Ben munched on another row, caramel spilling down his chin. Olive grunted. Her body stiffened.
“What’s wrong?”
She turned her back to him.
“Are you angry at Mum and Dad?”
She didn’t say anything. Ben put a hand on her shoulder. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she buried her head in his side. He wanted to say, “Don’t be a baby,” but Olive never cried unless it was serious.
“Just Mummy,” she said, muffled by sobs.
“You’re just cranky at Mum?”
She nodded and howled to herself.
“Why?”
“Because Dad’s a big Maugrim-ish idiot, but Mummy knows better than to be mean and bad.”
Ben held her for a few minutes, warm tears making the side of his T-shirt soggy.
“At least we can eat Dad’s chocolate,” he said. He snapped off another row and offered it to her. She took it and ate it quickly, then asked for another. Ben wondered if he was already fatter.
He looked around the room, sighing. He had his new Lego and knife and other presents from Dad, but he didn’t feel like using any of it. He had not seen a screen in days. Back in real life he watched TV, made movies, or played games from three-thirty in the afternoon till nine at night. They always ate dinner in front of the TV. Dad would get angry if anyone tried to eat at the dining table when a good show was on. He said it was rude. When Ben stayed at James’s house, they didn’t even have a TV, which was odd. And Gus was only allowed to watch it on weekends. But to Ben’s family, TV was like bad glue. They needed regular doses to keep all the cracks hidden.
The roof of the cabin clicked and creaked, expanding in the sun. Rosellas made a mad tweeting racket in the pine trees behind the cabin.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Olive said.
Ben needed to go himself. He leaned the air mattresses up against the wall and paced around the cabin, squeezing his bottom lip. How long would his parents be gone? Too long for Olive.
“Where can I go?” she asked. “I’m going to explode!”
Olive went from not needing to go at all to nearly exploding every time. It drove Dad crazy, especially when they were driving.
Ben heard the river in the distance, and for a moment it seemed to flow through him, making him feel as though he might explode too.
“We have to smash the window,” Olive said.
“No! Go in a cup.” Ben moved quickly to the shelf and grabbed a plastic cup out of the packet.
“I’m not a boy! I can’t go in a cup,” she said.
Ben had already thought about smashing the window, but what if his parents really had gone to get breakfast? What if Dad was coming back with bacon and eggs on rolls and strawberry milk to apologize for reading Ben’s notebook?
“We can’t smash the window. They’ll kill us,” he said.
“Well, I’ll already be dead from an exploding bowel.”
“Bladder.”
“What?”
“Pee is held in your bladder.”
Olive punched Ben hard on the arm. “They can’t just lock us in. Kids are people too.” She picked up a saucepan and went to the window.
“Don’t!” Ben said. “They’ll be so angry.”
“They’re gone!” Olive shouted. “They’ve left us to be eaten by lions and possums and…”
“No, they haven’t. Possums can’t eat you, and there are no lions in Australia.”
“We saw—”
“Except at the zoo,” Ben said.
“Well, what if they escaped?” she said, raising the pan over her shoulder.
“Stop!” Ben grabbed her arm. “Let’s…” He tried to think of something to distract her.
“Why don’t we play with your remote control truck?”
“No.”
“Skateboard?”
“No!”
“Let me tell you a story. It’ll take your mind off it.”
“Let me go or I’ll bash you with the saucepan.”
“Do you promise not to smash the window?”
“Let. Me. Go!” she screamed, and he dropped her wrist. “What about?”
“What?”
“What’s the story about?”
The saucepan hung by her side, threatening to rise again if Ben didn’t come up with something good. He searched the room for inspiration. His backpack lay on the floor next to his camera and the torn notebook. Dad had thrown it at Ben after reading it and told him that his detective work sucked.
Ben could tell her the story of Dario Savini, zombie thief, and Ben Silver, Sydney’s toughest cop, but it seemed a bit creepy. The ancient, dog-eared copy of My Side of the Mountain sat, cover up, on the floor near his notebook.
