Page 80 of The Surfer

I sigh and close my eyes.

Goodbye, Australia.

My phone vibrates in my jeans pocket. A message. Who’d be doing that? This is my Australian number and I barely have any contacts in it.

I pull it out.

Cove.

I gasp and my heart trembles at his name.

Cove’s messaged me?

I unlock my phone and, in a panic, open the message from him, my hand shaking as my fingers fumble with the screen.

My heart catches in my throat when I read it.

You’re my dolphin, Ripley.

That was it. That’s all it says.

But it makes everything change.

Cove?

I immediately know what he means.

My dolphin.

“Turn around,” I say urgently to Sandy as soon as I read the message. “Turn the car around.”

“What?”

I don’t hesitate. “Turn around right now, Sandy, we need to go back.”

She blinks at me, unresponsive. Confused.

“Forget about the airport,” I say. “We need to turn around right now.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Before it’s too late.”

We do a U-turn to the other side of the road and I guide Sandy back down the highway, away from the town and towards the ocean instead.

Towards Cove and I’s secret beach.

She follows my directions as I take her down winding roads to the outskirts of the bush.

I know where we are going, I’ve done this so many times with Cove.

“What’s wrong?” Sandy asks quietly as we reach the place where Cove and I would always park by the side of the trees. The same place he would always offer his hand. “Why have we turned around, Ripley?”

I look down at my phone, at the message Cove had sent to me, then back up to Sandy. “We’ve turned around because Cove’s doing something stupid. And I have to save him.”