“Jayden!” She looks up at me, clearly shocked. “Why?”
“I don't know. I guess mostly because I got dumped by my girlfriend. It all seems kind of trivial now.” I look at Nat and I can see that her face is already thinner, her jawline sharp and the skin drawn tight around her eyes and cheekbones. I feel a pang of something that could be fear or love or sadness; or maybe all three. “I don't want to die,” I say. “And you know what? We're not going to.”
“Okay,” she says, and her voice is thick with tears. “Okay.”
We decide to walk a short distance farther, to get out of sight of Mel's dead body, and to find some shrubbery to hide under for the heat of the day. It's going to be a bad one: already the sun is fierce. Just breathing in air this hot feels dangerous, like you could get cooked from the inside.
“You think he was on his way back to our camp?” I ask.
“Maybe. We've only gone a few kilometers.” Nat's voice is strained. “If we'd kept walking like we planned to, we'd have walked right past him in the dark.”
I take a last look at my uncle's body and notice something: he's lying on his bag, one arm clutching it to his chest. “Mel's bag,” I say.
She makes a face. “Let's just go.”
“Yeah. Okay.” I really don't want to touch him again. Those flies⦓But what if he's got food in there, or water purification tablets?”
“I guess.”
“You don't have to help.”
“No, it's okay. You lift him and I'll grab the bag.”
It's harder than you would think, lifting a dead body. Mel's a hefty guy. I lift his shoulders, trying not to look at his face. Nat pulls the bag free.
“Okay,” I say. It's weird, just leaving him here. I feel like we should say something to him but I don't know what. Besides, even now he's dead I'm still angry with him. He's the reason Nat and I are stuck out here, fighting to stay alive. His stupid ambition, his mistrust, his greed.
So in the end we just walk away.
We don't find any decent shade, but it is too hot to continue walking, so we huddle in the thin patchy shelter of some shrubbery. Nat drinks slowly.
Then she passes me the water jug. It's almost empty. After this jug is gone, we are down to nine gallons.
“Nat, you should rest here. I'll walk back to the camp to get the water we left for Mel.”
Nat nods reluctantly. “I gave him my water bottle too,” she says, pushing his bag toward me. “But I bet all he's got in there is dead lizards.”
“I'll eat them.” I unbuckle the bag and flip it open.
And I can't believe what I see.
“What is it?” Nat asks. “Jayden, what's in there?”
Wordlessly, I push the bag toward her.
“Oh my god,” Nat says, her fingertips pressed against her mouth. “He had it all along.” She puts her hand in the bag and lifts it out, holds it up. Small, black and silver. It sparkles like a handful of diamonds in the sunlight.
The satellite phone.
It takes only seconds to phone for help, but three long days for the help to reach us. It's a strange three days: We know we'll be out of here soon, but we don't quite believe it. We find some shade under some desert oaks, at the edge of a massive dune just a few kilometers north of where we found Mel's body; and we still ration our food and water, just in case. And we talk a lot, about all kinds of things. Life and death things, but also tv shows, music and what we're going to eat when we get back to the city. I tell Nat all about Anna and what she meant to me, and Nat tells me about her ex-boyfriend, who sounds like a jerk.
“His loss,” I tell her. “You deserve better.”
She sighs. “I think I need to be on my own for a while.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I hesitate. “Um, I know you're a couple of years older and all, but I was sort of getting a crush on you, before all this happened.”
“Seriously?” She laughs. “I didn't think you even liked me.”
“Yeah, I liked you. But now⦔
“Ah, now that you know me better, you don't?”
“No, listen. I like you. But thinking we might dieâ¦well, it changes things, doesn't it?”
Nat nods. “It changes everything.”
“I want to stay friends, okay? I mean, I have to go home, but we can still talk, right?”
“Yeah. We can still talk.” Nat's eyes are shining. “We'll have to, Jayden. I don't think anyone else is going to understand what this has been like.”
A convoy of two jeeps takes us back to Wiluna. Nat and I ride in one vehicle with an older Aboriginal man called Sam. Mel's bodyâzipped into a body bagâgoes in the second vehicle. Sam's quiet and easygoing, but the other driver is a heavy-smoking younger guy who talks loudly and cracks jokes that grate against my nerves. It's been less than two weeks since we left civilization but it feels like much longer.
There's a part of me that doesn't want to leave the desert.
Nat laughs when I confess this to her. “Slurpees,” she says. “Steak pies. Ice cream. Mangoes. A cold pint of Cooper's ale.”
Out my window, I watch the blue sky, the dusty red-brown land, the vastness of the landscape. And I realize something: I'll come back here. I'll take photographs that show the beauty of the desert, the glow of the morning sun, the changing colors of the rock. I'll make everyone see the ancient strength of this place.
I'll show them how it puts everything else in perspective.
Nat and I fly back to Adelaide together. From the airport, I phone my mother and tell her about Mel, but it turns out she was notified last night. Mel had her listed as his next of kin. She's been freaking out all day, waiting for me to call.
