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  Michael snorted a laugh and smiled at her. ‘I don’t know, maybe time travel?’

  She shrugged. ‘This makes less sense than time travel.’

  ‘No, no, you guys aren’t getting it,’ Sam said. ‘Before, we had no idea where to look. Now we do. Now we know where we have to go to get answers.’

  ‘Where?’ Emma asked softly, but Tessie had a feeling she already knew what he was going to say, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  He grinned at them, and the smile looked almost manic. ‘We have to go to the caves.’

  CHAPTER 23

  FABIAN

  There was silence after Sam spoke.

  ‘You mean go inside the caves?’ asked Fabian, aware how quiet his voice was but unable to do anything about it. His nightmare from the other night, where he’d been trapped inside a tiny space, felt nearby. He shifted back a little, so he wasn’t so close to the others and there was room to breathe.

  ‘Not necessarily inside them, just go to Sterling, have a look around,’ Sam said.

  ‘What do you think we’ll find there?’ There was still an edge of accusation in Tessie’s voice. Fabian didn’t blame her. Sam was acting differently today. He kept going between looking like his normal self, big grin and sparkly eyes, and then looking so intense and serious it was like he was a different person. It was as if he was trying to convince them. He was pushing too hard, but why? Maybe he was just excited because he seemed to think that they were getting closer to figuring it out. The more he knew about Sam, the more he didn’t understand him at all. Although he still kept checking his window for him every now and then.

  ‘I don’t know what we’ll find,’ he was saying now, ‘but they said that’s where they found us, right? It all comes back to the caves. No one has been there since then, so maybe there will be some sort of clue. There has to be.’

  ‘This whole thing is crazy, it’s just crazy,’ said Michael, rubbing his hands down his face.

  ‘Your hands!’ said Fabian.

  ‘What?’ Michael put his hands together, trying to hide what Fabian had just noticed.

  Fabian leaned across the mattress towards Michael. He took one of Michael’s hands by the wrist and looked at it. It felt weird to be touching Michael, but he needed to confirm that what he had thought he’d seen was really there. It was. Michael’s fingernails looked like Fabian’s. The skin underneath was purple.

  ‘I think it’s just some kind of reaction to this new soap I’ve got.’ Michael looked embarrassed. His eyes kept flicking towards Emma. ‘Or maybe the cold weather or something.’

  Fabian held out his hand next to Michael’s. Although his hands were a lot smaller, the nails were the same. They looked bruised.

  ‘Whoa.’

  ‘What about you guys?’ Fabian looked around and held both his hands up so they could see. ‘Do you guys have it?’

  Emma and Tessie looked at their own fingers, but he could already see that they didn’t. Their fingers looked perfectly normal.

  ‘Why is it just us?’ asked Michael, looking at him. Fabian suddenly felt very aware of how close he was to him. He pulled back so he was on the opposite side of the bed again.

  ‘It’s not just you.’ Sam pulled off one of his woollen gloves. His hand was the same, maybe even worse.

  ‘That’s so freaky!’ Emma stood up and went over to Sam. Carefully, she took his hand in hers and started examining it. Fabian felt Michael stiffen. Tessie leaned over from next to him and looked down at his fingers with a puzzled expression.

  ‘I didn’t even notice,’ she said.

  ‘I thought it was just the cold too,’ he told Michael. ‘It’s gotten worse all of a sudden.’

  ‘It’s just the boys,’ said Emma, letting Sam’s hand go and looking between them. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Who the hell knows what anything means anymore?’ Michael said, sitting down next to the cabinet and sliding his hands underneath his thighs as though he couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore. Fabian understood the feeling.

  ‘So, should we take a vote?’ asked Sam. ‘Do we go to the caves?’

  ‘A vote?’ Tessie was getting annoyed, Fabian could tell. ‘Since when was it definitely our next move?’

  ‘That’s why we’re voting,’ Emma jumped in. Fabian noticed how quickly she jumped to Sam’s defence. ‘To see if this is even a possibility.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Michael. ‘I can’t think of a better idea.’

