Ugh. Getting hungry.

—

So dark out.

Everyone is asleep but me. We’re beat up and exhausted, so we crashed pretty early. I’m writing this whenever the moon comes out from behind the clouds. It’s so dark and quiet out here. There’s hardly any wind, so the water is this perfect black mirror of the sky. I can see thousands of stars reflected on it. It’s pretty, but also kind of eerie. Do those stars really exist? Does the world of Hinterland extend all the way into space? Or is the night sky here just a projection, just thousands of dots of light being shone against the top of a black dome? I should ask Sikes if I ever see him again.

How can a sofa float like this?

Gonna try sleeping now.

—

Morning. Woke up around dawn. Still hungry.

Simon is awake too, at least. For a long time we sat together in silence, staring out over the water. Now we’re trying to figure out why this sofa hasn’t sunk yet.

I should describe it to you. It’s this great big fancy Victorian-looking thing, with mahogany arm rests and really plush red cushions covered in embroidered golden vines and flowers. It has got to weigh a ton. But it floats. We’re really scratching our heads here.

Okay, I’m scratching my head. Simon has a wary look on his face like he suspects something.

Oh lord. He just suggested that we try jumping on the sofa to test its magical buoyancy. I will not. What am I, eight?

—

So we jumped up and down on the sofa for a while. Barely even rocked it. Against all odds it is a seaworthy craft.

Schroeder didn’t stir the entire time. Weird. He’s really out of it.

Huh. Simon is patting the sofa now, like it’s a dog. He keeps saying, ‘good sofa, good sofa.’ I think he has officially lost it.

Unless…

Wait a minute.

—

AHHHHHHHHHHHH.

—

We confirmed it. Simon and I knelt on the edge of the sofa and stuck our hands in the water and felt around underneath it. Its little legs are paddling. Its litTLE LEGS ARE PADDLING. ASLDJDKJDFSDJ!

Wow. That is a lot harder to write out by hand than it is to type.

—

Holy crap! It’s a Miller minion! We’re stranded in the middle of the ocean on a Miller minion! I’ll kill it!

Simon stopped me from throwing myself into the drink just now. He grabbed the back of my shirt. I think he might have slapped me in the face. That little turd! Oh my god.

Okay. He says it’s okay. He’s says it’s a good sofa. Not an evil minion of his mother. Good sofa. Good sofa! I guess he’s right. I guess it would have dumped us all in the ocean if it was evil. Its little legs are paddling!

Oh my god. Okay. Calming down now.

There are a bunch of throw rugs draped over the back of it. Simon and I are going to gather some of the floating driftwood and use it together with the rugs to craft a little fort for ourselves. He says we should get out of the sun. By ‘we’ I think he means me.

Sounds like a plan.

—

Ahh, shade.

—

Simon is taking a nap in our brand new sofa fort. I’m still alive. Haven’t been done in by homicidal furniture yet. I’m watching you, sofa. Don’t try anything funny.

It’s hot out. I’ve got my shoes off and my feet in the water. Hopefully there are no sharks out here.

Gonna try to get some more writing done. Sure as hell can’t sleep now.

Okay. Uh. Where did I leave off again. Oh yeah.

The fire.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Before I go any further, I should back up a step and fill in a few details about what happened before I was pushed off a burning farmhouse. I’m going to tell you a little about the boy who did the pushing.

Simon Miller.

I don’t remember the day I first met Simon. I think It was about three weeks before school started.

The day started out ordinary enough. My dad and I got a giant inlaid dressing table stuck halfway up the stairs of our house.

We had just moved into town. Into Coching. It’s this rustic small town on the shore of Lake Ontario that a lot of people wet themselves over because it’s super historical or something. Like, supposedly its main street is the third best preserved in Canada thanks to a committee called the Coching Historical Society. They’re this uptight bunch who run around town telling everybody what their stores must look like in order to keep the main street from being contaminated by modern influences. Because everyone these days wants to shop where the settlers shopped. Forget laptops and packaged food! Let’s all buy some beaver felt hats, bitches.

But my dad fell in love with the town as soon as he saw it. My dad is a nut about antiques. He collects them. Back when we lived in Toronto he had a boatload of dusty old crap sitting in storage because he couldn’t fit it all into our apartment. Now he’s got a creaky old two-story house to cram it all into.

Okay. I’ll admit, it’s kind of a cool house. It’s sits halfway up the biggest hill in town, on gloomy old Sharpe Street, where all of the rich people with the oldest mansions chill out. We’re surrounded by huge old stone estates with lawns like green marble, their privacy guarded by silent gardens and witchy spruce trees. Our house is old and stately, with swoopy rooftops like black gingerbread, and rickety window shutters, and a black iron fence that runs all the way around the unkempt property. The lawn is covered in pine cones.

