28
2020, Camp Six
Green River Campground
Lyra
‘What does a virus even look like?’ Tia was asking through a mouthful of jelly snakes, contraband lifted from the esky by Trick.
‘Like a big spiky ball of snot. I saw it on the news,’ Lyra told her. It was true. Her mum was trying to keep her away from it, she said that between the American orange man and spreading sickness, the news was just anxiety.
‘They seem worried, the grown-ups,’ Tia said. ‘My mum says that there’s a place in China where people aren’t allowed to leave their houses.’
‘Well, that would be okay in your house,’ Lyra said, thinking about all the rooms at Auntie Liss’s house they didn’t even really use, and the swimming pool, and the big lawn. ‘If we ever have to stay in our houses, I’ll just come to yours. We could get a dog.’
Lyra and Bridge and their mum were in Bronte now. It was cool, because everything in it was new and her mum got this dreamy, smiley look every time they walked in and she looked around. It wasn’t far from Auntie Liss’s either. It was annoying that Lyra wasn’t allowed to walk to Tia’s on her own yet. Lyra walking places on her own seemed to be high on her mum’s worry list. Also, they weren’t allowed a dog, because they were upstairs. They had a balcony, but a dog couldn’t poo on a balcony, her mum said.
The other thing her mum seemed worried about was her dad. He was supposed to be coming for a month, but everyone was talking about travel maybe becoming a problem, because of the spiky ball of snot. She’d heard her mum telling Liss that Seb was worried about getting ‘stuck’ here. Maybe that meant her dad would come and never go home. Which would be weird, but fine with Lyra. When Dad was home he treated her and Brigitte like it was the weekend every day – imagine months and months of ice creams and iPad time and presents just because.
‘My mum thinks everyone is overreacting,’ said Trick, who was poking about under a log with a stick. ‘Worrying about nothing.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘James said there was a snake here.’ Trick was on his belly, skinny little legs sticking out of the bottom of his black shorts, his chin on the scrubby ground. ‘I want to see a snake.’
‘No you don’t,’ said Tia, jumping up from where she’d been sitting cross-legged on a mossy rock and looking around with suspicion. ‘Snakes bite, you idiot.’
‘And James is a liar.’ That was true. James was a liar. Especially this year. It seemed like James and Bob were more into teasing and playing tricks and running away than they were interested in hanging out and building secret dens. And Trick didn’t seem to be invited when they ran off.
The five of them were the OG Kids. That’s what their mums called them. The babies who had brought the mothers’ group together. There were more kids now, but they were still all little and annoying, and the OGs were all ten now, so Liss said they could play in the forest as long as they didn’t go far, and stamped their feet, and didn’t make fires. The little ones still had to stay with the parents all the time.
Lyra knew that if her mum didn’t like Lyra walking round the block to Tia’s house in the city, she probably didn’t like her disappearing into a forest either, but Auntie Liss could sometimes get her mum to agree to things she wouldn’t usually. Sometimes it was like she was the boss of Lyra’s mum.
‘Do you want to go see if there’s any chocolate in the esky?’ asked Tia, her jelly snakes now just sticky memories on her gappy teeth. She was going through a mad lolly phase. Now they were ten they’d worked out where treat things were kept, how to get to them, that you could help yourself or maybe even buy stuff from the convenience store with your pocket money if the parents weren’t paying attention. It was mind-blowing, really, because you realised why your mums were keeping this stuff from you. It was the only thing worth eating.
‘Not until I’ve found the snake.’ Trick gave his stick a big shove and it snapped on the craggy edge of the rock. ‘James lied to me.’
‘Of course he did,’ said Lyra. ‘Come on, let’s go back.’
The weather wasn’t great. They’d had a day of showers and a day of clouds, and the parents were all complaining about their beach time and their tans. Lyra didn’t mind though, because when it was too hot it was hard to sleep in bed with her mum, and Brigitte always got sunburnt and whinged.
But the overcast day meant that the forest was darker than usual. The trees always blocked out the sunshine anyway, but now it felt positively gloomy as they made their way out of the clearing and back towards the caves.
Trick whistled a tuneless whine as he walked behind Lyra and Tia, waving a new stick. He loved to thrash at stuff, which made Lyra paranoid that bugs were going to fly out and into her eyes. She hated bugs, and a kid at school had told her they could lay eggs in your eyes if they got to them. This was going to be the second-last year that she and Tia were going to school together, and she didn’t know who she was going to talk to about where bugs really laid their eggs once she didn’t see her every day.
There was a rustle and shuffle in the scrub beside them and suddenly Lyra realised that she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. James’ snake. A thick, shiny black snake sliding onto the path in front of her.
She stopped, gasped, and Tia bumped into her back. ‘What?’
Trick bumped into Tia. ‘What?’
Lyra couldn’t talk, but she could point. It was magnificent, actually. So big and round, muscles rippling under the scales, black as black, with red curling up from its belly, the snake was crossing in front of them, and then suddenly it stopped, the whole path blocked by its length, head in the scrub to the right, tail in the scrub to the left.
‘Oh my God,’ Trick breathed, his stick in midair. ‘It’s a red-bellied black snake. They’re deadly.’
Lyra’s heart was pounding. ‘What do we do?’
She thought about what she’d been taught about snakes. At school, on BTN. Stamp your feet. Never step over it. It’s more afraid of you than you are of it.
It didn’t look very afraid; it had just stopped there, making them wait.
