| |
––––––––
It’s Wednesday night and it’s still raining and I think the world is about to end. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe that’s why They came. Maybe it’s their way of saving us from ourselves. Even so I feel a bit cheated. We didn’t exactly get the chance to prove we could save ourselves.
Anyway they haven’t got me! They’ll never think to look in here, which should give me time to write it all down. Except I hope there will be someone left to read it, otherwise I’m wasting my time.
Hey! Maybe some Star Trek types from another planet will eventually find it. They'll figure out what happened!
#
THE TEACHER LOOKED over the boy’s shoulder in the otherwise deserted school library. “It’s all rather vague, Nathan,” she said, “you’re not really getting on with the story.”
“I know,” said the boy, “but I just don’t know where to begin!”
“What about on the bus?” suggested the teacher, “And put your name near the beginning so your readers know who you are.”
“No-one’s ever going to read this,” he said dejectedly, pushing away from the computer.
“Someone will,” she said, gripping his shoulders gently and rolling his chair back to the keyboard, “one day.” It was not a particularly teacherly thing to do, but it was not a particularly normal day. After all, school was over. For ever.
The boy paused at the keyboard, then began typing again.
#
HI. MY NAME IS NATHAN Kennigan and the world started to go weird on me just a few days ago. It was the beginning of our three-day school camp. We were on a bus heading out of Brisbane, and we had only been on the road for twenty minutes when Amelia started calling out to our teacher, “Ms Loti, Lucy’s got a headache.”
As well as being my teacher, Ms Loti was going to be Camp Coordinator, and she was a really cool teacher, I can tell you! She could cope with anything! (And I’m not just saying that because she’s standing behind me right now reading everything I write down.) So anyway Ms Loti goes striding down the aisle, her mobile phone and her medical kit hooked to her belt like one of those action heroes in the movies.
Us boys were all hanging over the backs of our seats, being nosy as always.
Ms Loti reached Lucy and felt her forehead. “Where does it hurt?”
Lucy pointed silently to the back of her head, just behind her ears.
“How does your neck feel?”
“Okay.” whispered Lucy.
“No pain? Not stiff or anything?”
“No.”
“Well there’s no fever, so that’s a good thing. But I think you’d better take a couple of these for the pain.” Ms Loti opened her kit and took out a huge packet of painkillers. I saw the name, ZANODOL, on the label. I knew they’d been advertising the stuff like crazy all weekend.
“They’re on special.” I blurted out, “a pack of a hundred for just $9.99!”
“We know,” said Marcus in that particularly nasty voice of his, “We’ve all got a TV, you know.” A few of the guys laughed.
Ms Loti had the packet open. “Have you got water, Lucy?”
She shook her head.
“She can use mine,” said Taylah, passing over a water bottle. We could all see it was half-empty. It had that slightly blurry look of water that someone has already been drinking.
“Ooh yuk,” I called out, “Girl germs!”
A few of the guys laughed, which was just what I’d been hoping for. Otherwise I was one point down on Marcus.
Before Ms Loti could say anything, Lucy drank from the bottle.
“We shouldn’t share bottles,” warned Ms Loti too late as Taylah took back her bottle. Taylah just shrugged and put it away.
Anyway, Lucy settled down and that was that, for a while.
#
THE BUS TOOK TWO HOURS to reach the camp, which was up in the rainforest of the Gold Coast Hinterland near the NSW border. I didn’t know the place existed until that day. All that rainforest and stuff. Just beautiful! Not that us boys cared that much. We were all goofing around, singing made-up songs and making comments about everything we saw out the window. All very disrespectful of sheep farmers and foreign tourists on mountain bikes and, for that matter, anything else we saw.
At one point we had to go past the top of a cliff and a few of the girls freaked out. I was pretty scared of going over the side too, but only because I was trapped inside a bus and couldn’t grab onto a tree or anything. I didn’t let on that I was scared though, because I was a boy.
#
THE CAMP WAS FANTASTIC. Okay, the buildings were just a bunch of concrete boxes like a big motel, but there was bush all around, and rocky mountaintops beyond that, and a deep valley with a little river in it. It all looked so pretty. I looked at the footbridge and wondered what lay on the other side. It was all bush.
And the camp had a swimming pool, which everyone else thought was fantastic. Naturally they all wanted to swim straight away but the adults made us all put our stuff in the bunkrooms first, then gave us a talk about rubbish and safety and sunhats and behaviour and respect and all that. Then they let us into the pool.
Ms Loti unlocked the gate and everyone swarmed into the enclosure like flies on a picnic. All except me. I kind of hung back. Had my towel, but I didn’t want to go in. No way!
It was really hot, mind. Stinking hot. Even the teachers and parents went swimming. I guess they had to, to keep watch on all the trouble-makers (and not all of them were boys, either, by the way).
Then I noticed that Ms Loti was hanging back just like I was. She didn’t even have a towel. She sort of looked at me, and I sort of looked at her. One of those weird moments; like she wasn’t a teacher anymore, just a person. Spooky! Embarrassing! I thought I’d better say something.
“Do you mind, like, if I go read a book or something?”
“No,” she said, “Not at all. But don’t you want to have a swim first?”
“Not really. I, ah, I just don’t feel like it.”
She and I edged back as the splashes from the pool got bigger.
“Come on, Ms Loti!” some of the girls called, “The water’s fabulous!”
She just smiled and shook her head.
“Aww, go on!” they pleaded.
Ms Loti glanced away towards the bunkrooms. “I ah, I think I’ll go check on Lucy,” she said, “She’s probably lonely.” She patted her first-aid kit and headed away, almost with relief, I thought. I went with her a little way, saying nothing, then turned away towards the boys’ end of the camp.
What a relief!
#
I MIGHT AS WELL ADMIT it now. I hate water. Anything bigger than a bathtub just freaks me right out. If you want the big fancy word for it, it’s ‘hydrophobia’. Fear of water. Don’t ask me why. Something must have happened when I was a baby, but I don’t remember. Anyway, thanks to my hydrophobia, I’ve managed to survive this whole terrible thing, so it’s served a purpose at last.
What terrible thing am I talking about? Sorry. I’ll get on with it.