I heard a long piercing scream, then a thud. I turned and ran back to Harry. He was face down and wailing at the top of his voice. His foot had caught in a deep gap in a rock and he'd fallen flat on his face. A broken branch had pierced his shorts and there was blood seeping out. The branch must've stabbed his thigh as he fell.
He turned his head so I could see his face. "My leg, my leg."
I kneeled beside him and freed his foot. "You'll be okay."
Tears streamed down his face; his wails quieted to sobs.
I stood up and looked round. There really wasn't one other person on the top of Uluru. We were alone. I felt sick. Real sick.
"Harry, I'm going to roll you onto your back. You're bleeding; we've got to stop it." He was too terrified to move. I was real gentle, but he screamed a few times. Still, I guess he was pretty brave. His leg had a bend in it that shouldn't have been there, but I didn't tell him.
"I don't suppose you have one of those big grandpa hankies in your pocket?" I asked.
"Nooo," he moaned.
Of course he didn't. I had no choice. I took off my Manchester United shirt, cleaned the wound with it and tied it tightly around the very top of his leg. Harry made a couple of sudden movements, but like magic, the bleeding stopped. I tried not to wonder if Mom would be able to get the blood out of my shirt. Near us, I found a rock that I put under the foot with the broken leg. And then I put my backpack under his head and gave him a few sips of water.
"Thanks," he whispered.
I knew there was a reason I'd broken my leg last year. Maybe Nanna was right: Everything happens for a reason. But there was still one thing to do. The problem was that if I did it wrong I might make things worse. I thought hard and decided I had to try.
From the bottom of Uluru you'd never know there were small trees on top. The aliens must've put them there in case someone broke their leg and needed a splint. I broke off two branches. They weren't perfectly flat like my splint had been. The cord from the surf jacket that I carried in my backpack would have to do to tie the splint. It wasn't long enough, so I used one of my shoelaces as well. Harry asked me if I knew what I was doing, so I told him the story of how I broke my leg.
"One day," I said, "I told my friends, Thomo and Chook, I could fly. I jumped out of the oak tree, flapped my arms, fell and broke my leg. The pain was real bad, but I couldn't cry because my friends were all crowded around. First the school nurse came, and then the ambulance. The nurse stopped the bleeding by tying a bandage real tight around the top of my leg. Then she put something under my head and under my foot. And someone put a blanket over me. The ambulance guy put on the splint. He said it was to stop my leg moving and that would help it heal."
If I'd hurt Harry, he wasn't saying so. He said, "You were lucky. What if no one rescues us?"
"Of course they will," I tried to sound real sure. "Our parents will send a ranger up as soon as they work out we're not coming down."
"What if they don't know where to look?"
"We're on top of a rock, not hidden in the jungle."
"What if it gets dark?"
I shivered. "We won't die or anything. We'll just get cold."
"What if the evil spirits come out at night and they try to kill us?"
"There's no such thing as evil spirits," I said. I shivered again. "We'll be rescued before it's dark. It's not like our parents have ninety kids; they'll notice we're missing." I hugged my knees. "My mom will only wait about ten minutes before she looks for a ranger. She says I'm accident-prone. She'll assume I've broken my leg - trust me."
"But the ranger won't be able to get me down to the ground." He sounded like he was about to cry.
"Of course he will. He'll have a rescue team and they'll bring a stretcher."
"It's too steep."
"People have accidents all the time. The rangers are always bringing people down. They know what they're doing. You'll be okay. Last year the rangers rescued sixty-three people." I tried to sound real certain, but I couldn't see how they'd get him down either. It was a long, long way down and it was real steep, especially the bottom bit. And Charlie had told me there'd been sixty-three accidents, not sixty-three rescues. But I guess most of them got rescued. Except for the guy who died. Lucky Harry didn't know about him.
Harry screwed up his face in pain. I wished it'd been me who fell and broke my leg. He was so little. He closed his eyes and slept for ages.
It was so boring just sitting and waiting and trying not to think about bad stuff - like maybe we wouldn't get rescued and we'd be on the top of this great big rock all night, just us and the evil spirits. The sun belted down on my back and I just knew I'd be red and sore tomorrow. I listened out for the sound of people, but all I could hear was the wind. And my stomach rumbling. I remembered I hadn't eaten lunch and suddenly I felt starved again.
Harry just kept sleeping, and when the sun got low in the sky he got goose bumps, so I covered him with my surf jacket. For a while I thought about leaving him and climbing down to get help. But there was no way I could leave him and, anyway, it was too late because it was getting dark real quick.
Where were they? What were Mom and Dad thinking? It's so nice and quiet without Max! If he hasn't turned up by the morning, we better look for him. I tried to list the fifty US states in my head, but it seemed like a stupid thing to do now.
Harry opened his eyes again. He hadn't seemed to realize that he'd been asleep for hours. "Max," he whispered, "do you believe in God?"
I knew I was older and I was meant to give a real smart answer, but it was a hard question. "Sometimes," I replied.
I know you're thinking, Geez, Max, that's a dumb answer, but it isn't really. It means sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. So, my mind is open. It's like having an each-way bet on the Melbourne Cup. That's smart.
