Blue Water High (14 page)

Heath was fairly stunned, but he kept his cool. ‘Are you finished? Or is there more?'

Fly didn't answer. She plonked down on the other end of the seat. Heath stood. He wasn't getting Fly at all today. He stepped over to the pole where the bus timetable was stuck. He looked hard, leaning in hard to make sure he was seeing straight.

‘There's no five o clock bus on Saturdays.'

‘Is there a six o'clock bus?'

Heath shook his head.

‘Seven?'

‘Yep. There's a seven o'clock bus – seven o'clock tomorrow morning.'

They started at the shop, banging away on the front door, the back door, the windows. But the old guy who'd cooked their chips that afternoon seemed to have done a runner.

‘So,' said Heath, ‘seeing as I wasn't meant to be here in the first place, what would the incredibly grown-up one have done now?'

Fly cleared her throat. She was thinking.

‘Given that she had no mobile and, unless she's wearing a money belt under her swimmers, we don't have ten cents between us.'

Fly wasn't ready to admit defeat yet.

‘I would've been fine on my own, Heath. I would've taken a moment to gather my thoughts and then I would've worked out a plan.'

Heath nodded sagely. ‘Well while you're gathering your thoughts, I'm going to start walking. There was a caravan park a couple of k down the road. Maybe we can find a phone, get a ride, whatever. 'Cause here is not where we're meant to be tonight.'

They weren't meant to be there tonight because they were meant to be arriving home in time for Fly's surprise party. Heath knew the others would be freaking.

Fly watched him walk off down the road. She looked around, hoping to get inspiration for some alternative plan to get them home. It was only now, when she had a reason to notice, that Fly realised there weren't any houses on the beach. Not one! And now she thought about it, she hadn't seen another soul all day. Fly started to think about all those cheesy horror films she'd seen – the ones where a group of kids got stranded somewhere isolated and it seemed like there was no-one else around until after dark, when the resurrected love child of two chainsaws suddenly sprang to
life. As silly as those films were, it still made her shiver. The temperature had dropped five degrees in the last half-hour and big dirty clouds were storming in from the sea. Fly took off down the road.

Heath didn't slow down on the way to the caravan park, and by the time she'd caught up he'd already banged on half the doors of the vans. There was no-one in the office, there were no young families having barbies in their annexes, there wasn't a soul in sight. How weird was that? Fly pushed down the chainsaw thought buzzing up in her brain. Then, to make matters a little more horror-filmish, there was a massive rumble of thunder and it started to rain.

Heath banged on one more dusty flyscreen and suddenly the door of the van swung open.

‘Fly!' he called out, before sticking his head inside.

‘Luxury awaits, my lady.' He gestured for her to step into the van. But Fly wasn't in the mood for Shakespearean theatrics and the idea of shacking up in a caravan alone with Heath for the night was enough to send the butterflies into hyperdrive.

‘What's the problem?' Heath asked. ‘A dirty old spider-infested caravan isn't good enough for you now?'

Fly still baulked like a horse not wanting to go through a gate. ‘It's like trespassing. We could get into trouble.'

‘We are miles from home with nowhere to sleep and no way of letting anyone know where we are. I think we already
are
in trouble, Fly. So until the rain stops and we can keep looking for a lift, this is it. Take it or leave it.'

Heath disappeared inside. Fly stood there for a full minute, the rain smacking her hard in the face, before she reluctantly stepped up into the van.

It was dark inside. And smelly. Whoever owned the
caravan clearly hadn't been using it for a while now. Or if they had, they had never heard of cleaning products. Fly stood there uncomfortably while Heath made himself at home. He was rifling around in the cupboards, quite happy with each new discovery he made – one packet of chicken-flavoured instant noodles with a use-by date that wasn't too scary, one torch, one blue enamel camping pot and two ice-cream containers they could use as bowls. He pulled a bottle of water out of his backpack and got to work at the stove.

Fly watched him pottering away. He was whistling tunelessly, his mood surprisingly high in spite of the circumstances and the crappy company Fly had been.

