Pip and Houdini Read online

  Pip’s heart beat fast as she tried the first car. Locked, not surprisingly. There weren’t a lot to choose from; most people took their cars home at night. She wondered if the people who hadn’t had forgotten they had a car.

  One by one, she tried all doors on the seven cars there. But her luck was out until she tried the driver’s door of a busted-up old station wagon. It opened with a creak but when she tried to lift Houdini inside, he backed off with a low growl.

  ‘Well, stay out here, then. I’m getting in—’

  A hissing sound came from the back seat and a snake’s head rose slowly from a cardboard box, its tongue darting out, gleaming eyes looking her way. With a gasp, Pip slammed the door shut and stood there, heart pounding.

  Now she knew why the owner hadn’t bothered to lock the car. They had a guard snake!

  She was just about to give up when she spotted a small van parked in the shopping centre delivery bay. With Houdini at her side, she walked briskly to it, and found the rear unlocked and empty. It wasn’t ideal, as it only had a small dirty window that was hard to see out of, but they were both very tired and they really didn’t have a choice.

  This time, Houdini made no fuss when she handed him in and scrambled up after him, shutting the doors. There were even some dirty rugs on the floor. Houdini nestled in one and was asleep almost instantly. Alert to every little unfamiliar sound, it took Pip a bit longer, but eventually she couldn’t keep her eyes open even sitting upright, and she fell fast asleep, too.

  It was very comfortable, soothing even, to be rocked to sleep. In her dream, she wondered if she was a baby again and Sully was rocking her, or even Cass. If only whoever it was would stop singing out of tune and if only the air didn’t smell so strongly of warm dog, life would be just about perfect.

  Pip stretched, smiling, and her hand touched fur. She opened her eyes to see Houdini was already awake, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

  For a moment, she couldn’t work out why her bedroom at the Brownings’ was so empty. Then everything came back in a rush and she remembered that she and Houdini had made a run for it before Mrs Browning could call the welfare to take Pip away.

  They were in the van, someone not far away was singing off key, and the van was shaking and rattling. Pip’s eyes opened wide! They were on the move. Oh no!

  Somehow, as they slept, the driver had come for his van and set off without realising he had a couple of stowaways in the back.

  Horrified, she crawled forward, ear pressed close to the wall of the cab. The driver was singing along with the radio! Pip slapped her palm over Houdini’s mouth to stop him joining in. He loved a singalong and looked at her with bewildered eyes.

  ‘Sorry, Houdini,’ she apologised in a whisper. ‘But you have to be quiet in case they hear. We’d be in even deeper trouble if they found out we’ve hitched a ride without telling them. As soon as the coast is clear, we’ll escape and you can sing as much as you like.’

  Houdini sighed and went for a sniff among the old rugs on the floor. He circled three times and then curled up in a ball, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  In the predicament they were in, sleeping was the last thing on Pip’s mind. What on earth were they going to do? Where would they end up?

  Groaning under her breath, Pip shuffled towards the small dirty window. If she could clean it, she might be able to get an idea of where they were and what time of day it was. She picked up one of the rugs and scrubbed at the window but it just seemed to smear the dirt around even more. Spitting on the rug, Pip tried again and manage to clean enough of the window to see out.

  But what she saw had her sitting bolt upright and pressing her nose to the glass.

  Eyes glued, she waited for the next sign. Long minutes seemed to pass by, but eventually there it was – a big green sign right across three lanes of traffic on the other side of the road. ‘Sydney 31km’, it said – 4km more than on the last sign – and pointing back the way they’d come.

  Pip watched and waited. They passed a turn-off with a sign. A month ago, the place would have meant nothing to her, but since discovering her mother had once lived in northern New South Wales, she had studied the map in the school library. She reckoned she knew just about every town along the 770 kilometres between Sydney and Byron Bay.

  So she knew almost exactly where they were: on the motorway, travelling north, with Sydney now far behind them – and 31km closer to Byron Bay than they had been last night.

