Beginner's Luck (12 page)

After Sergeant Everard had established that Shelby
was guilty of no more than trespass, she put Shelby in
the police car and radioed the station. 'I've just found
the Shaw child. She was breaking into the Sunnyside
Nursery on Gully Way. She was with the Edel girl.
Can you call the Shaws and ask them to meet me at
Brenda Edel's now? Over.'

Sergeant Everard meant that they were heading for
the stables. The driveway entrance to the stables was
on a crossroad further down Gully Way.

'I wasn't breaking in,' said Shelby, crossing her
arms. 'I was trying to find help for Lindsey. She's hurt.
We've got to call a doctor.'

At the next set of traffic lights Sergeant Everard
turned right. Lindsey's place was only a few hundred
metres down the road.

When they pulled up Lindsey's mother ran out to
meet them.

'Where's Lindsey?' she asked.

'She's on the other side of Gully Way. She fell
down. She broke her collarbone,' Shelby said. Ms Edel
put her hand to her mouth. It occurred to Shelby that,
having no experience with broken bones at all, she
shouldn't really know what was wrong with Lindsey.
'I think, anyway. She's sore along here,' she explained,
rubbing along the top of her shoulder.

'What happened?'

'She tripped and fell down. I was already at the
bottom.'

'Fell down where?'

'Under the storm water tunnel along Gully Way.'
She pointed over her shoulder towards the busy road.
'I tried to tell the security guard but he didn't believe
me,' she said.

'What security guard?' Lindsey's mum asked.

'You don't have a history of telling the truth,'
Sergeant Everard replied.

Shelby bit her lip. The last time she had seen
the sergeant was at the police station. She had to go
in there and explain that she hadn't been abducted.
It was part of a plan that she and her friends had
cooked up to catch a horse thief – a foolish plan, as
it turned out. Shelby had tried to cover for her
friends, but Sergeant Everard had figured it out.
Shelby didn't think Sergeant Everard liked her very
much.

'On the other side of the storm water tunnel there's
a slope going down to a pool of water, but the slope
collapsed,' Shelby explained.

'What were you doing down there?' Sergeant
Everard asked.

'She's there by herself? In the dark?' Lindsey's
mum asked at the same time.

Shelby chose to answer the second question. 'No,
she's fine. She's with . . .' She took a deep breath. 'With
Blue.'

That was close! She nearly said 'Frank'. She was
going to have to be more careful.

The sergeant moved away to use her radio to
arrange an ambulance.

'Is she OK?' asked Mrs Edel.

Shelby nodded. 'It hurts her, but she'll be fine,
I think.'

Another car pulled into the driveway. Shelby
recognised her father's old Alfa Romeo Spyder. He
jumped out of the driver's seat and ran towards her.
'Where have you been? Are you all right?'

He hugged her. Shelby felt like crying when she
saw him. She was tired, sore and just wanted to go
home, but she managed hold the tears in.

'What happened?' he asked.

All three of the adults were staring at her.
She should have thought of a story on the way, but she
had been too busy being scared of the dark. Then
she remembered the bandage. They would wonder
about that when they found her.

'She hurt her ankle too, but that's not so bad.
Lindsey had a bandage in the pocket of her saddlecloth
– just in case.'

'In case of what?' Her father demanded.

'But Lindsey left on foot,' interrupted Lindsey's
mother. 'None of the horses are gone. She didn't have
a saddlecloth.'

Shelby blinked.
Of course, she was on foot!
she
thought. 'OK, I was riding and Lindsey was walking.
It was in
my
saddle blanket pocket. I meant to say
"mine", but I said "hers" accidentally, because I'm
really tired and I forgot. Anyway, we went through the
storm water tunnel under Gully Way.'

She hoped her father wouldn't know that she
didn't have a pocket in her saddle blanket.

'Lindsey would never do that. I've told her a
hundred times that it's dangerous,' Mrs Edel said.

'I made her,' blurted Shelby. 'It was a dare. I went
through the tunnel and then I couldn't get back again,
and so I called out to her and she was trying to save
me. That's when she fell.'

'But Lindsey wasn't anywhere near there,' Mrs Edel
said, frowning. 'When you didn't come back, Lindsey
looked for you in the Gully with all the others.'

Shelby flushed. There'd been people out looking
for her. She'd caused a fuss again.

'She went on foot,' Lindsey's mum finished.

'Shelby, none of this makes any sense,' said
Shelby's father.

'No, I know. But it's OK. We'll go and get Lindsey
out and it will all be over.' Shelby bit her lip and
hoped that they wouldn't ask any more awkward and
difficult questions.

'Where's Blue?' asked Mrs Edel.

'He's down there with Lindsey, just at the bottom
of the slope.'

