We wandered through the forest for ages. Alice made up a big, long story about two kidnapped pop stars, who escaped from their kidnappers, and had to survive for weeks on their own. When rescuers found them, they were almost dead, but they were keeping their spirits up by taking turns to sing songs from their hit album.
Alice is great at that kind of stuff, and after a while, I almost believed that I was one of the pop stars, and I found myself ducking behind trees, at every sudden gust of wind, or every crackle of twigs beneath our feet.
Soon though, I stopped feeling that I was a pop star, and I felt more like a tired and hungry schoolgirl.
I stopped walking, and threw myself down on a pile of soft, mossy stuff.
‘Wait, Al,’ I said. ‘I need to rest for a while.’
Alice came back and sat beside me.
‘I’m a bit tired too,’ she said. ‘Let’s rest for a while, and then we can go back and go to that small shop and buy some food.’
So we rested for a while.
‘A toasted cheese sandwich,’ said Alice. ‘I can smell it already.’
I closed my eyes.
‘Pizza,’ I said. ‘With extra cheese – loads and loads of extra cheese, and pepperoni.’
‘Yuck,’ said Alice. ‘I’d like chips – with heaps of salt and vinegar.’
My mouth was beginning to water.
‘Stop, Al,’ I said. ‘Please stop. How about we stop talking about food, and actually go and get some?’
Alice grinned.
‘Sounds good to me.’
So we stood up, dusted ourselves off, and began to walk, with Alice leading the way – striding quickly like she always does.
We had walked for quite a bit, when I noticed that Alice wasn’t moving as confidently as she had at first.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
Alice turned back to look at me.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, no reason,’ I said, and we walked some more.
Soon Alice stopped and began to look around. I was starting to get worried now.
‘Al, what’s wrong?’ I said again.
‘I’m just …’ said Alice, as she started to walk. Then she stopped, and turned around and walked the other way.
‘You’re just what?’
‘I’m just not sure which is the way out of here.’
Her voice was unusually quiet.
‘But … But … I don’t know the way either. What are we going to do?’
Alice put her hand on my arm.
‘Well, we won’t worry, that’s for sure,’ she said. ‘After all, how big can this forest be?’
I gulped again.
‘Don’t you remember, Al? The other day Dad was reading from his guide book, and he said there was a forest in this area that covers eleven thousand hectares. Do you think this could be it?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’
‘Do you know how big a hectare is?’ I asked.
Alice shook her head.
‘Sorry. No idea. If we did that stuff at school, I wasn’t listening. But maybe it’s really small, like a centimetre or something.’
‘Yeah, or maybe it’s really big, like a kilometre or something. Oh, Al. What are we going to do?’
Alice hugged me.
‘We’re just being silly. We haven’t really tried to find our way out yet.’
Suddenly I had an idea.
‘What about your watch – the super-duper fancy one your Mum gave you for your birthday? Hasn’t that got a compass on it?’
Alice looked at her watch, and made a face.
‘No. I could tell you the time in San Francisco, or Moscow, but I can’t use my watch to help us get out of here. We’ll have to think of something else. You should know though – you read lots of books. What do kids do when they get lost in forests?’
I had to smile. In the kind of books I liked, kids only got lost in department stores, and airports and places like that, and they were always rescued by kind security guards. I wasn’t admitting that to Alice though.
‘Weeeell,’ I said. ‘Usually they start by following the sun.’
We both looked up. The small patches of sky that we could see through the trees were grey. What had happened to the lovely sunny day?
‘OK, so following the sun isn’t going to work for us today,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the only solution. I read a book once, where kids followed a stream, and found their way home.’
I’d just made that up, but I thought it sounded good. It made sense really. All streams end up in the sea don’t they? And the sea was near our house. That had to be the answer.
Alice sighed.
‘No chance of finding a stream. There’s a drought, remember? It hasn’t rained here for weeks, so all the streams will have dried up.’
‘Well, then, we just have to walk in a straight line, until we come to the edge of the forest. Easy,’ I said, a bit more confidently than I felt.
Alice smiled at me.
‘See, Megan. I love that you’re always the sensible one. I knew I could count on you in a crisis. Now lead us out of here.’