Catherine Jinks TheRoad (49 page)

Peter woke to the sound of voices. He had been dreaming about school, a surreal dream in which he had been trying to get to the toilets, only to be prevented at every turning: the boys toilets had been locked; the staff toilets had been guarded by a furious science teacher, who had demanded that he go and pick up all the rubbish that he had dropped; the girls toilets had been full of screaming girls. Upon regaining consciousness, Peter realised that he
did
need to empty his bladder, urgently. But as he moved to push his blankets off, he realised that there weren’t any blankets. He wasn’t at home in bed. He was in a car – Del Deegan’s car – and it was dark, and they were on the road to Broken Hill.

Only they had stopped, for some reason.

‘Wha . . . what’s going on?’ he muttered, blinking and stirring. His ear was sore, from the pressure of the window glass. His neck was sore, too. ‘Mum? Are we there?’

No one answered. He saw that Linda wasn’t in her seat, any more – that her door was open. Del was gone, too, and Noel, and Alec. Even Mongrel. Turning his head, Peter spotted them all behind the station wagon. They were standing in the full glare of Ross’s headlights, talking and throwing their arms around.

Peter checked his watch, which was a digital one, with luminous numbers. One fifteen a.m. That was late. That was
very
late. He looked at his sisters, who were both still fast asleep. Louise was lying with her knees tucked into her chest, and her head where his mum’s lap should have been. Rosie was lying on the floor. Linda had padded the floor with a quilt and a pillow from Verlie, and had covered Rose with a bath sheet.

She was all curled up like a baby kangaroo in a pouch.

Quietly, cautiously, Peter opened his door. After he had climbed out of the station wagon, he didn’t close the door again – not fully – because that would have made too much noise. Even

so, his mum heard him.

‘Peter!’ she said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Going to the toilet.’

‘Oh. All right. Don’t go far.’

As if I would,he thought.The country beyond the high beams was lost in darkness, with only the stars overhead clear and bright, but judging from what Peter
could
see (dry grass and pebbles, frozen like burglars caught in a spotlight), it was the same as usual. Semi-arid, unpopulated, apparently endless. He shivered, and stepped carefully into the shadows. Something snapped under his foot.

‘Watch out for snakes!’ Linda called.

‘Yeah, yeah.’

He wondered if the parched earth would be grateful for his little deposit. It didn’t make much noise. By the time he had finished and had zipped up his pants, his head was beginning to work again. Had they run out of petrol? Had the ancient Ford broken down?

He joined his parents in the red gleam of its hazard lights.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, tugging at the hem of Noel’s T-shirt. ‘Why have we stopped?’

‘Shh. Just a second.’

‘But –’

‘
Wait
, Peter. Please.’

‘I’ll doss down in the backa me Ford,’ Del was saying. ‘Done it a million times. Got a sleepin bag there, and everything. Alec can have the front seat and Noel can have the other one. No worries.’