'The slope that collapsed?' asked Sergeant Everard.

Shelby nodded.

'If it's collapsed then how are you going to get Blue
out?' Mrs Edel asked.

So much for no more difficult questions.

Shelby had never seen so many emergency services
people in real life. There were three trucks from Gully
Rescue Service, three police cars, two ambulances and
a fire truck. About twenty-five people in different
coloured overalls, but all with wide iridescent stripes,
milled around at the fence over the storm water
tunnel.

They had arrived in about ten minutes with their
sirens and lights whirling around on top, parking
haphazardly on the side of the road. It was still quite
noisy, as many of them had left their engines running
for the lights, and to power the equipment.

Sergeant Everard had closed Gully Way. One of the
police officers was redirecting the northbound traffic,
waving two orange lights in his hands that looked like
big ice-cream cones.

Shelby stood with her father and Lindsey's mum at
the edge of the group, trying to keep out of the way.
None of the rescue workers paid any attention to
them. The only one that glanced over every now and
then was Sergeant Everard, and she had such an
expression of disapproval on her face that Shelby
wished the sergeant would ignore them too.

The rescue trucks had poles on their roofs with
floodlights at the top. They had arranged the vehicles
in a semicircle and trained the lights into the ravine. It
was as bright as day down there now. She could see
the path that led into the mossy glade, but she
doubted that anyone else had noticed. Besides, they
were all busy with their lights, cables and hoses.

Lindsey was lying flat at the bottom, near the
water. She had her eyes open but was frowning against
the glare. One of the rescue men was talking to her.
He kept calling her 'Darl'.

Blue was tied to a tree nearby. It looked as though
Frank had undone his reins from the bridle and tied
one end of the joined reins to his noseband, to create
a makeshift halter and lead. He had also moved the
saddle to a spot between Lindsey and Blue. Shelby was
pleased to see that he'd rested it on its pommel.

The little paint pony watched the scene unfolding
with interest, and Shelby was proud of him for
remaining so calm, given all the shouting, lights and
engine noise happening above his head.

The rescue workers brought out a pair of bolt
cutters and made a hole in the hurricane fencing along
the top of the overpass. Then they assembled some
abseiling equipment, which they tied to the side of the
truck. One of the women from the ambulance stepped
into the harness and clambered down the hill. When
she had reached the bottom another rescue worker
winched down her plastic medical kit.

The ambulance lady hurried over to where Lindsey
was lying, where she tended to her, giving her a needle
and checking all of her limbs. Another man from the
ambulance had brought over a blue plastic stretcher
that looked a bit like a surfboard with handles on the
side. The rescue workers lowered that down to the
bottom and then the man from the ambulance abseiled
down the side as well.

They put a big white collar around Lindsey's neck
and Mrs Edel started biting her fingernails.

'It's OK,' Shelby told her. 'That must be just a precaution.
There's nothing wrong with her neck.'

'How do you know?' Lindsey's mum asked.

'Because she sat up before, and moved it about
heaps. It's her shoulder that's sore.'

Lindsey's mum looked down at her daughter. She
didn't seem convinced.

After a while nothing seemed to be happening.
Shelby sat down and crossed her legs.

'What's going on now?' she asked her father.

'I guess they need to find a way to get her out,' he
replied.

A few minutes later a much bigger truck trundled
into view. On the back was a crane folded down, with
its long hook curled up at the back and tied off with a
chain. A few of the other emergency trucks were
moved to make room for it. More people in bright
overalls jumped out of the truck, setting up tall orange
witches' hats and making hand signals to the driver.

'I should have brought the boys,' Shelby's father
said. 'They would have loved this.'

The rescue workers attached a new stretcher – this
one looked like an oversized metal breadbasket – to
the crane's hook. Another one of the rescue workers
was harnessed to it. The engine roared as it lifted the
man with the stretcher up and over the fence, and
slowly lowered him into the ravine below.

Shelby was watching Blue. She wanted to go down
there to be with him. She thought he would be frightened.
He snorted apprehensively and stood alert with
his ears pricked, but he didn't leap about and strangle
himself on the reins as she was afraid he would.

When the stretcher was close to the ground the
man unfastened himself, and he and the two ambulance
workers set about getting Lindsey from the
ground and into the metal basket. As they lifted her,
Shelby could see that Lindsey's limbs were floppy, so
she guessed they must have given her some pretty
strong painkillers.

Once she was inside, they strapped Lindsey tightly
across her chest, tummy and knees with what looked
like a seatbelt. The rescue worker untied rolls of the
seatbelt material from the corners, and as the crane
lifted him and Lindsey up into the air, they unfurled
like ribbons. Shelby wondered what they were for.

