by Justin D'Ath
I noticed something about the red-helmet group. All my friends were there. And so were the girls in the netball squad, along with the ones who sometimes played downball with me and the guys at lunch and recess back at school. It was pretty easy to work out which group would be tackling the more challenging kayak run – the red helmets.
The rest of us – the yellow helmets – would probably find ourselves on a dead-flat stretch of river where families came to feed ducks and lovey-dovey couples had picnics. (Yawn.)
It wasn’t fair.
Then I remembered the conversation I’d had with Dad the day before. He’d said that sometimes stuff happens that we can’t control.
Like having to go to funerals, I thought now. Like being late for school camp and having to share a cabin with seven guys I hardly knew. Like getting landed with Lily Ng for a paddle buddy.
But not everything was out of our control. I had already noticed that Angelo and Sean from 5J were in the red-helmet group. They didn’t belong there. At school, they spent most of their free time in the Quiet Time Quad, reading books or playing board games instead of doing sports like the rest of us.
Almost as if they knew what I was thinking, Angelo and Sean slowly drifted over to the yellow-helmet group and started talking to Karlie and Sally, who were both Quiet Time Quad guys, too.
Next to me, Lily had taken off her red-framed glasses to clean them with a tissue. She’d put her helmet on the ground. I scooped it up without her noticing and strolled over to Angelo and Sean.
‘Hey, Sean. Hey, Captain Wondersmash. What’s happening?’
Angelo drew a cartoon strip for The Year Five Times about a superhero named Captain Wondersmash, and some of us called him that for a joke. (He didn’t seem to mind.)
‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Sorry about your grandfather.’
Sean said he was sorry, too. So did Karlie and Sally, who were listening.
I wished people would stop talking about it. It was a real downer. For a moment we all stood staring at our feet, trying to think of something to say. Then I remembered why I’d gone over there.
‘Angelo, I was wondering if you and Sean could do me a favour?’
‘Sure,’ they said, both at the same time like they shared a brain.
I pointed at the rest of the red-helmet group, who had just started lining up to get on the other bus. ‘The guys I hang out with have all got red helmets like yours,’ I said. ‘But me and my kayak buddy were given these yellow ones . . .’
For a while everyone stared at Lily’s and my yellow helmets, which I was holding up by their chinstraps and swinging gently from side to side. Then Angelo and Sean looked at each other, looked at me, and both spoke at the same time: ‘Do you want to swap?’
Lily and I were nearly the last ones aboard, so we had to sit near the front. I didn’t mind. At least we were on the red-helmet bus, the same bus as my friends. The one going to the ‘more challenging’ stretch of river. I let Lily have the window seat.
‘We’ll get in trouble,’ she whispered. ‘They gave us yellow helmets.’
‘Red’s better,’ I said. ‘It matches your glasses.’
She giggled. ‘You’re funny!’
I giggled, too. But then I remembered the last time I’d giggled, and felt my face turning the same colour as Lily’s glasses and both our helmets.
Dad was right: there was some stuff you couldn’t change, no matter how much you wanted to change it.
‘Are you okay, Cooper?’ Lily asked, sounding concerned.
I tilted my helmet forward and down, so she could no longer see my eyes. They’d gone all wet and blurry because I was thinking about Pop again.
‘It’s just hay fever,’ I mumbled.
‘Leave the paddling to me, Lil,’ I said quietly. ‘Just sit back and enjoy the ride.’
We were nearly last in a long line of kayaks travelling single file down Thunder River. Most of the kayaks had two kids in them, wearing yellow life vests and red helmets like Lily and me, but every so often there was a single-seat kayak with an adult in it. They were our instructors from Mirror Lake, now our guides, and were easy to spot because their helmets and life vests were fluoro green.
I was trying to keep away from the guides – especially Nat, who was about eight or nine kayaks ahead of Lily and me – because I didn’t want to be noticed and get in trouble for swapping helmets. Which was why our kayak was nearly last. I figured we’d be less conspicuous back there.
