Authors: Gabrielle Lord
March (13 page)
Jennifer looked puzzled.
‘Here,’ I said, handing her the phone from the nearby desk. ‘Keep that door closed. You’d better get the snake catchers in,’ I added. ‘The death adders escaped.’
I walked into the night happy to be alive and free, for the moment, from all of my pursuers. I made my way from the Labtech complex through the bushes alongside the road, and was relieved to see the ambulance zoom past me on its way to Jennifer.
The climb back up the hill was rough, but once I made it to the top I could see the twinkling lights of the city below and I was grateful that the rest of the walk home was pretty much downhill.
It had been a long walk home—if you could call a derelict house a
home
—and I’d crashed almost the second I’d climbed back inside.
My head was spinning when I woke up and thought about everything that had happened in the laboratories. I pulled out my phone, keen to tell Boges about it.
‘Hey, Robbo,’ Boges answered, clearly not alone. ‘What’s happening? How’s the studying going?’
I got it straight away. ‘You can’t talk. Your mum’s there?’
‘Right, right.’
‘Do you have a couple of minutes to listen?’ I asked, hoping for that, at least.
‘Sure I do, Robbo! Yeah, go ahead.’
I quickly told him about meeting Jennifer Smith at Labtech in Long Reef, and how she’d hoped to give me Dad’s memory stick but wasn’t able to last night. I then went on to sum up the messy encounter with Red Singlet and his thug friend … and then finally the death adder bite and the fridge of antivenom. I said it as fast and in as few words as possible.
The other end of the line was quiet for a moment. I could tell Boges was working out what he could say without raising suspicion.
‘What’s next? Crocodiles?’ he finally said, laughing a little awkwardly.
‘Tell me about it,’ I sighed. ‘It was so bad: my head felt like it was going to explode, and I
just wanted to throw up. But the antivenom seemed to work perfectly. Sure, I felt pretty groggy afterwards, and still do, but that was nothing compared to possibly having that slithery sucker take me down! Imagine that, after everything I’ve been through.’
‘Damn straight!’ said Boges. ‘It was a good thing she didn’t bring it,’ he added.
‘Jennifer? The memory stick?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Because of Sligo’s thugs?’
‘Exactly,’ Boges agreed.
‘Hey, I called Eric Blair again, and guess what?’
‘Go on.’
‘He’s still off on sick leave,’ I said. ‘Can you believe it? What do you think’s wrong with him?
‘OK, you can’t really answer that, can you,’ I said after nothing but silence on Boges’s end of the line. ‘Anyway, we’ll talk about it later.’
‘Listen, Rob, I’m sorry mate,’ said Boges, ‘but I have to get going. Can I call you back in the next day or two?’
‘That’d be great.’
‘Cool,’ he said. ‘In the meantime I’ll see if I can dig up some information on snakes for your class project—venom, snake-bite care—I’ve
done a few reptile studies which could help you out with getting back into Mr Lloyd’s good books.’
‘You’re awesome, Boges, thanks.’
‘Dude, I am so sorry I haven’t been able to call you back until now. That phone call the other day was rough! Mum and Gran kept coming in and out of my room so I could hardly say a word! I can’t believe you were bitten by a death adder! Is everything OK now?’ Boges asked me.
‘That’s cool, don’t worry about it. Yeah, everything seems fine. I feel fine,’ I assured him.
Boges went on for a while, sounding like a medical dictionary. Basically he was telling me that I had to rest up, keep the wound clean, and be on the lookout for any deterioration.
‘What do you mean by deterioration?’ I asked.
‘There’s this thing called tissue necrosis. It’s when the skin dies and goes black. You haven’t
got any blackness happening, do you? Any oozing?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘What about suppurating pustules?’
‘Sounds disgusting. What are they?’
‘Kind of like massive zits. I saw some pictures of them online. Talk about gruesome!’
‘No, nothing like that,’ I said, relieved.
‘Just as well you weren’t bitten by a giant Amazonian Swamp Viper,’ said Boges. ‘In two days, the bitten limb turns green, then black, then drops off entirely.’
‘Lucky me!’ I said sarcastically. ‘And how about Eric Blair?’ I added.
