Olly woke up after the best night’s sleep he had ever had. He snuggled into his pillow and wondered what time it was. A stab of hunger answered his question.
Breakfast time! He was looking forward to some more of that porridge before the adventure ahead.
He opened his eyes … and found himself looking at Jack.
Olly sat bolt upright in surprise. He looked around him in confusion. Jack was on one side of him in his sleeping bag. Omar was on the other.
“What are you doing here?” Olly exclaimed.
Jack propped himself up on his elbow.
“What do you mean?” he asked sleepily. “This is our tent, too.”
Olly looked around wide-eyed. Where was the snow cave?
He felt something hard on the ground next to him. It was the compass. Olly stared at it.
What had happened? How had he got back here?
Then Omar groaned as he sat up.
“Man, that ground is well hard. I don’t reckon I can do another night like that.”
Olly remembered what Bear had told him.
“If you can find the strength inside you, you can overcome all things,” he said under his breath. “All you need is to keep going.”
Omar stared at him. “What are you on about?” He paused. “Keep going! That’s funny coming from the guy who gave up altogether and left his mates to do all the hard work yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” Olly said in surprise.
If the den-building had been yesterday … that meant everything with Bear had happened all in one night. Without the other two noticing.
Had it just been a really vivid dream?
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember,” Omar sneered.
“No,” Olly said quietly. “I remember.”
Jack tried to break up the tension. He clambered out of his bag.
“We should get moving,” he said. “What’s up today, after breakfast?”
Omar was still glaring at Olly. A good night’s sleep clearly hadn’t done anything to change Omar’s opinion of him.
“You think I’ll let you down again, don’t you?” Olly said quietly.
Omar just shrugged.
“Whatever.”
“I won’t. I promise,” Olly told him. He got the idea nothing he said would convince Omar he had changed. Olly knew that he would just have to show him. “Maybe I’ll surprise you,” Olly said with a smile, then started to climb out of the tent.
* * *
Olly looked up at the climbing wall and tried not to feel nervous.
He wanted to do this. He really did. It wasn’t just that he wanted to show Omar and Jack. It was because they were meant to do this as a team, and Omar and Jack were his team.
And he wanted to do this for himself. To feel that sense of pride again.
But it was a long way up and he had never really climbed before.
The wall was twelve metres high, and shaped like a real rock face. There were ropes dangling down which attached to metal clips on the front of their harnesses, so if anyone slipped then they wouldn’t fall and hurt themselves. Everyone watched as an instructor demonstrated how to climb. She was already halfway up. “You’ve got two hands and two feet,” she called down at them. “So always make sure that three out of four are holding onto something. Only ever move one at a time, like me …”
She made it look so easy. In fact, she reminded Olly a little of Bear. She could make it look easy because she was very good at it, and she had put in a lot of hard work to get there.
“You are going to climb up three at a time, against the clock and we’ll see which team is the fastest. First group up for the Yellow team is … Jack, Olly and Omar!”
A lot of kids looked quite happy that someone else was going first. They could make the mistakes for everyone else to learn from.
The instructors came forward with helmets and harnesses. Jack started to put his on without any help because he had done this before. Olly got tangled up, and an instructor had to help him out. And by the time they were both done, Omar was helmeted, harnessed and ready to go.
Eventually the three boys took their places at the foot of the wall. Olly was in the middle, with Omar on his left and Jack on his right.
“You going to drop out, Olly?” Omar whispered. “Just tell them you don’t like heights and they’ll let me and Jack do it on our own.”
Olly just shook his head. He knew Omar would never believe he could do this, until he saw it.
“Get ready!” an instructor called. The boys braced themselves. The instructor was poised with a stopwatch.
“Get set … Go!”
Olly swallowed his nerves, grabbed hold of the wall, and started to climb.