But I couldn’t help wondering what was going on at the front. The leaders must have been two or three river bends ahead of us by now, so I couldn’t see. A guide called Coral had set off first, followed by Dan and Fadi, then Jeff and Michael. That’s where I should have been – leading the way, instead of dawdling along at the back with only Jasper Sass and Ms Mucus behind us. (Imagine that – choosing Ms Mucus for a paddle buddy. Jasper was such a suck.)
Shortly before we set off, Nat had gathered everyone on the riverbank and told us it wasn’t going to be a race. But he wasn’t fooling anyone – with Dan, Fadi, Jeff and Michael in the lead, things were going to get competitive. Just thinking about it made me paddle faster.
‘What’s the rush?’ asked Jade Bitworth, as Lily’s and my kayak powered past her and Ella Williams into third-last place.
Then she saw who it was and said, ‘Sorry about your granddad.’
Ella said she was sorry, too.
Why did everyone have to keep reminding me that Pop was dead? I was trying not to think about him. Gritting my teeth, I paddled even harder.
As Lily and I drew alongside Monica and Jessica, I heard Ms Mucus’s bossy voice two-and-a-half kayaks behind us: ‘Cooper and Lily! Back in line, please.’
Normally I did what I was told – especially by teachers – but all I could think about was catching up with my friends. I churned past another kayak.
‘COOPER HODGE!’ Ms Mucus yelled in the distance. ‘IF YOU DON’T GET BACK IN LINE THIS INSTANT, YOU’LL BE SORRY!’
But I was already about as sorry as a person could be. All I wanted was for Pop to be alive again and for my life to be back to normal. The Pop bit wasn’t going to happen, of course, but if I could catch up with Jeff and the guys, at least that part of my life would be normal.
Ms Mucus was going totally ballistic now, but with every stroke of my paddles we were leaving her further behind. And passing more kayaks. Most of the other kids were hardly paddling, just letting the strong current pull them downstream and using their paddles to steer.
‘Go Hodgie!’ said Robbo Moorhouse – the first person not to mention Pop – as Lily and I went steaming past him and Oscar Hertz.
This was more like it, I thought.
Lily twisted half-around in the forward seat to look back at me, but only the red dome of her helmet was visible over the top of her too-big life vest. ‘We’ll get in trouble, Cooper,’ she said.
I felt guilty. ‘I’ll tell them it was me, Lil. That you had nothing to do with it.’
‘You should slow down.’
‘When we catch up with my mates,’ I promised.
But first we had to get past Nat. He was only two kayaks ahead now and must have heard Ms Mucus carrying on. Using his right paddle, he swung his kayak sharply out of the line and steered it out to meet ours.
‘Whoa there!’ he said. ‘It’s not a race, guys.’
That section of the river was quite wide. I dug my right paddle in too and veered around him. Now it was a race! I could hear Nat coming after us. Remembering the advice he had given us back at the lake, I got all my rugby muscles going. It felt good. My whole body was working, my paddles were churning, and our kayak went slicing through the water like a torpedo.
But Nat’s was a single-seat kayak, narrower than Lily’s and mine, and Lily was just sitting at the front of ours with her paddle across her knees like I’d told her to, so I was doing the work of two people. He soon caught up.
Drawing alongside us, he looked over and repeated
what he’d said before: ‘Whoa there!’
But I wasn’t going to whoa for anyone. I kept right on paddling. And so did Nat, matching his speed with mine.
‘Nice action,’ he said, staying just far enough away so our paddles didn’t bang together. ‘Are you sure you haven’t done this before, Cooper?’
‘No,’ I puffed. ‘Today’s my first time.’
Nat wasn’t puffing at all. ‘Anyhow, you’ve proven your point, buddy,’ he said calmly. ‘Now it’s time you got back in line.’
‘I want to catch up with my friends,’ I said. We must have passed a dozen or more kayaks now. How far ahead were Dan and Fadi?
‘You’re scaring Lily,’ said Nat.
She twisted around again. I still couldn’t see her face, but her voice sounded brave. ‘I’m not scared.’
Nat looked ahead, then turned back to Lily and me. ‘Listen to me, both of you!’ he said urgently. ‘There are some river rapids just around the next bend. We have to cross to the other side of the river where it’s flatter.’
