We followed him another eighty paces or so down the tunnel until it was obvious that the whole place was completely, absolutely, 100 percent empty of anything resembling an ancient Aboriginal Australian cave painting.
“I don’t get it,” Denny whispered.
Ellie looked like someone had handed her a really difficult math problem.
I saw the two cops exchange glances. The councilors did the same. Linda tapped me on the shoulder and raised her eyebrows questioningly. It must have been really confusing for her and for all the campers who couldn’t speak much English. I tried to explain what had happened but gave up. And before you start thinking I should have stuck at it, you try explaining something like that using only your hands and eyebrows—and in the dark.
Barry came back into view, his expression grim. “They’ve cleaned it all!” he said. He kicked a nearby stone and said more of those words I can’t repeat.
“Overnight?” Rollo said doubtfully.
“This is a big company we’re talking about!” Barry retorted. “They could get something like that done easy! MegaGlobal are—”
“We need to be careful, Baz,” one of the councilors said. “MegaGlobal are real powerful. You can’t just go flinging stories around without proof, mate.”
Barry’s head exploded.
Okay, it didn’t, but it was a close-run thing there for a second or two.
Barry handed the torch back to Rollo.
“That’s it?” Denny said. “Just like that?”
“That’s it,” Barry replied, and headed toward the light.
I’d like to be able to tell you that we discovered some other clue out there at Crocodile Rocks and that the police dug a little deeper and found out that everything we’d told them was true and they threw us a big party with fireworks and the King of Australia gave us all medals.
But, hey! Guess what? That didn’t happen.
Vern took us back to the camp, his face as blank as the walls of Crocodile Rocks.
Barry got back into a car with the councilors and headed back to Bigbottom Creek. Denny stalked off toward the campfire and lay down in his swag. From the look on his face, I knew he didn’t want company.
“What now?” Ellie said.
I shook my head. “I guess we do what we came here to do.”
CHIAROSCURO.
That’s what I was painting and drawing.
It means working with a lot of very dark areas on the canvas or page. I was mostly creating night scenes of Crocodile Rocks silhouetted by the crisscrossing headlights from the (nonexistent) trucks.
Since it looked like all our amateur detective work was leading nowhere, I figured I might as well get something down on paper. Experience, see? I was pretty excited by them too. They made me feel as though I was getting somewhere, but I didn’t know that what I was doing even had a name until Denny told me.
He had stayed quiet the day we’d been out to Crocodile Rocks but by the following morning he was back doing his thing, making a digital video mash-up about the camp from Ellie’s footage and Yrsa’s music. Denny got Ellie to film me painting and then put graphics over parts of the project, which was when I learned I was making chiaroscuro art.
It looked amazing.
All the Kamp Kulture kids did their own way cool stuff that week, getting ready for the touring exhibition (starting in Australia, then heading to Vietnam, Iceland, Scotland, Latvia, and ending up in Holland). Some of them, like Ellie and Denny, worked in teams. Others, like me, Eric, and Monique, did our own thing. Vloot kept working on his sculpture of Brushes.
We got to know each other better too.
I learned that fimmtudagur is the Icelandic word for Thursday, found out that Skonto F.C. was Linda the Latvian’s favorite soccer team and that she was a pretty good player, tasted a ball of traditional Ghanaian Jollof rice made by Eric, and was taught some rude Dutch words by Vloot.
After three days, Glen came back from Bigbottom Creek and showed that he was possibly the world’s only Scottish rapper. We couldn’t understand a word but it sounded great.
We were having fun and, slowly, as the days passed, the whole thing about being chased by crocodiles and suspecting that Brushes had invented the paintings in the McGarrity Caves and the diamonds and MegaGlobal and Barry the rock monster seemed to fade until there were times I wasn’t sure any of it had happened.
I mean, I knew the croc was real but I had no actual proof that Brushes had anything to do with that. There was the cage and the stuff Denny had found online, but it all looked a bit thin in the hot light of day.
Those trucks could possibly, maybe have had something to do with kangaroos. The cave paintings Barry the rock monster had photographed in the wing mirror might have been a trick of the light. We didn’t know for sure that Brushes had painted the “fake” McGarrity cave paintings.
We knew none of those things. We just thought we did, and I was learning that there’s a big difference between the two. That’s how things work out sometimes.
Don’t blame me.
AFTER TEN DAYS in the outback, the Bigbottom Creek Hotel looked like the Monte Carlo Ritz.
We had running water! Cold drinks! Showers!
We had beds! BEDS!
We didn’t have to poop out in the desert!
“So much happiness exploding my artery pump!” Linda squeaked, looking around excitedly. Like always, her English wasn’t great but I knew exactly what she meant. My artery pump was also exploding with happiness.
This place was complete, yes indeedy, uh-huh-oh-yeah-that’s-what-I’m-talking-about, total six-star luxury compared to Kamp Kulture. In the first few hours after we got back, I had three showers, six naps, and almost overdosed on ice-cold cans of soda.
