by R. A. Spratt
‘What’s so healthy about rationed food and digging latrines?’ asked Melanie.
‘It teaches you a lesson about having a smart mouth,’ said Geraldine.
‘Have any of the ping-pong balls from the rec room gone missing recently?’ asked Friday.
Geraldine flinched in shock. ‘How did you know about that? It was only reported to me this afternoon.’
‘This orange plastic is the distinctive colour of ping-pong balls,’ said Friday. ‘You can make a smoke bomb out of them. I’m not going to explain how, in case any of the boys here get ideas.’ Friday glared at Patel.
‘Why are you looking at me?’ asked Patel defensively.
‘The plastic burns slowly and releases a dark smoke,’ said Friday. ‘The foil would be shaped to slowly release it, without setting fire to the Houseboat.’
‘Ridiculous,’ said Geraldine.
‘And that smoke would have tripped the smoke alarm,’ said Friday.
‘But there are no smoke alarms,’ said Geraldine. ‘I saw to that myself. Nasty modern things that always beep when the battery starts to go.’
‘But we all heard an alarm go off, didn’t we?’ asked Friday.
‘I didn’t,’ said Melanie unhelpfully.
Friday looked about. There were no smoke alarms on the ceilings or walls in any of the three rooms.
‘The alarm must have come from somewhere,’ said Friday. She walked over to the stereo. It was a very old one from the eighties with a double tape deck and a graphic equaliser. ‘There’s a tape in here. Did anyone bring a tape from home?’
The students all shook their heads.
Friday rewound the tape to the beginning and pressed play. Suddenly the air was split by the deafening sound of a smoke alarm.
‘Turn that off!’ screamed Geraldine.
Friday complied. ‘Someone put this recording of a smoke alarm in here?’ she asked.
‘Who on earth would want to do that?’ said Geraldine. ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘There are quite a lot of people, actually,’ said Melanie. ‘Most people don’t like Friday very much. The five girls she got in trouble on the bus ride down here, in particular.’
‘But how could they have made this recording?’ asked Patel.
‘Do all the huts have stereos?’ asked Friday.
‘Yes,’ said Geraldine. ‘We use them for playing Wagnerian opera first thing in the morning when we want to wake the students up early.’
‘So all they would need is a tape and a smoke alarm to make a recording,’ said Friday. ‘There’s definitely a smoke alarm in the mess hall. They could have taken it down and used that.’
‘But who would do something like this?’ asked Wai-Yi.
‘Aha!’ cried Friday before throwing herself on the ground and reaching right under the coffee table.
‘Is she having some sort of fit?’ asked Geraldine.
‘No, I’m collecting evidence,’ said Friday. She pulled herself out from under the coffee table. ‘Behold – a false eyelash!’
‘So?’ said Geraldine.
‘There’s only one person here at camp wearing false eyelashes,’ said Friday. ‘Mirabella Peterson.’
‘But you helped her on the bus,’ said Susan. ‘You proved who cut her hair.’
‘That’s why she would have to do this,’ said Friday. ‘To gain readmission to her group of friends, she would have to play a cruel prank distancing herself from me.’
Suddenly, Sebastian stumbled in through the front door.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘Where have you been?’ demanded Geraldine. She sniffed. ‘You stink of poop.’
‘Have you been digging latrines?’ asked Melanie.
‘I don’t think Geraldine is allowed to punish counsellors as well,’ said Susan.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Melanie. ‘They’re not terribly good at their job. We can’t find Sebastian half the time. The other half he’s in his bedroom sleeping. And all the counsellors seem to regularly fall into thorny bushes.’
‘I heard a noise in the forest,’ said Sebastian, ‘so I went to investigate.’
‘It was probably our prankster,’ said Friday.
‘How did you get so messy?’ asked Geraldine.
Sebastian’s hands and knees were filthy.
‘I tripped over a tree root and fell,’ said Sebastian. ‘I must have stumbled on some animal droppings.’
‘Scat,’ said Friday.