Inside my house things get a little strange. Can you say you’ve got an eighteenth century crossbow mounted over the toilet of your guest bathroom? Because I can.

Dad and I were moving furniture when our story begins. Hence the stuck inlaid dressing table.

“Maybe I should have asked the movers to help me with this,” he said.

We stood on the stairs, one to either side of the table. It was wedged diagonally in the narrow staircase, just a few steps above the landing. Bright sunlight beamed through the staircase windows to cheerily illuminate our epic failure.

I stood on the step below the table with my face in my hands. In a muffled voice I said, “Do you think?”

“Maybe we could jimmy it loose and try again at a different angle. What do you think, Morgan?”

“I think I need a lunch break now, please. Can I go get some food in town?”

Dad scratched his ear. “I guess I could finish unpacking in the kitchen. How far are you going to go?”

“Just downtown.”

“When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. An hour from now?”

“Well, try to be back before two. After lunch we’ll start moving furniture upstairs. I’ll need someone to help me push things over this table.”

I lowered my hands and theatrically moaned. “All right, fine.”

Dad grinned. “Now give me a kiss.”

I leaned over the table and gave him a peck on the cheek, because he’s my dumb dad and I love him, and then I bolted for the front door. Outside, I trotted down the stone path that leads to the sidewalk. Dad’s brown Mercedes was parked on our narrow driveway. Its windshield was covered in maple keys, like the car had already made itself at home. The traitor.

Like I said, our new house sits on the slope of the biggest hill in town. From the driveway I could look down through the pine trees and see good old Coching, a ramshackle jumble of old shops and apartment flats and church steeples gathered on the grey shore of Lake Ontario. The Milestone River wound through the town, blue and sparkling where the sun reflected off the rapids.

Coching. Man. Dad talked about it back at the open house. He said that it’s almost two hundred years old. Older than Canada, anyway. Like that’s really going to impress your sixteen year old daughter, Dad. I remember thinking to myself at the time, oh god, he’s gonna buy this house. He is going to buy this house because Coching isn’t just a town, it’s one of those antiques he loves so much. Only this one is too big for him to cram into storage.

I wandered down the hill and into town.

I bought some gum from a convenience store with faded posters for ten year old Nicholas Cage movies in the windows and strolled around the main street for a while. Took in the sights. It didn’t take too long to see that half of the shops had names like ‘Agatha’s Attic’ or ‘Your Grandmother’s Trunk’ or ‘Coching Collectibles’. Their windows were full of crusty old junk like clocks, umbrellas, brass kettles, old furniture, and paintings of settler ladies wearing big floofy hats. I wonder if any of these women ever expected their portrait to end up propped against a stuffed badger ashtray.

There were no nice restaurants in town, just an old diner and a pizzeria. Saw a bunch of hair salons. A couple of banks. Shoe stores. Beery pubs with windows yellowed from cigarette smoke. In disgust I spat my wad of gum into a bin. Even gum held its flavour longer in Toronto.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me I was hungry. I veered towards the pizzeria with my shoulders hunched and my hands thrust into my pockets. No sooner did I get there than four boys walked out of the door with a bunch of cokes in plastic cups. They stared at me as I came down the sidewalk.

I tensed. I knew how this went. First came the staring. Then the quiet remarks they think you can’t hear. Then the louder ones that you’re definitely meant to.

I especially hate the staring.

The boys looked around my age. Maybe they would be in some of my classes at school. Well, I thought, anybody who wanted to make trouble for the new girl in town had better do it now, and possibly after getting the drop on her from some kind of tree, because in a week I would know Coching like the back of my hand. And there would be no running from me then.

But I knew Dad gets upset whenever I’m caught fighting, so when the boys sat down on the curb I slipped down the nearest alley. I was so annoyed by that I kicked a brick wall. They hadn’t done anything. Just stared. But like I said: I hate being stared at. Muttered at.

It happens a lot. Maybe it’s because I’m so tall. Maybe it’s my flaming red hair. It’s not fair. I like being big. I like my red hair. When I was little I braided it and pretended I was a Viking. Dad isn’t a burly redhead. Maybe Mom was. When I was really little I used to imagine that she was a Viking too. That was why she wasn’t around. She was out sailing the seas looking for villages to sack.

Feeling surly, I followed the alley past an auto garage and a used furniture shop, all the way down to a grassy little park. And there it was, shining between the trees: the Milestone River, glittering in the sun.

