‘Shut up Mika,’ Pip said aloud.

  The sun was already high and her mother had wanted her home for lunch and her antibiotic. She looked at her skinned knees, both of them bleeding. Her elbows too.

  ‘Let’s go home, Little Fella,’ she said as she lowered his tightly coiled form into her backpack and felt a sudden surge of anger, again, that she had to do this all alone. She crawled on her very sore hands and knees through the tunnel and back towards the hole in the fence.

  She’d be in trouble as soon as she got home, for having bleeding knees and elbows. Trouble was her permanent state of existence. Trouble was what it felt like to be Pip. She stopped, checked on Little Fella, then zipped up the bag and crawled as fast as she could out through the hole towards her bike.

  And there was Laura Denning waiting for her.

  LAURA DENNING WAS STANDING THERE IN her brand-new non-light-up sneakers. She was dressed in a yellow jumpsuit covered in pink flamingos with a purple bow at her waist and a lilac satin bow in her side pony. Laura Denning was awash with bows. She was like a merry ship full-sail at sea, things fluttering and flapping. She was astride her pink bike, which had mauve tinsel streamers at the handlebars and they fluttered too.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Pip asked.

  ‘What were you doing in there?’ replied Laura.

  ‘How’d you know I was in there?’

  ‘I saw you go in,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve been waiting for ages.’

  ‘Why were you spying on me?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Laura and she sounded genuinely hurt. ‘I just saw you crawl in there when I was riding past to Tiffany’s house, so I came back to wait. My mum said never to go into the old drive-in, bad people might be in there.’

  ‘You really should have stayed at Tiffany’s,’ said Pip.

  ‘Tiffany wasn’t home. She was at a gymnastics competition,’ said Laura.

  Pip shifted uncomfortably, one foot to the other, acutely aware of Little Fella, only freshly injured, in her backpack.

  ‘Your knees are bleeding,’ said Laura.

  Pip looked down at her thongs and her dirty bloodstained kneecaps. Her bike shorts and her old T-shirt. Her brown hair tied back without any thought. Laura rustled and flapped in the hot breeze. She wanted to say something, Pip could sense it.

  ‘I feel …’ Laura started, then stopped. She brushed her doll-blonde fringe out of her eyes. She squinted against the noon sun. ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Pip quietly. Of all the people in the world to take an interest in what creature was inside her backpack, she never ever would have guessed it would be glitter princess Laura Denning.

  All that silent wishing to not be alone and the universe had sent her Laura Denning.

  ‘You shouldn’t lie,’ said Laura. ‘You’ll grow a big nose.’

  ‘I’ve really got to go home,’ said Pip. She picked up her pushbike and started to walk but Laura moved her bike in the way, wheel to wheel.

  ‘Is it in your backpack now?’

  ‘There’s nothing in my backpack,’ hissed Pip.

  ‘Then why do you need a backpack?’ hissed Laura.

  All that hissing of words and Little Fella must have woken up. He hissed too and then rattled for good measure. It was perfectly audible. It was an I’ve-forgiven-you-already-I-want-Weet-Bix-mush hiss and rattle.

  Pip watched Laura who was standing there with her mouth open.

  ‘What the—’ was all Laura could manage.

  Quick thinking, said Mika, closely and calmly in her head.

  ‘You would never understand,’ was the best Pip could come up with.

  ‘I’m not leaving until you explain.’

  And suddenly the weight of trying to keep a small dragon alive all by herself was more than Pip could bear. She was exhausted. She’d nearly let Little Fella be killed. The universe had sent her Laura Denning.

  It was inevitable. Like a tide.

  Like the moon rising.

  Like the sun going down.

  ‘Come home with me,’ she shrugged. ‘I’ll show you in my bedroom.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Laura. She looked kind of shocked at how easy it had been.

  ‘You have to promise me you won’t tell a soul.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Laura Denning.

  ‘PROMISE ME‚ YOU’LL ALWAYS TAKE YOUR feet out at night,’ Mika had said. ‘That’s when bunyips come out.’

  He’d read it in a book, he said.

  ‘I don’t think there is a bunyip,’ Pip said. ‘No offense.’

