Free The Other Side of Nowhere by Stephen Johnston

blocked the path, but beyond it I could see a clearing about the size of a tennis court, dotted with pink and yellow wildflowers.
    I clambered over the fallen tree and made my way across the clearing. There, the ground began to rise, lazily at first, then quite steeply, up to the base of the escarpment. Scattered among the trees lay dozens of large boulders, like giant marbles whiskered with furry green moss. I paused in front of three massive rocks that were tucked behind a cluster of four tall trees with trunks as thick as lampposts. The trees were spaced out in an almost perfect square. I figured we might be able to hang the sheet between them somehow, like a bivouac, and build a fire in the shelter of the rocks. The ground was soft, thick with leaf litter.
    That ought to make Her Royal Highness happy , I thought and headed back to tell the others.
    Neither George nor Matt had found anything better and there was still no sign of a rescue party, so we packed up what little we had and headed back along the beach towards the forest spot I found.
    ‘Should we wait for Nick?’ George suggested as we came to the beginning of the path.
    I hesitated for a moment, not sure if I was really ready to be making decisions without him. George was watching me through squinted eyes. I wondered whether she doubted I could even make this call on my own.
    I took off my shirt and wrapped it around a stick. ‘Look, I’ll leave this as a marker. He’ll figure out we’re around here somewhere.’ I dug the stick into the sand, out from the tree line a bit, so there was no way Nick could miss it when he came back along the beach.
    Matt ran off into the bush and in seconds was out of sight. George followed me so closely that I had to be careful not to flick her with each overhanging branch we brushed past.
    ‘Johnno, what happened to Nick’s mum?’
    I should have known she wasn’t tailing me out of fear of being left behind. ‘Long story,’ I said, vaguely.
    ‘We’re not exactly pressed for time, Johnno.’
    ‘Guess not.’ For a moment I didn’t say anything, partly because I wasn’t sure where to start, but also because I was annoyed with George. Sooner or later every girl that met Nick wanted to know about his family. Why was it always me they came to? The Nick Barnes biography, as told by John Jones. Why couldn’t George be different from other girls, like she usually was?
    ‘Well, basically, after Nick was born, his mum couldn’t handle it, so she left,’ I started, trying to sound matter-of-fact about something that had hung over Nick his entire life.
    ‘What do you mean, like, straightaway? Like, at the hospital?’
    ‘Not exactly. She got sick after he was born. Mum reckons it was depression, but whatever it was she ended up back in hospital. For some reason his dad couldn’t look after him either so Nick got shipped off to his grandparents. To the farm.’
    ‘What? When he was a baby?’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘Wow,’ she said softly from behind me. ‘For how long?’
    ‘Ages. I think his dad came and saw him a bit, like on weekends and stuff. But his mum didn’t see him for about a year, maybe more.’
    ‘Wow,’ she said again. ‘That’s so sad.’
    ‘Well, it doesn’t get any better,’ I said shortly. ‘When his mum finally did get out of hospital, Nick came back to the city. They moved into a house in our street and that’s how we became mates. Everything seemed pretty normal to me when we were little, but I guess as I got a bit older I could tell something was up. I don’t think his mum was quite right in the head. She was always shouting, at Nick, at his dad. Like, everything and everyone just got up her nose. Then one day Nick comes home from school – he was, like, eight or something – and she’s gone.’
    ‘And he never saw her again?’
    ‘Nope.’
    George fell quiet for a bit. Only the crunch of leaves and twigs behind me let me know she was still there.
    ‘He’s different to what I was