by Wendy Orr
Date: Sunday 4 July, 5:30pm
Subject: Important!
Dear Jack
Selkie and Fred and I are going to put on a show, so we practised for two hours this afternoon. It’s horrible being with Selkie when the Professor’s watching because I have to pretend I don’t know her, and pretend I’m training her to do tricks, even though it’s just the games we play at home. But Selkie thinks it’s better than being in the cage so she doesn’t mind pretending. Fred hates the Professor so much he just glares at him all the time but the Professor never notices.
It’s very interesting being on the ship but I still like our island better. I hope you will stop being mad at me soon.
Love (as much as Jack loves the island)
Nim
‘No message yet,’ Erin said to Nim, when she came back from sending Nim’s email to Jack. She tried to sound as if it wasn’t important, as if she didn’t know that Nim was worrying whether Jack was too angry to answer or if there was another reason that was even worse.
‘Maybe he keeps forgetting to charge the battery,’ Nim said.
‘Probably,’ said Erin.
‘Or a virus!’ said Ben.
‘Maybe,’ said Nim.
‘We’ve got an hour before dinner,’ said Ben. ‘Let’s play Spy.’
‘Dolphin Deck?’ asked Erin.
‘Butterfly,’ said Nim, and started up the stairs. She always went first when they played Spy, because it was harder for someone with an iguana on their shoulder to blend into a crowd.
She chose the Butterfly Deck because the butterflies were the only animals on the ship that didn’t make her feel sad. They had plenty of space to fly around, and she loved it when they landed on her hair and arms. Nim wandered slowly through the butterfly cage, with Fred sitting so still, that her head and Fred’s spine were soon covered with brightly coloured butterflies. They both smiled so much that even the happy kissy people, who came in from the wedding room to have their pictures taken, didn’t notice that she didn’t belong in their party.
FROM ONE END of Sunshine Island to the other, people stared as Jack sailed his raft past the roaring jet skis, through the swimmers and snorkellers in the calm water, and right up onto the beach between the sunbathers and sandcastles.
He pulled down the sail and folded it into its bag, in case he needed it again. Curious people gathered around.
‘Where’s the airport?’ Jack asked.
Someone pointed down the road.
Someone else took his picture.
‘It’s a long walk,’ one man said. ‘I’ll drive you.’
Jack followed him to a golf buggy parked at the top of the beach, and the crowd drifted back to their sunbathing and sandcastles.
But when they reached the airport: ‘You’re in luck!’ said the man at the airport ticket counter. ‘You can get on a flight tomorrow morning.’
‘I need to go today!’ said Jack.
‘Tuesdays and Thursdays – that’s it.’
Thursday! thought Jack. That’s the day Alex and Nim left. If they missed the flight, they’ll still be here.
The man with the golf buggy drove him all around the town till late at night, but they never found a sign of Alex or Nim.
‘YOU,’ SAID ALEX to herself as she sat cross-legged on her bunk to eat her dinner, ‘are a lazy lay-a-bed slobby slug. You’ve gone through the Panama Canal without even seeing it. What if you need a story Hero to stow away on a ship on a great ocean adventure – how are you going to write about it?
‘Same way I always do,’ she answered. ‘Reading, research and imagination.’
‘Except the last book,’ said Alex, ‘you lived that one. That’s why it’s your best story – and the best part of your life.’
But she hadn’t been brave enough to open it yet.
KIDS’ KLUB FINISHED at five o’clock, but a big bunch of kids were out on the Sea Lion deck when Erin, Nim and Ben wandered up there after dinner. Nim had just finished eating her smuggled food when a small pig-tailed girl tapped Ben on the shoulder. ‘Spider!’ she shouted.
Quick as a wink, everyone else grabbed the nearest hands to make the web; Ben wriggled and squirmed to get through and the others held tight until the small pig-tailed girl began to giggle and they all collapsed together in a wiggling, giggling heap, happy as a pile of sea lion pups in the sun.