‘Ah, van life.'

Fly wasn't sure if he was talking to her or to himself.

‘It's definitely got something going for it. Though, this is a little crustier than my last one.'

This was something Fly didn't know.

‘I lived in a van on my olds' property from when I was eight till I turned fourteen. They were renovating so we'd have more space in the house, but they were pretty slow renovators.'

Fly just nodded. Heath was amazing. Any other person on the planet would have been sulking by now. They would've walked home without her, or at least kept all the noodles to themselves, but Heath was carefully dividing them between the two ice-cream containers. He grabbed the torch and sat it upright in the middle of the tiny table. It shone a spot straight up onto the mouldy roof and the result was oddly romantic. Fly tried to think about it differently. She tried to imagine that it was more like when you sat around a campfire with the torch under your chin telling spooky stories – stories about chainsaws.

Fly stared down at her noodles. The frighteningly chemical ‘chicken' flavouring steamed up into her nostrils. How they got a full grown animal into a tiny silver packet, Fly would never know.

‘They're safe,' said Heath. ‘And you didn't eat much at lunchtime.'

Fly couldn't help herself, she was just too wound up to shut up, even though she knew it was the safest thing to do. ‘I know I'm still a kid, but my brain and my stomach have worked out how to talk to each other.'

Heath let it sit there a moment, then said, ‘Have I done something wrong?'

Fly filled her mouth with noodles to stop herself answering.

‘'Cause up until yesterday, I thought we were mates. You know, you were a pretty cool customer. But today, it's like you're having some birthday meltdown.'

Fly jumped up, spilling some of the noodles onto the table. She stumbled into the kitchenette looking for something to wipe it with.

‘Mates,' she said. ‘We're mates. We're definitely mates.'

‘Why are you acting like such a psycho then?'

Fly swiped at the spilt soup with a tea towel so stiff it could've been used as a fly swatter.

‘I dunno … I just feel like everyone treats me like – like the baby.'

The tea towel was just pushing the noodles around uselessly.

‘It's just the way people are when you're the youngest. I've got five older sisters and now with you guys it's like I'm everyone's little sister all over again.'

‘I didn't stay back to wait for you 'cause I think you're a baby.'

Fly shook her head. ‘You're not getting it. It's … No-one treats Perri the way they treat me, 'cause they don't think of us the same.'

‘Maybe. But it's not that we think she's any better. I stayed back 'cause you've been so weird with me, and I wanted to sort it out. I thought if I spent some time with you, you might tell me what was up, or chill out. Or something.'

Fly stared down at her feet. This was not somewhere she wanted to go.

‘Don't tell her, but I'd rather catch the bus with you than Perri any day of the week.'

Fly smiled off the compliment. ‘You don't have to be nice. It's no big deal. Don't worry about it.'

‘I'm not worried.'

‘Yes you are. You're just trying to make me feel better.'

Heath took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Fly. I've only got –' he did a quick count on his fingers, ‘nine words to say to you.'

Fly was slightly alarmed at the suddenly serious tone.

‘I don't think of you in a sisterly way.'

Yep – that was nine. Fly felt the butterflies take off downstairs.

‘I'm, um, not sure what that means.'

‘Think about it. If you're so grown up, you can read between the lines.'

And before she knew what was happening, she and Heath were staring at each other, they were in that frozen moment where they both knew they were about to kiss. There was no crowd of jeering schoolkids, no-one counting them down. Just Heath and Fly moving slowly, deliberately towards each other. Their lips touched and Fly felt
like all the blood in her veins had been replaced with maple syrup …

She let herself enjoy the lovely warm sensation for all of five seconds before she reeled backwards.

‘Oh,' she stammered. ‘That was definitely …'

‘That was definitely what?' Heath asked, clearly confused.

‘That was definitely not meant to happen.'

If Fly had hung out for another couple of seconds she would've seen the hurt on Heath's face. But she didn't. She was out the door in a flash.

