Arrival (14 page)

‘I don't know,' I groaned, closing my eyes, wishing they would both just disappear. ‘I don't know what he wants. Haven't you caught him now? Why don't you ask
him
why he attacked me?'

‘I'm sure Officer Calvin intends to do exactly that,' said Ms Pryor, ‘but as you can no doubt appreciate, it's important for us to hear your side of the story as well.'

‘A crazy homeless man ran up and punched my face in for no reason,' I said. ‘That's my side of the story.'

Calvin looked like he was about to shout at me, but Ms Pryor stopped him with a sideways glance.

‘Luke,' she said gently, ‘please understand that Officer Calvin and I are on your side in all of this. We want to bring your attacker to justice, but to do that, we need to have a complete and accurate picture of the events leading up to the attack. We need you to tell us everything you know.'

‘That
is
everything I know,' I said firmly.

Calvin stared down his broken nose at me. ‘All right,' he said, eventually. ‘I'll give you the rest of the week to think about it. I'll be in touch after I've spoken to Bill.'

He turned and began making his way toward the door. Ms Pryor rushed to open it for him.

‘If you happen to recall any other information that might be of assistance –' she called over her shoulder.

‘Yeah,' I lied. ‘I'll let you know.'

I didn't see Calvin or Pryor again for the rest of the day.

I slept away most of the morning and woke up feeling much more human. My face still ached from all the scrapes and bruises, but the headaches were fading and so was the urge to throw up every time I moved.

Jordan dropped in to see me after school, but between the security cameras on the walls and the steady stream of doctors and nurses, we didn't feel comfortable discussing any of the things we
really
wanted to talk about.

Peter came by soon afterwards. He asked how I was going, then quickly launched into a story about how he'd tried all day to ask Jordan about the baby and how her mum was feeling, but for some reason she hadn't wanted to talk to him about it. I tried to be as supportive as I could without moving my head.

It was almost dark by the time Mum arrived at the medical centre. I heard her storming up the corridor, shouting at any nurse unlucky enough to get in her way. It turned out she hadn't got the message about me being there until five minutes after she finished work. So she'd run straight over and, as usual, began looking for someone to blame.

I could hear Dr Montag trying to convince her that it probably wasn't necessary to sue anyone over this, and she finally came in to see me. She asked most of the same questions that Calvin and Ms Pryor had, but at least she believed me when I said I had no idea why I'd been attacked.

Mum disappeared for a while, then came back in with a change of clothes and a toothbrush and stuff for me.

‘Let's go out for dinner tomorrow night,' she said, laying the clothes out on the chair next to my bed. ‘I feel like I've hardly seen you this week.'

Yeah, whose fault is that?
I thought bitterly. But I shoved the thought aside. ‘Sounds good,' I said.

‘Great,' said Mum. ‘Where would you like to go?'

‘You pick.' To be honest, after a week and a half of macaroni and pizza, I would much rather have stayed at home and eaten something out of our own oven. But at least she was making the effort to do something together.

‘How about one of those cafés out near the park?' she suggested. ‘I hear Cusumano's does great pasta.'

‘Sure.'

Mum finished laying out my stuff and then kissed me goodbye. She switched the light off on her way out the door, throwing the big empty hospital room into shadow.

I rolled over to face the window and felt a flicker of panic as I saw something move past outside.

Just a bird.

I reminded myself that there was no-one out there, that Crazy Bill was locked up in the security centre, that his stalking days were over, at least for now. And I realised pretty quickly that this thought didn't make sleep come any easier.

Chapter 20

F
RIDAY
, M
AY
15
90
DAYS

‘Okay, here's the plan,' said Jordan, unfolding a giant map and laying it out on my bed. ‘We take –'

‘So we're definitely still going?' Peter interrupted. ‘Even though Crazy Bill's out of action? Even though we still have no idea what we're looking for and the only person who ever did is now sitting in prison?'

‘Yep,' said Jordan firmly.

‘Right, just checking.'

We were sitting in my bedroom, going over the plan that Jordan and Peter had come up with for investigating Crazy Bill's map.

I'd been released from the medical centre in time for school that morning, but Dr Montag had sent me home, dosed up on painkillers, insisting that I stay there and rest. I wasn't about to turn down a long weekend, especially since this particular weekend was shaping up to be anything but relaxing.

So I'd emailed Jordan and Peter and got them to come around after school to bring me up to speed.

‘This is a map of all the bike tracks and walking paths around Phoenix,' Jordan said, smoothing out the big sheet of paper. ‘Seeing as Calvin's already got his eye on us, it probably wouldn't be such a smart idea to ride out onto the main road in front of everyone, so we're thinking we'll make our start here instead.'

She pointed to a place on the map at the south end of town, where a narrow path stretched into the bush.

‘This track goes straight into the bush for a kilometre or so,' she said, tracing along the path with her finger, ‘then it curves around in a big circle and comes out near my house. But right here –' she ran her finger back along the line, ‘– the track runs right up against the main road, only a hundred metres away from it.'

‘So we ride out there and then cut through the bush?' I asked, peering over her shoulder.

‘Right,' said Jordan. ‘That should get us far enough away from town to make sure no-one sees us leaving. We'll have to make sure we don't run into any supply trucks coming down the road, but apart from that we should be safe.'

‘Until we get to whatever death trap Crazy Bill's got waiting for us out there,' I muttered.

Not that I didn't still want to go ahead with our plan, but the pummelling I'd been given the day before had driven home for me just how dangerous this could get.

Jordan looked across the bed at me, concern flashing across her face. ‘Luke, if you want to leave this,' she said, glancing at my battered face, ‘put it off for another week until you've recovered from –'

‘No, I'm fine,' I said, trying not to wince. My face hurt more when I was reminded of it. ‘It has to be tomorrow. We're already down to, what, ninety days? Something tells me we can't afford to lose another week. I'm just saying we're probably not going to like what we find out there.'