LATER THAT NIGHT, with her windows open to catch the breeze, Alex heard the next-door parents chatting on the deck after their children had gone to bed. She imagined them leaning over the rail to watch the moonlight dancing on the waves.
‘The kids seem to be having a good time,’ the father was saying. ‘They’ve made lots of new friends.’
‘And they’re certainly enjoying the food! They keep heaping their plates with more than they could possibly eat, but when I look again, it’s gone.’
‘This fresh sea air’s certainly giving them an appetite,’ the father agreed.
THE NEXT MORNING, Nim, Selkie and Fred snuck up even earlier to swim in the Waterslide Pool. With the three of them all together, they felt almost free.
At the first sounds of the crew bustling around, they scurried back to Selkie’s prison. A few moments later, the ship dropped anchor in a white sand harbour.
Nim locked Selkie in and ran upstairs to say good morning to the dolphins in the fountain. When she went back to the Animal Room, the Professor was waiting for her to start feeding and cleaning.
‘No time for that!’ he snapped, when Nim hugged Selkie. ‘Feed them and get out. I don’t want you around today.’
‘But you said I could practise this afternoon!’
‘I’ve changed my mind. Now snap to it and then scram!’
His eyes were narrow, his face was hard – and he kept glancing at his whip. Nim fed the animals, and got out.
‘EVERYONE’S GOING ASHORE,’ Erin told Nim. ‘I wish you could come, but they check the tickets extra carefully when people get back on. It wouldn’t be safe.’
‘They’ll probably use your inflatable,’ Ben added. ‘Did you get all your things?’
Nim nodded. Everything was tucked safely into Erin’s wardrobe.
‘The Kids’ Klub is shut too,’ Erin said sadly, ‘so you’d better stay in our cabin.’
Nim had to wander up and down the deck while Erin and Ben’s mother hurried in and out of the cabins to organise their day. She felt as empty as a pricked balloon when Ben and Erin finally disappeared down the stairs with their family.
A second later, Erin came running back down the hall.
‘I said I forgot my hat,’ she puffed, unlocking the cabin door. ‘There are some books on my bed, if you want to read, and television, and paper and textas for making the posters. I wish you could come!’
Erin grabbed her hat, shouted, ‘Bye!’ and ran out. Nim started looking through the books. One was Mountain Madness, by Alex Rover. Nim remembered when she first read it, when she was alone on the island and Alex had emailed to ask Jack about coconuts. Alex had tried to tell Nim she wasn’t really the Hero of her story, but Nim hadn’t believed her. She wondered if she would still like the book now she knew Alex was just a small scared woman who’d sailed across the world to help Nim, before she even knew her.
She lay on Erin’s bed and started reading.
There was a knock, and Ben bounced in. ‘We forgot to tell you – breakfast is in the desk!’
He raced out again, and Nim found a brown-bread sandwich and an apple in the drawer.
Fred didn’t like brown bread, and he didn’t like apples, but he was hungry enough to share. ‘We’ll find you something,’ Nim said, though she wasn’t sure what.
They had a shower; Nim changed into the clothes Erin had left for her, and sat down at the desk with the papers and coloured pens. She drew twenty-two SEA LION CIRCUS posters – two for each passenger deck – exactly how she’d planned them with Erin and Ben. When she’d finished, she tucked them neatly into the desk drawer, flopped back onto Er
in’s bed, and went on reading.
Rap! Tap!
Someone was knocking at the door.
Nim stayed very still and didn’t answer. Fred crept behind a lamp and went to sleep.
The door opened, and a steward in a white uniform and blue apron came in with a vacuum cleaner and a mop and bucket. She saw Nim, and dropped her bucket.
‘Yipes!’ Virginia squeaked. ‘Did your parents leave you here alone?’
Nim nodded, because she couldn’t tell the truth.
‘Are you sick?’
Nim nodded again.
Virginia shook her head sympathetically. ‘Sorry – I still have to clean,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be as quiet as I can.’
She straightened Ben’s bed and made Nim sit on it while she changed Erin’s. ‘Leaving a sick child alone!’ Nim heard her muttering. ‘Appalling!’
