Authors: Lucy Christopher
Tags: #Law & Crime, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Australia, #Action & Adventure, #Adventure and Adventurers, #Juvenile Fiction, #Australia & Oceania, #Social Issues, #Fiction, #Physical & Emotional Abuse, #Interpersonal Relations, #Kidnapping, #Adventure Stories, #Young Adult Fiction, #General, #People & Places, #Adolescence
Stolen (18 page)
You laughed. “But what did
you
say? You were the one I was watching.”
I could feel the heat in my cheeks. I hate the way I always blush so easily. I unstuck the backs of my knees from the couch again and bent them. I rested my head down so you couldn’t see my face.
“That’s just weird, you watching me like that.”
“Not always. Sometimes it was good.”
The blush disappeared. And instead, that sickness was in my stomach again, the nausea that always arrived when I thought about what you’d done to me. I wanted to know what you’d seen in the park over the years—I’d certainly done some stupid things—but at the same time I didn’t want to know. I certainly didn’t want to ask.
So I got to thinking about the park instead, the times I used to go there. First of all it had been with my parents. We used to go most Sundays, for a year or so, when the weather was nice, anyway. Mum and Dad read the papers on the bench, and I played around them. Mum brought me toys, but I preferred to wander in and out of the flower beds, making up tales about the fairy kingdom. It was a good memory, one of the happiest I have about my parents. Mum hadn’t gone back to full-time work then, and Dad seemed more relaxed somehow. In my head, we are this normal, happy family. It’s nice. That must have been the year when I first met you, that summer.
Had you seen all that? Were those rare blissful family moments part of the pull that drew you to me? I looked back at you. You were picking at a loose nail in one of the veranda posts, trying to work it from the wood. I watched you tugging it back and forth, trying to get your finger under it. It took your complete concentration. Hunched over like that, you looked smaller than you were. I leaned back into the couch and changed my focus to the sky. That blue, blue sky, so endless and empty. But there were a few clouds that day, wisps of cotton candy scudding across the blue. I tried to find faces in them.
How many times did I lie in the park with Anna, doing the same thing? We always found Ben—he was the large cloud with the swirly, smiley edge. Anna said she saw Josh up there once, looking down on me.
I’d watched for Josh after that. I’d even talked to him, trying to find out whether he was really as bad as I’d thought. It only encouraged him. He started following me around then, skulking on the edge of our group. Anna didn’t mind, which was odd, because anyone could see that Josh was desperate to go out with me. But perhaps she wanted me to be with him. Then she’d have Ben all to herself.
I cringed. There was a thought drifting up there with the clouds that I didn’t want to think about. I switched my gaze and tried concentrating on you instead. But the thought wouldn’t go away. A warmish summer night. Almost two years ago. The park.
That
night.
You got one finger under the nail, and pulled at it.
Josh had been there that night, hovering at the edge of our group like some sort of bat. There’d been a bottle going around, strong stuff. A little bit of alcohol from each person, all mixed together. Anna was laughing and Ben was feeling her up, right there in the park, right there in front of everyone. I heard the rip of her zipper going down. I heard the elastic snap of her panties. Jay and Beth were joking about them losing their virginity right there, right in front of us, but we were all just jealous, really. We skipped Anna and Ben on the drinking circle, and everyone else drank more. After a while, the rest of us stopped talking. Then Jay and Beth disappeared into the bushes. And I was left there, sitting next to my best friends, who were practically fucking beside me.
But Josh was still there, in the shadows, just behind. I drank more. Stupidly, I hoped Anna and Ben would stop soon, and we could all walk home together. I glanced over at them. And Anna looked at me, over Ben’s shoulder, and I knew exactly what she wanted me to do. So I took off. I stumbled through the park and the darkness, heading for the exit. I don’t know where Jay and Beth had gone, but I didn’t see them. There was this thick smell in the air, earthy and heavy. There were tiny gnats flying around my eyes.
Josh followed.