“I'm sorry,” I tell her, after I explain everything that has happened. “About Mel. I shouldn't have left him.”
“You could have died too,” she says. “Honestly, I could kill him.”
The image of Mel lying facedown in the desert flashes into my mind. “Yeah. Well⦔
“Oh god. Sorry. I shouldn't have said that,” she says. “But Jaydenâ¦he had no right taking you and Natalie out there. He didn't even discuss it with me. At the universityâthat's what he told me.”
“I know. I'm sorry I didn't tell you either.”
I can hear her sigh over the phone. “It's okay. I'm just relieved you're okay.”
“Me too.”
“I'll get your flight changed,” she says. “Get you back here as soon as possible.”
“No rush. Nat says I can stay as long as I like. I wouldn't mind staying a few weeks, since I'm here anyway.”
“You and Natâ¦It's none of my business, but are youâ¦?”
“Nah. Just friends.”
“You sound different.” She hesitates. “I was so worried about you before you left. And now all thisâ¦But you're okay, aren't you?”
“I'm good,” I tell her. “Really good.”
“You sound good.” She clears her throat. “Um, Anna dropped by the other day. She hadn't seen you at school and wanted to check that you were all right.”
“Better than all right.” I picture Anna's round face, her long fair hair, her worried blue eyes. “If you see her again, say hi for me,” I say.
Mom really wants me back home, but in the end we compromise on two weeks. I stay with Nat in the brightly painted house that she shares with a bunch of other students. Girls with dreadlocks and bandannas and pierced noses; girls who wear pajamas all day, who cook tofu and soy beans in the big old kitchen, smoke dope on the front steps, pet the various stray cats that have moved in. They treat me like Nat's little brother and it feels fine.
I ride the tram down to the beach at Glenelg, try surfing with reasonable success, go out dancing with Nat and her friends. I eat a lot of steak pies. Nat buys me a disposable camera and makes me do all the tourist stuff: we feed kangaroos at a wildlife reserve, rent pedal boats on the river, eat gelato and watch the buskers in Rundle Mall.
I try not to think too much about Mel. It isn't until I'm packing to go home that Nat and I discover we still have his bag.
“It was in the laundry room,” Nat says. “Under the dirty laundry.”
I take it from her and open it up. A cold shiver runs up my spine as I remember the last time I undid these buckles. “Nat? If we hadn't found that sat phone⦔
“We'd have made it,” she says confidently.
I'm not so sure. I think we had a chance, but it was a pretty slim one. I slip my hand into the bag and pull out Mel's wallet. An empty water bottle. A granola bar wrapper. A notebook.
And a small glass jar with a very dead brown lizard inside.
Nat takes it from me and studies it carefully, turning the jar in her hand. “He found it,” she says. “I can't believe it.”
“That's it?” It's small and ordinary-looking. No big frills or bright colors. “That's what he died for?”
Her eyes are suddenly wet. “This is it, Jayden. Mel's pinnacle.”
By the time I've been back home for a week, Australiaâand everything that happened thereâfeels very far away. I go back to school, and to the surprise of my teachers, I actually do the work. I also sign up for some photography classes, a couple of times a week, after school. One evening I go for a walk with Anna. It's fineâa little weird, but fine. We agree to stay friends, but I don't know if we really will. It's different now.
I'm
different. I don't think we have as much in common as we used to.
When I get home, Nat's online and there's a message waiting for me.
Hey there, Jay. I just heard back from
Polly and Ian, and guess what? Turns
out that lizard really is a new species. So
Mel was right about one thing anyway. Polly says they'll name it for him. In his
honor or whatever. She says the world of
science has lost a great mind. Anyway,
desert buddy, I miss you. XO Nat.
I type a quick message back:
Nat,
I think the great mind got lost a while
back.
I sit for a minute, my fingers still on the keys, and remember how Mel looked at the start of the trip: Grinning, teeth white against his leathery skin, blue eyes blazing with obsessive purpose and anticipated glory. The words on the screen blur and I blink away my tears.
That's great that
they're naming it for Mel,
I say.
He'd be
pleased.
Yeah
, Nat says.
It's sad though. Him
finally making it to his crazy summit and
not being here to enjoy it.
I know
, I say.
It's weird
. It still doesn't feel real to me that Mel is dead. I try not to think about how he looked when we found him. I try to remember the good stuff instead of the way it all ended. Sometimes I feel guilty about not grieving more, but mostly what I feel these days is happy. So very happy and so grateful to be alive.
I haven't told Nat about my plan to return to the outback, to do some photography in the desert. I know exactly what she'll say if I tell her now:
Dude, you're crazy.
So I'm going to wait a while before I try to talk my desert buddy into coming with me. Even so, I know it'll be a long shot.
Sometimes a long shot is all you need.
Robin Stevenson is the author of a number of novels for children, teens and young adults. She was born in England, grew up in Ontario, spent two years in Australia and now lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her partner and son. For more information about Robin and her books, please visit
www.robinstevenson.com
.