  ‘Hang on, wait, before we do that,’ said Emma, sitting back down on the chair, ‘shouldn’t we figure out how this would even work? How would we get there?’

  ‘We’d find a way,’ said Sam.

  ‘And when?’ Emma demanded, her voice rising.

  ‘We’d have to go at night,’ he said.

  The dream came back to Fabian again. He was in the dark, the walls pressing in around him.

  ‘My parents would kill me!’ said Emma, but she sounded distant to Fabian now.

  ‘I thought you didn’t care what your parents thought, little Miss Rebel?’ said Michael.

  ‘I don’t! But they would be so worried!’

  ‘Don’t you know anything about sneaking out? You would leave after they went to sleep, come home before they woke up. Ta-da! They’d never even know.’

  ‘I know that! But still.’

  ‘I’m in,’ Tessie said firmly. ‘I think it’s a pretty crazy idea, but I also think this whole thing has gotten pretty crazy, so why the hell not? I’m sick of the guessing game.’

  Fabian couldn’t. He just couldn’t face it. The dream had felt too real. There was no way he could actually go down there.

  ‘So let’s take a vote,’ said Sam again, raising his hand.

  ‘Yay, back to school,’ said Michael, putting up his hand and waving it around as if he wanted to ask a teacher a question. Tessie rolled her eyes and raised her hand too.

  ‘Fine,’ said Emma, and stuck hers up too.

  They all looked at Fabian. He felt exposed, raw. His fear on show for everyone to see.

  ‘I need to think about it,’ he said, his insides twisting. ‘Sorry.’

  He saw an expression slide over Sam’s face, then it disappeared so completely it was like it was never there. It was different from the intense way he’d looked before. It had looked like anger.

  ‘No worries, man,’ Sam said. ‘Why don’t the rest of us go? We can tell you what we find.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Fabian, but really the idea felt like a kick in the gut. He didn’t want to be left out, but he couldn’t expect the others not to do it just because he was too scared.

  ‘Wait,’ said Michael, ‘I don’t want to go if Fabian doesn’t come. We’re meant to all be in this together.’

  For a second, Fabian thought that maybe he was just making fun of him, but Michael’s face was earnest. He meant it.

  ‘Yeah, there’s no rush. If you need to think about it, then think about it.’ Tessie put a hand on his back. ‘Maybe we’re all jumping into this too fast anyway.’

  Sam opened his mouth like he was about to argue, but then he just shrugged and looked at his feet.

  Fabian appreciated the support from the others. No one had said it, but the unfortunate truth was that there did seem to be a rush. They all knew it. He looked down at his darkening fingertips. They were all changing, and they didn’t know why or when it would end.

  Fabian hung around for a while after everyone left, partly because he didn’t want to walk home with Michael. Tessie told him he was being silly when he said he felt bad, but that didn’t help. Eventually, he pulled himself out of the window and began the walk home. The sky was starting to darken, and the air was bitterly cold. He pulled up the hood of his puffy jacket and did the zip up all the way to his chin. He probably looked like a miniature Eskimo, but he didn’t care; it felt comforting to have the soft fabric all around him like a hug. His hands were itching to take out his phone and tell the others on the message board he would d
o it. It would be so much easier if he did that. He felt so embarrassed about how scared he must have looked, and that flash of anger he’d caught from Sam hurt. But if he told them what they wanted to hear, then he’d have to keep his word. He would actually have to go through with it. Every time he thought about it, he remembered the dream.

  When he got home, his house was unusually quiet. The only sound came from the television, which his father was watching with his feet up.

  ‘Your mum’s got a late shift,’ he said, answering the question Fabian hadn’t asked yet. ‘Connie and Gina are out, although they better be back before your ma or there’ll be hell to pay.’

  Fabian laughed as he took off his coat. It was toasty warm in his house as always.

  ‘There’s dinner for you on the stove,’ his dad said.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fabian, realising how ravenous he was.