  He was unfazed by her lack of belief.

  ‘See?’ said Mika at the river, the second time they went to the waterhole. ‘These could be bunyip footprints.’

  ‘Or they could belong to a wallaby?’ suggested Pip.

  She’d seen wallabies there. Plenty of them. Also cows that had escaped from their barbed wire fences on the hill side of town. A skittish lone horse once, trotting down the middle of the baked dry riverbed. Kookaburras. Goannas. Cranky frillneck lizards that refused to back away. Hawks, endlessly circling above in the sky. Snakes. A brown snake had crossed the bulldust road in front of her feet once and disappeared just as swiftly into the dry grass, minding its own business.

  She told Mika that story.

  ‘You could have been a goner,’ he said.

  He wanted to know everything. How close the snake was to her feet. What type of brown it was. Its length. Mika was like that with stories. He was greedy for them. He absorbed them. He sucked them from books and television and news broadcasts. He absorbed them from movies. He drew them out of people constantly. He knew the story of Laura and her concussion when she fell from a pony at pony club. He knew she saw double for two days. That there were two fish in the hospital goldfish bowl when she first opened her eyes but really there was only one. He’d extracted that from Laura even though Laura didn’t particularly like him in those early days. He knew Mrs Green in Admin was a twin and that her twin was exactly like her only she lived on the other side of the world and that if Mrs Green got a headache, her twin sister got a headache at exactly the same time.

  As far as Pip could remember she’d never even seen Mika talk to Mrs Green.

  ‘What if Mrs Green’s twin is like an evil twin?’ said Mika.

  ‘Or what if Mrs Green is the evil twin and her sister is the good one?’ countered Pip.

  Mika’s eyes widened with delight in the way that made Pip laugh.

  Mika slurped up stories and now he was trying to slurp the snake story out of Pip. Pip wasn’t used to talking like that. She liked to blend into the background, not step forwards and tell tales; except he was so interested.

  It felt like forever since someone had listened to her.

  Matt had only recently moved in but Pip’s mum had been seeing him for months before. He sent her one million text messages a day. The phone ping, ping, ping, pinged and all those messages affected her mum’s hearing. Pip tried to tell her things. Things that happened at school. Things that she saw on the way home. Things she heard on the news. ‘Really?’ her mum would say, pretending to listen as she replied to Matt’s texts.

  Mika gobbled up Pip’s snake story and smiled. He told her one about a snake that ate a man in Malaysia, which led to a story about an elephant that trampled people in a village in India, which somehow led to a story about a whole town that drowned when a molasses factory exploded.

  They pretended to look for bunyip tracks although really, they were just feasting on each other’s stories. She didn’t have stories like his, but she told him about how she picked the Melbourne Cup winner for her mum three years in row until her streak ran out. How once a long time ago her mum told her that if a butterfly flapped its wings in South America it could cause a cyclone in Australia, although she couldn’t really remember how. How she had a dream once that a UFO landed at primary school and that they all hid in the toilet block with their feet up on the toilet seats but some of the kids were taken away.

  ‘Like which kids?’

  ‘Laura Denning,’ said Pip, giggling.

  ‘And then they gave her straight back seconds later,’ Mika said and cacked himself over that.

  He was patient with her stories, which were a bit slippery. She stumbled over some of them. She got mixed up with the story of her grandfather who was in the war, because she couldn’t quite remember which war it was. Mika suggested wars. He said, ‘I bet it was Vietnam.’

  She showed him the junkyard, and the haunted trees at the river bend. They walked halfway to the junction then turned back again. They ended up at the waterhole, as they always would, with the sun just setting.

  ‘Did you know that there are at least one hundred billion stars in our galaxy?’ he said, lying on his belly, drawing the spiral in the dark water.

  She did know. He’d told her twice already. Plus, there was a black hole in the middle, called Sagittarius A.

  ‘Hey, you never told me what you needed the getaway tunnel for,’ she replied.

  She wanted to hear a story about him. Apart from the survivor on a train story, his tales were all about other things, other people, other places, other happenings – black holes, not him.

  He had leaned forwards though, staring in the water where the darkening blue sky was held, for the first time not paying her attention.

