‘By the time they hear us, we’ll have a good head start. You’ll see,’ said Luke.
He stuck his foot out of the car and pushed against the ground. The swamp rat rolled faster.
‘Push,’ he said to Zac.
He’d watched Mad Mike do this maybe twenty times. And Darnell Coffee, an older kid he lived with in a refuge when he was between foster families, had taken him out car ‘borrowing’ once or twice, and that was where he’d first learned to pop a clutch.
The extensive grounds of the Dwight Juvenile Justice Centre were built up along the broad flank of the steepest hill in Windsor, and aside from the out-of-bounds-never-used swimming pool and tennis courts, the workshop was perched at the highest point of that hill. From the workshop, straight down past the dorms, through the quadrangle, past Admin, and directly out the gates, ran a gravel road. Mad Mike used this hill every day to get the swamp rat going. The engine had long ago stopped turning over with the key, he’d told Luke, but just give her a roll with the ignition on, foot down on the clutch, and when she has a bit of speed – not too much, boy, or you’ll lose control – lift your foot off the clutch, and bang! Up she starts!
The bushes along the gravel road flicked by faster and faster now. Luke was thankful for the wan moonlight. He couldn’t have risked turning on the one remaining headlight, even if he’d needed to. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, trying to stop himself from looking around for a seatbelt that he knew didn’t exist. He kept both feet stamped down on the pedals, one on the clutch and the other on the all-but-useless footbrake, trying to keep some sort of control.
The swamp rat rattled and bounced as it gained momentum. From the corner of his eye, Luke saw that Zac had his feet up on the dash in crash position.
As they rolled with gathering speed towards the open expanse of the quadrangle, Luke allowed himself to really start to worry about the next bit of this scheme. Mad Mike had done his part of the job, keeping Narelle happy and staying out of the workshop, but Luke now had to hope that he and Zac had been fast enough to get back to the gates before they automatically closed.
The swamp rat skipped and bounded over the uneven gravel road, breaking clear of the bushed area and into the open quadrangle, and tension began to creep up Luke’s neck.
For the first time he began to doubt his plan. What if they had been too slow? What if the gates had already closed?
The swamp rat was now unstoppable. She hurdled and leapt along, sometimes hitting a rough patch and becoming airborne for a couple of seconds. Luke clenched his teeth to stop himself from biting his tongue, his foot jammed down on the brake, which was doing absolutely nothing as far as he could tell. He glanced to his right and there was Dorm Four, brightly lit from within, but still with not a soul to be seen. A flick of his eyes to the left showed Zac, white-faced, bouncing in his seat, his arms wrapped around his knees.
Dorm Three flashed past.
Dorm Two.
The swamp rat clattered and jangled now, and Luke had a feeling that this crazy car was just waiting for her master, Mad Mike, to lean out the window, whirl his lasso and start whooping. They shuddered and skidded past Dorm One, gravel spitting and scattering away from the bald tyres.
Admin was straight ahead, and beyond that the gates.
Luke planned his next move. If the gates were open, he’d lift his foot and pop the clutch, then hang on to the steering wheel for dear life when the engine started. He would bet anything that not even Mad Mike had let the swamp rat roll this fast before engaging the engine. He knew that the road immediately outside the Dwight Complex was rarely used by locals, and he prayed that none of them were on the road tonight.
If the gates weren’t open … Luke closed his eyes for a split second. He took a deep breath. If the gates weren’t open he’d pop the clutch and ram down on the accelerator. Maybe they’d make it through. But deep down he couldn’t imagine that the swamp rat, even at full speed, would take out the front gates of a secure complex like this.
Even the swamp rat seemed to sense something big was about to happen. A worrying, whirring sound was building as they hurtled forward. No matter how positive he tried to be, Luke couldn’t believe they’d made it here in under five minutes. It was true he’d busted a gut getting up that hill, and that he had been running with bullet boy, but it just felt as though they’d left the Admin building later than that.
As they flashed past Admin, Luke suddenly remembered his file. He could feel it jammed into his jeans, the plastic stuck to his chest. I hope you were worth it, he thought. He slapped his stomach, making sure it was secure, and put his hands back on the wheel. The gates were dead ahead now, maybe fifty metres to go – still too far to see whether they were open, but he squinted into the night anyway.
