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That was from Mr. Henshall as well.

Don’t get too close,
he always said.
Don’t let a drowning person drag you down with them
.

It was most important
to secure your own safety at all times.
It was
reach to rescue
and
defensive posture
and
break their nose if you have to (don’t quote me on this)
.

I held on to the stick, on to the branch, and I didn’t grab on to the platform, which was a raft, of sorts. I let myself be dragged through the water, and then we were in the shallows, and he was hauling me in, all the way to the good solid ground — the voice, the mouth, the someone.

Liam.

I sat in the mud while he pulled the raft up onto the bank.

What are you doing here?
I wanted to ask, and
How did you get here?
and
Where did you get that raft thing?
But I couldn’t say anything just yet, could only focus on getting air in and out, in and out.

“Are you okay?” Liam sat down near me at the water’s edge.

I nodded. I didn’t feel okay — not yet — but I knew I would soon. Eventually. Because even though my leg was still wood and there was lake in my throat, I was out now and there wasn’t any farther to sink.

“Thanks,” I said finally. “My leg — it . . .” I made claws of my hands, gritting my teeth.

“Cramp. I had that in the pool once. The wall was right there, and I thought I wasn’t going to make it back. Pretty scary.”

“Yeah.” I ran one hand cautiously down my leg, probing for the pain.

Cramp? Was that it? Nothing to do with my lungs or digging in, but just a normal cramp, like anyone could get.

Any idiot who tried to swim out into the middle of the lake after a stick, that is.

“You probably just went too far,” Liam said. “What were you doing out there?” He peered out across the lake. “What’s that thing?”

“The fire tree,” I said. “That’s where I went.”

“The fire tree?” He turned back to me quickly. “Seriously? How far is that?”

“I don’t know. A long way.”

He gave a low whistle. “You’re crazy. I mean, I know you’re
better
and everything, but . . .”

I leaned back on my elbows. “I thought it was closer. I thought I could get there. I did get there. Then I had to get back.” I shot him a quick look. “How long have you been here, anyway?”

“I only saw you just there.” He pointed to a spot about halfway between the shore and the tree. “You were doing the breaststroke. You looked okay. Lucky I had the raft, though.”

I stared up the bank. His so-called raft was a row of planks bound together with rotting string and tied to the top of some rusty metal drums.

“Where did you get that thing?” I said. “What are you even doing here?”

Liam pulled at his shorts. From one edge, a thick, raised scar tracked down his leg like a centipede.

“I knew you were swimming somewhere,” he said. “That day near the pool . . . your hair was wet.” He picked up a stone and skimmed it out across the water. It skipped once, twice, then sank.

“Dad made the raft,” he said after a while. “We used to come up here all the time.”

“Your dad made that?”

Liam’s face clouded. “He’s not stupid. He’s just —”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said quickly. “I meant I didn’t know you came up here. You and him.”

“Oh.” Liam picked up a leaf and tore down the center along its knobbly spine. “Well, we don’t anymore. Mom said it was better not to remind him. He gets . . . worked up.”

I followed his gaze out to the lake, to where the clock tower would be if the map in my head was right.

Liam crushed the leaf in his hand, releasing the sharp smell of eucalyptus, and stood up.

“I’d better go. Mom likes me to stop in, see how he’s doing.”

“Yeah. I should get back.” I rocked forward into a squat, then creaked slowly to my feet.

While I pulled my clothes on, Liam dragged the raft behind a tree a little farther along the shoreline.

“I can’t believe this is still in one piece,” he said. “Sort of.” He grinned as a chunk of rotting wood broke off one side. “I forgot how much I like it here. The pool gets so crowded.”

I nodded. “Tell me about it.”

He scratched at the ground with the rescue stick, dragging a long wavy line through the dirt. For a moment, I thought he was going to say something, but then he shrugged. He gathered his shorts around him, and I followed him up through the trees toward the fence, where his bike lay, resting against mine.

We rode down the hill in silence, apart from the cicadas and the magpies and the rattle of our bikes over the bumpy path.

As we passed the pool, we slowed, then accelerated.

When we reached the town hall, we pulled up outside. I straddled my bike while Liam leaned his against the racks out in front.

“Well, I’d better go.” He jerked a thumb toward the door.

“Yeah, me too.” I scuffed one foot against a pedal. “So . . . thanks.”

“It’s okay. Um . . . see you tomorrow, maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

I kicked the pedals around and pushed down. “Hey, would you really have broken my nose?”

As I began to roll, I heard him laugh quietly. “I don’t know,” he said. Then more loudly, as I headed off the sidewalk and onto the road: “Probably. Maybe.”

When I looked back, he was grinning, watching me go.

I was pushing my way up the last big hill when I heard it behind me — the roar of an engine, tires crunching on the dirt road.

Tourists. It had to be. Dad would be in the studio all day, working on Finkle, pretending to work on pots. And Mom and Hannah would be home by now, waiting in the kitchen to ask if I’d hung up my towel.

I moved over, crunching across the sticks and leaves at the side of the road, and waited for the car to pass.

Instead, I heard the engine slow as it pulled up alongside me.

It was a once-green utility vehicle. A now-faded and rusted and falling-apart old truck that none of us could believe kept surviving the trip all the way to the city and back.

“Elijah!”

“Hey, doofus!” He rolled down the window, grinning, then coughed as the dust cloud he’d stirred up hit him in the face.

I scooted my bike over awkwardly. “When did you get back?”

“Just now.” He nodded at the backseat, which was full of books and clothes and pillows.

“Haven’t you been home yet?”

He shook his head. “I went past the pool — thought I might give you a lift. Didn’t see you, though.”

“I was probably getting changed.”

“Except you’re not changed.”

I looked down. Stupid. My bathing suit was clearly visible under my shirt.

