by Julia Jones
Like no-one trusted Donny. How would Skye know that the fat policeman and the horrible woman were keeping him away from her? That he wanted to come. Wherever she was.
Donny got back into his story again quickly. He’d be hammering on the walls if not.
John-in-the-book was a really good sailor. So was his sister. It seemed like they all were. They stepped the mast and found cleats under thwarts. Then they pointed her bows into the wind and hauled away … boom, yard and sail; painter, forestay, sheets and halyards; blocks and sheaves; tiller and rudder. He didn’t properly understand the words but the language was lovely. It was like words that he’d known before he knew any words at all. Magic words.
Donny found he was shaking slightly. Breathing a bit fast.
So he sat up in bed again. Looked round the bare room.
There were no other books or pictures in here but the carers had left some plain scrap paper, a pencil and crayons.
Donny began to draw a diagram of how he thought John-inthe- book was fitting the dinghy equipment together. The words fell easily into their proper places. Then he read a bit more. They were ready to set sail.
Was that a baby crying? Donny lifted his head and listened for a moment. Yes, somewhere in the distance. In this bleak house. One of the carers had evidently got up to try and quiet it but the crying went on and on.
“Poor baby,” thought Donny, as he and his crew slipped slowly out towards the mouth of the bay. Then they rounded the point and felt the steady light breeze behind them. Donny forgot the baby. He was asleep.
He’d like to have woken up in a boat. Or in a tent on an island. Or, best of all, back in the bungalow in Leeds with Skye and Granny and none of this happening at all.
But he didn’t. He was in the same hard bed in the same bare room and the male carer, Gerald, was banging on the door telling him he had to get up and get ready for school. He’d supplied thin grey trousers and a white shirt that had obviously come out of the same bin bag as the pyjamas. At least Donny got to wear his own shoes.
Then there’d been breakfast and Wendy had dropped him at the school bus stop. She was hassling to go to some meeting and had a temporary bus pass he could use. Gerald gave him an old rucksack and a re-filled water bottle and asked whether he’d like a re-cycled tissue from the Greenworld box by the door. Donny hadn’t bothered answering.
There’d been some other kids in the kitchen but they’d looked grumpy. Two boys, he thought, possibly a girl? That must have been the baby he’d heard in the night, sticky and a bit whiny in a plastic high chair.
There wasn’t time to get to know any of them even if he’d wanted to. And none of the school kids said hi when he climbed on board the battered single-decker. He didn’t care. Let them listen to their iPods or play games on their phones. He didn’t want to say hi to them either.
It was actually a nice day – like it usually was when kids had to go back to school. These roads were quite narrow and the hedges were tall and leafy. Donny kept his face to the window as if he was doing a sponsored stare. There were trees and fields and not many houses. Not like home. It reminded him of all those little roads he and Skye had been driving down together.
Or the summer holidays that Granny used to take them on. The ones she said were adventures except he knew that she’d been planning them for weeks. Everything would be properly stowed and labelled and the van would be wax-polished and their tidy house left even tidier. And they’d be away to the hills or the moors or maybe a forest. She always hid the maps when they were travelling then brought them out once they’d arrived. It was a bit of a strange thing to do but he’d got used to it. It made a sort of space between their home life and the new world of their holiday.
Donny felt a sudden hotness around his eyes. He squeezed them tight shut for a moment and took deep breaths. Maybe he should have said yes to Gerald’s tissue.
Nah. He could feel one corner of the Swallows and Amazons book in his rucksack digging into his back between his shirt and the seat. Granny’s secret book. And he’d packed the crayons and pencil and the diagram he’d started, showing how the boat worked. They were his. They’d do.
CHAPTER THREE
By the Shores of Gitche Gumee
Wednesday, September 13th, morning
There were glimpses of water in the distance through the trees. Donny used his sleeve to rub the place where his breath had misted the window. It wasn’t that clean but – so?
