North of Nowhere (12 page)

I ran back and grabbed the bag. I’d been so freaked out by everything I’d almost forgotten it.

“Thanks,” I said. Then I turned and hurried out of the door, while the man went back to his phone call.

Sal was outside sitting on a bench overlooking the harbor.

“Well, that was weird,” I said, plunking myself down next to her.

“Just a bit,” Sal replied.

I turned to face her. “You want to go back and tell your parents?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I want to get the rest of these posters up first — and find out what’s in that package.”

“OK,” I agreed. “But when we get back, whatever else we do, we’re calling the police,” I said firmly.

Sal swallowed. “What are we going to tell them?”

I took a breath and turned away as I slowly let it out again. “That we might have just met the last person to have seen Peter before he disappeared.”

She sat by the window all day. Well, perhaps not the entire day. The first hour after her father had left was spent in her bedroom, shouting, cursing, pacing her room so hard it was a wonder there was any carpet left when she finally stopped.

Finally, she tore a page out of one of her mother’s notebooks, and began to write her feelings down. It was the only way she could get them out. She would have used her diary but she had sent that away with her father.

She wrote about how angry she was with her father, how he spoiled everything, how she hated him, hated Luffsands, hated everything right now.

Finally, when the anger was out, she wrote about her fear.

Eventually, all she wrote was, “Father, please come home soon. I love you and I just want you to be safe. I’m sorry. I’ll never get angry with you again, I promise. Just come home, please.”

After that, she put down her pen, folded up the paper, and went downstairs. When she had hugged her mother tightly and whispered an apology that she wished her father would hear, she took herself to the window seat and sat, looking out at the sea raging below and trying to calm her heart.

It was still two hours before high tide and already the angry swell was rising fiercely, beating against the harbor wall like an angry mob that would not recede until it had wreaked the havoc it craved. The few boats inside the small harbor reared like rodeo horses with every wave. Each time, Diane’s heart reared with them, so hard she feared it would come out through her mouth if she wasn’t careful.

She watched the sea level inching ever higher with the tide, watched the swell grow more and more angry, all the time desperately hoping to see her father’s boat returning.

Why had she let him leave her in such a mood? She faced directly out the window and offered her plea bargain to the sea: bring my father home, just let him come home today, and I swear I’ll never say a mean word to him again.

Finally, with nothing left to barter, and all out of wishes, she curled up in the seat, closed her eyes, and prayed.

“Are you going to open it, then?”

Sal was perched on the bench next to me. The package was on my lap. I didn’t know exactly how long we’d both been sitting staring at it, and I didn’t really know what Sal made of what had just happened. I didn’t know what
I
made of it. My brain turned over and over, trying to find an angle that made sense. Here’s what I had come up with. It wasn’t much.

I’d seen Peter yesterday. He’d wanted to take the boat out but he’d promised he wouldn’t. At some point after that, he’d gone missing.

That was about it. And in among the thin scraps of information that wouldn’t piece together was one question that nagged at my mind:
did he take the boat?

I looked at Sal. Her eyes were full of sadness and confusion. I couldn’t keep the doubts to myself any longer.

“Sal,” I began. “I need to tell you something.”

She looked up. “What?”

I opened my mouth to continue, but I couldn’t find the words. Surely my doubts would only make her even more anxious. And was it fair to give her even more to worry about?

No, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give her an extra burden to carry, as well as what she was already feeling.

And another thing, if Peter had delivered this bag to the shop, didn’t that mean that he was still on the mainland?

Truth was, there were still too many question marks surrounding my troubled thoughts, and it simply wasn’t fair to share them with Sal till I knew where they would lead. Which meant I had to come up with some way of finding out where that might be. Or coming up with a plan, at least.

I smiled at her. “I just want to say, I’m sure it’ll all work out,” I said. “We’ll find him.”

Sal smiled back. “Thanks,” she said. “I really think we will, now that we’ve got you and your family helping. The police were helpful, but I could tell they thought Peter was just a typical teenage boy — going off without telling anyone — and he’d turn up any minute. At least I feel like we’re doing something useful now. Your family has been so kind.”

I wasn’t sure she really had anything to thank me for. If my looming worries turned out to be right, it could well be that
I
was the reason Peter had disappeared in the first place.

It was time to change the subject.

“OK, let’s take a look at this package,” I said. I pulled at the tape and opened the bag.

“What is it?” Sal asked as I lifted out the object that was inside — a big round brass dome. I turned it over in my hands.

“Wait, look — it opens up,” I said. There was a catch on the top of the dome. I clicked the catch and slid it open. The top half slid underneath and clicked into place, to leave a semicircular dome shape with a flat glass surface on top. Inside the glass was a large star surrounded by a bunch of letters and numbers, and with a dial in the middle.

“A compass,” Sal said. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” I said. I stared at the compass. There was something familiar about it. Had we used something like this in school? Did Dad have one at home? Or maybe there was one at the pub. That was probably it. It was exactly the kind of thing Grandad would have in the lounge somewhere!