  ‘Yes!’ she whispered, a little louder than she intended. Houdini woke in fright at the sound and sent up a spine-tingling howl. Too late, Pip leapt on him to squash the sound. In the cab, the radio shut off. Houdini yelped and tried to evade Pip. He gave a high-pitched bark, and Pip heard swearing from the cab. A moment later, the van began slowing and pulling to the side of the motorway.

  At any moment, the van would stop, the driver would open the back doors and all hell would break loose. Pip shouldered her pack and gathered up Houdini in her arms, ready to leg it the moment the van came to a standstill.

  But as the van drew to a stop, she heard an ear-splitting shriek of brakes from behind. A car horn sounded and then a sudden, breath-stealing jolt threw Pip and Houdini clear across the back of the van. She landed with a sickening thud on the floor, Houdini flying out of her arms. A dreadful squealing sound hurt her ears and her world turned upside down.

  UP IN SMOKE

  Every time Pip tried to stand up, the floor shifted as the van rolled and she was falling again.

  ‘Aaaggghhh,’ she screamed as her elbow slammed into the floor.

  ‘Woowoo!’ Houdini wailed in response.

  Eventually the van came to a stop. She thought it must have landed on its side. When she looked up from where she lay on the floor, one of the rear doors hung open. Outside, she could hear cars braking, and then shouts and screams.

  ‘Houdini,’ she whispered.

  He whimpered and emerged slowly from a tight huddle in the corner to lick her face.

  ‘I think it’s stopped moving,’ she told him. ‘We need to get out while we can.’

  Cautiously, she stood up again, slipped her backpack on and stuck her head out the back. The car that had hit the van had landed a few metres away. Its front was crumpled and the driver was looking dazed the wheel. Several other people had pulled over and were staring at the wreckage as if they couldn’t believe what had just happened.

  On shaking legs, Pip scrambled out of the upturned van, encouraged Houdini to do the same and led him well away from the road where she tied his lead firmly to a tree. Cars were still moving fast in the outer lanes and the last thing anyone needed was a crazy dog getting loose on the motorway.

  She turned and spotted the van driver climbing groggily from his van, blood dripping slowly from his head.

  Someone shouted, ‘It’s on fire!’

  Pip turned as smoke began billowing from the crunched bonnet of the car that had hit the back of the van. Even as she watched, small flames began to lick out from underneath.

  ‘Hey, mister!’ Pip yelled, when the man slumped in the driver’s seat didn’t move. ‘Your car’s on fire.’

  ‘I’ve called triple zero,’ a lady said, climbing from a car that had just pulled up. ‘Emergency services will be here soon.’

  Pip didn’t think they had time to wait for a fire truck. The flames were dancing higher now, and the woman edged closer to the door. She tried to open the door and staggered back gasping, holding her right hand with the left. ‘It’s burning hot! Don’t touch it!’ she warned Pip.

  ‘We have to get him out. There’s no time,’ Pip told her. She dumped her pack on the ground, unzipped it and tugged out the blanket she’d been wrapped in when Sully had found her on his doorstep.

  Wrapping it several times around her hand, she seized the doorhandle and wrenched it open. Smoke billowed out, blinding her, and she turned away coughing.

  ‘Someone’s coming with an extinguisher,’ the woman said.<
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  ‘Mister! Wake up. You have to wake up!’ Pip yelled to the driver. ‘Your car’s on fire.’

  The man stirred and groaned. His breath smelled like Sully’s had when he’d been drinking. Pip pushed him away from the steering wheel. ‘Come on, you have to get out,’ she told him. ‘Hurry!’

  ‘I can’t…’ He fumbled for his seatbelt clip, his eyes glazed. ‘I can’t find it.’

  The man with the extinguisher began to blast the front of the car with foam.

  Pip raced around to the other side of the car, dragged open the door, leant over the empty passenger seat and unclipped the driver’s seatbelt. ‘Okay, you can get out now.’

  The injured man slumped half out of the door, and with the lady’s help, Pip dragged him out just as the first fire truck arrived. One firefighter ran towards them as another began putting out roadblocks. Pip could see an ambulance pulling up behind the fire truck.