“You got a bus pass for that thing, Ribiero? Takes up way more space than a new Year Seven. They’re such pathetic midgets.”
Some boy was calling out from a few seats back. Probably at the person who’d sat down next to Donny. Someone lugging something big. He didn’t bother looking round to see what they were like.
“Hey man,” objected a warm, drawly voice – a girl’s voice – “Will you give my cello some respect? The parentals commanded extra practice time or no trip to Weymouth this weekend.”
“What’s special about Weymouth, Ribiero – donkey rides?”
“I do so hate to disappoint. This weekend we have the Laser 4.7 championships at Weymouth. Are you impressed? No. But that’s because you have no idea what I’m talking about. You probably think the Laser 4.7 championships means crawling around on your hands and knees in some redundant cinema playing paint ball with the lights out.”
The boy didn’t answer and there were a few uncertain laughs. Donny didn’t know what a Laser 4.7 was either but he wasn’t going to ask. This girl next to him had attitude. Okay the boy had sounded hard but she was scary.
“Lighten up, Xanth. Loads of people here know that Lasers are sailing dinghies and there’s different sail plans for the different categories. It’s just no-one’s as obsessed as you. Radials or 4.7s – they can get along without the knowledge.”
This girl had the same warm voice but lighter. She sounded nice. He could feel the one next to him settle back in her seat.
“Little sis,” he heard her say, “such people have sad, sad lives.”
Donny carried on looking out of the window. He wondered how much longer this journey would take. Not that he wanted to get there. He felt tired, disorientated, incredibly nervous. He didn’t need a new school. He needed to go see his mum.
The bus made an unexpected turn to the right. Donny’s forehead bumped hard against the glass.
That was such an amazing sight! It was like the world had sunk. No more trees and hedges and lumpy fields; but wide, flat, shining water as far as Donny’s eyes could see. For a few magical seconds it filled his view; blue-grey and glinting like a CD in the sun. Then, as the bus completed its turn and the horizon crowded back in, there was a pounding of wings, harsh cries and a skein of geese muscled their way upwards.
Those geese were ‘wawa’ – in Ojibwe language.
Forgetting everyone he stood up to watch them fly. Then, abruptly, he sat down again, twisting backwards to get a last glimpse of the lake or sea or whatever it was. He felt like he’d had a vision, straight from Skye’s favourite poem.
“By the shores of Gitche Gumee!”
That was the first line. He was breathing a bit fast in his excitement. The book in the rucksack dug harder into his spine as he leaned back in his seat, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment to keep that image safe in his head.
Then he remembered where he was.
On a school bus. Behaving like a complete idiot.
He shrank down, praying no one had heard him.
“Gitche Gumee! In your dreams – !” said the girl with attitude next to him. “Gitche Gumee was one of the Great Lakes. We lived in Canada five years. You could drop the whole of this county into any one of them and it’d sink without a ripple. That’s a reservoir. It stores water for people to flush their toilets and make cups of tea when it’s half time in the footie. And if you can’t sail properly you can rent some old Topper and blow about for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.”
Another rude person! Were they all h
ostile down here?
He turned to look at her. Reluctantly. She was tall, probably taller than him if they were standing up. Older too, he thought. Dark-skinned with a mass of springy black hair pulled into a short pony-tail. There was maybe a glint of amusement but Donny wasn’t going to bet on it.
“Maggi and I think it’s so totally un-cool.”
She seemed to want him to take her on. But why?
He noticed that she had a cello in a scuffed wooden travelling case beside her and across the aisle sat another girl, very similar at first sight, except prettier. They both looked stylish; their blazers were shapely, blouses snowy white and their school ties knotted fashionably low.
The second girl was looking across at him now.
Donny tried not to care that his grey trousers were a couple of inches too short and showed his shrunken fawn socks. He didn’t have a tie or a blazer or PE kit yet. The social worker, Sandra, was going to meet him at school and see what else she could find in the lost property store.