Lindsey's mum had her fingers hooked into the
fence mesh. Her face was white and stretched into a
grimace.

When the basket moved over the fence, four rescue
workers stepped forward holding their hands in the
air, and Shelby understood that they were trying to
catch the ribbons to keep the basket steady as it was
lowered to the ground.

One of the ambulance workers had a stretcher on
wheels, and with much shouting and waving at the
crane driver, and the four steadying lines, they were
able to place Lindsey directly onto the ambulance
stretcher.

Lindsey's mother rushed over to her. Shelby was
going to follow but her father held her back.

'Best keep out of the way for now. You can talk to
her later,' he said.

Lindsey and her mother were stowed in the back
of the ambulance and it whisked away with its lights
on. When it reached the part of Gully Way where the
traffic was flowing the siren came on, and Shelby
could hear the course it took as it rushed along Gully
Way and off towards the hospital.

The rescue workers started to pack their gear.
Shelby was amazed at how much they could squeeze
into each truck's roller door compartments. She
watched as the ambulance workers, still in the ravine,
inched their way up the slope and back through the
hole in the fence.

One by one the trucks filled with people and drove
away.

The crane personnel stacked the witches' hats on
top of one another and stowed them inside the truck.

'Hang on a second! Shelby walked quickly towards
Sergeant Everard. 'Stop! Where are they going?'
Shelby asked. 'What about Blue?'

Sergeant Everard shook her head. 'I'm sorry, but
we're only in the business of rescuing people.'

Shelby watched helplessly as the crane rumbled away.
She ran after it, waving her arms and shouting. 'No!
You can't go yet. My horse is down there!' But it kept
moving.

She turned to her father, feeling a lump in her
throat and butterflies in her stomach. 'Dad, make
them stop!'

He shook his head. 'There's nothing I can do,
Honey. Blue will be OK for one night. We'll come
back in the morning and decide what to do. Let's
get you home. How long is it since you've eaten
something?'

Shelby stared at him. 'You can't be serious. He has
no water. He's tied up. We can't leave him like that!'

'He will be fine for twelve hours.'

'No! I'm not going. We have to get him out now!'
Shelby insisted.

Her father frowned. 'You know, in the olden days
when horses were useful they were tied up for a lot
longer than that, and they had to pull and carry things
as well – heavy things – in the rain and snow. Blue will
be fine. Now, get in the car.'

Shelby looked at his face and could see that he was
nearing the end of his patience. There was no point
arguing with him, so she did as she was told.

At home her mother warmed a bowl of pasta that
they had kept aside for her.

'I don't understand what happened. Tell me from
the beginning,' her mother said.

Shelby picked at her fingernails. 'Well, I entered
the competition.' She decided to skip the part where
she forged her mother's signature. 'And I rode with
Erin and Lindsey for a while, but then these guys were
riding past really fast, and I kind of lost them.'

That was mostly true. 'So I was riding along and
I got to the storm water tunnel, and I thought that
nobody had looked to see what was on the other side
of it. I thought that the Matchstick Town was
probably down there. So I went in.' Shelby stopped.

'Yes?' prompted her father.

'So I got to the bottom and I tried to climb out
again, but the slope collapsed, and then . . .' She
skipped a few hours. 'And then I saw that somebody
was coming along, but I didn't know who it was at
first, but it was Lindsey and she was climbing down
the steep part.' Shelby chose not to specify which steep
part. 'And she fell and hurt her shoulder. So we . . .
I . . .' She thought about the bandage, but decided not
to mention it again. 'So I climbed out the other end
and came around the back of the electricity station.
Then there was the back of the nursery and I thought
it would be faster to go through it.'

Shelby's mother shook her head.

'And I was a little bit afraid of the dark. So I
jumped the fence, but there was a big dog there. The
security guard came. He wasn't very nice. He thought
I was a burglar, because I had black marks on my face,
but it wasn't, it was burnt . . .' She almost said
'
damper and golden syrup
', but stopped herself in
time.

'Anyway, he wouldn't help, even when I explained
about Lindsey. He called the police, and then Sergeant
Everard took me back to the stables. You know everything
that happened after that.'

'What was burnt? Shelby, you left the house ten
hours ago!' her father said.

She shrugged. 'Well, that's what happened, mostly.'

'What do you mean
mostly
?' he demanded.

She thought about it for a little while. She didn't
want to tell them anything. She wanted to check with
Lindsey first. She squirmed in the chair. 'OK, I fell
off,' she blurted. 'Twice. But the second time I wasn't
on Blue. It was later. I fell into the billa . . . into the
pool of water, but I didn't want to tell you about the
falling bits, because you worry about quadriplegia
already. I don't want to have to play ping-pong.'