‘That’s very strange,’ said Boges.
‘Tell me about it,’ I agreed. ‘Anyway, I’d better let you go. Thanks heaps for that info. Text me when you can come round again, OK, and we can talk about getting into Oriana’s?’
‘For sure.’
I re-dressed the old wound on my other leg, adding more antiseptic cream and changing the bandages. It had healed pretty well, and almost all of Repro’s tiny stitches had fallen out.
Next I washed the swollen area around the snake-bite, the cold water cooling the inflamed
skin. I shook my head thinking about being bitten by a giant Amazonian Swamp Viper.
I definitely needed to stay away from all dangerous creatures.
be round late this arvo. cool?
sweet. thx boges. c u then.
It was a cool afternoon and the sun was hidden behind the overgrown trees in the backyard of the old house where I was sitting, reading a book I’d taken from Repro’s.
A couple of days earlier, two men in suits had come to the door with clipboards and I’d hidden under the house while they made notes about the property. I guessed they were people who were considering buying and developing the land occupied by the old house. That worried me. If I was right, and they were starting their demolition plans, I’d have to find another place to live. This place was far from being a palace, but it had a working toilet and a tap with the water still on.
As the days passed, I wondered why Jennifer hadn’t called me and hoped she wasn’t in hospital. Thinking of hospital made me think of Gabbi, and I pulled out my phone to look at the photo of her that Boges had sent me. It made me sad, but I couldn’t help staring at it.
I’d been out late at night and scrounged some more furniture from the throw-outs along the nearby streets. Now I had another table set up, on bricks that I’d scavenged from a building site, and a couple of old cushiony chairs. For some days I’d had the drawings up on the walls and it had been comforting to have Dad’s work all around me. They weren’t up for long before I took them down again, worried that if I had to make a hasty exit I wouldn’t be able to collect them in time.
I kept my mind busy with my book as I waited for Boges to show up, when a sound around the front of the house made me freeze.
These days Boges always arrived by tunnelling under the house. Always. This sounded as if someone was coming up to the front door and I feared that the clipboard men were back.
I put my book down, crept back inside, and peered through the crack near the front door, ready to dive down the hole in the floorboards.
It was the sound of tiny bells that made me realise who it was. That, and a whiff of a familiar perfume that sent my mind spinning.
How in the world had Winter Frey found out where I was?
I waited, trying to work out how she might have done it but my thoughts were quickly interrupted.
‘Cal? Cal, I know you’re in there. I need to talk to you. You’re in danger.’
I knew that already—I didn’t need Winter Frey telling me that again.
‘Stop pretending you’re not there! Let me in!’
Somehow, she’d found out where I was staying. Things couldn’t get any worse if I let her in.
‘I know you must think I set you up, but I didn’t, I swear!’
She started thumping on the door. ‘Cal,’ she shouted, ‘let me in!’
‘Hey, shut up will you? I’m trying to hide in here!’ I said through the crack.
‘You
are
there!’ she cried, just as loud, running over to the crack I had spoken through. She ducked down, peering an eye through, and whispered, ‘Please, Cal, let me in. I promise I did not set you up. I was trying to warn you that they were trailing you and weren’t far away.
You’ve got to believe me. Besides,’ she added, ‘it’d be too late now for you to get away if I was working for them.’
‘How did you track me down?’ I asked. Her eye looked huge surrounded by smoky, grey eye shadow.
‘It’d be a lot easier to talk to you if you just let me in.’
I gave in and quickly opened the front door for her.
‘It was simple,’ she said, walking right into the main room, but before she could tell me any more, a sound from under the floor caused us both to swing around. I thought it would be Boges but still made sure that I had a clear run through to the back door just in case it wasn’t. I had an exit plan worked out—over the back fence and away.
‘What’s that noise under the floor?’ Winter asked.
She looked even more surprised when the carpet in the middle of the room went flying and Boges’s head and shoulders appeared through the hole in the floor like an oversized meerkat.
‘You!’ said Boges, halfway through the floorboards, staring at Winter.
‘Yes,
me
,’ Winter snapped back. ‘So?’
I looked from one to the other as they glared at each other.
Slowly, Boges hauled himself up out of the hole.
