November (4 page)
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
‘Sure did,’ I said. ‘Nearly burst my eardrums, but it gave me enough cover to get away … until Ryan took over.’
‘Sweet! Sounds like having a double pays off! I have to go, but I have something for you that I’ll bring around to Winter’s tomorrow afternoon.’
‘What is it?’ I asked. But Boges had already hung up.
The muscles in my legs were still sore and tight. Winter was at the library again with her tutor, so I had taken a hot shower then parked myself on the couch with my feet up, next to her radio. I turned up the volume the second I heard my name on the hourly news report.
My stomach started churning when the newsreader mentioned the name ‘Senior
Sergeant
Dorian McGrath’—the guy who’d accused me of kidnapping Gabbi when I was in police custody in the secure wing of Armitage District Hospital.
‘The net is closing around Ormond,’ said McGrath. ‘We have a large, well-equipped intelligence centre which is receiving crucial information about this dangerous young criminal every day. We’re building up a strong picture of where he is. We’ve plotted all of the sightings and have isolated one area—the south-east of the city.
It’s only a matter of time before we arrest him.’
They weren’t bluffing. The south-east of the city was exactly where I was—sitting with my feet up in Winter’s flat. It was also the rough location of the St Johns Street house.
I hated admitting it, but I knew I’d have to move on. I decided I’d talk to Winter and Boges when we got together that night, to see if they had any ideas on where I could go. In the
meantime
, I’d see what I could do about changing my hair.
I checked myself in the mirror after rubbing a section clear on the misty surface. I’d need to dye my hair again or something. Anything to try and avoid recognition and capture.
I grabbed one of Winter’s baseball caps, then put on Boges’s mirrored sunglasses, left behind after his Cyril the Sumo act. I’d need to risk a quick trip to the shops to get some more dye. Maybe a darker brown, I thought. Maybe even black.
No-one was around on the street outside Winter’s building, but for some reason I felt exposed.
At the sound of someone coming out of the building behind me, I turned. A man in a suit and black-rimmed glasses gave me a hard look.
‘I think I’ve seen you around here a few times now,’ he said. ‘Which flat do you live in?’
‘I’m just visiting,’ I said, trying to keep my answer as vague as possible.
He grunted, clearly unsatisfied, but he nodded as if to say it would do for the moment. I watched as he walked away towards the bus stop further down the street.
I imagined the guy in the suit casually asking the other residents about me, eventually
realising
that none of them had a sixteen-year-old visiting them. I would have to keep my trips to Winter’s flat to a minimum. Or avoid the place altogether.
Something flew at my head as I made my way to the shops. It struck my mirrored sunglasses, startling me, and I ducked, instinctively lifting up an arm to defend myself.
A bird had dive-bombed me from one of the huge fig trees that grew on Winter’s street. I looked up, shielding my face, to see the source of the attack. A magpie perched on a low branch in a nearby tree cocked his head and looked at me with serious, brown eyes.
I knew it couldn’t have been Maggers, but as I snatched the mirrored sunglasses off my face I thought of him and my old great-uncle.
As I continued walking to the shops, I looked
back. The magpie was still perched there, his sharp eyes following me. All of a sudden I felt like maybe it was my great-uncle watching out for me, reminding me of my need for constant vigilance.
It would be great living high in the treetops, out of sight while quietly keeping watch on the world. When I was a kid, me, Boges and a guy from school called Luke built ourselves a
treehouse
. Luke lived on a big, bushy block with an incredible climbing tree, right up the back. It had thick, strong branches that formed an ideal platform to build on, and it was in a perfect spot—far away from the house.
I remembered thinking how much I wanted to build one up the back of our house in Richmond—Gabbi would have loved it—but we just didn’t have the right tree …
I picked out a cheap hair dye and approached the pharmacy counter.
‘Do I know you?’ the chemist asked.
‘I come in here a bit,’ I lied. ‘I live around here.’
She nodded as she handed me my change, but didn’t once take her eyes off me.
My mobile buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out
and answered it, quickly walking away from the inquisitive chemist.
‘Cal?’
‘Winter, what’s up? Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Just had to get away from Miss Sparks for a moment.’ She paused. ‘I’m almost done here and Boges is coming straight over after school—the three of us have to get together and plan our next moves—getting the Jewel and the Riddle back, and getting to Ireland. We also need to find out who the three people on that list of nicknames are—one of them will have the goods, I’m sure.’
‘I just had my final physics exam,’ said Boges, flopping down at the table with a grin.
‘I take it you went well?’ said Winter.
‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Too easy for me.’
Winter threw a cushion at him. I picked one up and threw it at him too.
‘Hey!’ he complained, deflecting the cushion attack. ‘I’m just being honest! Anyway, you should be happy it’s over, because now I have more time to devote my brilliance to the DMO.’ He folded his arms. ‘And I can also now reveal
the results from the Caesar shift program.’
‘And?’ I asked.
‘Zilch. Nada. Not a single clue. It was all total gibberish.’
I groaned, shaking my head.
‘Still,’ said Boges, ‘you have to look on the bright side.’
‘There’s a bright side?’
‘At least now we know where the Caesar shift
isn’t,
’ offered Winter.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Boges.
‘Super!’ I said, sarcastically. ‘So it’s been used in the missing last two lines or not at all—that doesn’t sound like the bright side to me. We need to start making serious plans. We have to decide on how we’re going to get to Ireland, and it looks like we’ll have to make do with the help of our copy of the Ormond Riddle and the drawings of the Jewel. In the meantime, I also need another place to live. I just heard on the news that the cops have narrowed my position down to the south-east of the city. I need to get out of here.’
‘I can sniff around for something,’ said Boges.
‘I’ve already thought of a possible place,’ I said. ‘Do you remember our treehouse?’
Boges and Winter both looked at me like I was speaking another language.
‘At Luke Lovett’s place,’ I added.
‘Oh, yeah, I remember,’ said Boges, nodding. ‘The awesome one we built in his parents’
backyard
.’
‘That’s the one,’ I said.
‘Aren’t you a bit old for cubby houses?’ joked Winter.
‘These are desperate times,’ I said with a shrug.
‘Probably not a bad idea, actually,’ said Boges. ‘It’s at least a couple of hundred metres or so from the house, and has great coverage—that’s if all those other trees are still surrounding it. And that’s if they haven’t pulled it down—but why would they? It’s a breathtaking example of modern architecture!’
‘It was pretty awesome,’ I agreed, remembering how hard the three of us had worked to have it finished over one weekend in our school holidays. ‘We built it mostly out of wooden panels that we’d collected in wheelbarrows from an old barn that was being torn down nearby,’ I explained to
Winter
. ‘We even found this long seat from a train carriage, abandoned by the side of a road, and dragged it back to the tree.’
‘Yeah, do you remember how long it took us to get that thing up the tree?’ Boges asked me. ‘Took us forever to pulley it up—it was so heavy and awkward. But once we got it up there and
positioned it against the back wall, we stretched out on it and couldn’t stop smiling.’
‘Sounds unreal,’ said Winter. ‘I always wanted a treehouse.’
‘We thought it was the coolest treehouse we’d ever seen,’ I said. ‘Especially after we added a rope ladder and a swing.’
Boges nodded. ‘Cal, no-one would even know you’re up there—if you’re careful—but that doesn’t mean you can sit back on that awesome bench and relax, exactly.’
‘Boges, I’m always careful and I’m never fully relaxed. That’s how I’ve survived so long.
Anyway
,’ I said, smelling something delicious wafting out of his bag. ‘Those pies in your bag aren’t going to eat themselves. Get ’em out already!’