Then he spotted them through the gloom ahead.
Oh my God!
‘Luke, they’re closing!’ Zac yelled.
Luke popped the clutch, dropping the car into third gear.
The explosion from the rear of the swamp rat wrenched the wheel from his hands and rocketed the car to the left. Luke grabbed for the steering wheel and pulled with all his weight to the right. The car screamed in protest. Luke gunned the car full-pelt, straight ahead, as the gates closed. What else could he do?
He looked to his left to meet Zac’s eye, in warning, in apology, for comfort.
Zac was gone.
Bucking and wailing, the swamp rat shrieked towards the gates and Luke squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for impact.
It never came.
The car kept hurtling forward, deafeningly loud. He opened his eyes just in time to see the gates flash by – and they were opening again. Mouth wide open in shock, he whipped his head to the left, and there sat Zac, knees up in crash position, grinning at him.
‘Ambulance, dead ahead!’ yelled Zac, over the noise of the swamp rat.
Luke swerved the car to the left on the gravel road, out of the path of the oncoming ambulance. The swamp rat’s bald tyres skidded off the gravel and she bucked like a bull, trying to tear off into the bush. He held onto the steering wheel with everything he had and pulled it back in time to screech right out onto the street that led away from Dwight and into the suburb of Windsor.
He straightened the car out on the road. Heart rapidly decelerating, Luke allowed the frozen muscles in his foot to ease off the accelerator a little as he tried to learn to drive
this thing while the engine was running. He kept his eyes on the street ahead, pretty sure that the ambos would have something to say about the two kids in the busted-out vehicle who’d almost taken them out in the driveway.
So there goes the head start, he thought.
He decided to get as close to the train station as he dared and then find a place to dump the car. He figured they had another five to eight minutes before the cops could get mobilised; that is, unless they were already cruising. Oh well, nothing he could do about that if they were.
He was more interested in what had happened back there.
‘What happened back there?’ he yelled.
He could hardly hear his own words. Freezing wind rushed through the doors, adding to the noise from the uncovered engine.
‘What do you mean?’ Zac yelled back.
‘I mean, where did you go?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Zac yelled.
Luke’s brow furrowed. I could have just imagined it, he thought. It was pretty stressful. But …
‘What about the gates? They were closing,’ he said, eyes streaming from the wind buffeting about his face.
‘Lucky, huh?’ said Zac. ‘Someone must have opened them again just in time for the ambulance.’
‘Yeah, lucky,’ Luke said. That’s me. Lucky.
Still, he had to admit that so far tonight things could have been worse. They hadn’t yet passed a house or another car, and he was hoping that the first vehicle they met wasn’t going to have flashing blue and red lights.
On the road up ahead he spotted a railway crossing.
That’ll do me, he decided.
‘Hold on,’ he said to Zac.
He pulled the swamp rat over to the side of the unsealed road and crawled along, searching for an opening through the trees. With the car rolling out of gear, it was now no longer as loud as a Mack truck. He spotted a stand of scrubby bushes he figured he could drive his way through.
‘We’re going in,’ he said. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, keep your hands in the vehicle at all times.’
He steered the swamp rat into the bush.
Right now, Samantha was positive that any punishment she and Mirela copped for sneaking out would be worth it.
Because she was squished into the back of Besnik’s Toyota HiAce van, and her knee was jammed up against Tamas’s thigh. Right now, she felt that lunch with the gypsy king had been a mere diversion, being chased by the ninjas had been but a game, and the gossiping at the moonlight ceremony had never even happened.
Tamas’s older brother, Luca, was their driver, nineteen now, and old enough to satisfy any Gaje policeman that he was legal to drive. Samantha remembered plenty of trips when they’d had to use fake IDs, fast talking and/or running when pulled over by the cops. Hanzi, Luca’s cousin and Mirela’s big brother, had the prized front passenger seat. Sam, Mirela and Tamas’s little sister, Shofranka, were in the back. Of course. Samantha didn’t think she’d ever had a ride up the front. She was cool with that.
Tamas was not.
