Bonjour Alice

by Judi Curtin

  I gave her a small push.

  ‘You are so boring,’ I said. ‘Who needs Snow White? I hope we find Prince Charming, or maybe even Bruno’s handsome cousin Pascal.’

  Alice laughed.

  ‘Yuck,’ she said. ‘He’s no Prince Charming, that’s for sure. Prince Totally-Not-Charming, he is. Now come on. Let’s go and start our adventure. Did you bring the bicycle locks?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I thought you had them.’

  ‘I thought you had them,’ repeated Alice.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We can just leave the bikes here. There’s no one around.’

  ‘But we can’t do that,’ I protested. ‘If some-one did come along and take our bikes, how would we get back? It’s much too far to walk. And besides, Mum and Dad will kill me if my bike gets stolen.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be your fault. It would be the thief’s fault for being so dishonest,’ said Alice.

  I sighed.

  ‘You know that’s not how Mum and Dad would see it. They’d say it was my fault for being careless.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Alice. ‘We’re wasting precious time here. Why don’t we just wheel the bikes a bit of the way in to the forest? We can hide them under some branches, and then even if some-one comes along, they won’t see them. And if they don’t see them, they can’t steal them, can they?’

  I sighed again. She was right as usual.

  I followed Alice as she wheeled her bike in amongst the trees. It was cool there, out of the sunshine. The ground was soft and springy under our feet. There was a smell of Christmas.

  Soon Alice stopped near a big tree.

  ‘This is perfect,’ she said.

  We propped our bikes against the tree, and dragged some old branches over them to camouflage them.

  When we were finished, I stood back and looked at our work.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘You’d never guess there were bikes hidden there. It looks just like a pile of old branches.’

  Alice grinned.

  ‘Now that’s sorted, let’s go explore.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We wandered through the forest for ages. Alice made up a big, long story about two kidnapped pop stars, who escaped from their kidnappers, and had to survive for weeks on their own. When rescuers found them, they were almost dead, but they were keeping their spirits up by taking turns to sing songs from their hit album.

  Alice is great at that kind of stuff, and after a while, I almost believed that I was one of the pop stars, and I found myself ducking behind trees, at every sudden gust of wind, or every crackle of twigs beneath our feet.

  Soon though, I stopped feeling that I was a pop star, and I felt more like a tired and hungry schoolgirl.

  I stopped walking, and threw myself down on a pile of soft, mossy stuff.

  ‘Wait, Al,’ I said. ‘I need to rest for a while.’

  Alice came back and sat beside me.

  ‘I’m a bit tired too,’ she said. ‘Let’s rest for a while, and then we can go back and go to that small shop and buy some food.’

  So we rested for a while.

  ‘A toasted cheese sandwich,’ said Alice. ‘I can smell it already.’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Pizza,’ I said. ‘With extra cheese – loads and loads of extra cheese, and pepperoni.’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Alice. ‘I’d like chips – with heaps of salt and vinegar.’

  My mouth was beginning to water.

  ‘Stop, Al,’ I said. ‘Please stop. How about we stop talking about food, and actually go and get some?’

  Alice grinned.

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  So we stood up, dusted ourselves off, and began to walk, with Alice leading the way – striding quickly like she always does.

  We had walked for quite a bit, when I noticed that Alice wasn’t moving as confidently as she had at first.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  Alice turned back to look at me.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason,’ I said, and we walked some more.

  Soon Alice stopped and began to look around. I was starting to get worried now.

  ‘Al, what’s wrong?’ I said again.

  ‘I’m just …’ said Alice, as she started to walk. Then she stopped, and turned around and walked the other way.

  ‘You’re just what?’

  ‘I’m just not sure which is the way out of here.’

  Her voice was unusually quiet.

  I gulped.

  ‘But … But … I don’t know the way either. What are we going to do?’

  Alice put her hand on my arm.

  ‘Well, we won’t worry, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘After all, how big can this forest be?’

  I gulped again.

  ‘Don’t you remember, Al? The other day Dad was reading from his guide book, and he said there was a forest in this area that covers eleven thousand hectares. Do you think this could be it?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’

  ‘Do you know how big a hectare is?’ I asked.

  Alice shook her head.

  ‘Sorry. No idea. If we did that stuff at school, I wasn’t listening. But maybe it’s really small, like a centimetre or something.’

  ‘Yeah, or maybe it’s really big, like a kilometre or something. Oh, Al. What are we going to do?’

  Alice hugged me.

  ‘We’re just being silly. We haven’t really tried to find our way out yet.’

  Suddenly I had an idea.

  ‘What about your watch – the super-duper fancy one your Mum gave you for your birthday? Hasn’t that got a compass on it?’

  Alice looked at her watch, and made a face.

  ‘No. I could tell you the time in San Francisco, or Moscow, but I can’t use my watch to help us get out of here. We’ll have to think of something else. You should know though – you read lots of books. What do kids do when they get lost in forests?’