We were all due to fly out the next day but before then there was a celebration at the McGarrity Ranch. Brushes came around in the afternoon and gave us all presents to remember Kamp Kulture by, which made me feel bad about spying on him. My present was a pot of paint made from the red outback sand. It was a nice idea but I had already mixed up a few pots of my own, so I swapped the paint for Vloot’s present—a little piece of desert rock mounted on a wooden plinth. It looked exactly like my lucky pebble, only shinier.
“Nice rock,” Ellie said. She’d been given a little framed drawing Brushes had done of an odd-looking rock formation. It was pretty good.
I nodded but didn’t say much.
The fact was, Ellie and I were in a weird mood. Since we’d gotten back to the hotel, it seemed like everything she said annoyed me and she made it clear that she felt exactly the same way about me. I don’t know why but that’s what it was like.
You ever get that? Just sort of digging at someone when you don’t really want to? Like there’s something making you be nasty? Maybe because we were all going our separate ways. Or maybe it was those hormones again. Whatever it was, we arrived at Brushes McGarrity’s place for the farewell party that night hardly speaking.
Brushes’ place was huge. It was a bit rundown here and there maybe but BIG. Running along the back of the main house was his gallery. In the middle, all the stuff we’d done out at Kamp Kulture was arranged on the walls and on plinths along with a whole bunch of stuff by Brushes (which, I have to admit, wasn’t bad).
Ellie and Denny’s movie was being projected onto a wall in one corner. Yrsa’s soundtrack played over the speakers. It still sounded like two cats fighting in a washing machine but somehow it was exactly right for the movie. Pretty much everyone who lived in Bigbottom Creek was there, including Barbara, the crying lady from the plane (looking much calmer than the last time I’d seen her), the two cops who’d been out to the caves, Barry the rock monster, the entire Bigbottom Creek Council (both of them), The Suits, and Brushes. The only face I couldn’t see was Vern’s.
I watched Ellie talking and laughing with people who weren’t me and felt a hot flush of anger. That was the only downside to doing interesting stuff—when it comes to an end, it can feel twice as
crummy. Ellie glanced over in my direction. What I should have done was walk over and join in the conversation, make up with Ellie, and enjoy my last evening in Australia.
What I did was turn right around and go out the back door, slamming it behind me as hard as I could.
Hormones. Don’t you hate them?
HEY, GUYS, HERE’S a solid bit of Rafe Khatchadorian advice: when making a dramatic exit, there’s one Very Important Point to remember—you have to have somewhere to stomp off dramatically to.
I had forgotten this Very Important Point, so once I’d left the house I found myself standing in Brushes’ backyard in the dark alone and with exactly zero idea about where I was going to go or what I was going to do when I got there.
Arguing sucked and arguing with Ellie on my last night in Australia double-sucked.
As I stood there wondering what to do, I heard a whistle followed by a series of muffled thuds.
There was something off about those thuds. I’d heard them before but I couldn’t remember exactly where. The sounds were coming from a big tin shed about two hundred yards from the main house. Curious, I moved closer. Vern was standing outside it, holding a stick. As I watched, he threw the stick and the dog bounced out of the tin shed, its tail wagging in excitement.
I stopped dead. I’d found out what was making those weirdly familiar thudding noises.
The dog was no dog.
It was a croc. The same croc I’d stood on out in the desert.
A lot of things went through my mind at the same time. Here they are in no particular order:
1. We’d been right about Brushes all along! He’s in this—whatever “this” is—up to his bristly neck.
2. That croc is way bigger than I remember.
3. Crocs like playing fetch—who knew?
4. Brushes has been using the pet croc to put off people snooping at Crocodile Rocks. McGarrity wouldn’t have risked using “wild” crocs so close to Kamp Kulture.
5. If McGarrity is crooked, why had he encouraged a bunch of art kids to come here?
The answer to the last one of those questions came to me first. Brushes got us here as camouflage. He needed us. The question was, why?
I tried to concentrate. If …
“Uh, Rafe?” Leo said.
“Not now, Leo.” Couldn’t he see I was thinking? When I’m thinking, the last thing I need is interruptions.
“I think you need to listen to this interruption,” Leo said. “I’m not kidding.”
I glared at him. “What?”
He jerked a thumb at the tin shed. The croc had stopped playing with Vern and now both of them were looking right at me.
It was a bad moment.
MY EYES MET the eyes of the croc. Time stood still.
For a long moment we just looked at each other. I didn’t have the slightest doubt that the croc recognized me as the kid who’d peed on his back.
Then I heard Vern say something. It was the first complete word I’d ever heard him say and it gave me an electric jolt that started in my brain and shot down the length of my body. It was the scariest word I had ever heard.
Fetch.
Being a play toy for a monster crocodile was not something I wanted to try. But I did have three things on my side:
(A) a twenty-yard head start;
(B) my lucky pebble in my pocket; and
(C) I’d been in this situation before (you too can become A Man of Experience!).
Spinning on my toes, I sprinted across the yard and headed straight for the house. If you’ve ever been in some sort of accident, you’ll know that being in great danger does something different to time. Everything gets real slooooow. Every detail becomes ultra-HD-TV sharp. And your brain starts doing strange things.
Example: Instead of thinking only about escaping from a monster crocodile, my brain was also finding time to figure out the last few details of Brushes’ plan.