I didn’t see him at first, but I heard his footsteps when I was about halfway to the exit. They were hesitant but quick. I could hear the shuffling rub of his jeans as he walked. I turned. And I saw him, about ten feet back, coming up on me. The look in his eyes, well, it was nasty. Like he’d been waiting all those months for that moment. Just to get me by myself, like that and drunk. It had been his goal all along. As I watched him, my head started spinning. I had to steady myself against a tree.
That’s when I got lost. When I turned back to the path I went the wrong way. I didn’t notice it straightaway, either. That’s because Josh started to talk to me, started to come closer. All I could concentrate on was walking a little faster. I heard him laughing then, low and soft.
“Gemma, wait,” he was saying. “I only want to talk.”
I was in a part of the park I didn’t go to much, near the ferns at the back. There was a pond somewhere ahead of me. That’s all I could remember. To get to the right path, I needed to go back the way I’d come. But Josh was on that path. And he was getting closer. It was so shadowy, I couldn’t even see how close he was.
“Get lost, Josh,” I said. “Another time. Just go home.”
“But it’s still early.”
I glanced around me for a branch or something solid I could hold between us. I tried to remember where the pond was exactly. Did the path go around it? Did it lead anywhere afterward?
“Come on, Josh,” I tried again. “What are you doing? You know I don’t want to go out with you.” My voice was shaking, my throat tight, barely letting the words escape. “Just leave me alone.”
“I don’t want to.”
Josh was only a few steps away. I could almost see the pond, directly in front of me. The plants around it stood up like shadowy spears. I could feel the sudden damp in the air, the ground softer under my feet. I heard Josh’s jeans swishing through undergrowth behind me. I saw the path leading off to my left, circling around the pond.
I was moving toward that path when it happened.
My eyes snapped open as I thought of something. You were still there working on the nail, though you’d just about got it out by now. I looked at your back hunched over it. I listened to the way you grunted.
“Were you there that night?” I asked quietly. “That night in the park with Josh?”
Your mouth twitched, and you seemed to hunch further into yourself, your shoulders curling over your chest. I shut my eyes again, just for a second.
The sound was easy to remember: the sharp, quick scuffle that I thought was Josh slipping in the grass. And then there were the shadows. There were two shadows besides mine, both cast over the path: one tall and one short. I looked back quickly. Someone else was there. Someone in a dark gray hoodie. Someone pushing himself into Josh, pushing him away from me. I heard Josh start to shout something before his voice got muffled by someone else’s: a low, deep, urgent-sounding voice. I thought it was one of Josh’s weird friends fooling around, someone catching him in a headlock, tackling him, pulling him into the bushes to smoke dope or something. Or maybe it was Ben or Jay.
I didn’t stick around to find out. I ran past the bushes Josh had disappeared into. I ran all the way home. I didn’t stop until I had the key in the lock and the door shut behind me.
You kept wriggling the nail away from the wood, until eventually it came free. You tossed it in the air a couple of times. You glanced back at me, and somehow I managed to hold your gaze.
“You were that guy in the hoodie, weren’t you?”
You glanced back at the nail in your hand, then tilted your head up to look out at the land. The sun was beginning to go down. The light was spreading out over the Separates, turning the rocks to gold.
“What did you do to him? After you dragged him into the bushes?”
You looked at me then. A flash from your eyes told me you knew exactly what I was talking about.
“Nothing,” you said. “I did nothing.”
“He left me alone after that.”
“I know.”
I uncurled my knees and leaned toward you. I saw the sweat beads on your neck, but I felt only cold right then. I looked at your wide eyes, wondering something. “Do you think you saved me from him?”
“What do you think?” You took a step toward me and crouched down on your heels. Your eyes moved across my face, trying to read me. “Aren’t you glad I was there?” You rested your hand on the couch, the edge of it brushing against my thigh. I frowned, confused.
“And in case you were wondering,” you began softly, “…
that
was the moment.”
“What moment?”
“The moment I first knew I wanted you … the moment I knew I had to bring you here. Not when you were ten—that night. From then on, this was all geared toward you. I worked harder to make sure it was finished, trying to rescue you as quickly as I could.”