  ‘I really wish I knew how deep this was,’ he said.

  They rode their bikes the two streets in silence, Pip arguing loudly with herself the whole way. She was having second thoughts. This would go bad, real bad. Laura would probably scream. She was a screaming, squealing type of girl. She’d scream and then she’d run all the way to her house and tell her mother who would ring the police. She’d squeal and there’d be sirens. Laura Denning wasn’t the type of girl who could keep secrets.

  It’ll be okay, said Mika.

  No, it won’t, said Pip.

  You can’t do it alone, he replied.

  Pip held open her front gate for Laura and showed her where to rest her bike.

  ‘How’s your hand?’ asked Laura.

  Pip looked at her left hand, perfectly healed but heavy as a small planet. Where something was opening, she knew it, like a black hole.

  Yes, she couldn’t do it by herself anymore. It was inevitable.

  She’s better than no one, said Mika.

  ‘My hand,’ said Pip, staring at it. ‘It’s getting better.’

  ‘My mum got a special cream on the internet that heals everything in one minute,’ said Laura.

  That was the kind of girl she was.

  She was a look-at-my-braid-my-mother-watched-a-YouTube-video-on-how-to-do-it-it-took-her-nearly-an-hour type of girl. She was a just-stand-there-while-I-perform-a-Beyoncé-song-for-you girl. She was a hey-everyone-I’ve-got-melting-momentbiscuits-in-my-lunch-box-because-I’m-so-awesome type of girl.

  Then Pip smelled something else in Laura’s voice. Smelling an emotion was so weird she stopped pushing her bike and stood there. Laura’s words smelled tangy, like crushed dandelions. Her words smelled nervous.

  She wished that hadn’t happened. That was weirder than the heart inflations and the black hole in her hand and the crying and her skin on her left arm that was one size too tight and felt like it was going to crack if it got any tighter, all rolled into one. She really didn’t want to smell Laura Denning’s words.

  ‘I could get you some,’ said Laura, releasing another cloud of tangy nervous words.

  ‘It actually might come in handy,’ said Pip.

  Her mother had a good scolding ready and waiting, especially when she saw Pip’s bloody knees, but when she saw Laura she tucked it away.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘It’s Laura, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hi Mrs Gemmell,’ said Laura.

  Her mother was thinking all her Christmases had come at once. A girl like Laura in our house. Some of it might rub off on Pip. Pip could read all that on her mother’s face in a nanosecond. She was in the kitchen cleaning, the way she cleaned sometimes, scrubbing away at the surface of things as though it might change their house. As though there might be a new one folded away beneath, a bigger one, an airier one, where everyone was relaxed and smiling and never scared.

  Matt was in the kitchen too. He was freshly showered and normal-looking. Like all the shouting and stamping had never happened the night before. Pip knew all his weather patterns. Today was sunshine. Her mum was basking in its glow like a sunbaker but that would change. Pip’s heart sank, her hopes withering. Then she steeled herself, refusing to give up. He might seem normal but there was more to come. He’d make her mum feel good today and bad tomorrow.

  They would get to Townsville, she knew it. They had to. She could feel it.

  ‘G’day,’ Matt said, glancing up from his phone for a second.

  ‘We’re going to play something in my room,’ said Pip.

  ‘What on earth did you do to your knees?’ asked her mum.

  ‘Stacked it on my bike,’ said Pip. ‘Didn’t I, Laura?’

  Laura seemed confused. It’s the first of many lies, Laura, you better get used to it, thought Pip.

  ‘Yeah, big-time,’ said Laura, recovering herself.

  ‘Well clean them up with a washcloth before you play,’ said Mum, coming closer. ‘It’s just gravel rash, right?’

  Pip was aware of Little Fella shifting in her backpack.

  ‘I’ll wash them,’ she said quickly and she bundled Laura down the hallway. ‘We’re going to be shutting the door.’

  ‘Secret women’s business?’ said her mum.

  ‘Something like that.’

  She washed her knees with lightning-speed, and threw the washcloth in the dirty clothes basket.

  ‘Quickly,’ she whispered to Laura. ‘He’s waking up.’