It was bucketing down. She stood where the annexe used to be, in the pouring rain, blinking and regretting and wishing it was her fifteenth birthday all over again. She pined for that G-rated film. She forgave those cartoon pyjamas. She wished it wasn't raining so hard.

Heath left her out there for a good fifteen minutes before he couldn't stand it any longer. When he got to the door she was wrestling with her board bag.

‘What are you doing?' he asked from the doorway.

‘I'm just getting my board bag,' she said.

‘Yep I can see that. I'm not sure that now is such a good time to surf …'

Fly slipped her board out of the silver bag and slid it into the van. She picked up the dripping bag and squeezed back in past Heath.

‘You know what?' she said brightly to no-one in particular. ‘I'm completely stuffed. I'm just going to get in my bag and curl up on the floor.'

She was already standing in the bottom half of the bag, and leaned down and dragged the zipper upwards, wriggling and jiggling to get her arms inside.

‘There's a bed, Fly. The table goes down. You can have it, I'll take the floor.'

Fly shook her head. ‘No need, I'm going to be snug as a bug.'

Heath watched, bemused, as she finally got the zip up to her neck and started hopping like some huge, crazy sardine towards the other end of the van. It was harder than she thought to get down onto the floor now that she no longer had the use of her arms. She crouched as low as she could, and then let herself flop on her side. It was as if someone had just reeled her in and flung her onto the bottom of a boat.

‘God, I hope the aliens are watching,' Heath said to himself.

He headed back to the other end of the van to get to work on the table–bed.

Fly lay there for a long time after she heard Heath's breathing signal he was asleep, really quite amazed at just how uncool an individual she was growing up to be.

After what had gone down, it wouldn't have been unexpected for Fly to have found it hard to sleep, or at least to have been haunted by dreams, a night-time rerun of her goofy behaviour playing over and over in a loop. But that's not what happened at all. Fly went to sleep straightaway. She slept hard and deep. So hard that she failed to stir as a pair of headlights swept across the outside of the caravan. She didn't roll over as the car pulled up right next to the van. Not even a sleepy snuffle at the sound of two men talking getting closer and closer to them.

It wasn't until they were hooked up and speeding down the freeway that Fly even had an inkling that something might not be quite right. The van took a hard, fast corner and Fly's silver board-bagged body rolled bang into a storage cupboard. She opened her eyes.

Where was she? Why did they seem to be moving? What was that steady humming sound? Why did her arms appear to be totally unavailable to her? After a moment she remembered she had placed herself in the board bag, but the answers to the other questions? She didn't have a clue.

As the van swung back and forth across the lanes, Fly struggled to her feet and managed to get one of her arms out of the bag. She lurched forwards and pulled back the curtain over the kitchen sink. Yep, there was no mistaking it. They were roaring along the highway at a million miles an hour, the dark landscape screaming by. Fly wrestled out of her board bag.

‘
Heeaattthhhhh
!!!' Her voice got higher at the end with panic.

She raced down to where Heath was snuggled up on the bed–table. Even though he'd claimed Fly was mad, she saw he had followed her lead and zippered himself into his own board bag for warmth. She shook him hard.

‘Heath! Wake up!

Heath opened one eye.

‘Someone's hooked up the van! We're driving somewhere!'

Heath obviously didn't remember he'd joined the fish-impersonating crew, because instead of getting up he rolled straight onto the floor.

‘Help me with the zip, Fly.'

Somehow she managed to help him to his feet so she could get at the zipper. It was stuck solid and as the van whipped around a bend, they were both sent backwards. They crashed into the table, which busted right off its hinges and landed on the floor. Fly, as fate would have it, landed right on top of Heath, their faces just inches apart.

‘Are you alright?' she asked.

And right there, in the midst of the crisis, there was a small moment that could've gone all romance on them.

‘Apart from the fact that I can't breathe, I'm excellent.'

Fly rolled off him and helped him to his feet again.

‘Do you know where we are?'

Fly shook her head. ‘I only just woke up. We could've been driving for hours.'