The Other Side of Nowhere (9 page)

But I was struggling to keep up. From what I could piece together, for some reason, Nick’s dad – the only person on earth who knew where we were – might
not
be coming to get us anytime soon. I had no idea what was making Nick think that, but I also had zero desire to push him on it, so I shrugged at George. She had as much chance as I did of getting an answer out of him – probably more, given she didn’t try to drown him the night before.

George chewed on her fingernail and I could almost hear the cogs whirring as she processed what was happening. ‘We don’t have any water,’ she said, half to herself.

‘Exactly,’ said Nick, sparking up. ‘So let’s get going as soon as we can.’

Every bone in my body, every instinct was screaming the same thing:
Stay put, be patient and don’t do anything stupid.

‘Well?’ said Nick looking around. It sounded like a challenge. When his blue eyes settled on me, my heart quickened. It
was
a challenge. It was a challenge to me.

I was totally unprepared for any of this. Nick was a person who I never argued with, hardly ever traded a cross word with. If anything I always backed down.

I stood up, feeling totally confused. I couldn’t look at him, but I couldn’t agree with him either.

‘I think we should stay,’ I said, my eyes shooting down to the sand.

‘Me too,’ said George, with all the assurance I wished I had.

Nick nodded slowly, biting on his lip. ‘Matt? What about you?’ he asked pointedly. ‘Stay or go?’

My stomach somersaulted. Nine times out of ten, if I said ‘black’ Matt would say ‘white’, so I wasn’t expecting him to agree with me. But I hoped he might feel torn about siding against George.

‘Jeez, I dunno,’ he said scratching the back of his neck. ‘I guess stay?’ He looked apologetically at Nick.

‘Three to one. We stay,’ George announced, glaring at Nick.

‘Fair enough,’ Nick said tight lipped. ‘But you’re wrong. No-one knows we’re here. We have stuff-all to eat, no water and in about an hour it’s going to be hot as an oven on this beach. So I guess I’ll see you guys around.’

Then he turned his back on us and started off along the beach.

‘Come off it, Nick,’ I yelled. I never imagined he would go it alone after we voted.

‘What is his problem?’ George asked, staring after him.

‘Beats me,’ I said, fighting to keep the quaver from my voice.

As I watched Nick head towards the rocks at the end of the beach my stomach began to ache again. I felt sure that somehow I had just massively let him down. Again.

Standing in a moody silence on the beach, the three of us might not have moved at all if George hadn’t spoken.

‘If, for some reason that I completely don’t get, we do have to spend another night here, there’s no way I’m sleeping on a rock again,’ she said, hands firmly planted on her hips in a stance that reminded me of Mum. Right at that moment I was pretty happy to be told what to do, so Matt, George and I agreed to split up to search for a better camping spot and to meet back at the cave in one hour, assuming no-one had come to get us by then.

I wandered off along a line of trees, looking for a way in to the bush. But it was thick and seemingly impenetrable. I quickly discovered that anything that looked like an opening soon came to a dead-end, blocked by a wall of leaves, vines and dead wood. I also found out that every plant seemed to scratch, prick or slice. After being slashed to bits each time I tried to get through, I was just ready to give up when I came upon the first sign of a track of sorts. It was massively overgrown, but nonetheless I managed to find a way through.

A fallen tree blocked the path, but beyond it I could see a clearing about the size of a tennis court, dotted with pink and yellow wildflowers.

I clambered over the fallen tree and made my way across the clearing. There, the ground began to rise, lazily at first, then quite steeply, up to the base of the escarpment. Scattered among the trees lay dozens of large boulders, like giant marbles whiskered with furry green moss. I paused in front of three massive rocks that were tucked behind a cluster of four tall trees with trunks as thick as lampposts. The trees were spaced out in an almost perfect square. I figured we might be able to hang the sheet between them somehow, like a bivouac, and build a fire in the shelter of the rocks. The ground was soft, thick with leaf litter.

That ought to make Her Royal Highness happy
, I thought and headed back to tell the others.

Neither George nor Matt had found anything better and there was still no sign of a rescue party, so we packed up what little we had and headed back along the beach towards the forest spot I found.

‘Should we wait for Nick?’ George suggested as we came to the beginning of the path.

I hesitated for a moment, not sure if I was really ready to be making decisions without him. George was watching me through squinted eyes. I wondered whether she doubted I could even make this call on my own.

I took off my shirt and wrapped it around a stick. ‘Look, I’ll leave this as a marker. He’ll figure out we’re around here somewhere.’ I dug the stick into the sand, out from the tree line a bit, so there was no way Nick could miss it when he came back along the beach.

Matt ran off into the bush and in seconds was out of sight. George followed me so closely that I had to be careful not to flick her with each overhanging branch we brushed past.

‘Johnno, what happened to Nick’s mum?’

I should have known she wasn’t tailing me out of fear of being left behind. ‘Long story,’ I said, vaguely.

‘We’re not exactly pressed for time, Johnno.’

‘Guess not.’ For a moment I didn’t say anything, partly because I wasn’t sure where to start, but also because I was annoyed with George. Sooner or later every girl that met Nick wanted to know about his family. Why was it always me they came to?
The Nick Barnes biography, as told by John Jones.
Why couldn’t George be different from other girls, like she usually was?

‘Well, basically, after Nick was born, his mum couldn’t handle it, so she left,’ I started, trying to sound matter-of-fact about something that had hung over Nick his entire life.

