Page 33 of Head First
‘How’d you guys sleep?’ Pippa asks, poking her head above board. Soon, Natalie and Derek follow. I overhear Pippa comment on how nice Natalie’s skin looks (she’s right, it’s glowing) and Natalie responds with something that makes Pippa laugh. I’m wondering if I should bring my coffee over to them, if maybe I’m being too cautious about Natalie remembering my name is really Andi, but my anxiety keeps me rooted in my seat.
Luckily, Vanessa and Miguel dive straight into work, saving me from my indecision. They ready equipment for our morning dive and remind us we should eat something before we go.
‘But you’re not supposed to swim right after you eat,’ says Derek, with a genuine look of confusion on his face.
‘I think that rule is just for kids,’ Natalie whispers to him, nudging him with her elbow.
I stifle a laugh and I see Hugh’s shoulders shake out of the corner of my eye.
After a lengthy safety briefing, which feels like it’s aimed solely at Derek, we change into our suits and strap on our equipment. I lurk next to Miguel, hoping he’ll sense my presence and ask me to be his buddy, but I have no luck. Hugh is watching me out of the corner of his eye. I wait until Miguel says, ‘Derek, you’re with me,’ jamming his thumb towards his chest for emphasis before I reluctantly turn towards Hugh.
‘See?’ I whisper, inclining my head towards Miguel. ‘No favouritism here.’
Just then, Miguel shoulders past me, pausing to say under his breath, ‘Maybe next time we can be buddies again.’
As soon as he’s out of earshot, Hugh bursts out laughing.
‘Shut up,’ I hiss.
‘You better play nice, or I won’t be saving you from any sharks today,’ Hugh says with a gleam in his eye. I glare at him by way of response.
We’ve done this before, the dance where we check one another’s equipment, but when Hugh leans close to me to check my air pressure, I find myself holding my breath. And when he slips his fingers under the strap of my BCD, the pressure of his fingers causes heat to race into my belly.
I can’t tell if he’s trying to distract me. Or because we declared a truce, he is sincerely attempting to be a good buddy. My mind keeps circling back to our conversation earlier.
As soon as I’m off the boat and in the expanse of crystal blue water, my head immediately clears. Effortlessly, everything is pulled into focus, my breathing slows, my heart race stabilises. My weird tangle of maybe-this-isn’t-hate-anymore feelings for Hugh, my worries about Millie, my deep missing of Murphy, all vanish from my mind as we start to descend.
The group is quick this morning. It feels like everyone can’t wait to get to the reef. Vanessa has to motion to us twice to descend slower. There are strict rules on how fast you can descend and come back up, and all of them depend on how quickly the body acclimatises to pressure. We all have computers with us that do the calculations, and I know if I looked at mine it would read the same warning Vanessa is giving — our descent is too fast.
But none of us are looking at our computers. Hugh is eyeing the looming shadow of coral in the distance. I can see his smile underneath his mask. I follow his gaze.
We’re on a different part of the reef this morning, and both Miguel and Vanessa had seemed excited about the conditions and the location when we were on the boat. We find out as soon as we’re underwater that they were right to be excited.
We aren’t descending on a mooring line. Instead, we all bring our BCD hoses over our heads and press the deflate button, slowly sinking down towards the sandy bottom. We’re only about thirty feet underwater, and the sun filters down, dappling the ocean floor.
Derek doesn’t have his camera, and Natalie is making the most of his attention by pointing out a school of sweetlips fish that darts by us. I’ve been keeping an eye on Natalie, but she hasn’t made any effort to talk to me since last night. I bring my attention back to the sweetlips fish. Their bodies are patterned in a black-and-white zigzag that makes them look like an optical illusion, and they have bright yellow lips, yellow fins and yellow tails. One by one, our group stills, watching as they flick their fins to pass us.
The sound of water in my ears is calming, a whooshing noise that eventually fades to the background, but never goes away. My regulator is a loud and comforting reminder that I’m breathing. Scuba-diving is my favourite form of meditation, I think. I want to keep doing it. A thought breaks through my trance – my current lifestyle isn’t exactly conducive to frequent dive trips – but I push it away.
Andrew gets his buoyancy quicker than usual, although I see Hugh snicker when Pippa grabs Andrew’s hand and yanks him back down. Sometimes I think scuba-diving is like being on the moon – with a jacket full of air on, you can’t really control any of your movements. And everyone looks hilarious when they try, like stumbling toddlers just learning to swim.
I’ve got the hang of it after yesterday and can scuba like Hugh does, with my arms crossed in front of me, each hand grabbing my opposite elbow. Yesterday, Hugh was the only non-instructor to dive in this position, and when I try it today, I pick it up quicker than I thought I would. Keeping my arms crossed in front of me helps direct my body, so if I tilt my arms up, I go up, and if I tilt them down, I go down. The only thing I can’t get the hang of is stopping in front of something and remaining still. My breath lifts my body up and down, and I’m always afraid I’ll sink low enough that I’ll hit the coral, which is abigno-no – divers should not disturb coral at any cost.
This morning, I get my camera out immediately. I am on a mission. As soon as we get in sight of the reef, our group disperses to look around. We’ve swum into a semicircle of coral, and Vanessa hangs out at the opening of the structure so she can keep eyes on all of us at the same time. Miguel is swimming around, pointing out interesting fish. I beeline for the staghorn coral, where butterfly wrasse like to hang out.
The reef is just as breathtaking today as it was yesterday. Coral doesn’t grow uniformly, it builds and layers on each other, creating nooks and crannies teeming with life. Everywhere I look I see a different species of fish. Some fish have huge, flapping dorsal fins, some have spots, or stripes, or patches just above their eyes. I’m starting to feel like underwater is technicolour, and every-thing else is black and white. As I kick forward slowly, the coral fissures below me and I spot the dark green ribbon of an eel as it streaks through the rocky crevice.
I drift a couple of feet further, until I’m hovering over a flat bed of coral. Staghorn coral make up about 25 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef’s ground cover. They come in many sizes, shapes and colours. All of them branch out, some resemble elk antlers, some are small and look like miniature forests, and some branch high into the sea, swaying in the current, and look more like pointy sticks.
I hover over a bright blue structure of staghorn branching up towards the surface. There are hundreds of fish darting around, most of which swim away as I get closer, but after I pause, doing my best to hover without kicking too much, the fish return.
I start snapping pictures as fast as I can. I don’t see a butterfly wrasse, but I’m hoping I can comb through the pictures later and find one. It’s hard to focus on one fish at a time when they are all moving.I bet Millie could do it, I think. As soon as she crosses my mind, my thoughts snowball.
Why did I think I could do this? What if I don’t find the fish? Will it be because it doesn’t exist or because I’m bad at this? Will this be the last adventurous thing I ever do?
My lapse in confidence causes me to lose focus and I almost kick the coral beneath me. Frightened, I swim away from the reef, backpedalling towards Vanessa. From there, I watch as the divers continue to explore. I feel defeated, floating in the ether, untethered, like I could drift off into the ocean, letting the current carry me further out to sea.
After a beat, Hugh comes to join us. Annoyance prickles my spine. I needed a moment alone and here he is, encroaching, always the ever-present buddy. I try focusing instead on the magic of seeing the reef structure from far away. It’s massive and dynamic. There are schools of fish swimming and floating both above the reef and closer to the ocean floor. I notice Hugh moving out of the corner of my eye and turn to find his shoulders shaking with laughter.