“I meant . . . I was in the bathroom.”

“Oh, okay.” He frowned. “Must have just missed you.”

“You can give me a lift now.”

I climbed off the bike and wheeled it toward the back of the truck.

He raised his eyebrows. “We’re basically there, Cass.”

He was right. We were. But I suddenly felt like I couldn’t go any farther, like all of it had caught up with me at once — the swimming, the sinking, the stick. Not to mention this long, dusty hill.

Elijah opened his door and climbed out. He lifted my bike into the back of the truck, then turned to me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired.”

“Do your six?”

“Yep.”

“Hang your towel?”

I punched him in the arm. “She still says it, you know.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” He put the car into gear and took off up the hill. “Seriously, Cass. Don’t push yourself too hard. You look wrecked.”

When we eased into the driveway a minute later, the front door flew open immediately. Mom appeared first, followed by Hannah, then Dad.

“Elijah!” Mom put her hands on her hips. “You should have called ahead!” She was smiling, already moving to the window to drag him out for a hug.

“Does this mean my scones aren’t ready yet?” Elijah grinned as he climbed out of the car, unfolding his long frame and stretching his arms above his head while Mom tackled him around the waist.

“I’d make you some,” she said. “You know I would.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to eat them.”

“True.”

“Good thing you teach history, not cooking.”

“Cheeky!” Mom ducked her head, then caught sight of me in the passenger seat. “Cass?”

Elijah reached up to haul my bike out of the back. “Yeah, I gave her a lift. From the pool. Right, Cass?”

His lips were curved in the shadow of a smile. I hesitated a second before nodding. “Yeah.”

“Do your six?” Mom asked.

Elijah burst out laughing.

Mom stared at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” He grabbed an enormous duffel bag from the back of the truck and hoisted it over one shoulder. “Better hang your towel, mate.”

“Yeah.” I bit my lip to keep from smiling and headed for the clothesline.

Later, after lasagna and apple pie and nothing at all resembling a Devonshire tea, we sat around the table. Elijah told us about his exams and the house he was living in with six other guys, and how he seriously doubted the truck was going to survive another trip. Hannah told him about the centenary celebrations and showed him the draft of the book she’d printed out to make notes on.

Dad told him about the Finkle head and the pots, and Elijah agreed to help him finish things up and cart them into town. But when he asked Dad to show him Finkle, Dad shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said. “It’s still . . . developing.”

Hannah sighed. “That’s one word for it.”

Finkle was being difficult, apparently. Or Dad was, depending on how you looked at things.

“He wants me to work from this,” Dad said, pulling a folded photograph from his pocket.

Hannah rolled her eyes. “That old thing again?”

Dad nodded. “I know. It hardly even looks like him anymore.”

“We keep telling him,” Hannah said. “He won’t listen. Says he hasn’t changed that much. He’s in denial or something.”

I peered down at the photo. There were some notes scribbled along the edge in black marker —
Left side best
and
Not really that wrinkly.
The face itself was crisscrossed by a grid of lines that divided it up into tiny squares.

Dad snorted. “He seems to think I can just copy the photo, one square at a time.”

He ran a finger across Finkle’s crosshatched face. It was like those drawings I used to do when I was little, where you copy a picture square by square onto a new grid. No matter how careful I was, they always came out slightly wonky.

“That’s not how it works,” Dad said. “You can’t just break something down into parts like that. This is art, not construction.” He tossed the photo onto the table and leaned back in his chair. “I tried to explain to him — what I like to do is look at the photos, capture the essence of the thing, then put them away and just work from the mind’s eye, from the hands.”

“That explains a lot, actually,” Elijah said. When Dad first started doing heads, he had done one of Elijah that ended up looking disturbingly like a cross-eyed ferret.

Dad whacked him lightly on the shoulder, then sighed. “I just don’t think Finkle really understands the artistic process.”

Hannah’s jaw clenched a little. “I’m sure he doesn’t, Dad. But he means well. Just do your best, would you? We’re all working hard on this.”

She pointed at the centenary book. Elijah had been working his way through it slowly and had just reached my page.

“Ah,” he said. “Welcome to New Lower Grange!”

“Yeah.” I flushed.

He flicked back and forth quickly. “Bit surprised I don’t get a mention. Defenders of the forest, heroes of the tree — carrier of the poo.”

“Elijah!” Mom frowned. “Yuck.”

“Yeah, it was.” He grinned. “I made sixty bucks, though.”

“No one needs to remember that,” Hannah said. “They weren’t heroes. They were feral weirdos.”

“Typical Finkle-spin!” Elijah countered. “They were cool. And they were right. That tree was a landmark.”

“Trees grow,” Hannah said. “Besides, they have better ways of spotting fires now.”

“Yeah, well, I liked the fire tree,” Elijah said.

“Me too,” I said.

“Come off it, Cassie,” Hannah said. “You never even saw it. That tree was dangerous. You could fall right through the pegs if you weren’t careful. I can’t believe they let anyone climb that thing.”

“And I can’t believe you were too chicken to climb it.” Elijah gave her a scornful look. Then he turned to Mom. “Remember when she got about halfway up and was too scared to move?”

Mom nodded. “Oh, yes. Because I was at the bottom, being told off by a family of Japanese tourists. They asked me if Australian mothers normally let their kids do such risky things.” She smiled. “I didn’t know what to say.”

Elijah went over to the bench and filled the kettle with water. “Yeah, and I couldn’t get down because I was already up, and she was so hysterical, she wouldn’t let anyone past.”

Hannah folded her arms. “I was ten, Elijah.”

“Yeah, and I was eight. I couldn’t believe it. But that wasn’t the best bit, was it, Mom? Remember how that guy went up to his car . . . ?”