My bad mood faded as I stood on the bank. The river sure looked as if a week’s worth of hot summer weather had knocked the stuffing out of it. The water had shrunk down into the deepest runnel down the middle, exposing the gunky mud that coated its rocky bed. Styrofoam boxes and clumps of pale blue fishing line were all tangled up in the driftwood left stranded by the receding water. Here and there I saw a dried up fish skeleton, some with the shrivelled heads still attached.

I kicked a pop can into the river. It bobbed down the rapids, whirling off towards the railway bridge and the faraway lake. Adios, pop can. Go have adventures.

Wrinkling my nose at the dead fish smell, I looked upstream. In the distance I saw the abandoned warehouse that dad had warned me about a day ago when we had taken a walk along the riverside. It was a long two-story industrial building with a rickety wooden tower on one corner. Its crumbly walls were missing bricks in ungainly patches, while rusty grates had been bolted over broken windows. A name for it had once been painted in giant white cursive letters across one wall, but rain and age had stripped off most of the letters.

It looked nasty. So I wandered towards it. Dad would never know. Not unless I came home in need of a tetanus shot.

I tramped around the warehouse to the shady side that faced the river. There were a lot of tall brown weeds back there, trampled and strewn with bits of broken glass and garbage. And then I saw it: a ground-level window with a handful of busted panes. No grate over it or anything.

Perfect. I felt up to a bit of exploring.

Bits of glass were still lodged in the sill, which I gingerly climbed over. Once I was inside the warehouse I stood for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the murky darkness.

Junk littered the floor of the big room inside, mostly rotten planks and chunks of grimy drywall and filthy plastic sheeting. And garbage too – beer bottles and mouldy cigarette butts and chip bags lay scattered in the debris. Dark water stains streaked the walls. Part of the ceiling had collapsed in one corner. I looked up through the exposed beams and electrical wiring and saw another room overhead. Motes of dust glowed in the feeble daylight that shone down through the hole. I thought I saw some decaying cubicles up there.

I stood in the middle of the room and wondered what they had once kept in this place. Though it had to be empty by now I was gripped by the urge to rummage about and find something cool to take home. Like an old typewriter! I don’t know why I got hung up on a typewriter. I just think they’re neat.

So I began to poke through the rubbish, when a voice said, “What are you doing?” and I screamed and spun around.

A boy sat in the corner of the room, half-hidden behind a wrecked desk. With his knees curled up to his chest he was so small I hadn’t even spotted him.

“Who the hell are you!” I yelled.

He stared at me with watery eyes.

“You’re not suppose to be here,” he said.

“Oh, and you are?”

The boy didn’t say anything. I clutched my chest and glared at him. He was scrawny and blond, dress nattily in a golf shirt with a logo on it, and a navy-blue tie, and pressed grey slacks. It looked like one of the uniforms kids used to wear at my old school. Only his was a lot dirtier.

“Are you hiding in here?” I said.

He said nothing, but his eyes darted.

“That’s what I thought. Well, you picked a good spot. Nobody is gonna find you here.”

“You did.”

“Not on purpose!”

“You’re new here, aren’t you?”

That caught me off-guard. “Huh?”

“I haven’t seen you around town before.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, I am.”

Silence. So I held up my fist and said, “You got a problem with that?”

The boy quickly shook his head. “No! No. We just don’t see a lot of new people in Coching.”

I sat on the corner of the desk desk. “I’m from Toronto.”

“Really? I’ve never been there before.”

“What! Not once?”

He shook his head.

“Not even for school? Like, to go watch a baseball game, or go to the museum or the Science Centre?”

“My mom doesn’t let me go on school trips.”

“What, seriously?”

The boy looked morose.

I laughed. “Dude, that sucks. You need to get out more.”

The boy stood up and dusted himself off with palms and knuckles that were scraped red. “Yeah. I know.”

“How long have you been hiding here for?” I said.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “What time is it?”

I checked my watch. “Like… a quarter to two.”

“Oh. Sunday, right?”

“Uh, yes. Sunday.”

“I see. Then thirty-eight hours.”

I sprang off the desk. “You’ve been here since Friday?!”

“Yes.”

Holy shit. I stared at him with something akin to awe. This kid was clearly in some kind of trouble if he had been hiding in an abandoned warehouse overnight. Not even someone on the run from bullies hid himself in a derelict building for thirty-eight hours straight. A part of me said, don’t start empathizing with him, you idiot – ditch him and get out of here, fast! Don’t make his problems your problems!

Except I don’t like running from things. It still stung to think that I had run from those boys at the pizzeria. Besides, this guy looked harmless. Troubled, but harmless.

I gnawed my lip and eyed him up and down. “Hey, look – are you hungry?”