Nim thought about Erin and Ben’s parents, and her face grew as hot and red as the lava in Fire Mountain. ‘I’m feeling a lot better now!’
Virginia finished cleaning, felt Nim’s forehead and made her go back to bed.
Nim picked up Mountain Madness again. She read lying down, she read sitting up, and she read lying on the floor with her feet on the bed. Then she practised doing handstands, and Fred practised climbing from her shoulder to her feet instead of the usual way around. They even made up a trick with Fred staying stiff as a log and Nim twirling him around on her feet.
But you can’t stay upside down spinning an iguana for ever, so after that Nim stared out through the lifeboat stands at a bit of blue sea. A great black frigate bird soared past. Looking through her spyglass she was almost sure it was Galileo. ‘I wish I could go out on deck to check,’ she muttered, even though she didn’t have a fish to call him with.
One more chapter of Mountain Madness; the hero had just caught a trout in a mountain stream and cooked it over a fire.
‘I should have saved the apple for lunch,’ Nim told Fred. Fred answered with his best unblinking stare. He was sure she could find them some food if she tried hard enough.
‘We can’t go out,’ she told him, ‘because everyone else has gone ashore, and the crew will notice me and ask where my parents are.’
There was another knock at the door. Nim shoved a pillow over Fred, and Virginia tiptoed in carrying a tray.
‘I wasn’t sure what you liked,’ she said, ‘so I brought sandwiches and salad, fruit, cake …’
The pillow wiggled. Nim put her elbow on it. ‘Thank you. That’s very nice of you.’
She was glad she could say something that wasn’t a lie.
‘I’m so pleased you’re starting to feel better. The poor lady next door hasn’t left her cabin for the whole trip!’
This cabin was a bright room with cheerful paintings on the walls, but Nim thought she’d have gone crazy if she’d spent the whole trip in it.
‘You look a bit bored,’ Virginia said, as she left. ‘Do you want the TV on?’ She handed Nim the remote control.
‘Thanks,’ said Nim.
But even though Nim had seen televisions in the lounges when they played Spy, and she’d played video games in the Kids’ Klub, she’d never sat and watched a program with a story – and she’d never had the remote. Neither had Fred. Fred didn’t care about the programs, but he liked stepping on the buttons so that the channel changed just as Nim figured out what was happening.
‘Stop it, Fred!’ Nim shouted.
Fred went to sulk under the bed, and Nim turned the TV off. She didn’t want to shout again and wake up that poor sick lady next door.
‘Come on … you can have all the lettuce,’ she coaxed, and when Fred had eaten the lettuce out of the sandwich and sneezed a kiwi fruit all over the bed, he felt quite cheerful again.
Nim finished Mountain Madness and stared out the window some more.
When she heard the rumble of the launches and the thump of passengers’ feet on the gangplank, she grabbed Fred and raced outside to gulp deep breaths of fresh air.
And as soon as the ship was on its way out to sea again, Nim pulled on her Troppo Tourist jacket and ran down the stairs to the Animal Room. She waited outside the door until the Professor let her in.
Selkie whuffled sadly, because it had been an even longer day for her. And scarier.
The last of the empty cages was full now – with long, fat snakes.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday 5 July, 7:30pm
Subject: Very important!
Dear Jack
Maybe there’s something wrong with the computer and that’s why you’re not answering, but I think you’d want to know what we’re doing so I’ll go on emailing and maybe you can read it later.
Today I had to stay inside the cabin all day and it was very boring but now I understand even better how Selkie must be feeling, and all the other animals with her. So maybe it was good in some ways.
Erin bought me a bead bracelet when she went ashore. It’s very pretty and she bought one for herself just the same so whenever we wear them we will think about each other. Ben brought Fred and me a coconut, which was good because we haven’t had coconut for way too long.
Love (as much as Fred loves coconut)
Nim
JACK SPENT THE night on the floor of his new friend’s living room.
‘Who are you?’ the man joked, when he saw Jack staring at the television as if he couldn’t remember what it was. ‘Robinson Crusoe?’