‘What do you mean, like, straightaway? Like, at the hospital?’

‘Not exactly. She got sick after he was born. Mum reckons it was depression, but whatever it was she ended up back in hospital. For some reason his dad couldn’t look after him either so Nick got shipped off to his grandparents. To the farm.’

‘What? When he was a baby?’

‘Yep.’

‘Wow,’ she said softly from behind me. ‘For how long?’

‘Ages. I think his dad came and saw him a bit, like on weekends and stuff. But his mum didn’t see him for about a year, maybe more.’

‘Wow,’ she said again. ‘That’s so sad.’

‘Well, it doesn’t get any better,’ I said shortly. ‘When his mum finally did get out of hospital, Nick came back to the city. They moved into a house in our street and that’s how we became mates. Everything seemed pretty normal to me when we were little, but I guess as I got a bit older I could tell something was up. I don’t think his mum was quite right in the head. She was always shouting, at Nick, at his dad. Like, everything and everyone just got up her nose. Then one day Nick comes home from school – he was, like, eight or something – and she’s gone.’

‘And he never saw her again?’

‘Nope.’

George fell quiet for a bit. Only the crunch of leaves and twigs behind me let me know she was still there.

‘He’s different to what I was expecting,’ she said at last.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know exactly. He’s not as laid-back as you made him sound. More intense, I guess.’

We’d reached the fallen tree and I leant against its damp bark, cooling my back. I could see the concentration on George’s face. I guessed she must be taking in everything I’d told her about Nick and trying to match it up to what he was like in person.

Trying to figure out Nick was a pastime I had given up a long time ago. Sure, he was my best friend, but could I say that I really knew Nick Barnes? Could anybody?

‘I guess he is kind of intense. I’m just used to that. Anyway, Nick and his dad moved to Shell Harbour a few years ago, to look after the farm. That’s when he left the city for good.’

George nodded, but didn’t say anything.

‘You know, I was talking with Dad about it,’ I continued slowly. ‘About Nick moving away to the farm. He said going back to the farm for Nick would be like going from a rooster to a feather duster. I didn’t get it at the time, but now maybe I do. Nick was
the
guy at school – smart, funny, captain of every team he played in – the one all the girls liked and the guys wanted to be friends with. Then one day that’s all gone and he’s slogging it out on some farm in the middle of nowhere.’

George nodded slowly. ‘That must have been so hard. I mean, to have to drop out of school and just leave your whole life behind. I just can’t imagine what that must have been like. Have you ever asked him about it?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said quickly. ‘He can tell me stuff anytime he wants.’ But even as I said it I wondered if I really believed that. Nick and I had played together side by side since the day he moved into our street. And up until the day he moved away, I couldn’t name one memorable moment in my life that didn’t in some way involve Nick. So sure, we’d talked about stuff, all sorts of stuff. But did I really know how he felt about things that really mattered? Had Nick ever really confided in me?

‘But he wouldn’t volunteer anything,’ George said, as if reading my mind. ‘Maybe you should ask him sometime.’

Suddenly I didn’t want to talk to George about Nick anymore. Or about how George thought Nick felt. I wanted to tell George how I felt. I wanted her to know about me, not Nick. But the very thought was too confusing. I felt a tingling flush of awkward embarrassment that caused me to turn away and climb over the tree trunk.

‘Yeah, maybe I will,’ I said offering her a hand as she climbed over the trunk. ‘C’mon. It’s not far now.’

Matt was busy preparing our campsite when we arrived. He’d already cleared the ground between the four trees, so we got to work with the bed sheet. We propped it in the middle with a long stick and had enough rope to secure two corners to the trees. We found some creeper vine to secure the other two ends then pulled the sheet tight between the four trees, just high enough for us to stand without stooping. Underneath was a clean floor of sand and soft grass.

‘Luxury! This is so much better than the cave,’ said George, lying down with her arms behind her head.

I winked at Matt. ‘Well if you’re happy, Princess Georgina, then your slaves’ work is done. May we have a swim, your ladyship?’ The sun was high in the sky, and even in the shade I was sweltering.

‘But I’m starving,’ moaned Matt, ‘and I need a drink.’

‘I would kill for a drink,’ agreed George.

I nodded. My mouth was all clagged and dry, and when I tried to muster up spit there was none there at all.

We all agreed to a swim first to cool off and then we’d hunt for fresh water and maybe some berries or something. Starting back along the path towards the beach, we were in high spirits. Matt was in fine form, chirping continuously about nothing in particular, encouraged by George. I was zoning in and out of the conversation and doing my best not to get sucked in by Matt’s taunts and jibes.

Maybe if Matt hadn’t been yapping so much I might have noticed the sound earlier. As it was, I felt it more than heard it. A kind of throbbing vibration. As we came out onto the beach, we all looked skywards, and suddenly the throb became a roar and, seemingly, just metres above the treetops was the grey-white underbelly of a plane.

‘Hey!
Hey
!’ I yelled uselessly.

George ran onto the beach, waving her arms above her head. Matt quickly overtook her and sprinted towards the water. I bolted after them. Matt was in the water jumping about crazily and screaming at the low-flying plane as it flew off over the ocean. I pulled up next to George, panting hard. Together, we yelled at the top of our lungs, a cry of wild enthusiasm, frustration and anger all rolled into one.