The reason Brushes took the risk of having a bunch of teenagers out at the caves was because he needed us to help smuggle The Blue Budgie diamond out of Australia. A company like MegaGlobal Industries couldn’t risk being caught with something like The Blue Budgie.
They couldn’t afford to be caught smuggling it, either. They had too much to lose. McGarrity probably only needed MegaGlobal for their digging expertise. He must have come up with some sort of deal, but with border security being kind of fussy about sneaking huge diamonds out of Australia, Brushes needed a way of getting The Blue Budgie somewhere it could be sold. It just so happened that the Kamp Kulture exhibition was going to tour all the countries the Young Artists came from—including Holland, the diamond capital of the world.
I thought of Vloot’s sculpture of McGarrity.
It had always seemed majorly strange that Brushes wanted a sculpture of himself. But what better way to smuggle The Blue Budgie out of the country than by stuffing it inside some kid’s sculpture? What border security guard would risk breaking something like that? It might cause an international incident if the IAWCAAW bods heard about it. It was genius.
I figured all that out in the time it took me to get halfway to the house.
Glancing back, I saw that the croc was gaining. I put on an extra spurt and reached the door. Grabbing the handle, I heard that familiar Boofboom! Boofboom! getting closer and closer.
Ten yards to go. Boofboom!
Five. Boofboom!
Two. Boofboom!
I yanked open the door.
“CROC!” I YELLED as I skidded into the gallery. “CROC! CROC! CROC! CROC! CRRRRRROOOOOOOCC!”
It was safe to say that I had everyone’s undivided attention.
I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting as far away as possible from the croc. I’d seen the look in that thing’s eyes. It wasn’t going to let me get away twice.
I hurdled the first display table and zigzagged through the crowd. It was only when I was on my second lap of the gallery that I figured something out.
The croc wasn’t there.
I jogged to a halt, scanning the gallery in case it was hiding behind a painting.
“Are you okay, Rafe?” Ellie said, putting a hand on my arm. Of everyone in here, she was the only one not laughing.
Everyone’s got a boiling point and mine had just been reached. Sometimes a Khatchadorian’s gotta do what a Khatchadorian’s gotta do. I took a few paces toward the plinth holding the sculpture of Brushes McGarrity.
“Sorry, Vloot,” I said, looking at the Dutch kid.
“What for?” Vloot asked.
“For this,” I said, and knocked his sculpture of Brushes to the floor, where it smashed into a thousand pieces.
A gigantic blue diamond skidded across the floor of the gallery and came to rest at the feet of the astonished Bigbottom Creek Police Chief.
Everyone froze and looked at Brushes McGarrity.
“You darn kids,” he snarled. “If you hadn’t interfered with our crafty scheme to smuggle The Blue Budgie to Amsterdam, I’d have gotten clean away!”
He was right.
This wasn’t the movies and McGarrity didn’t say anything, mainly because when Vloot’s sculpture hit the deck, no hidden diamond came out.
I’d been wrong.
Oops.
EVERYONE LOOKED AT ME. I wanted to come out with some kind of wisecrack but I couldn’t think of anything that sounded right.
So I did what anyone would do—I ran.
I had no idea what I was going to do once I got outside, but even facing the croc was better than staying in the gallery with everyone laughing at me. I hit the gas and took off like a rocket.
Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that the floor was covered in thousands of bits of Vloot’s broken sculpture. My right foot landed on Brushes McGarrity’s clay nose and I skidded across the shiny polished concrete floor like a first-time ice-skater whose pants were full of wasps.
“Neeeeeyarrrrrrrr!!” I yelled, and slammed headfirst into Eric’s artwork, which was a big kind of net
woven from bits of wool that was hanging from the ceiling. I bounced back and crashed awkwardly to the floor.
I got up and then fell down.
Then I did it again.
Ellie screamed and I looked down to see my foot pointing the wrong way.
I blinked. I was used to both my feet pointing the same way—forwards.
And then two things hit me at the same time. First, that I had just broken my leg. And second, a tidal wave of pain. I opened my mouth to scream and then everything went black.
I LOOKED OUT of the hospital window and watched the plane carrying Ellie disappear into the blue sky. Another layer of experience settled on me like dust. I was building up a pretty thick crust now and it was painful.
That’s the thing about getting experience—you have to have a wound before it becomes scar tissue. Experience isn’t always fun. Experience can hurt. Endings hurt. Being humiliated at the gallery hurt. Saying goodbye to Ellie hurt. And my broken leg really hurt.
Not like when it happened—that had been waaaaay beyond painful—but now it had settled into a kind of dull ache. And the thing itched like crazy.
“Look on the bright side,” Leo said. “There’s only another six weeks before the plaster comes off. Now, can we finish this story and get out of here? I’m bored.”
“We’re going soon,” I said. “Real soon. Cabin crew prepare doors and cross-check for take-off.”
“What?” Leo said.
I leapt onto the back of Lorek Bearsson, my flying warrior polar bear, and hoisted Leo up behind me.
“Ah, the flying polar bear ending! Excellent!” Leo grabbed a double-necked red electric guitar and took up position.
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