  I had to smile. In the kind of books I liked, kids only got lost in department stores, and airports and places like that, and they were always rescued by kind security guards. I wasn’t admitting that to Alice though.

  ‘Weeeell,’ I said. ‘Usually they start by following the sun.’

  We both looked up. The small patches of sky that we could see through the trees were grey. What had happened to the lovely sunny day?

  ‘OK, so following the sun isn’t going to work for us today,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the only solution. I read a book once, where kids followed a stream, and found their way home.’

  I’d just made that up, but I thought it sounded good. It made sense really. All streams end up in the sea don’t they? And the sea was near our house. That had to be the answer.

  Alice sighed.

  ‘No chance of finding a stream. There’s a drought, remember? It hasn’t rained here for weeks, so all the streams will have dried up.’

  ‘Well, then, we just have to walk in a straight line, until we come to the edge of the forest. Easy,’ I said, a bit more confidently than I felt.

  Alice smiled at me.

  ‘See, Megan. I love that you’re always the sensible one. I knew I could count on you in a crisis. Now lead us out of here.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  So, there I was, lost in the middle of a huge forest, and instead of leading the way, as she usually did, Alice was relying on me to show her the way home.

  Brilliant.

  Totally, totally brilliant.

  I looked all around me carefully, trying to find something different, something I’d recognise again, if we walked past it a second time. I was wasting my time though. We were in the middle of a forest, and there was nothing to see except trees.

  I took a deep breath, and started to walk. I took my time, concentrating on going in a straight line. Alice walked right behind me, encouraging me, like she did when I was learning to roller-blade.

  �
�Keep it up, Megan. You’re doing great,’ she kept saying.

  And even though I knew I wasn’t doing great, it made me feel a bit better.

  Every now and then, a tree would block my path, and I had to carefully walk around it, and then try to keep walking in the same direction as before. Soon Alice began to walk beside me, and I wasn’t so scared any more. For a while it felt like we were just out for any old walk, and that we weren’t lost at all.

  We started to chat again.

  ‘What do you think Melissa would do in this situation?’ asked Alice.

  I thought for a minute.

  ‘Worry that her hair would get messed up by all these branches?’ I said, as I flicked yet another branch out of my face.

  Alice laughed.

  ‘Yeah, or cry because she got a speck of dirt on her sandals.’

  We spent a while listing all the stupid things that Melissa would do if she was in our situation, but in the end, we both ran out of ideas. Then I started to get scared again. My legs were getting tired too.

  ‘Let’s stop for a while,’ I said.

  Alice shook her head.

  ‘Maybe we should keep going,’ she said.

  And that’s when I realised that she was scared too.

  And that’s when I started to get very, very scared.

  Alice is the bravest girl I’ve ever known.

  And if Alice was scared, then, things were very, very, very bad.

  I pulled Alice’s arm, and made her stop.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Are we even sure that we’re going in a straight line?’

  ‘Of course we are,’ said Alice. ‘I think.’

  I looked up through the trees, but there was still no sign of the sun. I tried not to sound too scared.

  ‘Let’s be double careful,’ I said. ‘Let’s both watch out and make sure that we are walking in a straight line. OK?’

  Alice nodded.

  ‘OK.’

  And so we walked some more.

  Much, much later, when I felt like my legs were going to fall off, I stopped and leaned against a tree.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t this tree look familiar to you?’

  Alice sighed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s a tree. It’s green and brown, just like all the others.’

  ‘Look properly,’ I said. ‘Look at this broken branch. Haven’t we seen this before?’

  Alice shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. There’s lots of trees with broken branches.’

  I looked around. Alice was right. There were lots of trees just like this one. I thought hard.

  ‘We should leave a trail,’ I said.

  ‘Like Hansel and Gretel? They used crumbs, didn’t they? We don’t have any bread. And if we did, I wouldn’t scatter it on the ground, I’d eat it.’

  ‘Yeah, but Hansel and Gretel used pebbles first, remember?’

  ‘But there are no pebbles here either.’

  Once again she was right. There wasn’t a single stone to be seen. Except for Alice and me, there was nothing to be seen except for trees and mossy stuff.

  We had to do something though. We had to know if we were walking in a straight line. Suddenly I had an idea. I reached up and broke two twigs off a tree.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘How about if we put these on the ground in a cross shape, and that will leave a trail?’

  ‘That’s a great idea,’ said Alice, and for one second I felt proud, before I started to feel scared again.

  Alice reached up and pulled off loads of twigs.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You go first, and we can do every second one.’

  And so we continued to walk, marking our path every few metres with two crossed twigs. After a while, my hands were cut from breaking twigs, my back was sore from bending down making the crosses, and my legs felt like I’d been walking for about a hundred years.

  I stopped to catch my breath.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  Alice looked at her stupid fancy watch that didn’t have a compass.

  ‘It’s ten past five,’ she said.

  That was very bad news. Even if we found our bikes immediately, we wouldn’t be back home by six. Mum was going to kill us.