  Laura’s eyes widened at that.

  They sat on the bed, the backpack between them, Laura looking around, everywhere but at the backpack. Pip could only imagine what Laura’s room was like. It would be a complete advertisement for pinks and purples, probably. Nothing like hers.

  ‘Ouch,’ Pip muttered as the skin on her left arm tightened suddenly and her hand grew heavy. The stench of Laura’s anxiety was overpowering.

  ‘Calm down,’ Pip said quietly to Laura.

  ‘I’m calm,’ lied Laura.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ she asked Laura, over the ache. ‘I mean, once you know you can’t unknow it. Maybe you’ll have to run away with me too.’

  ‘Run away?’ Laura whispered it. There were probably kids that didn’t fantasise about running away, Pip realised right then.

  ‘Because that’s probably what’s going to happen,’ she explained.

  ‘Show me,’ said Laura. She didn’t do drama as well as Pip thought she would. Pip leaned forwards, Laura too. She began to unzip the backpack. She unzipped it slowly so she didn’t give Little Fella a fright. She hoped he’d gone back to sleep, that the movement in the kitchen was him shifting in his dreams.

  Those amber lightning eyes would be way too much for Laura.

  Please be asleep, please be asleep.

  He wasn’t asleep. His head popped out of the backpack straightaway, as soon as he could push past the opening in the zipper. There was a golden storm raging in his eyes that seemed to have grown since the incident with the hawk.

  He looked at Pip and then at Laura. The papery bristles on his back rustled slightly. He made a not-so-happy hiss-rattle.

  And then Laura screamed.

  LAURA DENNING WAS BACKWARDS OFF THAT bed, knocking over a washing basket filled with clothes, hands over her mouth, clamping in the residue of the scream.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she said in a high-pitched voice, then quieter, ‘oh my god. Oh my god.’

  Even though Little Fella wasn’t doing anything, just staring up at them. He didn’t seem like he was about to attack her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Pip said. ‘He won’t hurt you.’

  But she thought of her hand immediately, the burning that spread through her body and turned her into a lighthouse, the stiffening of her skin, the new-found ability to smell words.

  ‘He won’t hurt,’ she said again, placed a finger on her lips and motioned for Laura to be quieter.

  ‘Oh my god,’ was all Laura could whisper.

  ‘Everything okay down there?’ called Mum. ‘What are you two up to?’

  ‘Nothing, all good,’ Pip yelled back.

  She grabbed the Weet-Bix box off the bed and started to mush.

  ‘Pippa?’ said her mum. The stern use of her name. Pippa, the question? Pippa, you must be doing something wrong.

  Pip went to the door and opened it a crack.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘We were just playing a game.’

  Little Fella could smell the mush and he was rattling and hissing and trying to get out of the backpack. Laura shuddered

  ‘Calm down, Little Fella,’ said Pip, lifting him out and then holding the Weet-Bix bowl so he didn’t knock it over as he went to work slurping down the contents. ‘Seriously Laura, he won’t hurt you. He’s tiny. Tiny as a baby puppy.’

  Laura took a step closer, then two steps back when Little Fella turned, aware of movement behind him. Pip lifted him, turned him so that he was in her lap, the bowl in front of him so he could see Laura clearly.

  She felt protective of him, motherly, and that inflating pain ballooned inside her chest and the tears welled in her eyes. She wiped at them because she didn’t want Laura to see, there was no stopping them though, the tears dripped as she mushed another bowl. Laura watched Pip as though she were making a potion, not Weet-Bix, her mouth slightly open, the ribbon wilted in her hair. The tears didn’t seem to register with her.

  Laura twitched each time Little Fella moved. When he stood on all four legs to move towards the bowl, Laura jumped involuntarily.

  ‘You’re walking, Little Fella,’ cried Pip. ‘His name is Little Fella.’

  ‘It’s a bat, right?’ whispered Laura. Her first words.

  ‘It’s not a bat,’ said Pip.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not a bat?’

  ‘It’s not a bloody bat,’ said Pip, wiping away the tears with one hand while holding the bowl for ravenous Little Fella. ‘You’re not a bat, are you, Little Fella?’

 

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