has me on her hip and we're waving at the camera
. That was the most precious thing I owned. I could live without it for two weeks but not for the rest of the year.

  As I shoved my brush back into my bag I touched the edge of my diary sticking through the clothes, because last night, one of the first things I'd put in my bag was my diary.

  After January twenty-seventh, there were pages and pages of nothing. But starting from tonight at Kia's, my diary would be back in action. I was going to record every fantastic day of the next two weeks. Me wanting to do that must've meant that somewhere Miss Micki was ready and waiting to come back. At least, that's what I was going to believe.

  The brakes squealed as the train began to slow. I zipped up my bag then lifted my surfboard down from the luggage rack. I needed a second to get myself together. My heart was pounding so hard. Slowly I took a deep breath in, feeling my chest rise and stretch full of air. Then gradually I let it out, each knob in my spine trembling with its release.

  In a way it was like blowing out the black stuff. Except today not all the stuff was black. A lot of it was bad – like the way I felt about leaving Dad – but some of it was good, 'cause if I could stay positive and remember Reg's words, then today could be the first day of my new life.

  GEORGIE

  One of the best feelings in the world would have to be snuggling under the doona while your school friends are about to start the first period of the day – especially when it's double maths with Mr Lloyd and his smelly breath.

  Sucked in, friends, 'cause today was that day.

  The fact that we had convinced four mothers – well, three mothers plus Micki's dad – to let us have the day off was unbelieeeevable! I had been positive my mum would be the one to let us down. Usually I had to have a temperature and an appointment with the funeral director before Mum would even consider me not putting on my school uniform.

  Finally, after psyching up for about a week, I had asked if I could have today off so that me and Kia and Ace and Micki could have Friday and Saturday together before camp started on Sunday. Drum roll . . . Mum said, 'That sounds great, darling.'