  She slipped behind the growing crowd, as the woman started to explain what had happened to a fireman. Turning, Pip saw the van driver leaning against his upturned vehicle, pressing tissues to the gash on his head. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she told him. ‘The ambulance is here now. I hope you’re okay.’

  He stared at her blankly. Pip hoped he hadn’t hit his head too badly. In any case, two ambulance officers were heading his way. It was time she disappeared before anyone started asking questions about her.

  As she hurried away from the van, she heard one of the ambos ask the man if she was his kid but she didn’t hear his reply. With so much going on, though, she thought there was a good chance everyone would forget all about her.

  As Pip slipped down the embankment, Houdini pranced and yipped in delight at seeing her. She unclipped him and took a last glance back at the motorway. It was a mess. Cars and emergency vehicles were parked all across the three lanes. Police and ambos were bustling about as people stood by their cars and watched. Traffic was at a standstill, and in the distance she could see more flashing lights, unable to get through to the accident scene.

  How had a place to sleep snowballed into this giant catastrophe?

  Pip sighed and looked down at Houdini. He gave her a sorrowful look, almost as if he now realised they weren’t going back to his bones and comfy bed at the Brownings’.

  ‘Sorry, Houdini,’ she mumbled past the lump in her throat as they turned away from the motorway wreckage, slipped down the embankment and disappeared into the trees.

  It didn’t take long before she realised she had no idea where she was going. The trees were tall and spindly and close together, making it difficult to see far ahead. The sounds from the crash scene were getting fainter, and within minutes Pip couldn’t hear them at all. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything except the crackle and crunch of her footsteps and Houdini’s on the twigs and leaves that covered the ground.

  At least they hadn’t been followed.

  They walked for what seemed like forever before stopping for a rest, and then continued deep into the afternoon until she started to wonder if they were walking in circles. She wished she’d thought to bring food and drink.

  Not long after, Pip stopped again. It was really shadowy now amid the closely planted trees as evening began to close in, and while it was cooler, it was also kind of spooky. She knew ghosts weren’t real, but right now it was easier to believe they were. And even if they weren’t, axe murderers were. She felt a shiver run down her spine.

  ‘We’d better find somewhere to sleep, Houdini,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll work out what to do in the morning.’

  She found a place encircled by thick shrubs where the leaves had collected in a deep pile. Unzipping her pack, she went to pull out the blanket she’d had since she was a baby, in case the night became cooler. It wasn’t there! And then she remembered using it to open the door of the burning car, how it had blackened and smouldered.

  Rats! She must have dropped it when she went to help the driver escape from his seatbelt. One of the very last things that connected her with her mother was lost for good.

  She sat down with her back propped against the tree, Houdini snuggled next to her, and pulled the photo of her mother from her pack. As much as she had tried to take care of it, it was now a bit wrinkled and one corner was bent. It didn’t matter, nor did the fact Pip couldn’t really make out any details in the fading light. She knew that the photo showed a young woman with Pip’s grey-green eyes. She wore a pale blue summer dress and she was laughing.

  There and then, Pip decided she was going to find Cass, however long it took her, however far she had to go.

  Cass would understand what it was like to be Pip. She’d had her own troubles as a kid. She wouldn’t mind that Pip wasn’t perfect because nor was she.

  A little voice in Pip’s head whispered that it was nine long years since Cass had come looking for her. Pip silenced the voice. It wasn’t Cass’s fault. She’d thought Sully had found Pip a good home; she had probably figured she was doing Pip a favour by staying well away.

  But Pip would find her and then everything would be okay. They would be a family at last.

  MAKING TRACKS

  She fell asleep holding the photo, and woke when the birds began to chatter in the trees above. She felt stiff from lying on the ground and the smell of smoke from the car fire lingered around her. She wrinkled her nose. Since living with the Brownings, she’d become used to long hot showers; now she needed to become unused to them again.