‘What?’ said Sebastian.
‘Animal droppings are called scat by hunters and wildness survival experts,’ said Friday. ‘You should know that.’
‘It smells like you fell over a lot of tree roots,’ said Melanie.
‘Did you fall in the river too?’ asked Friday. ‘Your boots are wet.’
Everyone looked at Sebastian’s feet. They were saturated. And he had tramped muddy footprints into the room.
‘Potato-peeling duty for you for a week!’ snapped Sebastian.
‘What?’ asked Friday. ‘What did I do?’
‘You’re too nosey for your own good,’ said Sebastian.
‘He’s got a point,’ said Melanie.
‘I’ve already given them latrine duty,’ said Geraldine.
‘You can’t give us latrine duty,’ said Friday. ‘I proved we were set up with a smoke bomb and a fake fire alarm.’
‘Unless you set all that up as a cover for the stolen food outside,’ said Geraldine.
‘I’m not that hungry,’ said Friday.
‘I am,’ said Harvey. ‘I’ll take the punishment if we get to keep the food.’
‘You don’t get the food,’ said Geraldine. ‘But you do get the punishment for wasting my time.’
‘That’s totally unfair,’ said Friday.
‘Good,’ said Geraldine. ‘Life is unfair. I’m teaching you a valuable lesson.’ She stalked away.
‘Get back to bed,’ snapped Sebastian before going to his own room and slamming the door shut.
‘I suppose we might as well,’ said Friday, turning to her own room, only to find Melanie fast asleep in bed already.
The others were settling down too. But Friday was too full of adrenalin to go to sleep straight away, and too puzzled by the irrationality of Sebastian and Geraldine. She stepped outside onto the deck of the Houseboat, leaned on the railing and looked up at the stars. In the northern sky she could see Orion. It seemed like a lifetime ago they had been following that constellation to find Ian.
Just then, Friday noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced across to the far side of the river.
Something was moving along the riverbank. It was a glowing green human shape.
Friday rubbed her eyes and blinked several times. Her eyesight wasn’t very good. Perhaps the darkness and the blinding floodlight was making her see things. She looked again and the shape was definitely still there. It was moving away through the trees now, disappearing from view.
‘I must be imagining things,’ muttered Friday, shaking her head. ‘Ghosts aren’t real.’
Chapter 12
River Challenge
Over the next week the Houseboat team dug the latrines and peeled the potatoes, and continued on with the monotony of the camp. The counsellors had started taking it in turns leading all the students on long bushwalks every day. Friday suspected this was so the other three counsellors could hang around at the camp doing nothing. They seemed to spend more time napping than Melanie. Nadia, Louise, Pedro and Sebastian seemed very random choices for their jobs. None of them showed any interest in nature or wilderness skills, so the long hikes weren’t even punctuated with fun facts about botany or camping tips. Between the walking, the tedious lessons and the endless chores, Camp Courage was proving to be exhausting. One of the least pleasant things about it was the way the students were woken up every morning.
Ride of the Valkyries was still blasting as Friday, Melanie and the rest of the Houseboat team made their way up to the mess hall.
‘Is it me or are they waking us up even earlier than usual?’ asked Melanie with a yawn.
‘It’s earlier,’ said Friday.
‘Really? How can you know for sure?’ asked Melanie.
‘It’s still dark,’ said Friday.
Melanie looked up at the black sky. ‘Good heavens, you’re right. These people are even more dementedly cruel than I realised.’
As they arrived at the dining hall, the girls could see that there was a crowd gathered outside.
‘That’s odd,’ said Friday. Usually people went straight in and began eating.
‘What’s happening?’ Friday asked the first person she came to at the back of the crowd. But that first person was Mirabella Peterson. Friday didn’t recognise her immediately. She had never seen Mirabella not wearing false eyelashes before. Mirabella looked Friday up and down, then turned away with a sniff of distain.
Friday rolled her eyes. It was too early in the morning for petty social politics. She pushed her way through the crowd so she could see for herself.