“How about a story about a kid who has to survive in the wilderness by himself, living in a tree.”
Olive dropped the saucepan to the floor with a clang and sat on one of the camping chairs, thumb in her mouth. She and Bonzo waited.
Ben breathed a stuttering sigh and picked up the book. He climbed onto the table, leaning his back against the wall next to the window. He began to read the author’s note at the beginning—how when she was a kid she had packed up a suitcase and told her mother she was going to run away from home.
Over the next few hours, Ben started to unravel the story of Sam Gribley, the kid who left home to live in the mountains with only a weasel and a falcon for company. As he read the book aloud his mind pedaled furiously in the background.
I hope it wasn’t me who sent them away, with all my stupid evidence and notes. They’ll come back for sure. They’ll be back by lunchtime. I know they will.
HOLE
Ben worked the small, jagged blade back and forth across the floorboard. He was starting to make a decent groove now. As he worked he listened for the sound of a distant engine, but there was nothing.
“Shine it over here,” he said.
Olive focused the flashlight beam on Ben’s work. Rain hammered the old tin roof.
They had read My Side of the Mountain in two sittings, one before lunch and one after. They had taken turns to read aloud and had finished the book by flashlight as the sun abandoned them for the day. Ben had never loved reading. He liked movies or a teacher reading them a book, but he did not like wading through millions of words alone. But this book played on the movie screen in his mind, like when he imagined his films. No one was showing him pictures but he could still see them.
Olive had peed in the cup. She had made Ben turn his back and reminded him of the time that he made her drink apple juice. Well, he had told her it was apple juice but it was not. It was something else. Something that looked like apple juice, but he had made it himself. Ben laughed but he still felt bad. Why did he do those things to her? It was as though there was a bad-Ben inside him, forcing his hand.
My Side of the Mountain had given them comfort and light and warmth, but when it was done all they had was heavy rain, leaks spattering the floor around them, and small, unseen animals making nests in the darkest corners.
After dinner Ben had said, “Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow, this day will feel like a dream. They’ll be here when we wake up, you wait.”
“Liar,” she had said, darting across the cabin to grab her saucepan and heading for the window.
“Stop. We don’t want to be out there at night. And we don’t want to smash anything. Think what Dad will do.” Ben had already been thinking about a way out of the cabin that would not get them into too much trouble if Dad came back. And if they really had been abandoned, they needed to be able to come and go without smashing a window. “Why don’t we cut a hole in the floor, something we can cover up. A trapdoor.”
“I love trapdoors,” Olive had said.
“I know that.”
She lowered the saucepan. “What do we cut it with?”
Ben had pulled his knife out of his pocket, shoved the small, rusty green metal trunk across the floor. He had run his fingers over the pine floor, found a smal
l knothole about a foot away from the wall, and started to cut away at the board.
“That’ll take ten years!” Olive had said. “Lemme smash the window.”
It did take a long time to get going, and the blade stuck regularly in the wood, but Ben was determined. Olive held the flashlight, but her mind wandered and so did the flashlight beam.
“This is payback for those dirty dogs leaving us,” she said.
Ben moved the blade back and forth, back and forth. Dirty dogs. Dirty dogs. Those words sawed through him. Dirty on the forward motion of his saw. Dogs on the backward. The more he thought, the more he sawed, the more he became certain that he and Olive needed a way out, that maybe Mum and Dad were gone for good. But why would they do that? Why would they lock Ben and Olive in?
“Do you think he’s real?” Olive asked, sitting above Ben on a camp chair.
“Who?” Ben asked. Dirty dogs. Dirty dogs.
“Santa.”
Ben stopped sawing. He looked around the dark room. “Who said anything about Santa?”
“Just me.”
Ben started sawing again. “Yes. He’s real.”
Olive was quiet.
