Jag comes back with a huge fish, long and golden with a golden tail, but I gotta pretend like it ain’t as good as the one I slapped him with, so I try to play it down.
‘S’okay,’ I say.
‘It’s fatter, not longer!’ he says. ‘So it’s got more meat, and that’s important, coz that’s what we eat.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I say.
‘You ain’t even trying to argue!’ he says, all huffy.
So I tell him how I tried to be a tick on Gerra and stuffed up.
‘You should prolly leave it to kids who’s better at it.’
‘What d’ya mean?’
‘I mean, you always doing sneaky stuff, and even when you go away with Marta, you come back with stories about crocs and kids hiding and strange villagers.’
I shove him. ‘All that happens to be real,’ I say. ‘I don’t make up stories, it’s jus’ I’m normally dragging you around with me, so you know it’s true!’
He laughs like he’s happy he finally got an argument.
‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘If you and me snagging her boat and hauling it in isn’t trustworthy, I don’t know what is.’
‘That’s why you got nothing to worry about,’ Jag says. ‘Coz we ain’t done nothing wrong.’
And I wonder if I should tell him what I got up to last night, pulling the wires out of the tech thing. But I don’t, and if I ain’t telling Jag, my best buddy, I ain’t telling no one.
Up the hill, the red light is completely out. Gerra is sitting out in front of Marta’s cottage still, in the shade. If you din’t know where to look you wouldn’t see her. I wave to her but she don’t wave back. Why would she?
There’s a splosh sound, a chunky splash behind us. Jag hears it too, coz he grabs my arm. And then there’s a scream. I spin and take off running towards it. ‘Bring a rope!’ I yell to Jag.
Little Margy’s screaming. Margy’s slipping and sliding on her back, her chooks running squawking, from the sinkhole opening up in the ground in front of the chook shed. The ground under Margy is crumbling away, great cracks forming around a bubbling muddy hole, and those chunks are sliding away into the frothing water.
‘Margy!’ I scream and run straight at that sinkhole. Sinkholes, always opening up and stealing people. It’s not gonna take one of my littlies. I run flat out. Jag is the only one fast as me. He’ll be off that jetty with the rope and right behind me. Him and me, we’re a team. I don’t even have to waste time looking back.
I’m about to jump to where Margy is scrambling to pull herself out of the mud, but the edge falls away under my feet and I drop and slide into the cold boiling water. It sucks at me and pulls me under, drags my arm one way, my legs another, and I’m kicking and pushing against chunks of land. I’m shoved back up by a rush of water. Margy’s going down. I reach out, snag her shirt, haul her to me, find her grabbing arm under the water, but it’s slippery with mud so I use her hair, pull her back to the surface. Coughing, gasping, her eyes blinking wild, mud streaming down her face. Me treading water, kicking hard as I can at chunks that scrape my bare legs, everything churning, boiling and sucking. I kick like I’m fighting. I pull her head close to my shoulder. She’s kicking like mad too.
The mud sucks my legs, twists them, grinds a hunk of something at me, pulls me down again. ‘Take a breath!’ I tell Margy. I been teaching her to swim, but I don’t know how long we’re going down for. It’s hard jus’ keeping a hand on her in all this pounding muddy water. I twist my hand in her shirt so it’s wrapped around good, so I can’t let go. Mud pushes grit in my eyes. A hunk of land hits me square in the back as it falls in, blobbing around, breaking up, and it pushes us sideways. I kick, push up through a surface of slopping mud and grass, pull Margy up with me, both of us spluttering.
‘Jag!’ I yell.
A rope plops beside me. I wrap it around my arm. Jag pulls, and I pull at Margy and we’re dragged through the churning mud, gently first, then the olds arrive in a panic of yelling and we’re torn across the surface of that sinkhole so my arms burn like they’re gonna rip off. My elbows graze, and I spit mud and grass from my teeth coz we hit the crumbling edge. Me stretched between the rope and Margy, like I’m a hunk of chain. I can’t do nothing to protect my head from the crumbling bank.
Then people grab me and Margy, stand us up and yell things. I scrape the mud from my eyes and I’m face to face with Ma yelling about what did I think I was doing.
‘Jag was right behind me!’ I yell back. ‘We’s a team!’
Then she’s squishing me against her chest even covered in mud like I am. Her heart thumps in my ear super-fast like it’s gonna bust through her chest. Then Aunty Dizzy is there, wailing and hugging Margy and me and Jag all at the same time, Jag squirming away coz he don’t wanna get covered in mud.
Margy and me look like swamp creatures, cept Margy has two clean lines under her eyes, where she’s been crying. I go to wipe away the tears and smear mud across her cheeks. She grins. A pop of white teeth in a mud-brown face. I hate to think of her maybe drowned in all that mud. I’m glad me and Jag was close.
Aunty Dizzy takes me and Margy off for a shower and clean clothes, leading us right past Marta’s cottage where Marta calls, ‘Great work, Neoma!’ and Gerra lifts her hand and waves. Ha! Finally she’s seen me do good!