There was a sign on the mess hall door saying, ‘Closed.’
‘Do you think they’ve decided to save money on food by starving us all to death?’ asked Melanie.
‘I doubt it,’ said Friday. ‘It would be a false economy. Then they’d have to pay out all the lawsuits to the annoyed parents.’
‘Good morning, maggots!’
Geraldine was standing at the back of the group, addressing them.
‘Hungry, are you?’ asked Geraldine.
From the gleeful glint in her eye, the students could tell that something deeply unpleasant was about to be laid out.
‘Well, I know you are all such toffy, fancy ladies and gents, so today we’ve decided to give you a little surprise. Today, we’re going to be serving breakfast down by the river.’
‘That sounds nice,’ said Melanie.
‘It’s not going to be nice,’ said Friday. ‘There’s going to be a catch.’
‘The only thing is,’ said Geraldine, ‘the food is all on the far side of the river.’
Everyone groaned.
Geraldine smirked. ‘And there are four huts, but only three packages of food. One hut will miss out.’
The Treehouse members sniggered and looked across at the ragtag group of Houseboaters.
‘Who gets the food will be decided by who grabs it first,’ said Geraldine.
‘I think I’m going to cry,’ said Melanie.
‘To cross the river, the only supplies you can use are …’ said Geraldine. Now she positively grinned. ‘Your rubbish from last week.’
‘Okay, that’s a weird idea,’ said Friday.
‘Plus, anything you can find in the forest,’ added Geraldine.
All the students stared at her in appalled silence.
‘What are you standing around waiting for? Your rubbish is waiting for you down on the riverbank. Go!’
The students took off sprinting, even the Houseboaters, who secretly suspected that any attempt would be futile because they were predestined to be the losers.
‘Come on,’ said Friday, taking Melanie by the hand and pulling her along. ‘This is going to take brains as well as brawn. We’re in with a chance.’
There were four large stacks of rubbish sitting on the riverbank. The Houseboaters had the smallest stack, but it still amounted to about eight bags of garbage.
‘What should we do?’ asked Patel.
‘Empty out the bags and see what we’ve got,’ said Friday.
Everyone grabbed a bag and started emptying. It was mainly just food wrappers and crumpled packaging. Melanie’s bag had a lot of scrunched-up paper.
‘What is this?’ asked Melanie.
‘That’s mine,’ said Susan, snatching a handful of the paper away from her. But she dropped a piece near Friday’s feet, and Friday could clearly see the words, ‘Dear Mum and Dad, please come and rescue me’, as well as some marks she could swear were tear stains.
‘There’s nothing terribly useful here,’ said Harvey.
‘What a shame none of us threw away an inflatable motorboat last week,’ said Melanie.
‘We can use anything from the forest,’ said Patel. ‘Should we start finding branches to make a canoe?’
‘We could use the plastic bags as twine to tie branches together,’ said Wai-Yi.
Just then, they were interrupted by yelling further up the riverbank.
‘That’s just stupid!’ yelled Trea.
‘You’re stupid!’ yelled Jessica.
Everyone turned to watch the Treehouse team fighting with each other. They were usually playing it too cool to raise their voices.
‘This whole camp is stupid!’ yelled Brandon.
‘Would you all just shut up!’ yelled Ian.
‘At least they’re not doing much better,’ said Patel.
The Houseboaters watched as Ian turned away from his group and stalked down the river.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Melanie.
When Ian got to the riverbank he didn’t stop. He dived in.
‘Is he drowning himself?’ asked Melanie. ‘It’s not like Ian to give up so easily.’
Ian resurfaced several metres into the flowing water, cutting through the current with powerful strokes.
‘He’s not building anything,’ said Friday. ‘He’s just going to swim over and get the supplies!’
‘But surely the current is too strong?’ said Wai-Yi.
As he approached the middle of the river, the current did begin to give Ian trouble. He was being pushed further and further downstream.
‘Quick,’ said Friday. ‘If you don’t want to be hungry for the rest of the day, gather up all the garbage bags and start tying them together.’