"I believe in God," Harry said. "Tyson says everything's random. A big accident. I don't believe him. God made this rock and everything. God made the stars. See," he said, pointing to the sky, "you just have to look at those stars and you know there's a God."
"Yeah, I guess. Maybe God made the stars so we can see when it's dark." It didn't seem like a good time to say that meant God also made crocs and they sure aren't pretty like stars. And it definitely wasn't a good time to say I really liked Charlie's idea about aliens giving Earth people stuff. Like Uluru. And if aliens gave us Uluru, they might have stuck sparklers in the sky just to make the view from Earth look good. Who really knew? Only God, I guess. And that's only if there really was a God.
"Look!" Harry pointed to the sky again.
A shooting star sailed across the sky. "Wow!"
"See?" he said. "That's God telling us we'll be okay."
"Yep," I said to be agreeable. I would've preferred the ranger to turn up, but that was the next best thing. I rubbed my arms; I was beginning to go numb.
We didn't say anything for a while. I don't know what Harry was thinking, but I knew what I was thinking. God, if we're going to be okay, please don't drag it out. Harry is in lots of pain, even though he's not complaining. It's freezing. I want to go home.
But no one came. The quietness was weird. It was so quiet I could hear Harry breathing.
Eventually, Harry said, "Max, do you have a super power?"
I laughed. "I'd like to. Dad reckons I've got a super power for getting into trouble. I guess that isn't really a super power. It'd be great to make myself invisible when I'm about to get into trouble."
"But then Charlie would get the blame."
That sounded good to me. I laughed as I thought of all the jokes I could play at school if I could make myself invisible. When Mr. Connor filled up the board with writing and expected us to copy it down, I could rub out the writing as he went. I could kick goals in soccer and no one would ever see me coming. I could change the total point score in House competitions, so Yarra House could win the House Shield every year. I had this feeling that Harry would think I wanted to use my super power for evil, so I decided not to share this with him.
Instead, I asked, "Have you got a super power?"
He thought about it for a while before he replied, "Yeah, I've got the best super power."
"Really?" Already I knew it wasn't going to be that great. If he could make himself invisible or fly, or if his body could heal itself, I would've already known about it.
"I always find special people. Like my best friend, Luke. I know what he's thinking and he knows what I'm thinking. We don't even need to talk."
That didn't sound like a super power to me, but I didn't say so. "And who else is special?"
"There's my teacher, Miss Johnson; the girl who lives up the road, Amy; my swimming teacher, Clare; and David, he looks after us. They're all special. My mom says I have a magic touch for finding special people."
"You're lucky," I said. "I wish I had that many special people."
Harry's voice sounded sad again. "I wish my mom was here."
I reached over and squeezed his hand.
"Max," he said, "I found you too. Except for Luke, you're the most special."
"Thanks, Harry." I didn't want to get all mushy, but I just had to say, "I think you find special people because you're so special yourself."
Just then I realized that there was a loud noise and it was getting louder. I looked around, but couldn't see anything. A chill shot through my body. Evil spirits? Did spirits make that kind of noise?
Just then a gigantic monster rose up above the edge of Uluru. Bright lights shone down onto us. An alien spaceship! Every hair on my skin shot up. I screamed. Then Harry screamed.
First I noticed the blades spinning and then I noticed the shape.
"A chopper!" I shouted. Of course, Harry couldn't hear me because the noise drowned out my voice.
But Harry must've figured it out, because he raised his head and smiled at me. The wind nearly blew us off Uluru, but I didn't care.
The chopper landed and a minute later, two rescuers ran over to us with a stretcher. They both checked Harry and his leg.
"Are you okay?" a lady in uniform said to me as the man with her looked after Harry.
"Am now," I replied. I didn't say, What took you so long? But she gave me the answer.
"Your parents," she said to Harry and me, "have spent the last three hours on a wild goose chase."
"What?" I imagined them searching all over Uluru, but being too dumb to find us.
"Two different lots of people said they saw the two of you coming down. It turned out there were two other boys. They looked nothing like you two, except the older boy was wearing a Manchester United shirt."
"So they did miss us?"
She laughed. "After we realized you were probably up here we had to get permission from the Aboriginal owners to land the chopper on Uluru at night. They think the mamu, the evil spirits, come out at night. But because you were kids, they let us. They didn't want you all alone with the mamu."
Far out! There really were evil spirits. "Lucky for us," I replied.
She returned my bloodied shirt. "You did a brilliant job, you know. You stopped the bleeding and elevated his leg. That splint isn't too bad, either. He's going to be fine." She patted me on the back. "You're a hero."
I smiled my real humble smile. This time I was the hero.
"Ever been in a chopper?" she asked.
I shook my head.
I walked next to Harry as he was taken on the stretcher over to the chopper.
"Told you everything was going to be okay," he said to me.
"You were right."
I got to sit next to the pilot. A few minutes later, we rose straight up into the air. Through the chopper windows I could see Uluru below and the stars all around us. There were millions of them. It was magic.
Wow. Now I was a hero like Charlie and I'd done two things that he hadn't done. I'd climbed to the top of Uluru and I'd flown in a chopper. And, of course, I'd escaped death four times.