“Xanth, I just cannot believe you sometimes! Do you not drink tea or go to the loo or even wash? I’m happy to say that I do. I like clean water. And people who live near lakes use them as reservoirs you know. Even in Canada.”
They must be sisters. It looked as if the older one was about to speak but the pretty one carried on. “Your attitude totally sucks! Who persuaded Dad to buy us both wind-surfers last year so we could compete in the Tattingstone championships? And who was really gutted when she lost to that boy from Windermere? Do I see her sitting on this bus? I believe I do.”
The older girl scowled. Then she laughed. “Oh okay. I admit. The reservoir does have its moments … about once in a thousand years. But wind-surfing’s not sailing. I could have beaten him to a stranded jellyfish if we’d been down on the river in dinghies.”
“Maybe he didn’t need to go down the river. Maybe he was just really good at what he did. Maybe he loved his surfer like you love Spray.”
Evidently this was going too far. “Take it down, little sis, a surfer is a plank. My Spray is a foam-flyer, a sea-arrow. She has beauty – she has soul!”
But the younger girl still hadn’t finished setting her older sister straight. “And you were way out of order with this guy,” she indicated Donny. “Dad told you to stop yelling at people the moment they say something you don’t agree with. Who else in this bus has ever even heard of Gitche Gumee or read Hiawatha? Anyone at all?” She looked round but most of the other kids blanked her. “Of course they haven’t, why should they? I think you should grovel.”
The older girl looked at Donny as if she’d suddenly remembered he was human. “It’s my big mouth again. I’m sorry for what I said, stranger.”
She smiled and paused as if she was giving him room to speak. Her arrogant face softened into a beautiful smile, wide and warm and totally genuine. But he couldn’t say anything. His brain was stunned. Too much had happened over the last twenty-four hours. It was like a knock-down and he was going to stay on the floor a while.
Anyway Hiawatha was for him and Skye. And Granny. The private world. It wasn’t for sharing with some gabby girl on a Suffolk school bus.
“I shouldn’t have spoken like that. It was mainly a wind-up but how could you know? It’s your first day. You’re just a dude. Don’t let it get to you.”
She paused again. Donny managed a sort of shrug. Then she held out her hand in a curiously formal manner, made awkward by the cramped seats of the bus.
“Hi,” she said as if they were being introduced in some drawing-room. “I’m Xanthe Ribiero and this is my sister, Marguerite, usually known as Maggi. You might make the common mistake of thinking she’s a bimbo but actually she’s not. And I’m not as bad as I sound. Believe me. What’s your name anyway?”
“Donny,” he managed, and took her outstretched hand. It appeared he had no choice. “Donny Walker. Adults sometimes make jokes about some whisky called something like that but they’re not particularly funny.”
“Adults’ jokes so often aren’t,” she agreed, shaking his hand firmly. “Welcome to Gallister High, Donny. If anyone else tries to give you grief tell them you’re a friend of Xanthe’s. Xanthe Ribiero, Year Eleven.”
Her sister went back to chatting with her neighbour but Xanthe relapsed into silence until they arrived at the school. Then she got off the bus with him and showed him the way to the admin entrance.
“By the way,” she said, “in case Hiawatha’s some sort of family thing for you, I’ll let you into one of ours. My family call this cello Long John – out of Treasure Island. You know? Partly because of it only having one leg but mainly because they say I’m like a wild parrot, squawking on its shoulder. You should hear me play – I am truly terrible!” She pulled a rueful face, then added, “You can blurt it on the bus if you want revenge but most of them won’t get it. They don’t usually do books. Not classics anyway.”
“By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big Sea Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, daughter of the moon, Nokomis …”
Donny was sitting in a sunny corner of the Gallister High School library. He’d got his bits of uniform, been given a swipe card for the catering system and allocated to a tutor group. Then apparently he needed to do some tests but there was nobody available to give him the papers.