‘Why?’ asked Melanie.
‘We’re going to make a rope,’ said Friday.
The Houseboaters set to work, grabbing garbage bags and tying them end to end.
Suddenly there was a loud cheer.
They looked up to see that Ian had made it to the other side, although he was a good two hundred metres downstream thanks to the current.
‘He’s won,’ said Patel.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Friday. ‘We only have to beat one of the other two teams.’
The Houseboaters looked across. The Tent team were building a raft out of sticks and tying inflated garbage bags to the underside for floatation. The Hole team were building a canoe. They had found an old log and were using tin cans to scrape the rotten wood out of the middle.
Meanwhile, Ian had run up to his team’s supplies and began dragging them towards the river. It was a packaged-up cube of boxes.
‘Keep working,’ urged Friday.
The Houseboaters now had nearly twenty metres of rope.
On the far bank, Ian gave the supplies a big shove and they tipped over the edge into the water. His team cheered. But then the supplies sank, quickly disappearing from view.
The Treehouse team started yelling outraged abuse at him.
‘What?’ exclaimed Trea.
‘Get our food back up!’ screamed Jessica.
Ian leapt into the water, which was surprisingly deep close to the bank, and began duck-diving down to try to find the food.
‘What sort of food sinks?’ wondered Melanie.
‘It must be canned food,’ said Friday. ‘There’s no air in a can of food, nothing to give it buoyancy. It’s just a tin can full of liquids and solids. There’s no reason why it would float. It’s like a box full of rocks.’
‘We’ve got twenty-five metres of rope,’ said Wai-Yi. ‘I don’t think there’s anything else here that we could use.’
‘Good,’ said Friday. ‘Now gather up all the big two-litre juice bottles.’
‘What are you planning to use them for?’ asked Susan.
‘I’m going to shove them up inside my cardigan to make a buoyancy jacket,’ said Friday, jamming bottles up her cardigan as she spoke. The others started helpi
ng her and she was soon looking like the Michelin man. A fuzzy brown version of the Michelin man, but the Michelin man, nonetheless.
There was a loud splash behind them. The Hole team had launched their canoe. They all cheered. Two of their team got in with makeshift paddles and they were given a push off from the bank.
‘Oh dear,’ said Friday.
‘What?’ said Melanie.
‘I hope they can swim,’ said Friday.
‘Why?’ asked Harvey.
‘Watch,’ said Friday.
The canoers took a couple of strokes out into the river, then they reached the full flow of the current. The water hit the side of the canoe and rolled it over, throwing both students into the river. The canoe then rolled over the top of them and went downstream.
‘I don’t want to fall in the river,’ said Wai-Yi. ‘My swimming isn’t that good. I’d rather go hungry for a day.’
‘Give me the rope,’ said Friday. ‘I’ve got this.’ She grabbed the rope and ran up the bank.
‘Where’s she going?’ asked Patel.
‘I’d say she was running away,’ said Melanie, ‘but I think she’d take the thirty drink bottles out from under her cardigan if she was going to do that.’
The bank rose up several metres above the water.
‘And she’s having to run uphill,’ said Susan. ‘Poor Friday.’
Once she got to the top, they could see Friday jump up and start climbing a tree.
‘She’s gotten much better at tree climbing since she came to Highcrest,’ observed Melanie. ‘It just goes to show, even clever people can still learn something by going to school.’
Now Friday was edging her way out along a branch.
‘If she dies, do you think they’ll cancel the competition and let us all eat?’ asked Patel hopefully.
‘I should think so,’ said Melanie. ‘Because we’ll all have to go down to the police station to fill out statements.’
Friday had climbed down and was backing away from the river.
Further up the bank, there was another splash.
The Tent team had launched their raft. It seemed a lot more stable than the canoe, and it was large.
‘They’ll easily be able to bring their food back in that,’ said Wai-Yi.
Downstream, the Hole team had all jumped in the water and were swimming their log across the river.