On the Jellicoe Road

“Shhh,” Santangelo says to everyone. “I think I hear something.” He puts his head and half his body down the hole again and his father holds on to his legs, around the knees.

I can’t hear a thing. We wait, my pulse beating out of control and another sick feeling comes over me.

Just say Griggs loses hope down there. And Chloe P. And Jessa.

Just say Jessa never giggles again. Or sings karaoke or pesters me with a trillion inane questions. Just say she never snuggles up in bed with the other girls, whispering about the boys they have crushes on. Just say she never grows up to be my age and just say she never falls in love or gets to know what type of people her parents were. Just say she never gets to be someone’s mother and someone’s life-long friend.

Just say she never gets to hear me say that I always knew she was something special and that’s why I was so horrible to her. Because people with that much spirit frighten the hell out of me. They make me want to be a better person when I know it’s not possible.

“Okay,” Santangelo’s muffled voice says, and they begin pulling him up. He’s holding Griggs’s legs and there’s dirt everywhere. Everyone’s hands are grabbing at anything, trying to get them out of there. I see Griggs’s torso, absolutely blackened, and then his arms and then his hands and then more hands and I can tell it’s Jessa but she’s not moving. He’s panting and they’re pulling Jessa out and the emergency crew are placing breathing stuff over both their mouths and they won’t let me near until they have everything in place.

Griggs looks shaken and I know that it’s killing him but he can’t go down again.

He looks at Santangelo, who looks at his father, who reluctantly nods.

“If you close your eyes, you get to control your own darkness,” Jude tells Santangelo. “Do you understand?”

Santangelo nods and they help him in.

I don’t want to feel relief, because Jessa isn’t moving and Chloe P. is still down there. I go over to Jessa but the emergency crew are working on her and they need their space. I feel useless.

“Will she know your voice?” one of the ambulance people ask me.

I nod. “Of course.”

“I think I broke her arm,” Griggs says, wincing from where he is lying.

“Don’t you move until we can check you out, too,” one of the ambulance officers says.

We hover over them and the ambulance man looks at me. “Talk to her. We need her to respond.”

I lie down next to Jessa and take her hand. For a moment I don’t know what to say. So I tell her the story she loves best. Of her father who stole a bike and rode down the Jellicoe Road and saved the lives of my parents and Ha

I sit there and listen to the history of my family, the Schroeders and the Markhams, who set out on their separate journeys that day not realising the tragic ironies and joys of that collision of worlds on the Jellicoe Road. And of the people they would never have met if it hadn’t happened. Like Fitz and Jude.

And me.

Of the people I would never have met if I had just belonged to one half of them. Like Raffy and Jessa and Chaz and Ben.

And Jonah Griggs.

I look at him as they patch him up and he looks back at me and I know that it will be one of the last chances I’ll have to see him this close for a very long time.

Again we sit in silence, waiting for Santangelo to emerge and, five minutes later, Chloe P. comes out of the tu

And then, for the first time all night everyone breathes in rhythm. Mr. Palmer, like every other adult I’ve seen tonight, looks a thousand years older but he’s relieved and breaks the hands-off rule, hugging me so tight that I almost stop breathing. Again.

“Are they okay?” Richard asks from the door.

The ambulance man gives the thumbs-up and Richard disappears behind the door and a couple of seconds later we hear shouting and cheering and stamping of feet from upstairs and outside and the place becomes a circus.

When they wheel the girls out, the whole school seems to be lining the driveway. Lachlan girls are jumping all over me, flying at me from all directions. I look for Griggs but he gets swallowed up in the mayhem and I feel a weariness that I can’t shake.

When we get to the hospital, Raffy and most of the year sevens and eights who had been taken down to the town are there. I don’t think anyone has the heart to tell them to stop making a racket.

“This is the best night of my life,” Raffy says, crying.

“Raffy, half our House has burnt down,” I say wearily. “We don’t have a kitchen.”

“Why do you always have to be so pessimistic?” she asks. “We can double up in our rooms and have a barbecue every night like the Cadets.”

Silently I vow to keep Raffy around for the rest of my life.

I wake up in the waiting room of the hospital, leaning against Jude’s shoulder. He’s reading a newspaper and glances at me when I move. I look at him for a long time, maybe because for so long, every single time he crossed my path I had looked away. I had misunderstood my anxiety.

“I remember…being on your shoulders,” I say sleepily.

“I remember you being on my shoulders,” he says, putting down the newspaper.

I sit up and stretch, my neck is out in so many places. “You were wrong yesterday in the car, you know,” I tell him. “About how every time Ha

He doesn’t say anything but after a moment or two he smiles sadly. “Your mother rang Ha

He stops for a moment and I know there’ll be many of these pauses. For a second or two I close my eyes because I want to go back to the tree but I don’t. I go back to the shoulders of the giant.

“Ha

“It’s because my mother wanted to die beholden to no one. Like Mrs. Dubose.”

“No, it wasn’t that. When I signed her out she said, ‘I want to die clean for my baby girl, Jude. That’s all I want. It’s all I have to give her.’”

I wonder about things. Like what she thinks I look like and if she and my father ever spoke about what they wanted for me. But before I can say anything, Jude’s looking over my shoulder and I see a change in him. I’ve never seen this look on his face before but I’ve imagined it. The way Jude Scanlon would have looked when he saw Narnie standing by the side of the road when he was fourteen.

I turn in the direction of his gaze and there she is, coming through the hospital doors. Ha