After Summer

This summer is different. School is over for Alex Delaney, and he's waiting for his university acceptance, only seventeen days away. The waiting is killing him. He's not expecting much from summer. Bodysurfing, TV, but mainly waiting. So he's not ready for the girl who cuts past him on a wave. Not at all prepared for her perfect balance on the board, the elegant muscles of her shoulders and back. Just a girl. Compelling green eyes, golden skin, something graceful and elusive about her. Summer is about to change.

Nick Earls lives in Brisbane, Australia, where he writes for both children and adults. His previous Graphia book, 48 Shades of Brown, won Australia’s Children’s Book Council Book of the Year for Older Readers. It also received the following praise:

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This begins in January, and January is okay. It begins like December as though their join is seamless. Sometimes as though the bright days of summer will last forever. But the end of January is the end of the known world. This is when I stand at the edge. Its been easy till now, relatively. Ive had a new school year to face each January, but not this year. School is over, so there is not the usual symmetry about the holidays. The feeling of days leading up to Christmas and New Year and then away. Across the slow heat-heavy weeks of January and back to school. This January Im waiting for my offer, waiting for the code that will tell me what happens next. Waiting. Its as though the future is held here. Held at bay, held at more than arms length. Held just beyond my reach all the long days of summer. And the waiting is everywhere, in the rhythm of waves and winds, in the familiar lights and sounds of the coastal summer, in the sun rising over the sea and settling through an orange sky into the Glasshouse Mountains. The impossible days and nights of a suspended world. Its hard not to think about the day Im waiting for. The twentieth of January. Seventeen days from today. On the twentieth of January it all comes out in the paper and Ill be there with the others from school around midnight at Newspaper House, the way the uni students do in December. Ill head down from the coast and Ill meet the others and well buy a paper and then well all know. Ill go to bed knowing, and in the morning everyone will know; everyone who bothers to look for my name and work out the code everyone whos ever known me, expected things from me, expected me to make it. Theyll know right then whether I have, or not. And then it will come in the mail. A few days later maybe, and just the way that phone bills come, and reminders from the dentist, and my mothers medical journals. Just as unannounced, just as unspecial, wound in a bundle with a rubber band or wrapped in plastic if it looks like rain. One envelope, a few sheets of paper, the definite offer in writing. And if the newspaper says I made it I still wont believe it till I see the letter. If the newspaper says I didnt, then I wont want the letter. I should stop thinking of it as though its weeks of sensory deprivation leading up to an execution. I should stop thinking of it and get a life. The waves change with changes in the weather far out to sea, storms and cyclones and winds, and the first of January blew in a forest of red weed and a fleet of blue box jellyfish, and the second blew them away again. Whatever its like I go to the beach early because Im in the habit of it. Its the best time. On all but the worst days I swim, and my body is still warm and creased with sleep and the first cold wave always comes as a shock. Im facing the house when I look back at the shore, the fibro beach house lit up white by the sun, the white plastic chairs on the long veranda, the unbleached calico curtains through the locked s

Excerpted from After Summer by Nick Earls
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