“Do you think kids in Africa are dying right now?”
“Maybe,” Ben said. “I guess so.”
“Are other kids in Africa getting born?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Why don’t kids in Africa get Christmas presents?”
“They do,” Ben said, wiping sweat off his face with his shoulder.
“No, they don’t.”
“How do you know?” Ben wanted to work in silence, but at least the chatter stopped him from thinking about Mum and Dad and what they had done.
“Movies,” Olive said. “In Christmas movies Santa never goes to Africa.”
“Really?” he asked, surprised. He tried to think of one where they did.
“Mm-hm,” Olive said, sucking her thumb now while holding the flashlight.
Ben blinded himself for a moment by looking into the flashlight beam.
“Stop sucking your thumb.”
“You’re not my dad.”
No. And you wouldn’t listen to me if I was.
Ben felt the saw go all the way through the timber for the first time.
“Give me the flashlight!” he said, blowing sawdust aside. He lay down and put his eye to the crack, trying to squeeze the flashlight as close to his eye as he could. Through the tiny slit, Ben could see corrugated iron on the ground and lots of old bottles. This pinprick of hope pushed him up off the floor, and he worked double time, hacking away like his life depended on it. And maybe it did. He would have to cut through three floorboards to make a hatch wide enough to escape. His hand ached like when he was forced to write for a long time at school, but it was easier now that he could push and pull all the way through the board. After almost an hour he had cut across an entire floorboard. He pried it up, and the rusty nails near the wall bent and twisted and the board came away.
“Ya-a-a-a-a-a-y!” Olive said, shining the flashlight into the gap. Ben used the piece of floorboard to scrape away the twisted mass of spiderwebs beneath and reached his arm down into the outside world, laughing for the first time that day. Breeze. He could almost touch bare earth.
“Let me, let me!” Olive said. She lay down and spat into the hole. “Coooooooeeeee!” Her voice skittered into the night.
Ben shoved her aside and began cutting the second board.
“We’re like burglars,” Olive said, climbing back into her camping chair. “Except we’re trying to get out, not in.”
Ben smiled at her weirdness. The feeling in the cabin had changed now. Hope had blown in. The rain had settled into a steady sprinkle.
“That’s cool,” Olive said. “I’m a burglar!”
“Now you just have to become a judge and your life will be complete.”
“I’d need a wig for that.”
Ben heard a noise and stopped sawing. A bird or animal scratching the tin roof.
“This is a secret, okay?” he said. “A proper secret. Like, if they come back, we cannot say anything about it … or you’re dead.”
Olive nodded and yawned. It was around nine o’clock, Ben reckoned. She went to bed at eight at home. He wondered what they would do once they had made it through the three boards. Would they really go out into the night by themselves, the only humans in all that inky forest-ness? And what then—tomorrow and the day after?
* * *
They’re not coming back. The annoyingly honest and fearful part of Ben’s mind whispered these words. He hated them now, and hated himself for making them go. Why did he think he could play detective? He slipped with the saw and cut the top of his finger. The pointer, right where he had sliced it on the sharp reed down by the river. Fresh blood spilled from the slit onto the floorboards. He put the finger to his lips and sucked for a few seconds, then pressed down hard on the cut with his thumb, trying to stop the flow. It stung but he knew that he had to keep working. Two boards to get through.
They’re not coming back. These words helped him to saw faster and harder. Droplets of blood spat onto the floor. Twin angels of fear and anger drove him on. It was easier now with one floorboard gone. Three-quarters of an hour later he was through another and he started on the third and final board. He wondered if the saw on his knife was getting blunt. He sawed until he forgot about his parents, forgot why he was sawing, and eventually he pulled up the third board.
They were free to leave.
He looked up. Olive had her eyes closed, resting her head against the window frame. He poked her. “Hey, we’re through.”
“I’m going first,” she mumbled, taking her thumb out, sitting up.