‘How do we make it go?’
‘Maybe we could catch it?’
‘We’re not going to catch it, you just said it was deadly.’
‘Stamp your feet.’
‘We can’t tell my mum about this, she’ll never let us go into the forest again.’
Trick stamped his feet, as hard as he could, and the girls joined in.
The snake, as if just woken from a nap, raised its head from the bush and Tia screamed. Lyra elbowed her in the ribs but the snake heard. A rustle and a flick and it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
‘I can’t believe it. James wasn’t lying.’
‘Let’s go.’
Lyra started running, and the three of them didn’t stop until they were down past the caves, into the campground and all the way to the edge of HQ. She didn’t know, because she didn’t look behind her, if she was the only one lifting her feet really high in case of more snakes.
It was weird, because they were expecting all the parents and all the little kids to be at camp. But things were quiet. There was no sign, as they came up the campsite’s edge, of trikes and scooters and mums shouting about hats. It was quiet, the only noise coming from Ron’s buzzy buggy somewhere and kookaburras shouting.
Then, as the three of them walked towards the tables and chairs and treat-filled eskies, some laughter.
‘Hey there!’ It was Tia’s dad and Trick’s mum and they were sitting in two camp chairs very close to one another, which Lyra thought was strange because there were so many empty ones all around the circle. They had drinks, the kind of drinks Lyra knew the kids weren’t allowed to taste, with ice cubes and a slice of lemon. Looked like lemonade but was not.
‘We saw a snake!’ Trick shouted, and both the adults laughed, although it wasn’t funny.
‘Trick, we weren’t going to tell.’ Lyra shoved him.
But he wanted his mum’s attention, she could tell. Wanted her eyes away from Tia’s dad, to him.
‘It was a red-bellied black, Mum! They’re deadly.’
‘And it was this big.’ If they were telling, Lyra wasn’t going to be left out of this story. She had been the one at the front, after all. She spread her arms out as wide as they would go. Tia’s dad and Trick’s mum just laughed more.
‘A red-belly?’ Tia’s dad said, a chuckle still in his voice. ‘That’s very impressive, kids. Did you know what to do?’
‘We stamped our feet and shouted and it went away,’ Tia said, quietly, looking at her father. ‘I think that’s what you’re meant to do.’
‘Good girl,’ he said, and Tia’s whole face seemed to split open with a smile. ‘That’s exactly what you’re meant to do.’
‘Where is everyone?’ As Lyra asked this, she noticed that Trick was looking at his mum with a strange expression on his face. He was staring at the adults’ knees, which were almost touching, Tia’s dad in his tennis shorts, Trick’s mum in her short sundress. Bare knees, like theirs.
‘The little kids are riding their scooters down on the hard sand, it’s low tide. You should go too.’ Tia’s dad’s voice sounded a bit different from usual. Thicker, somehow. ‘We thought we’d have a little sundowner.’
‘It’s not sundown,’ said Trick, his face serious.
Tia’s dad laughed again. Seriously, what was so funny? ‘Your son’s a smart boy, Sadie,’ he said. ‘Busted.’
Tia was edging her way around the table to where the esky with the chocolate might be.
‘Go on, Tia,’ her dad said. ‘Grab something and run off down the beach. Tell your mothers about the snake and we’ll hear the shrieks from here.’
Tia couldn’t believe her luck at being given permission to get something from the lolly box. Neither could Lyra. Tia’s hands went into the esky at record speed, grabbed a plastic packet and a bar wrapped in gold foil and showed them to Lyra, who nodded.
‘Let’s go.’
Trick was just standing there, looking at his mum. Lyra pulled at his sleeve. ‘Come on, before they change their minds.’
The grown-ups were laughing again. Heads together, knees touching. The kids dashed back out onto the path, sank down behind the nearest tent and ripped open the lolly bag. Strawberries and cream.
‘I don’t like the way your dad’s looking at my mum,’ Trick said, shaking his head at the sweets. ‘It’s weird.’
‘They’re drunk,’ whispered Tia, and Lyra was surprised. Did adults get drunk in the daytime? ‘That’s all.’
‘I don’t want Mum to be drunk,’ Trick said. ‘Who’ll look after us?’
Lyra thought that was a weird thing to say. Trick could be so weird. Weren’t they looking after themselves right now? They’d just fought off a snake.
And then a burst of hooting laughter from HQ, a few metres away.
‘If this virus happens,’ Lyra could hear Trick’s mum saying, loudly, ‘I wonder how you catch it. Touching? Breathing? Kissing?’
Lyra’s stomach flipped and Trick’s face knotted into a deeper frown. It was uncomfortable listening to the adults talking, and hearing what they were actually saying, rather than just the blah-blah sound they were usually making around the kids.
‘Come on!’ said Tia. ‘Let’s get out of here. Yuck!’
‘Don’t say yuck about my mum,’ said Trick, his face dark.
‘I’m not,’ said Tia, sharply. ‘It’s my dad’s voice, when it’s like that . . .’
They stopped talking for a moment, to listen. Now it was hard to make out all the words that Lachy Short was saying, but the deep tone was like the one he used on Auntie Liss, when he was saying something nice to her and Tia would blush.
‘Touching, I think,’ they heard him say, and then something mumbled, and then a giggle, and the noises were just so awful that they started running down towards the beach, lollies left on the ground behind HQ, running as fast as they could to tell their mothers about the snake in the grass.