‘You’re the girl that’s been hanging around my place! Hard to miss someone with eyes like yours. And, you know,’ Boges added, ‘people put bells on their cats so that birds can
hear
them coming. It’s not a very clever move for someone who’s trying to
sneak
around to wear bells on their skirt!’ Boges swivelled his hips like a belly dancer. ‘People can hear you a mile away!’
Winter gave me a look as if to say
you’d better shut your friend up
, then pulled a newspaper clipping out of her bag. ‘And you can’t be missed either, clever boy,’ she said, waving it at Boges.
‘Best friend knows nothing of teen disappearance.’ I read from beneath a grainy picture of Boges standing outside his house on Dorothy Road.
‘It wasn’t hard to find out where you lived,’ she said, raising her right eyebrow, revealing, even more so, the intensity of her dark eyes. ‘I recognised your house from this picture. I’ve also noticed Zombrovski watching your place. Bruno’s been looking for you, too,’ she turned to me, ‘all over the city.’
‘Bruno?’ I asked. ‘Who’s Bruno?’
‘One of Sligo’s men. This big dude who fancies himself as a top street fighter. He always wears this stupid red singlet.’
‘He nearly got me at a government laboratory,’ I interrupted, ‘but the snakes got me instead.’
‘Snakes?’ Her eyes widened.
‘Another time,’ I said. ‘Tell me more about Bruno. Why is he always wearing that same stupid singlet?’
‘Bruno’s high up in Sligo’s gang. I can’t stand him. He got this singlet from a Chinese martial arts guy, thinking that the characters on the singlet mean
Master Fighter,
’ she laughed, ‘but I know what they really mean …’
‘And what’s that?’ I asked.
Winter shook her head. ‘I’ll tell you some other time. Maybe. Anyway, both Bruno and Zombrovski missed you because they’re both stupid, but I’m not. I just followed
your friend
the other day—all the way here,’ she said, turning to Boges, ‘I watched you look around, then creep in here up the side, thinking you were all sneaky and stuff … I knew who you were visiting.’ She put her hands on her hips, cocking her head to one side. ‘You’re not really that smart at all,’ she said. ‘You led me straight to
the kid every cop in the state is trying to catch.’
‘Give me that!’ said Boges, trying to snatch the newspaper from her. Winter was quick, and easily pulled it out of his reach. She shoved it back in her pocket.
‘So I guess I don’t have to introduce you two then,’ I said.
‘Nope. You’re Winter Frey all right,’ said Boges, and he didn’t sound too friendly. ‘At first I thought you were a thief, hanging around my place waiting to steal my wallet.’
‘Your wallet! That’s a joke. I don’t need your money.’
Stand-off, I thought.
‘Anyway, Winter,’ I interrupted. ‘How come you just appear and disappear like some sort of optical illusion?’
‘I don’t have to give an account of myself to you. Who do you think you are?’
‘There’s no mystery about me,’ I said. ‘You know exactly who I am.’
‘And that’s what I’m afraid of, dude,’ said Boges. ‘This chick knows far too much. What’s she doing here, anyway? Didn’t you say she dobbed you in to Sligo? Isn’t that how you ended up almost sliced-and-diced on the train tracks?’
Winter looked shocked, and a little wounded, by what Boges had just said. ‘Sliced-and-diced?’ she repeated, softly.
‘Yeah, you little rat, you nearly got him killed,’ Boges shouted at her.
‘Stop it! Both of you!’ I said, standing between the fiery pair. My head couldn’t deal with them fighting just then. ‘I’ve got enough crap going on. I don’t need this.’
They both backed off and looked away.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Boges looked up strangely at me, all of a sudden.
‘What?’ I asked him.
‘Dude, what’s with your hair?!’ he said before bursting into a fit of laughter. I couldn’t believe it; I looked to Winter and she’d started laughing too!
I could feel my face flush red with embarrassment, and my hands flew up to my hair, trying to do something with it to make it look less flat.
‘He looks ridiculous!’ she laughed.
‘Totally!’ Boges agreed.
If laughing at me put an end to their fighting, then I’d have to cop it. Besides, I knew that my new black, combed-down do did look pretty bad.