He sat glowering, cross-legged on the van’s hard floor, one leg jammed up against two bald tyres and a spare sliding
door, and the other pressed against Samantha’s knee. She
felt
his indignation sparking in periodic bursts through the clothing over their skin. She also sensed something else from him. It made her cheeks burn and her palms itch.
For as long as forever, Samantha had watched Tamas fight his big brother and cousin for a spot in the front seat of the HiAce. Given over to storage, a bedroom for up to six little kids during winter, and daytrips into town for the teenagers, anyone under thirty thought the HiAce was the coolest vehicle in camp, maybe even the coolest car in Romania. Diarrhoea-yellow, handpainted with an old house-paintbrush – back window and all – the HiAce was nevertheless always there when you needed it. Although you had to make room for the junk. It was a kind of mobile wrecker’s yard: always full of spare parts found on the side of the road. Lala told Samantha that this was because the van was cursed. It broke down more than any trailer, bike, car, wagon or horse the camp had ever owned. Still, Sam had watched knock-down brawls in the dust as the boys fought to ride up front of the golden chariot.
At this very moment, she’d have paid money for her spot in the back.
‘Why are you so cranky?’ she said quietly to Tamas, pretending that Mirela and Shofranka were not listening to every word.
‘Stop being witchy,’ said Tamas. ‘I’m not cranky.’
Tonight he wore jeans just like her, and a soft, dusky-brown T-shirt the same colour as his skin. It was almost as good as his usual uniform: jeans-and-that-was-it. Although the T-shirt was loose at his midriff, it gripped tightly around his upper arms. He wore his silver amulet out over the top of the shirt and a red bandana to hold his hair back from his eyes.
Samantha watched him blink those outrageously long lashes a few times. She outright stared. She couldn’t help it. Her mouth felt dry. She licked her lips.
And then she felt Tamas lean – maybe it was only two millimetres – a little closer into her.
She had to blink a couple of times. And then she coughed. Why did her mouth get so dry when she was around him? I swear to Goddess Gaia that I would kiss the gypsy king for a glass of water right now, she silently declared.
Music pumped from the front of the van. She didn’t think she’d ever heard the song before.
‘What’s that song?’ she said, suddenly in love with it.
‘It’s olden-day music,’ said Shofranka.
Tiny Shofranka, a year younger than her thirteen-year-old cousin, Mirela, didn’t say much, but whatever she said, it could always be relied upon.
‘It’s Huey Lewis and the News,’ Shofranka continued.
‘What?’ said Samantha.
‘That’s the name of the band,’ said Shofranka. ‘Huey Lewis and the News. The song is called “The Power of Love”.’
‘How do you know that?’ said Samantha.
‘
Why
do you know that?’ said Mirela.
‘Are we there yet?’ said Tamas.
Shofranka said nothing. She leaned back against a greasy carburettor and mouthed words along with the song.
‘Don’t you wish you were up front with the big boys?’ Mirela said suddenly to Tamas.
Samantha could have killed her.
Tamas reeled right back until there was nothing but air between her jeans and his. ‘Why don’t you shut up, Mimi,’ he said. ‘Unless you want me to tell Aunt Esmeralda exactly
what you’ve been doing from five minutes ago until the second we get back to camp.’
‘Well, she would bust you boys just as bad as she gets me,’ said Mirela. ‘On account of you taking us when she told you not to.’
‘Yeah? Well, what’s she gonna do to me?’ he said. ‘I’m not scared of Esmeralda. It’s you who asks how high when she tells you to jump.’
‘Oh really?’ said Mirela. ‘I guess that’s why I’m in the back of the van on the way to the Carnivale, hmm? And if you’re not scared of my mamma, you sure put on a pretty good act the other day, dancing around like Beyoncé to the tune of that wooden spoon.’
Samantha tried to zone out to their bickering, but they were on a roll, and although she knew they were just arguing to pass the time, the verbal arrows they shot at one another ricocheted around the small space in the van, glancing off walls when they missed their target and piercing her skin instead. They stung slightly, minor irritations, but because she was already so on-edge they dragged her mood down further.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on emitting calmness. Within a minute or so, Tamas and Mirela laughed more as they hurled their insults. Their emotional darts disintegrated to dust as soon as they touched her.