Free Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta Page A

Dubose.
    “Have you heard of her?” he asks.
    “Yes,” I say sleepily. “She lived in the same street as Jem and Scout Finch.”

Chapter 9
    I’m riding as fast as I can. The faster the pace, the less thought-process, and being thoughtless suits me fine. I pedal hard, my face sweating, my hands clenched on the handlebars until I feel the blood stop in my fingers. I pedal on with eyes closed and we travel, the bike and I, as if it has a mind of its own and I have no control. I skid suddenly to the side and realise that I’ve reached the ridge, an inch away from going over the edge. My face is drenched with perspiration and I look at the space below. The world sways and I sway with it until it’s like being in a hypnotic dance, almost enticing me to step over.
    But my attention is drawn away by the rustling above me. In the tree. There’s something watching. I throw the bike to the side and crane my neck, my heart pounding hard. For a moment I think I see theboy, his limbs nimble and quick, his eyes piercing into me, and then he’s gone. The knocking at my ribs in no way subsides and for a moment I don’t move because I’m petrified. Until there, in the corner of a branch, I see something else. The cat. Without thinking I start climbing. I don’t know why but somewhere at the back of my mind is the thought that the cat was the last to see Hannah. When I reach his eye level, I straddle the branch and get as close to him as possible, my arm stretched out as far as it can go. I find myself having to lean my torso onto the branch to balance and for a moment I get close, but he hisses and swipes at me and goes flying through the air, while I half fall off the branch, hanging on with both hands.
    I see his shadow first, and the shock of what I see makes me gasp.
    Standing under the tree, holding the cat, is the Brigadier. With the cat so compliant in his arms, he resembles some kind of Mephistopheles. As I cling on for dear life, I try to control the breathlessness within me that spells trouble.
    “It’s an easy drop,” he tells me. “You’ll be cushioned by the leaves.”
    I’d be happy to stay hanging off the tree for the rest of my life just so I don’t have to deal with him. But my hands begin to hurt and I know I have to let go.
    There is nothing easy about the drop. It hurts when I land and when he holds out a hand, I ignore it.
    He’s looking at my face closely and like every other time this man is around there is havoc in my stomach. Like a warning against malevolence. I could easily put it down to the fact that I’m still angry at him for being the one who stopped me and Jonah Griggs that time. But it’s more than that.
    “Give me the cat,” I say when I get to my feet.
    “Mightn’t be a good idea. He doesn’t seem to like you.”
    I grab the cat from him and he goes back to his feral self, scratching and writhing in my hands, but I’m not letting go.
    “Hannah—who lives here—she wouldn’t want you hanging around her place or stealing her cat,” I say.
    He’s still looking at me. It’s unnerving and although I don’t want to have my back to him, I turn and walk away, clutching the cat.
    The strange thing is this. In crazy dreams when I relive that moment when Jonah Griggs and I were sitting in the postman’s van in that township two hours away from Sydney, ready to set off on the final leg of our journey, I remember the Brigadier. I remember the look on his face when he pulled up in front of the postman’s van and got out of his car and walked towards us in that measured way he has. That look was directed at me and a thought has stuck in my head for all these years: that maybe the Brigadier did not come looking for a Cadet that day.
    That maybe, in some way, it was me he was hunting down.
     
    The next day, Raffaela, Ben, and I decide to do an inventory of every piece of property the Townies and Cadets own on our land. We split the page in three and list them, beginning with the most