Sal pointed at the bag. “There’s something else in it,” she said.

I rummaged in the bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. I opened it up.

We both leaned over it, trying to figure out what we were looking at. At first glance, I’d have said it was a piece of trash that had accidentally gotten into the bag with the compass. It was crumpled and ragged and looked like the kind of thing you’d find down the back of a very old sofa.

Someone had doodled all over the page. Words I couldn’t read, as they were heavily crossed out. Scribbled pictures of arrows pointing in every direction, most of these crossed out, too. The only ones that weren’t were the ones pointing directly upward.

In the top-right corner, a capital “N” stood out. It was the only letter on the page that wasn’t crossed out.

“Just a piece of trash,” Sal said. “Must have gotten in by mistake.”

I was about to throw it away in a nearby wastebasket, but just as I was scrunching it up, I noticed writing on the other side. I opened up the paper again and turned it over.

Keep this compass with the boat!!!!!

The message was written in thick black pen and underlined so heavily there was a small rip where the pen had gone through the paper. I read it out loud.

“What does that mean?” Sal asked. “What boat?”

I shook my head. “No idea.”

Then she looked at the note over my shoulder, and she turned whiter than the paper itself.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

She nodded, and then, pointing at the words, she said something that made my blood turn so cold I almost felt ice cubes forming in my chest.

“It’s Peter’s writing,” she said. “Whatever this means, it’s a message for us — and it’s
definitely
from him.”

Her voice cracked as she spoke. Which was when I knew I had to tell her everything. It didn’t matter if it led to despair or doubts. What mattered now was that we were in this together.

“Sal,” I said softly.

She looked up.

“Just, I . . . well, I . . .” I looked away from her. “Look, there’s something I need to tell you,” I said as I looked out at the beach, the water rolling and frothing around the harbor wall. Where should I start?

“About Peter?” Sal asked.

I nodded.

“Did he . . . Are you and he, you know . . .”

“No!” I burst out. “It’s nothing like that! I’ve only met him twice, and most of the time we just talked about the dogs.”

Sal laughed lightly. “That doesn’t surprise me. Peter loves Mitch.”

“Yeah, I could tell.”

“What is it, then? What do you want to tell me?”

“Well, like I said, Peter was really friendly. And helpful. And he wanted to try to cheer me up. You see, I’ve got a kind of friend. She lives on an island just off the coast, and she was supposed to come here yesterday, but she couldn’t make it.”

“So, what has that got to do with Peter?” Sal’s voice was starting to get an edge of impatience.

“He wanted to help me. He wanted us to go and fetch her.”

“Fetch her? How?”

“On a boat,” I said shakily. “He wanted us to take a boat.”

“What? Peter steal a boat? No way — he’d never do that. That’s not him at all.”

“No, he didn’t want to steal it. It was Dee’s boat.”

“Dee?”

“My friend. It was her dad’s boat. Peter suggested that we could borrow it to go and get her. We were on our way out of the harbor when my mom turned up and called me back.”

Sal was staring at me. “How come you haven’t told me any of this before now?” she asked.

“Because he promised he wouldn’t go on his own. He
swore
he wouldn’t. It was one thing for me to borrow the boat, but for Peter to take it when none of the family would have known who he was — well, it would have been hard to explain without it looking like theft.”

Sal was quiet for a long time. She looked at me, slowly nodded her head. “You’re right,” she said firmly. “And Peter is no thief.”

“I know he isn’t,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t say —”

“But the thing he likes to do most in the world is help people,” Sal continued, her face clouding over as she spoke. We sat in silence, both of us staring blankly ahead.

Then Sal turned back to me. She was trying to say something.

“What? What are you thinking?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m trying to figure out which would have been the stronger pull for Peter. The desire to help you, or the knowledge that he shouldn’t take someone else’s boat.”

“And?”

“And they feel neck and neck right now.”

I nodded.

“And you didn’t see him again after this?”

I shook my head.

“So what we’re saying is that Peter might have gone out on some boat, on his own, and that was the last anyone saw of him,” Sal said woodenly.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you before. I should have told
everyone
—”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Sal stopped me. “If Mom even
suspected
this, it could tip her over the edge. You were right to wait till you were sure.”

“But I’m not,” I said. “I’m not sure at all. If anything, I’m more confused than ever.”

Sal smiled shyly. “Yeah, but at least we can be confused together now.”

I smiled back. “Thank you,” I said quietly.

“Anyway, if he left you this package, doesn’t that mean he
didn’t
go out on the boat?” Sal asked. “Or, if he did, that he made it back here safely?”

“That’s exactly what I thought. But if he’s on the mainland, why didn’t he go back to you and your parents last night?”

Sal shook her head. “I’ve no idea. But if he left on the boat and didn’t come back, when could he have taken the package to the shop for you?”

I let out a breath. I didn’t have any answers. Every time I thought I had one, it only led to more questions. I turned the compass around and around in my hands, looking at it and thinking so hard my brain was beginning to hurt. And then, finally, a plan came to me.