Ever since Nat had started chasing us, I hadn’t paid much attention to our surroundings. Now I did. The river seemed narrower, the current stronger. Sheer rocky cliffs loomed high overhead, blocking out most of the sky. All the other kayaks were hugging the far bank. Two guides in fluoro-green vests and helmets were keeping everyone in line. Lily’s and my kayak was going twice as fast as theirs, skimming along only metres from the rock face on our side of the river. There was a roaring noise in the distance, like a plane taking off. Nat began paddling out towards the middle of the river, yelling something at me that I couldn’t hear.
Next moment, there was a bone-crunching THUMP! It made me drop my paddle and grab the sides of the kayak as it whirled around in a giddy half-circle. The kayak and I ended up rocking along backwards, totally at the mercy of the swift current. But I wasn’t thinking about that, there was something else on my mind.
Why was the seat in front of me empty?
We worked out later what had happened: Lily’s paddle, lying flat across her lap, had hit a big rock jutting out from the cliff face. The impact had spun our kayak around and thrown her into the water.
But at the time, it was like she’d just disappeared off the face of the earth.
A faint cry solved the mystery. I glanced over my shoulder. Lily was bobbing along in the swirling water just downstream of the reversing kayak. The current was pushing it and her along at exactly the same speed. She was trying to swim back towards me, but her arms were all caught up in her huge life vest. I could see she was panicking, not thinking straight – she was starting to take it off!
‘NO!’ I yelled.
Lily wouldn’t have heard my warning. I didn’t even hear it myself. Because suddenly we were surrounded by noise. The distant roar had turned into an ear-splitting boom. We were in the rapids! All around us were green walls of water. Waves crashed over me in white, icy explosions. I lost sight of Lily as the kayak reared upwards, then slammed back down so hard I bit my tongue. It was chaos. I had to hold on with both hands as the kayak was tossed around like a pencil in a front-loader washing machine.
It ended as abruptly as it had started. Suddenly everything went still. It was quiet again, almost peaceful. I could feel my racing heartbeat and taste blood in my mouth. But I was still in one piece. And still in the kayak. It had been swept into a little inlet where the water was dead flat. But looks can be deceiving. Everything was moving in slow circles like it was caught in a gentle whirlpool. The kayak was drifting slowly around the edge of the circle. Further in was one of our paddles. Right in the middle, spinning slowly round and around, was a big, yellow life vest with no one in it.
OMG! I thought.
I didn’t even realise I’d jumped out of the kayak until I was in the icy-cold water, thrashing madly towards the centre of the whirlpool. There was something under the life vest, about a metre below the surface – a small human-shaped shadow wearing a bright-red helmet.
I tried to dive down, but my life vest made it impossible. Desperately I struggled out of it, then dived again. And got a nasty shock. Lily’s underwater face was as white as a sheet. Her eyes looked like marbles and her lips were blue. Was I too late? But when I grabbed one tiny hand, her fingers grabbed me back. Yay!
Pulling Lily up to the surface was harder than I expected. The whirlpool didn’t want to release us. But I’d made a promise to Pop once – that one day I was going to be a Wallaby just like him – so I used my rugby muscles and kicked us up into the light. Where a man wearing a fluoro-green helmet lifted Lily up onto his single-seater kayak.
‘I’ve got her, buddy,’ Nat said.
I didn’t even know what hypothermia was. And I was too scared to ask, in case someone said Lily was going die.
They had whisked her off in an ambulance as soon as we got back to camp. One of the ambos had checked me out, too. She said I was lucky. I didn’t feel lucky. I kind of wished it was me going to hospital, not Lily.
The last place I wanted to be was at year five camp. Everyone blamed me for what had happened to Lily. I could see it in their eyes. If looks could kill, I would have been dead about seventy-six times over.
Miss Hobbie was nice to me, though. She wrapped a big blanket around me and got some dry clothes from my cabin. She brought me a fresh towel, too.
‘Go and have a long, hot shower, Coop,’ she said. ‘You need to warm up.’
