Like the Tide

The waves at Burleigh are a deep turquoise. They crash and spurt a cloudy foam that Corrie knows as intimately as the blanket that wrapped her at birth. The break swaddles her, carrying her to land where it thinks she wants to be. But like the tide, she slips back out. A craving for what she knows.

And Corrie knows Burleigh.

Out there, she is loud. Her voice is carried by the curves of each barrel, and on those arcs, she is loose and instinctive. No self-doubt, just confident movements over offshore glass. Balance on the epoxy brings balance within herself.

But where Corrie is headed, she will lose it all.

***

There, in central Melbourne, every day is spent far from anything blue and rolling. The summer sun forever eclipsed by a towering building. Corrie is sure those long shadows are a worse place to be than any impact zone she’s known. A harder escape, too, with shoes on.

Her stifled feet. It feels wrong, like two fish trapped in discarded plastic bags; she gets nowhere fast. But filthy urban streets make blistered heels and crushed toes customary. Sweat between her toes instead of sand. Walking anywhere is a victory in shoes that lace up. Each step, a painful reminder of this place she chose to be.

A clock on her wrist to dictate each weekday and a rigid study schedule in place of the ocean’s timing. Competing for grades rather than waves. Is she smart enough? The timetable fixed to her dorm wall says so: organic chemistry, integrated bioscience, calculus, anatomy, and physiology. With all those classes, the alarm for dawn patrol was quickly repurposed for early morning crams in the library. Early bird gets the worm, a poster there declares.

Constant talk of “extreme dedication” and “personal sacrifice”. Self-doubt festers between her ears, and she misses the muffled rush of water there instead. Memories of sitting in the line-up with her head tipped to the side, working with gravity to clear it after a wipe-out.

And wipe-outs — she misses those too. Nose dripping, deep breaths, and arms slung over her board she’d just pearled. Burleigh’s tough love was an invigorating kind of disappointment. It made her paddle harder for the next wave, fortitude propelling her toward an even chance of perfection or another failure — she didn’t care either way. But that nerve didn’t follow her everywhere.

At a party, her friends talk loudly. Their words spill out all at once over a mess of chips, vodka, and various mixers. Pink vomit and piss in the corner. The two culprits beside it, hands wandering.

Back at the table, conversation is hard to match. She waits for a window. Finds one and attempts to get a word in, but her voice trails off into the air without the water to carry it forward. The window shuts, and she falls silent for the rest of the night between friends who don’t notice.

A brunch on Bourke Street she’d said yes to. She isn’t missed when she takes her board out to Torquay instead, hoping she might find her voice on any beach, because really, they’re all connected. The waves are a familiar blue with that same cloudy foam, but their faces are odd as they come at her. A close friend whose face she doesn’t recognise.

The chance all beaches are one and the same fades quickly from a growing estrangement. Her and that water — two strangers who had never danced together, attempting to do so anyway. Thrown from the board she was usually an extension of. Over and over. A ragdoll in a washing machine, stripped clean of all hope. Her voice under the surface, far below the curves she’d hoped would carry it. And a hard tug from her leash jerks her leg back the way she just came.

Back to shore now, Corrie, it says.

And she’s back on the sand, where, for the first time ever, she’s glad to be.

Defeated that even the nearest ocean hadn’t known her, she falters across campus, certain of nothing. Grieving everything. Her voice and balance traded for a place where she is a smaller version of herself. A baby that stops every few steps, searching for basic words or something nearby to hold onto. Where to sit. Who to talk to. What to say. She’s in the library again, alone. She wants to call home. No — don’t, she thinks. And she doesn’t. She’ll go home if she hears those waves.

She’ll go home if she hears those waves.

She’ll go home.

She’ll go.

She’s gone.

Back to that beach. Loud and steady.