  He went into the kitchen and lifted the lid off the saucepan, his mouth watering at the smell of the rising steam from the pasta. He piled his bowl full and went to sit next to his dad.

  ‘How do you always make everything so yummy?’ he asked his dad with his mouth full.

  ‘It’s in my blood,’ his father said. ‘Yours too.’

  Fabian suddenly felt like he was about to cry. It wasn’t in his blood. He probably wasn’t even Italian.

  ‘I’ll teach you if you like?’ his father said. ‘We can cook up a big meal together on weekends. How does that sound?’

  ‘That’d be great,’ he said, smiling.

  Maybe it didn’t matter. His father loved him, he was certain of that. Even if he did think he was a bit weird sometimes.

  They watched the news together in silence for a while as Fabian ate. He kept thinking about the caves. About the people who had been crushed in them, about the narrow dark passageways.

  ‘They were talking about the cave-in at school today,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Really? In class or something?’ his dad asked. His voice hadn’t changed, but Fabian felt his body go rigid. He wouldn’t have felt it if he hadn’t been sitting so close.

  ‘Yeah, it was part of this debate thing we had,’ he continued, winging it. ‘It was kind of bad, actually. I realised I don’t really know much about it.’

  He put his empty bowl on the coffee table in front of them, just to give him something to do with his hands. This was dangerous territory.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ his dad asked, not taking his eyes off the television screen.

  ‘I don’t know. Were you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ his father cleared his throat, ‘I was part of the rescue team.’

  Fabian waited for him to continue.

  ‘There were tours on that day, all through the caves. It was . . . horrible. When we got news of it, everyone came. Everyone. We all just walked out of our jobs and came running. Shop doors were left open and empty. We all knew someone who was down there.’

  ‘What did it look like when you got there?’

  ‘It was just devastation, everywhere. Some of the teams that went in to pull out the injured were killed too.’

  ‘There was a second cave-in?’

  ‘Mmm . . .’ said his dad, ‘an aftershock.’ His voice sounded forced for the first time. He didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Sorry, you probably don’t want to talk about this.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ his dad said, putting his arm around Fabian and pulling him closer. ‘I just try not to think about it much.’

  They sat together on the couch in comfortable silence, his father’s arm around him, until his sisters came home. They were bickering warmly as usual, and only beat his mum home by a few minutes.

  He’d gone up to use the toilet then, and as he passed his room, he looked inside. This time, there really was someone there. Sam, standing up near the glass. Fabian only hesitated for a second, then kept walking, his heart hammering with surprise and anger. He wasn’t going to talk to Sam. The only reason he was there was to try to change Fabian’s mind. He went to the bathroom and then back downstairs to his family.

  Later, when he returned to his room, the window was empty. As he lay in bed in the dark, he couldn’t help but think of how maybe he’d got it wrong. Maybe Sam had actually come to apologise for being so weird today. He turned over, trying to put it out of his mind. Across the gap between their houses, he could see that Michael’s bedroom light was on and he wondered what he was doing. Looking at his hands maybe, or playing with Jeffrey, or just worrying. It was weird to think of Michael as a real person with feelings, but he was starting to. He had surprised Fabian when he had stood up for him today, and it surprised him even more that it had meant a lot to him.

  He heard the sound of his mother walking from the bathroom to her bedroom.

  ‘Took your time in there, honey. I thought you might have fallen in,’ his father said, and he heard the whack as his mother playfully hit him. The bed creaked as she climbed into it, and then the lamp switch clicked as she turned it off. He was aware suddenly that it was happening again, that he was hearing through Connie’s and Gina’s rooms into his parents’ room, which wasn’t usually possible.

  ‘Fabian was asking about the cave-ins,’ his father whispered.

  ‘Oh God. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said it came up at school.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I have to. How on earth could he know to ask?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Fabian tried to stay perfectly still. He needed to hear this.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ his mum whispered.