I had a very long shower. I must have stayed in there for nearly half an hour. When I finally came out, it was dark outside the boys’ showers and nobody was around. It must have been dinnertime. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was arrive late for dinner again – especially after nearly getting Lily drowned – so I sneaked back to my cabin and sat there in the dark eating a muesli bar and a packet of trail mix I’d brought for tomorrow’s bushwalk.
Footsteps crunched outside. Someone was coming. Before they could open the door, I climbed onto one of the top bunks and squeezed up next to the wall.
The door hinges creaked, the light clicked on. And after a moment, Miss Hobbie’s voice said, ‘Cooper? Are you in here?’
I held my breath and stayed as still as a statue until she switched the light off again and went out.
Phew! I thought. I didn’t want to see anybody, not even Miss Hobbie. But I knew I couldn’t stay hiding forever. There were games in the hall after dinner – they would keep everyone busy for a while. But after that, Jasper and the other guys in my cabin would be coming to bed. I didn’t want to be there when they arrived. Didn’t want to have to answer all their questions about why I’d nearly got Lily killed. (Or maybe really got her killed, if hypothermia was as bad as it sounded.) So I decided to go somewhere where no one would find me and wait there until everyone was asleep. Then I’d come back and slip into bed without having to talk to anyone.
And I knew just the place to lie low for a couple of hours.
Grabbing my torch and the blanket Miss Hobbie had given me, I let myself out of the cabin and set off through the shadowy camp towards the track where we went for our night walk.
It felt a bit scary when I entered the pitch-black forest all on my own. I shone my torch this way and that, telling myself there was nothing out there that could hurt me. Except maybe snakes, I thought. But wouldn’t they all be asleep by now? What about dingoes? They came out at night, didn’t they? Or wild dogs?
But I kept going. I was too old to be scared of the dark. All I wanted was to get away from camp and away from everyone’s questions about Lily, about Pop, about everything!
Year five camp totally sucked!
Falling asleep wasn’t part of my plan. But it was spooky in the rock-paintings cave, and the mosquitoes were bad, so I pulled the blanket right over me like a little tent. Then my eyelids started drooping – I’d hardly slept a wink the night before – and I lay down under the blanket to have a little rest.
And the next thing I knew, I was having a dream about Larry Sayer.
‘Young Cooper, is that you under there?’ he asked.
Someone gently pulled the blanket off my head and I opened my eyes. It wasn’t a dream. I was awake. And Larry Sayer really was bending over me.
‘Rise and shine, sleepyhead,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’re missing the best part of the day.’
I blinked up at him. The sky was pale mauve behind his head. It was morning.
‘What are you doing here, Mr Sayer?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘Looking for you.’
Then I noticed his outfit. He was wearing bright-orange overalls with a badge that said Search and Rescue. A sick feeling rose in my gut.
‘Are other people looking, too?’
‘Only ten of us so far,’ Larry said. ‘But more are on their way. Excuse me for a moment, I’d better let them know that I’ve found you.’
He called up someone on his two-way radio. ‘I’ve found him, Don . . . Yes, he’s okay . . . Tell the others to stand down . . . And let headquarters know we won’t need a helicopter.’
I waited till he’d finished talking. I felt scared. ‘Will I get in trouble, Mr Sayer?’
‘In trouble?’ He sounded surprised. ‘Of course not. Everyone will be glad you’re okay.’
‘Not everyone,’ I blurted out, before I could stop myself.
One of his eyebrows bent upwards. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They all hate me because I nearly drowned a girl yesterday. She ended up in hospital.’ I swallowed. ‘She might even be dead.’
Larry looked like he was about to ruffle my hair (I hated it when adults did that), then he changed his mind and patted my shoulder instead. There was a funny expression on his face. ‘Do you want the good news, or the good news?’ he asked.
I sighed. I wasn’t in the mood for games. ‘You choose.’
‘Okay,’ he said, smiling a goofy smile. ‘Here’s the first piece of good news, young Cooper: the girl you’re talking about is out of hospital. They thought she might have had a mild case of hypothermia, but it was a false alarm. She came back to camp last night.’