  ‘Alice––’ I began, but she interrupted me.

  ‘Let’s keep walking for ten more minutes, and then we’ll stop for a rest. OK?’

  I nodded. All I wanted to do was get out of there, and get home as fast as I could.

  Just then Alice stopped so suddenly that I crashed into her.

  ‘That wasn’t ten minutes, was it?’ I said.

  Alice didn’t reply.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’ I asked.

  Instead of replying, she pointed down at the ground.

  I followed her pointed finger, and gulped. There on the ground in front of Alice, were two neatly crossed twigs.

  ‘Maybe someone else did that,’ I suggested. ‘Or maybe they just fell off the tree like that.’

  Alice walked a few metres and pointed again – two more neatly crossed twigs. I ran past her and saw two more.

  I threw myself down on the mossy ground.

  ‘We’re going around in a circle,’ I said, trying not to cry.

  ‘Remind me again why Hansel and Gretel left a trail,’ said Alice.

  ‘So they could follow it home,’ I said.

  ‘So starting it when …’ she began.

  I finished her sentence for her.

  ‘… we were already lost was a total waste of time. If we follow these twigs, we’ll just end up walking in an endless circle. It was a stupid, stupid idea. I am so dumb sometimes.’

  Alice sat down and put her arm around me.

  ‘You’re not dumb,’ she said. ‘You’re the cleverest girl I know.’

  ‘So why did I suggest a stupid trail then?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, at least now we know we’re walking around in circles,’ she said.

  ‘And knowing that will help us how exactly?’

  ‘Weeeell,’ said Alice slowly. ‘Now we know that we have to do something different.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Alice put her head down.

  ‘Sorry, Meg,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.’

  Neither of us said anything for a while. Suddenly I jumped up. ‘We are so totally stupid,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t we think of it before?’

  ‘Think of what?’

  ‘Why don’t we just use your phone and phone someone for help?’

  Alice still kept her head down.

  ‘I’m out of credit, remember? I used the last of it to text Grace in Lanzarote the other day.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But even without credit you can phone the police. Even I know that.’

  Alice still didn’t look up.

  ‘I know that too, but because I’m out of credit, I left my phone back at the house. I didn’t see any point in bringing it.’

  I sat down again. I didn’t want to think of Grace having fun in Lanzarote, but I couldn’t help it.

  ‘I bet you wish you were in Lanzarote now,’ I said.

  Alice looked up at last and gave me a small smile.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Who needs Lanzarote? I’d be happy to be back at your place, running around the garden, playing with Rosie.’

  Suddenly that sounded like the best thing in the whole world – just being out of this forest, and safe again.

  And it also felt like the most impossible thing in the whole world.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  We stayed sitting down for a very long time. There didn’t seem to be much point in walking, since we hadn’t the faintest idea which way we should walk.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I said after a while.

  ‘A bit,’ said Alice.

  ‘A bit? You’re only a bit hungry?’

  ‘OK. OK. So I’m very hungry,’ she said.

  ‘Me too. I wish we’d brought that food Mum
left for us.’

  ‘That was my fault,’ said Alice glumly. ‘You wanted to but I told you not to. You didn’t sneak an apple into your pocket, when I wasn’t looking, did you?’

  I shook my head.

  Alice put her hand into her pocket, and pulled out her money.

  ‘I’ve got forty-two euro. I think I’d pay all of that for one slice of pizza right now.’

  ‘I’m so hungry, I’d pay all of that for an apple right now,’ I said.

  ‘Or one slice of bread.’

  I had to giggle.

  ‘A plate of Mum’s lentil stew.’

  Alice giggled too.

  ‘Chick pea salad.’

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my entire life. Do you think we could starve to death?’

  ‘Nah. We could easily survive for a few days. We––’

  She stopped talking when she saw my face.

  ‘But we won’t have to survive for a few days. We’ll be out of here soon. Don’t worry.’

  I wanted to believe her, but couldn’t. I looked around.

  ‘There’s probably lots of stuff here that we could eat,’ I said.

  Alice picked up a handful of moss and dead leaves.

  ‘Even if we found something that looked nice,’ she said. ‘How would we know if it was safe to eat? We’d probably both have to eat different things, just in case one of the things was poisonous. Then at least one of us would survive.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No way. I’m scared enough already. What would I do if you died of poisoning and I was stuck out here all on my own? Or if you got really sick – I’d never be able to carry you.’

  Alice jumped up.

  ‘This is totally stupid,’ she said. ‘Why are we talking about starving to death, or being poisoned? We’re just being drama queens. And sitting here isn’t getting us anywhere. Let’s go.’

  ‘But what if we’re walking in the wrong direction?’ I asked.

  Alice stamped her foot.

  ‘At least we’ll be walking. We can’t just sit here.’

  And with that, she marched off. I hesitated for a second, and then I jumped up and followed her. Alice might be grumpy, but I so wasn’t staying there on my own.