Her mother took hold of Shelby's hand. 'Honey,
we want you to tell us everything that happens to you.
Sometimes we will be cross, but we just want you to
be safe.'

Shelby really wanted to tell her parents the whole
story, but she knew that it would come out wrong.

'There's an old man who lives down there secretly.
I thought he was a bunyip and then I thought he was
Santa. He fed us damper and told us stories, and
asked us to promise not to tell anyone he's there
because he's afraid of raffles.'

Her parents would never believe her. They were big
on stranger danger. They would think he was some kind
of dangerous weirdo, or a drug dealer or something.

Even if she got the story out in a way that they
understood, she couldn't tell. It was different from
lying to Erin about the Matchstick Town. That was a
choice between right and wrong, but this was a choice
between two wrongs – keep information from her
parents, or betray Frank and Lindsey. She had to
figure out which was the worse wrong.

Now Shelby understood why Lindsey had behaved
so strangely with her on the day that they met in the
rain and during the Matchstick Challenge. It wasn't
Lindsey's secret to tell, and it wasn't Shelby's either.

'That's all I can say until I see Lindsey,' she said
quietly.

Shelby's dad blew his top, yelling all the things
that every parent yells at a teenager. 'You tell us what
happened right this second! Don't you keep secrets
from us, young lady. I won't have it!' His face was all
red and he stared at her. 'Spit it out right now!'

Her mother rested her head on her chin and
sighed. 'I know that there comes a time in every child's
life when they stop telling their parents everything,
but I just didn't think it would be so soon, Shel.'

Looking at her mother's face, Shelby hoped that
she had made the right wrong choice.

She went to bed straight after a shower. She had
intended to get up in the middle of the night after her
parents had gone to sleep and head to The Pocket
then, but when she opened her eyes she could already
see the grey haze of first light.

Shelby dressed quickly in a tee-shirt, long shorts and
joggers, and shoved a tube of sunscreen into one of the
pockets on the side of her knee. She wouldn't need it
for a few hours, and she could apply it on the way.

Out in the garage Shelby quietly shuffled objects
around – a suitcase, a tent, an esky and a plastic box
of her dad's gardening tools. Behind it all she found
what she was looking for – her old bike. It was a pink
Y-frame, with white wheels – a bit dinky-looking, and
too small for her now, but she was pleased to see that
the tyres were still inflated. There was a combination
lock and chain wound around the handlebars from
when she used to ride it to primary school, and she
tried to remember the four-digit code.

She thought opening the garage door would be too
loud, so she wheeled it back into the house and out
the front door, closing the screen carefully behind her.

Shelby slid on her helmet and cycled down the
street. There were no cars and the air was fresh and
cool. She hadn't ridden her bike for a long time and
after a few minutes she could already feel some tightness
in the muscles along her thighs.

As she turned the corner at the end of the street
she smiled. Before she owned Blue she used to call her
bike Misty and, when she rode it, she pretended that
she was horse-riding and that the gutters were jumps.

Back then she had wanted a horse so badly. She
dreamed about it all the time. She read all the books
and watched movies that had horses in them. Her
parents thought she would grow out of it, but she
hadn't yet.

The newsagent was open, and as she passed the
bakery she could smell the wonderful aroma of freshly
cooked bread. Her stomach grumbled and she realised
that she'd forgotten breakfast. She wished she'd
brought some money. Their cheese and bacon rolls
were the best. Shelby often bought one while she
waited for the bus to school.

As she headed uphill Shelby stood up, pumping the
pedals, and the bike swayed from side to side. Up
ahead a man in a moke was delivering the newspaper,
flicking the rolled-up paper out the window and over
the fence. She waved to him as she passed and continued
up the hill.

At the next corner she held her hand out, indicating
right, even though there was no one to see her, and
she whizzed along the flat, enjoying the wind in her
face.

Eventually she reached the corner of Gully Way.
The traffic was light but moving along swiftly. She
waited for a break in the traffic and turned right,
crossing the lanes and then tucking into the shoulder.
She didn't like riding along the busy roads. When the
cars whooshed past the wind nearly knocked her over.

Shelby assumed that nobody would have fixed the
fence above the storm water tunnel from the night
before. She wanted to check on Blue first, and then
she planned to ride around to the back of the nursery
and follow the path that led to the rock face.

The road above the tunnel looked empty, now that
she had seen it crowded with emergency vehicles.

At the top she stopped, dropped the bike and
locked it to one of the fence posts with the chain that
she kept around the handlebars. She climbed through
the hole in the fence, scanning the area below.

Shelby could see the billabong, with its resident
cormorant, and her saddle rug at the edge where
Lindsey had been lying on it. She could see her old
saddle still resting on its pommel. What she couldn't
see was Blue.