I push through some big double doors and I’m in a room with everything built from shiny steel. There’s a rack with all kinds of glass jars with lots of different coloured herbs and spices and pots and pans on every shelf and giant spoons hanging from hooks, and knives, sharper than any Jag’s got on his belt. I turn to tell him, but he ain’t behind me no more. I push through to a room to one side of the steel kitchen and there’s dozens of packets and cans and giant white bags with mould creeping up the sides. The cans are rusty round the tops, the labels faded and hanging off them. I shove some of them into my sack. Cans like Ma said. She’s gonna be so happy.
‘Jag!’ I call.
His feet pound on the tiles behind me and I spin to show him the amazing find of a whole small room full of food.
‘Come see the sky!’ he says first. His face is weird-stiff.
I drop my sack with a clunk and follow him running back through all the tables and chairs to where he’s pushed one of the grimy sliding glass doors open a bit. I squeeze out, follow him between tipped and rusting chairs and tables to the edge of the balcony, and even before he cries out anything, that smeary cone of runny black and green cloud in the distance makes my mouth go dry. Lightning flashes, cracking through the black clouds, kicking out at the sea like it’s taking giant jagged white-legged steps towards us.
‘If we fill our sacks, we can jump,’ I say, not wanting for our find to be lost to other salvagers before we get back here.
‘We can’t jump from this high!’ Jag says, and starts towards the door.
I grab his sack from him. ‘Then you take the stairs, I’ll jump.’
‘Neo! No! We’ll come back!’ Jag’s voice is squeaky.
‘It’s food for summer when it’s hard to grow stuff. It’ll keep us all fed. I can do it.’
Jag looks at me and looks at the door, and I can tell he’ll choose me. He’ll make me jump first but still he won’t leave me to do this alone.
‘Listen,’ I say and grab his shirt. ‘I need you to run down the steps fast as you can, and tell Ma about the storm and to bring Licorice around to this side of the building for me. Can you do that?’
Jag nods. ‘I c-can,’ he says, like he’s surprised to be given a safer job to do. He presses a rope from his belt into my hands. ‘Don’t jump more than ten floors, you’ll break your legs off.’ He takes off.
I drag his sack through the kitchen, slide more cans off shelves into it. I throw a solid-looking pan and a ladle into my bag as well. These sacks are super heavy and once they’re all tied off I can’t hardly drag them to the balcony. I’m hoping three floats each will keep them afloat long enough for Ma and Dizzy to get hooks to them.
Then I tie Jag’s rope to the railing of the balcony. I’m gonna get down a few floors before I jump, like Jag said. He’s the voice that I’m missing in my own head sometimes. The voice that keeps me safe.
The storm’s kicking up white tips out on the sea, boiling up the clouds and making them swirl dark and angry, full of hate for the little land creatures that dare to be out on the edge of the wide risen sea.
Ma said they din’t used to have sudden storms rolling around all the time when she was my age. She said they came on with the risen sea and the heat in a way no one could’ve guessed.
‘Neoma!’ Ma screams below, coming around the building in Licorice. Jag must’ve slid down railings to get to them that fast.
I heave the first sack up to the rusty rail and balance it there, cans on either side, then the second. ‘Get your hooks ready!’ I yell.
‘Leave them!’ Ma yells. ‘We have to go!’
I hear her fine but pretend I don’t coz I worked hard for this salvage. I push the first sack over and it goes down so fast and slaps the water so hard, I think I must’ve dented all the cans. It sinks immediately, the floats dragged down after it, down into the dark choppy water. Then a hint of yellow as the floats pull up, looking for the surface they jus’ can’t reach. Dizzy’s dangling from a stanchion, hooking the ropes with her long hook pole and pulling it in. Yay!
I climb over the balcony rail and give Dizzy a moment before I pull the other sack over, let it fall past me, down and down. I move my hands to the rope, stick my bum out and try to walk down the wall, feeding the rope out as I go. It’s rough on my hands and my arm muscles burn. Then my feet hit nothing on the next balcony and I’m jus’ swinging hand under hand, fingers and shoulders tight and burning now too, grappling at the rope with my bare feet, trying to spread the weight. I’m thinking we went up twenty floors above the water, but there’s no way I’ll last doing another ten like Jag wants.
‘Hold on!’ Jag yells at jus’ the right time.
I do. I hold on for two more floors, hands slipping, muscles weak. Then two more, blisters burning on my hands. My shoulder joints scream at me to stop, let go. But still I hang on and get one more floor down. My blisters tear and I want to be in the cold choppy sea to stop the burning more than anything. So even though I’ve only scaled down six floors, I push my feet against the wall, push out and let go. The air roars like it wants to tear my ears off. My shirt’s flapping like it’s already torn. My shoulders is suddenly good again and I wish I hadn’t let go so soon. I clamp my knees together, pull them up like I’m kneeling for them to bash a hole in the surface of the water, and link my fingers behind my neck, with my elbows hard together in front of my face. I take a deep breath.
Then blam! My shins and ankles sting and my knees is shoved up, smacking my chest, my elbows ripped up and apart, my fingers drag my knuckles over each other as they tear apart, water pushes up my nose and tears at my hair, pulls on my sore burnt scalp, and I sink like a rock. I kick against the water, heavy and pulling me down. My ankles complain like the fronts of them got sprained a bit, but they ain’t broke like Jag said. And soon, I’m kicking for the surface and Jag is in the water there, holding on to the hook with one hand, his head under the water, hair all fanned out floating around his head, eyes round and blinking and cheeks puffed out like he’s some kinda puffy-cheeked angel. He reaches a hand out towards me and I take it, let him pull me up through the surface into the empty air and the waiting hands of Ma. She drags me into the net of Licorice Stix, the net knots scraping my skin like I’m a wet-skinned eel that she drug up from the deep.
‘You alright, kiddo?’ she asks.
My mouth opening to answer only brings the water from up my nose out the back of my throat and sets me coughing. Water splutters from my mouth, pours from my nose. I nod.
‘Good haul,’ she says, and runs to help Aunty Dizzy get Licorice up to speed.
