The Other Side of Nowhere by Stephen Johnston Page B

or something. And then I thought about getting back to Shell Harbour. I smiled thinking of how Matt would demand to be the one to tell everyone what happened and would make it sound bigger than the sinking of the Titanic . Then we’ll go back to the farm and hang out, like I promised George we would. And then, maybe, after a few days, Nick and I will laugh about how I’d shoved his nuisance body away under the water and how he kicked me in the head …
    Yep, all we have to do is get to the other side of this night and everything will be fine.

There was something on my foot. When my eyes adjusted I saw it was a rat. Only it was the size of a cat. And it had my toe in its claws!
    ‘Get off!’ I jerked my legs up to my chest, frantically, and it shot off into a dark corner of the cave.
    Wide awake now, I stood up and stretched against the stiffness from a night on the hard stone floor. Our campfire was dead and everyone else was still asleep. Leaving them huddled together, I slipped out of the cave and wandered through the trees to the beach, squinting at the sunlight.
    The storm was long gone, leaving in its place a powder-blue sky and an even rolling swell. The only evidence of the previous night’s mayhem was a line of seaweed pushed high up the beach by the storm tide.
    I dropped onto the sand and tuned into the sounds of the island. The gentle hiss of foam bubbling as each wave receded, the hum of cicadas and the chirping of a zillion waking birds.
    Looking down at myself, I noticed for the first time that my legs and arms were covered in deep scrapes and blue-green bruises. Other than some stinging deep cuts on my hands from gripping the wire railing on The Dolphin , and a few aches, I didn’t feel too bad. But when I thought about what had happened the day before, I could hardly believe we’d survived.
    The beach we’d crawled onto was crescent shaped, no more than a few hundred metres long. At the farthest point, the rocks we had narrowly avoided the night before jutted into the ocean. But they were no longer covered in an eerie mist. Instead, the sun sparkled off rock pools and highlighted the colourful patterns in the stone. Behind me, a dense jungle of trees and bushes stretched back to the base of an almost vertical rock wall. As high as a skyscraper, the wall spanned almost the full length of the beach. It was like being in the middle of a stadium and looking up at the grandstand.
    At the near end of the beach, the trees were not so tightly packed together and I could see through to the boulders where the cave was. Then the beach closed out into another wall of rock, the beginning of what I recalled to be a long line of cliffs all the way down to the southern-most tip of the island. This tiny beach was the only landing spot for kilometres. I thought, not for the first time, about just how lucky we’d been.
    ‘Welcome to Survivor Island,’ said a voice behind me.
    George sat down next to me, digging her brown summer feet into the sand. I noticed the bright red polish on her toenails and realised that we’d all lost our shoes or thongs at some point during the night.
    ‘Hey. Get much sleep?’
    ‘Oh yeah. Those rock beds, they’re gonna catch on big time,’ George said, extending her arms behind her in a long, luxurious stretch. She pulled her hair back from her face, tying it loosely in a bun on top of her head, and leant forward to rest her chin on her knees. A nasty scratch ran down the side of her neck, angry and red against the tan of her skin.
    ‘What?’ she asked squinting against the sun.
    ‘Nothing. Just looking.’
    ‘Weirdo,’ she teased, nudging me off balance with her elbow.
    ‘Bully,’ I replied, elbowing her back.
    ‘So how long do you think we’ll have to wait to be rescued?’
    ‘Not long,’ I said, surveying the water. ‘Nick’s dad must be worried out of his mind. I mean, we said we’d call and we never did. Bet he’s already on his way.’
    George looked skyward, as