Free Love and Muddy Puddles by Cecily Anne Paterson

long? Now you’ll have to wait a whole year.”
    “Which is like, forever, when you think you’ve found the boy of your dreams,” I said sadly. “Seriously, he is gorgeous. You have no idea.”
    “There probably won’t be any decent boys near you at all,” said Sam. “And even if there are you won’t get to meet any if you’re stuck on the farm all day.”
    “I know, right?” I agreed. “And anyway—farm boys? Eew.”
    “Look, if by some miraculous chance I ever get to meet Darcy, I promise I’ll tell him about you and what he’s missing,” said Sam. “You never know. Maybe you two are just meant to be.”
    “You’re such a great friend,” I said. “You look out for me! Are you going to be ok when I’m gone? I’m worried you’ll be left alone with no friends.”
    She gave me a joking, sceptical look. “Are you serious? Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself. You’ve got to nail this story. Both of our futures depend on it.”
    So I learned to lie. I practiced in front of the mirror a few times to build my confidence and then fielded mock questions helpfully prepared by Samantha.
    “Why can’t you just do horse riding here like everyone else?” she demanded to know, pretending to be Tiger Lily and adding an eye roll for dramatic flair.
    “Well, my parents really like the idea of us doing something away from home,” I said glibly. “They’re all into ‘building character’ and anyway, my mum went there for a while when she was young, so it’s kind of like home away from home.”
    And so my story began.
    I told the girls at lunch on Friday and spent a nervous weekend waiting for a message on my phone that said, “You’re lying, you loser, we know everything and you’re dropped!” but it never came. On Monday when the topic came up again, it seemed like I was safe. No one suspected a thing and I wanted to keep it that way.
    At home, it seemed like Dad was on some kind of super-speed drug because everything was happening uber-fast.
    “I’ve got it set for us to move on to the farm first week of the holidays,” he told us at dinner. “So you can say all your goodbyes to friends in the next three weeks.”
    “Oh wow, that’s so soon,” said Charlie, enthusiastic. “I can’t wait.”
    I sniffed haughtily and looked away.
    I had been true to my promise and had managed not to talk directly to Dad for at least a fortnight. A couple of times in the first few days I nearly forgot and asked him to pass the salt at dinner but at the last second I managed to make it seem like I was actually talking to Josh.
    Once he started giving us instructions about packing though, I nearly lost the plot. I had to literally bite my lips so that I didn’t let out any words.
    “So, you guys can take a suitcase each,” he said. “Pack everything else into boxes so we can put it all into storage until the house is built.”
    I had to wait till I was in Charlie’s room before I could start yelling about it.
    “One suitcase? Is that all? Does he expect me to live with only one suitcase worth of clothes?” I said. “What about all my other stuff? I’m not going to cope without my make up and shoes and pillows and all the rest of it for a whole year.”
    “He did say one suitcase  each,”  Charlie said. “You make it sound like we all have to put our stuff in the same suitcase altogether. Seriously. Get the big suitcase. You’ll be fine.”
    I did. I got the biggest suitcase I could find. It was the one Mum bought the year that we all went to the Gold Coast and she said she was sick of handling a million different little pieces of hand luggage on the plane, but even then I couldn’t make it all fit in. And I was studiously ignoring Dad’s instructions to leave behind my good clothes.
    “Two pairs of jeans, a pair of joggers, a couple of old T-shirts and a jacket or two,” he kept saying over and over to anyone who would listen. “That’s all you’re going to need. And we’ll buy