  ‘I told him what it was like, but I said it was the cave-in that killed everyone. I hate lying to him.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  There was a pause, and he could hear the shifting of weight on the mattress. They must be hugging.

  ‘So, did he buy it?’ his mother asked.

  ‘Yeah, he did.’

  Fabian kept listening, but eventually he could only hear the deep breathing of their sleep. Carefully, he picked up the phone from his bedside table. The grating sound of it against his hand was deafening, but he persisted. Opening the message board, he typed, I’m in. Less than thirty seconds later he got a reply from Michael: If we are going to do this, I think I’ve figured out how we can get there.

  CHAPTER 24

  MICHAEL

  The moon lit their way through the hushed streets. The two boys walked shoulder to shoulder in silence. It was past midnight, and the houses they passed were dark and still. Michael pointed left at the crossroads and Fabian nodded. They were almost there. It was freezing cold, making their breath rise above them, but Michael felt hot with excitement.

  ‘Is this it?’ Fabian whispered when Michael stopped in front of a large grey house.

  ‘Yep,’ said Michael, breathing a sigh of relief. Luckily, the garage door was open. He didn’t know what they would have done if it wasn’t.

  ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever done,’ whispered Fabian, looking around.

  ‘Me too,’ Michael told him, even though it wasn’t entirely true. He and Tom had already done this a bunch of times. Although that was different because it was Tom’s dad’s car.

  ‘We’ll have it back before they wake up,’ Michael continued. ‘They’ll never know.’

  He walked into the garage and felt above the high dusty bookshelf against the wall. For a moment, his hand touched only wood and his heart skipped a beat, but then it touched the cold metal of the car key. Turning around, he held it up to Fabian.

  Fabian looked back at him, as white as a sheet. ‘You know how to drive though, right?’

  Five minutes later, they were skidding around the corner.

  ‘Careful!’ Fabian yelled, both hands gripping the dashboard.

  ‘I’m trying!’ he yelled back. ‘Do you want to drive?’

  ‘No way in hell,’ Fabian said, making Michael laugh. To his surprise, he was starting to actually like this guy.

  He drove
as slowly as he could, trying hard to stay within the lines of the road. This definitely was not the same as when he did wheelies around the oval with Tom, or when they just drove around with music blaring. Without Tom himself here, it felt less like Grand Theft Auto the game and more like Grand Theft Auto the felony.

  The lights of the Mercy Point Motel shone ahead. Two figures stood up from the kerb. The back door opened, and Sam and Tessie got in.

  ‘This is completely insane,’ said Tessie, but her eyes were alight.

  ‘Wow, this is sick, man!’ said Sam, seeming somehow even more cheerful than usual. ‘So completely awesome. You guys rule!’

  As he drove up to Emma’s house, Tessie, Fabian and Sam chatted excitedly. Michael stayed silent. Driving was really difficult. As he got onto the narrow road that wrapped around the mountain to Emma’s place, he drove slower and slower. There were barely any streetlights. Finally they reached the narrow driveway and his phone GPS told him they were there. Good thing too — he would have driven right past it. He would never have even guessed there was a house there. It looked like a tiny shack in the dark, probably less than a quarter of the size of his place. It was definitely the right address — that dented old red truck out the front was unmistakable. He imagined his father laughing smugly at how crappy Emma’s house was, and then wished he hadn’t.

  He turned off the headlights and kept the car idling, but Emma didn’t jump in.

  ‘Do you think she’s coming?’ asked Tessie after a few minutes.

  ‘Yeah, she’ll come,’ he said firmly. He always joked about Emma being a princess, but he knew she had guts.

  ‘Maybe she fell asleep?’ added Sam.

  ‘She’s coming,’ he said, shooting Sam a dark look. Even though he teased Emma all the time, he couldn’t stand anyone else saying something negative about her.

  They waited in silence for a few more minutes and, just as doubt was starting to filter in, the door clicked open and they all jumped.

  ‘Sorry!’ said Emma. ‘My mum got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and I got freaked out she would hear me, so I just had to make sure she was definitely asleep.’