Warrnambool! What kind of name is that for a place? And what am I doing here?
Well, I know the answer to the second question. I’m here because of Dad—Mom and Dad, really. If Mom hadn’t decided to change her name to Acacia and go searching for the space to “find herself,” my parents wouldn’t have split up. Dad wouldn’t have accepted a job in Australia, and I’d be back struggling through grade eleven at Dover Bay Secondary.
Not that that would be a bunch of fun. It’d be a gray, rainy January on Vancouver Island, and I’d be fighting to pull myself up to a B in math while trying to handle all the usual garbage that being sixteen in a big high school throws at you. But I’d be with my friends. I’m not a real outgoing person. It takes me a long time to build up a few good friends. Now they’re at the other end of the earth, and I’m walking along a beach at Warrnambool, worrying about starting at a fancy private school in Adelaide in a couple of weeks—we have to wear uniforms! And I’ll have to begin the find-friends routine all over again. At least it’s not cold and rainy here—the weatherman’s calling for thirty-eight degrees this afternoon. But hot weather doesn’t do anything for loneliness.
I kick an old piece of black driftwood ahead of me. I’m walking along the edge of a line of grass-covered sand dunes. To my left, the featureless beach stretches down to where the ocean waves roll in, foaming and crashing as if angry that they can’t climb higher toward me. Beyond that, there’s nothing until you reach Antarctica. At least there’s somewhere more boring than Warrnambool.
I catch up with the piece of driftwood and give it another kick. That’s when I hear the counting—“3.141592653589793…” Well, it’s not really counting, because the numbers aren’t in any sequence I can spot.
I look around. The voice must be coming from behind the dunes. As far as I can see in either direction along the beach, there’s only one old guy and his dog. Neither of them is counting.
I stumble through the soft sand up the dune face. Normally, I wouldn’t go looking for someone talking to themselves, but the numbers are so weird. They’re still going on and making no more sense—“…238462643383279…”
At the top of the dune, I see the girl. She’s not tough to spot. Bright red hair like hers would stand out a mile away. She’s sitting cross-legged in the hollow between my dune and the next one. She is wearing green cargo pants and a loose, long-sleeved khaki shirt. There’s a tattered blue backpack beside her. Her eyes are closed and she is still listing numbers—“…5028841971…” Have I stumbled upon a lunatic escaped from a local asylum? Maybe she’s part of a coven, and she’s chanting a mystical formula to raise the devil. I’m about to return to the beach when the girl stops counting, opens her eyes and stares up at me.
“Hello,” she says, without a hint of embarrassment.
“Hello,” I reply. Then my throat and brain dry up. Like I said, I’m not an outgoing person. Fortunately, the girl is.
“I was just sitting here reciting Pi,” she says, standing, brushing sand off her pants and picking up her backpack.
“Pie?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says, coming up the dune toward me. “You know—Pi, the basis of everything.”
“Oh, you mean Pi, the mathematical number.”
The girl smiles, and I feel my cheeks flush. “My name’s Annabel.” She arrives at my side and holds out a hand.
I shake it. “I’m Sam.” Up close, she is striking. Her hair falls straight halfway down her back and almost glows in the low sun. Her eyes are an odd gray color and stare at me confidently. Her mouth curls up on one side, making it look as if she is permanently amused by something. She’s a good four inches taller than me, and I’m only a couple of inches under six feet.
Like a mouse mesmerized by a snake, I stare up at her until she looks down, and I realize I’m still holding her hand. I drop it hurriedly and mumble, “Why were you saying Pi out loud?”
“Because it’s cool. Do you want to hear me recite it?”
“Okay,” I say, not entirely sure that I do.
Annabel closes her eyes and rattles off numbers, much faster than before. “3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944 592307816406286…”
“That’s impressive,” I say, interrupting the flow that sounds as if it could go on all day.
Annabel opens her eyes. “I can keep going,” she offers.
“That’s okay. How many digits have you learned?”
“I’m up to three thousand two hundred and thirty.”
“Wow,” I say, partly in awe and partly in realization that my guess about an escapee from a lunatic asylum was correct. “That’s a lot of numbers.”
“It’s my party trick.” She laughs out loud. “I don’t go to many parties. Actually, it’s not a lot of digits. The world record for memorizing Pi is over a hundred thousand.”
I frown, trying to imagine someone wanting to memorize that many numbers.
“I don’t think I’ll ever manage that,” Annabel says. “My dream is to have Pi tattooed on my arm.” She holds out an incredibly long right arm and stares at it. “In a spiral.” She twists her left hand in a sinuous motion down the length of the arm. “I reckon I could get several thousand numbers on there. Don’t you?”
“I guess so,” I say, wondering if I should turn and run for it.
“You’re new here,” she says, dropping her arm and turning those gray eyes on me. All thoughts of running vanish.
“Yeah,” I reply. “My dad’s working in Adelaide, so he thought it would be a good idea to drive down here for a holiday for a few days.”
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”
“The beach is okay,” I say defensively, “but there’s nothing to do. The town’s boring.”
“Have you been up Flagstaff Hill?”
“Why would I want to see a flagstaff?” “There’s a museum there. This stretch of coast is called the Shipwreck Coast. Dozens of ships have sunk along here.” She waves an arm expansively to take in the entire coast and ocean.
“The museum has all kinds of cool stuff salvaged from wrecks.”
“Boring old stuff,” I say dismissively, trying to sound casual. I immediately regret it. Annabel’s face darkens in anger.
“Boring old stuff!” she says. “You just dismissed all of history. You think people who lived in the past weren’t as interesting as you? They were certainly smarter.” Annabel strides off down the sand dune.