Jordan was still staring at me. ‘I don't get it,' she said. ‘One minute, Crazy Bill is feeding us information, and the next he's stalking us and beating us up. I wish he'd make up his mind about whose side he's on.'

‘I think Crazy Bill is on Crazy Bill's side,' said Peter, leaning back in my desk chair. ‘I don't reckon he's done anything so far that wasn't helping
his
agenda.'

‘Maybe,' I said, ‘but his map is still the only thing we have to go on right now.'

‘Great,' said Peter. ‘When do we leave?'

Jordan picked
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
up from the bed and flipped to Crazy Bill's map.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I'm assuming this thing isn't to scale, so it's hard to tell how far away either of these places actually are. But if we head off at, say, midday tomorrow, that gives us seven hours of riding time before the curfew kicks in, which is probably about as much as any of us can ride in a day anyway.'

And that was pretty much as far as our planning went. Leave at noon. Cut through the bush. Ride down the road and see what happens. Genius.

We hung around in my room for a couple of hours, playing video games and pretending that our lives were back to normal, until 5.30 p.m, when against all odds Mum came home from work in time for dinner.

Peter offered to walk Jordan home, which was ironic since I was sure she could have taken him down with one hand tied behind her back. To no-one's surprise, she turned him down.

It was getting kind of depressing to see Peter crash and burn with every attempt to win Jordan over – like watching the same car crash replayed again and again in slow motion. But convincing him not to climb behind the wheel again was clearly a lost cause.

The others headed home, and Mum and I walked down the street to Cusumano's
.
We took a shortcut through the park, past families standing around barbecues, teenagers skateboarding and rollerblading, kids feeding ducks or getting pushed on the swings by their parents.

Normal people doing normal stuff.

After everything that had happened in the last week and a bit, it was weird to think that most people saw Phoenix as just a perfect little town.

I mean, sure, that scary homeless man would've given a few of them a fright, but that was taken care of now, and they could all go back to walking their dogs and planting their vegetable gardens.

Even Mum was still positive about the move to Phoenix. ‘I feel like things are starting to settle down for us now, don't you?' she said as we reached the café and found a table overlooking the playground.

I stared at her. ‘Mum, I just got hospitalised by a psychotic hobo. How is that settling down?'

She bit her lip. ‘Okay, point taken,' she said, picking up a menu from the centre of the table. ‘And I can hardly imagine how scary it must have been for you, being attacked out of nowhere like that by someone you've never even met.'

‘But…?'

‘
But
,' she continued, ‘that was just a freak accident. One in a million. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

‘Didn't feel very accidental when he was beating the crap out of me,' I said.

A waitress, only a year or so older than me, appeared at our table. I thought maybe I recognised her from school. Her eyes went wide for a second at the sight of my bruised face, but she quickly covered up her shock and asked if we were ready to order.

‘The point I'm trying to make,' said Mum, after the waitress had disappeared into the kitchen again, ‘is that apart from that
one
incident, our move to Phoenix seems to be working out for the best.'

‘What about the phones?' I said sceptically. ‘I haven't talked to Dad since we left. For all he knows, our chopper disappeared into a black hole on the way here.'

‘Luke, if your father can't –' she paused midstream to rephrase what she'd been about to say. She'd been doing that a lot ever since Dad stopped being
Dad
and started being
your father.
‘Look, I know you miss him, but I'm sure he understands that these things happen from time to time. It's just the nature of living in a small town.'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘Tell you what,' Mum said. ‘First thing on Monday, I'll get in touch with Mr Ketterley and pin down a date for your first flight back to Sydney.'

Yeah, good luck with that.
‘Thanks,' I said.

The food arrived a few minutes later, and it turned out to be pretty good. Better than most of the junk I'd been eating lately, anyway.

We talked about school and work and what Mum wanted to do with the backyard if she ever had time. I told her that I was going bike-riding with Peter and Jordan tomorrow, and she said how great it was that I was making friends already.

But by the time we'd finished eating, the conversation had circled back around to Mum trying to reassure me – and probably herself as well – that moving to Phoenix had been the right choice.

‘I know it's been a rocky start, Luke, but we're getting there. You can see that, right? I'm finally getting my head around this new job, you've got your new friends at school…'

She took my hand and held it between both of hers. ‘This town is a good place,' she smiled. ‘Better for us than the big city. We just need to give ourselves enough time to find our feet. There's something different about Phoenix. The people in charge here – I get the feeling they really
believe
in something, don't you?'

I didn't answer.

I looked back out at the park, where a couple of security guys were coming around to enforce the curfew, which, I realised with a nasty jolt, hadn't been lifted even after Crazy Bill's capture. Armed men moving in to protect the secrets of Calvin and his friends.

Whatever it was that these people believed in, I could think of about seven billion others who might see things differently.

Chapter 21

S
ATURDAY
, M
AY
16
89
DAYS

Jordan arrived at my place at 11.30 the next morning, carrying her schoolbag over her shoulder. She opened it up on the coffee table, dumping out a bike pump, a pocket knife, a water bottle, a box of matches, a coil of rope, a notepad and pen, the bike track map from yesterday, some sandwiches, and a torch.

‘You really think we're going to need all that?' I asked, popping some more painkillers into my mouth as she piled everything back into the bag.

‘Doubt it,' she shrugged, closing the bag again. ‘But we might need some of it.'

Peter showed up about forty-five minutes later, looking like he'd just rolled out of bed.

In another surprising display of motherly kindness (maybe she really
was
starting to make an effort), Mum offered to make lunch for us before we left.