March (7 page)
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
I could hear Boges crawling under the house so I pulled the carpet back off the floorboards. Seconds later his round face emerged as he crawled out of the hole, straightened up and brushed himself down.
‘Man,’ he said, looking up at the charred, blackened ceiling, ‘what happened here? Too lazy to take the campfire outside, huh? Or turning to pyromania now? Another one for your crime sheet?’
‘There have been a few people through here, I think. I just hope they don’t come back too soon,’ I said, relieved to see my friend, the one visitor I could trust.
Boges plopped himself down on the floor and against the wall, arms folded behind his head. ‘Your mum’s completely moved into your uncle’s place,’ he said.
‘Actually,’ I reminded him, ‘it’s her place now.’
‘Right,’ said Boges. ‘That is a really cool thing your uncle has done for your family. Signing over his house, sorry, his
mansion
,’ he corrected himself, ‘is a pretty huge deal.’ He shook his head and whistled, probably thinking back to the day we rode our bikes to Rafe’s huge place in Dolphin Point, so that I could sneak in and find the drawings … Actually; Boges was probably thinking back to the hot yellow Ferrari we’d spotted parked outside on the street.
‘Here’s the antiseptic cream,’ said Boges, passing me a small tube. ‘And I found these, as well,’ he added, showing me a couple of rolls of thin bandages. They looked pretty old, but they were still sealed in plastic.
‘Perfect,’ I said.
‘I feel like moving in with you,’ said Boges. ‘You don’t know what it’s like at school these days. Miss Pettigrew’s been on my back. Always trying to get me to make appointments with her.’
‘Miss Pettigrew?’ I asked, trying to picture a teacher with that name. ‘Oh, the school counsellor?’ I said, remembering a brief chat I’d had with her one day shortly after Dad had passed away. ‘Why?’
‘She thinks—
they all think
—I need counselling.’
‘Because of
me
?’
‘Miss Pettigrew thinks I’m scarred for life, having my best friend turn into a homicidal maniac.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘Any time, dude. And then all the heavies are trying to be friends with me. Sean Halloran and Jake Arena—’
‘Arena? Wasn’t he arrested last summer?’
Boges nodded, with an
almost-pleased-with-himself
grin.
‘And Maryanne has been showing off this ring that she said you gave her just before you went crazy and on the run.’
‘I’ve never given Maryanne Helfgott anything except distance!’ I said. ‘
She
must be crazy.’
‘The principal is really riled up about the graffiti in the boys’ toilets. Someone’s written “Cal Rox” all over the brickwork above the sinks.’ Boges leaned up and slapped me on the back. ‘Dude, you may be gone, but you sure as hell aren’t forgotten!’
‘Hey, I’m not completely gone … yet!’ I said, slapping him back. ‘I can’t get over Maryanne,’ I said. ‘Making up something like that.’
‘She’s only trying to impress Madeleine
Baker. Not that it’s working. Maddy doesn’t even know who Maryanne is!’ he laughed.
‘But Maddy knows who Bodhan Michalko is, doesn’t she?!’ I teased my friend. I rarely used Boges’s real name—he didn’t like it too much. At the same time he didn’t seem too phased about the Maddy comment. He was actually grinning.
‘She’s not that bad, you know,’ Boges defended his new friend. ‘Maddy’s not just hot, she’s smart. Anyway,’ said Boges, changing the subject, ‘you have no idea what I had to do to get here … Next thing, I’ll be jumping over the rooftops
Mission Impossible
-style. That dude is still parked across the road in his silver sedan and still reading his newspaper—he has no idea that this little black duck has flown the coop. I don’t know whether he’s with the cops, Oriana de la Force or Vulkan Sligo. You are
sooooo
freaking popular.’
It was a popularity I sure could have done without.
‘Give us a look at your leg,’ said Boges, emptying some food out of his bag for me.
I carefully pulled up the leg of my pants.
Boges swore. ‘That’s gross, dude.’
‘You should have seen it last week.’
Boges raised his round, dark eyes to me. ‘Respect, dude,’ he announced. ‘That is awesome.
But I have one question for you:
why
,’ he said, slowly and disbelieving, ‘did you climb into a lion’s den? Bad idea. Don’t you think you’ve already got enough trouble without baiting the king of the jungle?’
‘You think I knew it was a lion’s den?! It just looked like a bit of vacant land when I climbed over. Like it was awaiting development. As if I would have climbed in if I had known there was a freaking lion waiting in there for me! I didn’t have enough money for a ticket, and all I was thinking about was making my meeting with Dad’s nurse, Jennifer Smith. I have to do whatever it takes to get information!’
I suddenly felt a surge of fury. ‘I’m going crazy here, not knowing what to do each day. I’ll do anything that’s going to take me closer to getting me and my family out of this mess.
You
tell me Boges—you’re the smart one—why is all this happening? To me and my family? What am I supposed to do?’
Boges looked down and fiddled with the laces on his sneakers, shocked at my explosion.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really am. I wish I could find a way to fix all this up for you. It’s not easy.’
I felt really bad then that I’d taken my anger out on him. It wasn’t his fault. Without him, I’d have been captured ages ago. Or dead.
‘I just wish I could see Gabbi,’ I said, my anger subsiding. ‘That’s the hardest part. Will you please go and visit her, Boges? Talk to her? She might respond to your voice. She always thought you were the best.’
‘Sure,’ said Boges. ‘I’ll ask your mum if I can go with her. She practically lives at the hospital.’
Boges frowned in the direction of my backpack where it had fallen sideways, spilling out some of the stuff from inside. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
One of the packets of tranquillising syringes had fallen out and I passed it to him.
‘Tranquillisers,’ I said. ‘I grabbed a handful of them from a lab at the zoo. It’s what saved me in my fight with Red Singlet—the thug chasing me on the railway line. Repro gave me some railway detonators, too.’
‘Repro?’
‘The guy who pulled me from the train tracks,’ I said, realising we hadn’t talked about him and his underground hideout.
‘Repro—sounds like some sort of superhero name,’ said Boges. ‘Was he wearing a cape, and undies over his tights?’
I laughed, and pictured Repro in his ratty-looking
suit. ‘Far from it. “Repro” is short for “reprobate”,’ I said, knowing that I wouldn’t have to give Boges a dictionary definition of the word.
‘Cool. So he gave you explosives?’
‘Yeah, he has this huge stash of stuff he’s collected from the trains and the yards. I thought I could save them for a rainy day. They could be useful.’
‘What about the drawings?’ asked Boges. ‘You still poring over them?’
‘Yeah, I’m starting to hate the sight of them.’ I grabbed my backpack and peeled back the adhesive that sealed the cut I’d made in the lining. ‘I keep them in here, now.’
Carefully, I lifted the folder out.
Boges stared at the drawings again and pulled out his black notebook. ‘Whatever these mean,’ he said, ‘we both know it’s huge—whatever the secret is that your dad found out about.’ Boges glanced down at his notes, studying the written list he’d made. ‘How about we go over everything we have so far on the DMO one more time.’
‘OK, so we have the angels,’ I said, laying the two angel drawings next to each other on the floor to the left.
‘And so far, we know about Piers Ormond—who we still need to look up—and the cenotaph Memorial. He may also be wearing a medal of some sort, which,’ he leaned in and pulled out another sketch, ‘brings us to this; a collection of things that can be worn.’
‘That’s right, possibly hinting at the jewel or whatever was taken from Dad’s suitcase in the
robbery,’ I said, pulling out the next one and laying it on the floor.
