Free Raven's Mountain by Orr Wendy Page A

once they’ve got people’s hopes up!
    â€˜You meanies!’ I scream at the empty sky. ‘You bullies! Come back NOW!’
    The sky doesn’t answer; the helicopter doesn’t come back.
    Lost, scared, alone . . . the words are a bunch of mean girls trying to make me cry: I didn’t know how scared I   was till I   thought I was rescued. Now I’m not rescued, I can’t forget how scared I still am. I don’t know how I’m going to find help even once I get to the truck, because I can’t drive and I don’t know for sure that I   can find the key or move the lever for the seat so I can reach the pedals. I   don’t know how much longer I can go on walking without food or water.
    I’m screaming so loudly that I don’t hear the watery murmur that’s still there now the helicopter noise has gone. I’m so angry that even when I see the creek in front of me it takes me a second to understand what it is.
    My body understands before I do. It throws itself down on the bank, ready to lap like a dog, because it doesn’t want to die of thirst, no matter how angry the rest of me is.
    You’ll get sick! Use your filter bottle! Jess fusses.
    The water looks clean.
    The lake looked clean too, till you saw the deer poo, says Amelia.
    I don’t want to drink deer poo. Or bear poo. I scoop my water bottle into that rushing, running, clear cool water.
    I’m sure the filter didn’t take this long yesterday!
    Drip, drip, drip . . . Done.
    I drink the whole bottle, gulp after gulp, so fast that it dribbles down my chin, but it doesn’t matter, there’s a whole river left. It cools the burning lava of my stomach; washes down the pine needle stuck in my throat; whooshes that magic honey into every part of my thirsty body.
    It’s easier to wait for the filter the second time, and then the next. I drink till my stomach is so full and gurgly I couldn’t push in another drop.
    I imagine a message to Jess and Amelia: Not thirsty. Still scared, lost & alone.
    No, I wouldn’t tell them that. I send them a new one:
    On Lost Helicopter Creek. If you see a lost helicopter please send it back to me.
    I wonder how the helicopter turned up so soon?
    Maybe Mum really did get my thought message.
    Maybe she loves Scott and Lily so much that she can feel they’re in trouble.
    I don’t know if she knows exactly where we are. Scott calls it Greg’s mountain, but I’m pretty sure that’s not its real name.
    But he showed her on the map. I remember that she laughed and said there was never much point showing her anything on a map, and he said she shouldn’t under – estimate herself and kissed her on the nose.
    The first time Scott took us on a picnic at the Cottonwood River, Lily and I went exploring, and when I went back for a drink, Mum and Scott were kissing. I turned around and shouted for Lily to come see a frog; then I had to tell her it had hopped off, because I hadn’t seen a frog all day.
    Then I had to think hard as I could about frogs so I could unsee the kiss.
    I still feel a bit funny when I see them kissing.
    Lily kissed a boy once too. His name was Jordan and he was in grade 10   – I didn’t see her but I heard her telling Caitlyn when Caitlyn was her best friend. Then Caitlyn told everyone about Lily kissing Jordan and so Lily wasn’t her friend any more, and then we moved, so now Lily’s just like me and doesn’t know anyone at her new school   – except it’s easier for Lily to get new friends because she’s pretty and good at things, and nobody teases her about having red hair.

15

1:28 SATURDAY AFTERNOON
    I know the rescuers aren’t going to come back, but I   still make another Inukshuk, big enough to see from a helicopter. I’ve been wrong about lots of other things so far.
    I make it out of long skinny branches: not so much an Inukshuk as an arrow.
    I