‘No – Jack Rusoe.’
His friend laughed, but Jack couldn’t. He’d just checked his emails – and not one message had come into the Inbox. Only the Trash folder had blinked as the Spam trickled in to be deleted.
The next morning he sorted out how to get money at the bank, and took the little plane to the airport on Isla Grande.
The only thing he could do now was to go and see Delia Defoe. She wasn’t just Alex’s editor – she was probably the only person in the world who knew where Alex was.
There was one seat left on the plane leaving the next day for New York City.
‘THERE’S A SEA lion circus tomorrow,’ Virginia told Alex when she brought in her breakfast. ‘There are posters all over the ship – doesn’t that sound fun?’
If Alex hadn’t known Selkie she might have thought it sounded fun. But she did know Selkie, and suddenly she missed her so much that she knew she could never see another sea lion again without crying. It was the best reason so far for staying in her cabin another day.
ERIN WOKE NIM and Fred up earlier than usual, but they spent so long in the pool that the sun had come up before they knew it. When Nim came up for air after practising swimming underwater, a white-uniformed crewman was standing at the edge, watching.
‘There’s a sea lion in there!’ he exclaimed.
‘It’s the Sea Lion Deck,’ said Nim.
‘But this is a swimming pool. For people.’
‘We need it to practise for the sea lion circus,’ said Nim. ‘We won’t need it after tomorrow.’
‘The cruise ends tomorrow!’
‘That’s why we won’t need it,’ said Nim.
The crewman stared a little longer, then shrugged and walked away.
Nim and her friends scrambled out of the pool and back to the Animal Room, as fast as they could.
‘I SUPPOSE YOU think you’re clever!’ the Professor snarled when he let Nim in to feed the animals. ‘All those posters advertising a sea lion circus at the Waterslide Pool – now you think I’ll have to let that beast in there!’
‘I must have got mixed up!’ said Nim, even though the posters were exactly how she wanted them. ‘Isn’t that what you meant?’
‘I said you could have her perform a few tricks at my lecture. You know perfectly well it was supposed to be in the theatre, like all my lectures. I’m a professor – that’s what people expect.’
‘I just thought … ’
‘Think about what’s going to happen to you
and your mum if you try to be smart. Besides, no one’s going to look at humdrum animal tricks once we get into the harbour. You’d better do something spectacular or you won’t have an audience.’
‘I’ve got a plan,’ said Nim. ‘It’ll be spectacualar.’
‘THE POSTERS WORKED!’ Nim said, as Erin handed her a breakfast scrambled-egg sandwich, and Ben tossed grapes for Fred to catch. ‘We can do the show the way we planned.’
‘So today …’
‘We can do whatever we like.’
It was hard to choose, because even though in some ways today was exactly like every other day on the ship, it was the last day they were going to spend together, and that made it special – sad, and a little bit scary.
Fred chose to spend the day at the Splash Pool, where he could sit on the water jets and be blasted into the air and then paddle across the pool, just the way he liked to do where the spray came in at a blowhole at the Black Rocks.
Ben, Erin and Nim went on a treasure hunt with the other kids from the Kids’ Klub. The clues took them all over the ship, but when Nim got to the Toucan Deck she found the toucan sitting on the floor of its cage with its head drooping and eyes closed.
Nim squatted down to see it. It’s so unhappy it might die! she thought. Suddenly she knew that escaping with Selkie was not enough. Every animal on the ship had to be rescued.
‘Just hang in there a little bit longer! We’re going to help you, somehow,’ Nim told the unhappy bird, chirping and clucking until it lifted its head to see her. When it finally began to peck its mushed mango, Nim stood up – and noticed the treasure chest hidden behind the display. It was full of enough bags of candy for everyone in the Kids’ Klub.
Fred thought he liked candy, but he felt sick afterwards and had to lie on his back while Nim rubbed his tummy.
Then Nim and Erin painted all the papier mâché fish they’d been making, and Ben finished his sculpture.
‘Excellent!’ said Kristie.
‘It is pretty good,’ Erin admitted.