The next day I sat in the dust at the side of the pen. You were gentle with the camel, and slow. Whenever she did something you wanted, you rewarded her with a branchful of dry leaves, which she nibbled with her soft, elastic lips. You spoke to her constantly, murmuring sweet nothings into the side of her neck. When she didn’t do as you asked, you simply raised your hands and came toward her as if you were going to strike. Her fear of you was enough for her to learn. She slid sideways immediately, away. She walked back to you soon enough, though, with her head bowed and her jaw chewing slowly. It was a battle of wills, only it looked like the camel had already given in.
I leaned back on my elbows. My arms were already so brown, browner than they’d ever been. When I lay them down against the ground they almost blended in. I felt a tickle as a large ant crawled over my pinkie finger. I wasn’t bothered enough to brush it away, despite its large-looking pincers. Strange: A couple of weeks before I would probably have stomped on it. It crawled over my next three fingers, then disappeared somewhere underneath my back. I didn’t move, afraid I might crush it.
I watched you entice the camel toward you with the branches, then, when she was near enough, lay a strip of rope across her back. At first she skidded backward, afraid, and you let the rope slide off her. But as you persisted, she started to get used to it.
“I’m training her for a saddle,” you called across to me.
I sat up slightly. The camel saw my movement and stepped sideways. The rope thudded on the sand. “You want to ride her?” I asked.
“Sure.” You turned away from the camel, avoiding her eye contact, and, after a moment, she came toward you. “When the gas runs out we might need to get around.”
“When will it run out?”
“Not for a while, a long time, but we’ve got to be prepared. Anyway, this girl will be useful for more than just transport, much more.”
I glanced across to the outbuildings, my eyes lingering on the one next to the painting shed, the one I hadn’t been inside yet. Was the gas there? I had an image then of locking you in the house and pouring gasoline all around it, setting fire to the veranda and watching you burn inside. I ran my eyes down your clothing for the billionth time. Without knowing where you kept your keys, my chances of escape, or even of burning you to death, were impossible. That second building was locked. I’d seen the padlock on the door. My eyes flicked back to the camel.
“When will you be able to ride her?” I asked. “Today?”
“Nah!” You scratched the camel’s neck. “Not a chance. But it’s always like this with camels … baby steps. Just one tiny thing at a time until she learns to accept.”
You tried holding the rope against her back for longer each time. She evaded it easily. But sometimes she let it sit there, too.
“So you’re forcing her to do what you want? Breaking her spirit?”
“It’s not quite like that.” You clicked your tongue at the camel and moved toward her, head-on. This time when you threw the rope over her back, she didn’t move away. Instead she turned her long neck around and sniffed at it. “I’m giving her faith in me,” you said. “Once she trusts me, and she’s accepted me, she’ll like it better this way. Camels work in herds, you know. She’ll feel safer once she’s got someone to follow, a leader. Then she doesn’t have to worry about being scared anymore.”
You spoke with your eyes entirely on the camel. You pressed your hands against her side, leaning your weight into her, pushing her to accept you. She didn’t move away. Instead she nibbled at the leaves you offered.
“Good girl,” you said. “Good, beautiful girl. That’s what we want.”
You stopped pressing. Then you lifted the rope from her back, picked up another branch of leaves, and started the whole process again. After doing this a few more times, you ran your hands over her, starting with her neck and working your way down to her feet. She gurgled softly, and you murmured in reply.
“Enough for now, baby,” you said. “We’ll do a little more tomorrow.”
While she nibbled another branch, you cut farther into the chicken-wire fence that attached her pen to the Separates, widening the previous opening until it was camel-sized. You pointed her toward it, trying to encourage her to move in the direction of the boulders.
“You won’t be able to catch her …,” I started to say.
But the camel wandered after you anyway, her head reaching for your shoulder. You ducked between the ropes that ran around her pen, and came to join me. You flopped down beside me, your body sprawling into the sand, shutting your eyes against the sun. You were pretty close, but for once I didn’t shift. I was still worried about the ant crawling underneath me, not wanting to crush it or for it to bite me. And I was too hot and lazy. One of your eyes snuck open to look at me.
“We’re getting there,” you sighed. “Baby steps.”
