On the Jellicoe Road

But she doesn’t look me in the eye and I know that Raffy is scared that whatever we find out about Webb will change everything for me.

“I’m going,” I tell her flatly and firmly. But I think I hear a pleading in my voice when I ask, “Are you coming?”

Santangelo organises to meet us at the scout hall, except the scouts are meeting there, so it ends up being on the steps of the water tower in the middle of town. I begin to understand his desperate need for the Club House and the Townies’ need for a place to go.

Raffy and I take Jessa with us because not everyone’s back yet from holidays. While we wait for him, I tell them the story of the kids in Ha

“He crawls in through the back passenger’s window of the car on top,” I explain to them, “and the first person he finds is Narnie. Except Narnie won’t move. She’s petrified and he begs her to come out with him but she won’t. The other two, Tate and Webb, are pleading with her, ‘Come on Narnie. Please.’ They had begun to smell petrol and were terrified the cars would blow. Then Narnie leans over and she whispers something into the ear of the boy who came by on the stolen bike. Tate and Webb say later that the look on his face was one of horror and they just cried. They think that Narnie has asked him to let her stay there and die. So he begins with them. First Tate and then Webb. He takes them out and places them under a tree and he makes them promise not to move. He tells them that if they don’t move, he just might be able to convince Narnie to come out. Five minutes later, Narnie comes out with him and he lays her down beside her brother and tells Webb not to let her out of his sight. They ask him where he’s going but he doesn’t answer. Then he goes back into those cars four more times and he carries out the bodies of Tate’s mum and then Tate’s dad and then Tate’s sister and then Webb and Narnie’s father. He places them on the other side of the road.”

“What about Narnie and Webb’s mum?” Jessa asks.

I shake my head. It’s the part of the story I do not want to tell.

“Anyway,” I continue, “not even two minutes later, the cars blow up.”

“He could have died,” Jessa says in a hushed voice.

I nod. “And he knew that, but all his life he’d been treated like crap to the point that he believed he was crap. He’d never done anything good and nobody had ever said anything positive about him. But that night, on the Jellicoe Road, it was like he was reborn. The lives he saved gave him purpose and he loved those kids more than anything.”

“So where’s the rest of the story?” Raffy asks.

“I left the manuscript on the floor in Ha

“Why?”

I shrug but Jessa can’t contain herself. “Because he’s the serial killer.”

Raffy is irritated. “Don’t say that in front of Chaz. The Santangelo household is in a state of fear because of you, Jessa. Enough about the serial killer,” she says firmly.

“Do you think they’re real? Those people in Ha

“Yes I do,” I say. And it’s the first time I’ve said out loud that Ha

“Why can’t we just get the rest of the manuscript?” Jessa asks.

“How? Knock on his tent and say, ‘Yoo-hoo, remember me? I threw a stretcher bed at you. Can I have the manuscript back?’”

“According to Teresa and the boy she’s going around with, the Brigadier hasn’t been there during the holidays. He doesn’t get back until tomorrow.”

“How does Teresa know that?” Raffy asks.

“Teresa’s in a relationship with one of the Cadets. They’re going ‘around’ with each other,” I explain patiently.

“The Cadets are the enemy,” Raffy says. “We’re not supposed to be conducting relationships with them.”

I nod in agreement.

“Although the whole town is talking about the snog you and Griggs—”

“Enough about that,” I snap. “It was a one-off.”

“What’s a one-off?” Santangelo asks as he arrives.

Raffy looks at me, knowing I’ll lose it if she mentions it again. “Nothing,” she mutters.

Jessa has already run off with Santangelo’s sister, Tilly, and the three of us are left beating around the bush until Raffy holds out her hand.

“What have you got?” she says to him.

“It’s not about the territory wars.”

Her hand is still out and he looks at me because mine isn’t. Then he reluctantly hands over an envelope.

“It’s a photo,” he says. “I got it from the file at the station.”

A photo that I am dying to see, although I’m sure something inside of me will die from seeing it.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” he asks.

I watch Jessa and Tilly swing off the stairs of the water tower like monkeys without a care in the world. “Be careful,” Santangelo calls out to them.

It takes me a moment to find my voice. “If I look at the photo and whoever it is looks exactly like me, that only means he can be my father, and if he’s the boy who’s been missing for eighteen years, it means that my father is dead and I’ve never thought that. Ever.”

“Then don’t look at it,” Raffy says. “You know you had a father, Taylor. You were on his shoulders and you lay between him and your mother. It was the first thing you told me in year seven. Remember?”

I nod. “And then I told you something else.”

She looks at me. “But the shoulders of the giant is a better story.”

I remember love. It’s what I have to keep on reminding myself. It’s fu

“Then I’ll take it back,” Santangelo says. “Maybe memories should be left the way they are.”

I can feel Raffy’s eyes on me and I lean over and take the envelope gently out of her hands. “Thanks, Raf, but I think this belong to me.”

I do the count to ten that always reaches eleven and then begin again. Until I find the guts to look.

He’s the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it’s not about his face but the life force I can see in him. It’s the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he’s saying, “Here I am, world; are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?” Except this boy is dead and the u

There is total silence around me and I’m not sure if I have said all this out loud or shouted it in my heart.

I hand the photo to Raffy and she does what I can’t. She bursts into tears.

This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Ha

Later we walk to the police station to ask Santangelo’s dad if his sister can stay at the school for the night. I feel numb with a sort of anger at no one in particular but I feel it brew inside me and I want to lash out at anyone.

Santangelo’s dad comes outside. I watch his daughter jump onto him and he piggybacks her to us and I see the look on her face that says that nothing can happen to her if she is holding on to her dad. It kills me to hate them so much for having that.

“She can stay with us for the night,” Raffy says. “There are spare beds in the dorm.”