The social worker, Sandra, had been okay but she was gone. The administrator was looking harassed. Her phone had been ringing all the time she had been filling in his forms for free school meals. Now it started again.
“Try the library,” she said, “and ask someone to show you to the DT suite later. Your tutor’s Mr McMullen. This is A block, by the way,” she added, already reaching for the telephone. “Straight up those stairs. Ask the librarian for an induction session so you qualify for a resource card. Tell her you’re new. Only temporary.” She picked up the receiver and turned away from him, “Good morning, Gallister High School …”
He’d done the induction, got the card, then he’d found a place where he couldn’t easily be seen and dozed off drawing ‘wawa’, a picture letter to send to Skye. If anyone would give him her address.
A colourless girl had approached while Donny slept. She picked up the drawing and studied it a while. Then she put it down and walked quietly away to use one of the computers. Her face showed nothing of her thoughts.
By the shores of Gitche Gumee… Donny shook himself properly awake. The dream had been good but he was hungry. He stood up to see whether there was a clock in the library.
Then he noticed what was out of the window.
It was real. Why shouldn’t it be? The reservoir was maybe half a mile away across some fields. What a view!
Xanthe Ribiero had been right, though. Looked at from above it wasn’t really big. Not like an inland sea. There was a concrete wall at the end nearest to him, with metal railings and a low square building that looked as if it might be a pumping station. And beyond the concrete wall, their coloured sails bright against the glitter of the water, he could see dinghies.
Sailing dinghies.
Sailing …
The pull was so strong that he stood up from his chair and was walking towards the door before he realised what he was doing. How could anyone ever settle to any work in here?
“If you’ve finished, you’ll need your card to check out with,” called the librarian. “We’re monitoring student use-patterns this term.”
“Oh … no … I haven’t … quite …yet. I was … er … fetching something.”
He crossed to the bag-park and took out Swallows and Amazons. Then he helped himself to some more paper from the recycling tray and went to sit down again. Obviously he couldn’t simply walk out of the school, cross the fields and step into a boat. He had to think. He was on his own here, a castaway, marooned in un-charted waters.
Un-charted waters … okay … yes, Donny did know what he should do. What those kids in the book would have done. They’d get going on a map. He’d been looking at maps the who
le summer as he navigated down from Leeds: why stop now? He needed to know where he was: where his mum was: where Great Aunt Ellen would arrive.
He got up again and asked the librarian for the school postcode and whether it was okay to print out a map of the local area from the Internet. She said it would be fine as long as he took only a single copy.
So he did that and then he began drawing a map of his own. He traced the outline from his Internet printout and promised himself that he’d add places as he discovered them. Even plotting the school bus route would make him feel less like a package.
There’d been distant glimpses of water before the reservoir. He’d keep a lookout, check if he could work out what they were. Plot them.
The printout showed that his school was in the middle of a triangle with rivers on two of its sides. They were the River Orwell and the River Stour and the point where they met was … Shotley!
So now he’d go navigate himself some lunch.
CHAPTER FOUR
An Aid to Buoyancy
Wednesday, September 13th, afternoon
The footpath led him to a little beach half-hidden in a bay. Trees ran almost to the water. He stood where grass met sand and he watched.
Bunking off from school had been ridiculously easy. With a good slab of lasagne inside him plus apple juice, muffins and custard he’d felt so mellow that he’d almost considered joining in some lessons for the afternoon. But his common sense told him that this was the time to go. When he was so new as to be practically invisible.
There’d been a bad moment when he thought he’d seen the snakey lady talking to the school administrator. Checking up on him? Donny didn’t wait to find out. He dodged down a crowded corridor and discovered, by luck, that it took him to the DT block. So he had turned up to registration but his tutor, Mr McMullen, wasn’t there. Some bored-looking woman was marking the register and she didn’t have any tests for him to do. Or a timetable. She ticked his name on the bottom of her list and asked him if he knew where he was going next. “Yes I do, thank you,” he’d said, not lying.