  But if she could find her way to a beach, she could clean up in the ocean. The thought cheered her and gave her a plan. The cops wouldn’t be looking for her at the beach. They’d be watching bus or train stations. They always had time to look for kids. The silly thing was that if they’d looked for Cass and found her when Pip had asked them to, Pip wouldn’t be here now. When she grew up and joined the police, she’d make some changes.

  But that was years away. Right now, she had to get out of the forest.

  After a bit more walking, being careful to keep the morning sun on her right to make sure she was heading in the right direction, Pip found the trees began to thin and she soon broke out into an ordinary-looking street. She and Houdini plodded along the footpath, doing their best to look inconspicuous, until they came to a corner store, where she stopped to buy water. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of the chocolate bars displayed on the counter, but Pip didn’t have a lot of money and she didn’t know how expensive the quest to find her mother might be – after all, Byron Bay was still a long, long way – so she decided that she and Houdini would have to go hungry for a while.

  As she handed over the money for the water, it was on the tip of her tongue to ask the shop assistant – a bored teenager with bad acne – if he knew how she could get to the beach. But not wanting to draw attention to herself, she kept her mouth shut.

  Pip tried to call the Brownings from the public phone outside to let them know she was okay, but the line was busy, so after a drink, she and Houdini kept on walking in the same direction.

  She tried to think of the beach and finding her mother – and not that the Brownings didn’t want her anymore or that now she wouldn’t get to help Matilda decorate the Christmas tree they had been going to buy this weekend. Pip didn’t blame the Brownings, not at all. Why would anyone want scrawny, difficult Pip when they already had popular, pretty Matilda, who never did anything she shouldn’t? Or at least nothing serious.

  But Cass would want her. For all Pip knew, her mother had spent the last nine years trying to find her. And the moment she saw Pip, Cass would recognise her and know – as Pip did – that they were meant to be together.

  Pip was so busy imagining their reunion, in which Cass was overcome to see Pip after all this time, that she was halfway across the motorway bridge before she realised it. When she and Houdini pressed their noses through the security bars, she could see a sign pointing to Sydney, and another pointing north. Unfortunately, there was no sign that said ‘beach’, so at the first opportunity, Pip tu
rned in the direction she thought was probably correct.

  It was an inspired decision. Five minutes later, she ran into a gaggle of boys at a bus stop wearing thongs with towels slung over their shoulders. One carried a surfboard.

  ‘Here it is!’ one of them yelled. Pip turned to see a bus pulling up with the words HALF-MOON BEACH on the front.

  Wary after the incident of the MUSEUM bus that hadn’t stopped at the museum, she asked them, ‘Does this go to an actual beach?’

  They all sniggered. ‘Nup. It goes to the zoo, doesn’t it, Rabbit?’ one of them said, digging his mate in the ribs.

  ‘Reckon it’s the circus bus,’ his mate responded.

  ‘No, it’s goes to the South Pole, this one.’

  They all laughed as though they were hilarious.

  ‘So, it goes to a beach with ocean and sand?’ Pip pressed, ears turning slowly red, as the boys started to climb aboard. She wanted to be sure.

  But they just laughed even harder. Pip felt even more stupid, and then the bus doors closed and it lumbered off. The boys waved and smirked at her from the back window.

  She and Houdini looked at each other. ‘Spiro would fit in well with that lot,’ Pip fumed. ‘They must be going to the beach. Where else would you take a surfboard?’

  Houdini just grinned encouragingly, so they set off again, following the bus until they lost sight of it. But it didn’t matter because by then, Pip had spotted a sign for the beach, and quite a few people seemed to be heading that way in cars and on foot. They joined the throng, and within another twenty minutes, they stood on a paved path that led down to a wide crescent of golden sand that embraced a semi-circular bay of blue water, with a pretty island just off-shore.

  The sun had chased the morning’s clouds away, and it was now so bright it turned the sand white and its rays were like fireworks on the water. Pip thought it was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen; it was mesmerising. She knew Sydney had beaches, although she’d never been to one, but she couldn’t imagine that any could be as dazzling as this one. If Byron Bay’s beaches were half as good as this, she’d be very happy.