Free On the Run by Tristan Bancks

Mum must have elbowed him because the snoring stopped. Three short, sharp snorts. Then silence.
    Ben scanned forward but that was it. He rested the camera on his lap and listened to it over again. He pulled his notebook and pencil from his backpack and wrote these words:
    Wish we hadn’t done it.
    As soon as we get the passports we go.
    Disappear into the desert.
    He reread the notes. Passports. That was the most important piece of evidence. Where were they going? Dad always said that he knew Australia was the greatest country on earth so why would anyone want to go anywhere else. Even when Ben pleaded to go on vacation to Fiji or New Zealand like some kids in his class, Dad said no. Ben ran his fingers over the words on the page. He figured that this was what a real detective would do—chew over the evidence, ratchet through the possibilities.
    Maybe it was nothing. Maybe they really were just going on vacation. Maybe they were getting passports for Fiji or New Zealand and were only stopping in at the cabin for a few days on the way to the airport. Dad was probably joking about the desert. Ben let out a breath and bit his bottom lip. Sometimes he wished that his imagination wasn’t quite so good. He could never walk down a dark hallway or put out the garbage or stay home by himself without thinking scary thoughts.
    He went to his raft and uncovered it. He took one end in his hands and struggled down over the rocks, carefully laying it in the water. He crouched and crawled on board, floating at the shallow edge of the river. Water rushed beneath him. The raft wobbled. Some of the grass ties split with the pressure of his body so he shifted his weight, which made the back of the raft move away from the river’s edge. He scrambled for balance.
    The ties continued to split. Ben clutched the narrow branches like he was a baby and they were his mama. He fell into knee-deep water, standing quickly, the freezing river ejecting him. The raft was in the middle of the river now, drifting toward the far bank, where it would be swept downstream and over the falls.
    Ben was not a strong swimmer. He moved from knee-deep to waist-deep water with a sharp in-breath, the cold pinching him. He waded until he was chest-deep, the force of the water pulling him forward. He pushed off a rock with his toes and surged toward the raft, reaching for the back left-hand edge with two fingers.
    He caught it, clamped it with his thumb, and pulled back, getting a better grip with his other hand. He swam with everything he had, trying to drag the damaged raft back toward the boulders that stretched halfway across the river.
    The relentless pull of water made Ben panic. He was losing the battle. Just as he decided he needed to let go of the raft or go over the waterfall, his foot touched a rock at the river’s bottom. He dug in and pulled hard against the current and, finally, nudged up against the large, smooth, mossy boulders that reached out across the river. He hung on, breathing hard, feeling alive.
    After a few minutes he began the difficult climb up the slippery rocks. At the top he collapsed, panting and wet. He laughed. His first attempt at building a raft, at building anything other than clay figures and miniature stop-motion sets, had been a disaster. He slapped at mosquito bites on his neck and face and arms.
    Wish we hadn’t done it.
    Passports.
    It . What did Dad wish they hadn’t done?
    Ben stood and hauled the loosely connected branches of his raft along the boulders and up onto the riverbank, dropping them next to his notebook and camera. He took the knife from his pocket, flicked out a blade, and cut the remaining grasses away. The knife was sharp and worked well. He headed off into the heavy shadow of the trees, and after a time he came across some tough, rootlike vines growing along the ground at the base of a hoop pine. They would do.
    The raft needed bracing, something going across to hold the longer branches