Ben was relieved. But he knew he could not let his seven-year-old sister go down through a trapdoor in the night before him. Even a little sister who acted, and maybe was, slightly braver than him.
“I have to,” he said.
“Why? Because you’re a boy?” she asked, disgusted, shining the flashlight into his eyes.
“No, because I’m five years older than you.” Ben was trying to sound convincing, as if he really wanted to go first.
Olive didn’t say anything more. Nuts, he thought. She could have at least put up a fight.
He sat and let his legs dangle into the outside world.
“Maybe we should wait till morning,” he said. “There’s no point going out now. What are we going to do?”
“We’re going out,” she croaked. “We’ve been locked in here forever.”
He listened for rain. It had stopped. Just the rushing sound of the river.
“Go on,” she said.
The promise of seeing the river by night was enough to move him. He rested his palms on the floor either side of the hole and lowered his legs through the rough-sawn, splintery square. He scratched his hips and bottom through his shorts as he shoved himself downward. Ben wished that he had made the hole slightly wider. Or that he had kept up his exercises at home or not eaten that entire block of chocolate. The soles of his shoes touched corrugated iron and then earth. He smiled.
Ben grabbed the flashlight from Olive and forced the rest of his body down through the hole. He knelt and shuffled the corrugated iron and some bottles aside. He looked out into the forest of pines as Olive’s legs appeared through the hole. He heard the gentle rush of the river, the calls of dozens of birds, insects, and frogs. Olive landed heavily and scrambled out from under the cabin.
“What are you waiting for, Fatso?” she said.
“Can you not call me names?” he said. “If I hadn’t sawed the hole—”
“Can’t you take it?” she said.
Ben wondered where Olive had learned to be such a punk. It wasn’t at school. She had always been like this, even before she could speak. Ben trained his flashlight on her. “What if they come back?”
“Don’t care. I’m going. Why else did we make the hole?”
Ben crawled out f
rom under the cabin. They would go down to the river. He could think more clearly down there. He would make a decision: stay here and wait for his parents for who knows how long, or, in the morning, take off with Olive up to the main road.
By the time he stood, Olive was already heading downhill.
“Wait!” he whispered.
“Why are you whispering?”
Ben wasn’t sure. He just felt that he should whisper in a forest late at night. Olive walked boldly into the dark while Ben scanned the ground with the flashlight, thinking every stick was a snake, every shadow a werewolf or zombie.
He ran to catch up with Olive and grabbed her hand, partly for her sake, partly for his. They were halfway down the hill, almost to the fallen tree that he and Dad had hidden behind, when he heard it. At first it didn’t sound like a car. But Ben stopped, and Olive stopped, and they listened.
Run, said a voice somewhere deep within him.
THE PLAN
The car screamed down the final steep section of dirt road, not stopping in front of the cabin but continuing out across the clearing. Why would they park away from the cabin? Maybe it wasn’t his parents’ car. But if it wasn’t, who could it be? Low rumble. Brakes. Engine cut.
“Hurry!” Olive pushed Ben up through the hole, scratching his sides and hands. Fresh air and river and freedom disappeared.
Car doors opened.
He took Olive’s hands, pulling her up into the cabin in a single movement.
“Ow!” she said.
“Shhh!” Ben hissed, switching off the flashlight.
“That hurt,” Olive said, sitting on the rim of the hole in the floor.
The sound of low voices moved quickly across the clearing toward the cabin.
“C’mon!” Ben whispered.
She stood up. “I hate them! I wish they’d never come back.”
“What if it’s not them?” Ben snuck across to the cupboard at the back and looked for the gun, but all he could make out was the shovel. He grabbed the splintery timber handle with two hands. He stood there in the darkness, trembling, Olive clinging to his arm.
“Should we say something?” she whispered.
The chain jangled at the door.
Ben raised the shovel and tiptoed ever so slowly toward the door.
On the Run Page 8