He gave me a blank look. I felt like dope slapping him.

“You know, food,” I said. “Come on. You can hide out at my place and we’ll order a pizza and you can, like… give Children and Youth Services a phone call or something.”

“I’m not a runaway!”

“Yeah, sure you aren’t. What’s your name?”

He looked cagey. So I graciously said, “What is your name, now!”

“Simon.”

“Well, I’m Morgan. Come on, my house isn’t far from here. Unless you want to be found by whoever is after you?”

“I’ll come,” he said quickly.

Yeah. Sort of figured that.

I got lost trying to find my way back to Sharpe Street. Luckily Simon knew the way. He was really jumpy the whole time, like he thought someone was following him. I didn’t have the heart to yell at him whenever he spooked at something. There is not a lot of sport in cussing out someone who jumps at lawn sprinklers.

He seemed happy to get inside the house. Dad was busy puttering around in his new study doing, I dunno, lawyer stuff, so Simon and I headed straight to the stairs and crawled over the dressing table.

Simon liked my bedroom, and said as much.

“Do you play soccer?” he said as he studied the poster on my door.

I vaulted onto my bed. “Yep. Field hockey too. Do you play anything?”

“No. Mom says sports would destroy me.”

Probably a harsh truth.

My Xbox controller sat on the end of my bed. The console was hooked up to my TV. I grabbed the controller and showed it to him. “Well, do you want to play something where you can be as destructive as you like and only have to worry about in-game consequences?”

Simon stopped hovering at the door and came over to join me. “Okay.”

So I gave him the controller and booted up the console. I could tell just by the way he held it that he had never played a game in his life.

We played an easy one to start with, this fantasy game where you create your own character and then run around fighting bandits and dragons and looting caves. Simon made a dark elf guy with a bow. Pretty cool. My dude is this scruffy bearded warrior with a sword and shield and a horned helmet. Yes, he looks like a Viking, shut up.

So Simon began to play and surprise, surprise – he was pretty bad at it. I made him go into the control options and invert the ‘Y’ axis, and he spent half the tutorial running into things. Meanwhile I yelled stuff like, ‘pick up that potion! Unlock that chest, there’s gold in there and you need the experience points. Get the armour off that dead guy! Put that helmet on, it’s way better than the one you’ve got and it’ll boost your archery skill.’

After a while he got the hang of it. I shut up and watched him play. When it didn’t seem like he would get killed by a random bandit I said, “So, what grade are you going into?”

Simon’s eyes were glued to the screen. “Grade ten.”

“Same here. I guess we’ll be in the same class.”

“Are you going to Hogarth Hills?”

“The private school? No!”

“I am. My dad teaches English at the high school though.”

I frowned. “So if your dad teaches at the high school then why don’t you go to school there?”

“Actually, private school was my mom’s idea. She’s had me attending it since first grade.”

“Seriously?” I whistled. “What’s the deal with your mom? She sounds strict.”

“I guess she is.”

My stomach grumbled just then, as if agreeing with him.

I patted it. “You know what? I’m starving. I haven’t had lunch yet. And I’ve got twenty bucks on me. You got any cash?”

Simon hesitantly touched his pockets. “Nothing, I’m afraid.”

“Beautiful. Well, never mind. I’ll just buy us a small pizza. What do you want on your half?”

Blank stare.

“Of your pizza,” I said.

“I – don’t know?”

“You don’t know? What’s not to know about it? What kinds of toppings do you like?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure? How can you not be sure? Just pick something. We’re buying a pizza, not a car.”

“I’ve never had one before.”

“Come again?”

“Pizza,” said Simon. Looking abashed, he lowered the controller. “I’ve never had pizza before.”

It was my turn to stare. “Never-”

“Ever.”

Wow. I thought to myself, I’ve met some sheltered private school kids before, but this one takes the taco.

I grabbed my forehead. “Okay. Okay. You know what? We’ll keep this simple. Just a small pizza with double cheese and pepperoni and maybe some mushrooms if you’re feeling adventurous. The basics. Let’s not give you an aneurysm.”

Simon trailed after me when I jumped off the bed and marched to the door. “And you just order it like takeout?”

“Yes. Jesus. Come on, let’s go find the phone book and look up the number for the pizza place in this stupid hellhole.”

And as I stomped down the stairs I thought I heard him mumble, “It’s not stupid.”

I see what you did there, Simon.

—

Uh oh. Hang on a second, guys. I’ve got to put this on pause for a while. Something is moving at the other end of the couch. I think Schroeder might be waking up. Arm the harpoons!

—

Contemplating homicide. More news at eleven.