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Dear Children at Westmead Hospital,
We hope that you enjoy reading the short story we put together. Our names are Madi,
Naomie, Jess, Eva, and Addy. We’re in Year 11! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!
Love,
Redlands
Redlands Owls:
Madeleine Sarich Prince
Eva Busch
Jessica Harris
Adelaide Yuill
Naomie Scharf
Text © Redlands Owls 2014
Cover Illustration © Redlands Owls 2014
Illustrations © Redlands Owls 2014
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Map:
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CHAPTER ONE: THE GIRL NEXTDOOR
Squinting, Angus observed the new
girl through a crack in the fence that separated
their two houses. She had been hopping
around the moving boxes for over an hour,
which unsettled Angus. She grabbed a sailor
hat from one of the boxes and placed it on her
head, knocking over a pile of books next to
her as she did so.
“Does she ever stop moving?” he
grunted to himself, wiping his clammy
forehead with the back of his hand, somehow
unable to take his attention away from this
strange creature-next-door.
Her family had moved to Kalgoorlie
only two days ago, and Angus was already
growing tired of them – especially the girl,
who looked about his age. Her dirty blonde
hair was covered with haphazardly placed
pins, confused with the artificial extensions. It
seemed inadequate to refer to that jungle as hair.
Angus felt sick. It seemed like she had thrown herself into a whirlwind of
colour. The mismatching socks covering her calves were blindingly colourful, and
almost overshadowed her shoes – almost. The crocs were painfully eye-catching, with
dozens of badges pinned to the surface.
This girl radiated colour and energy, making Angus wince at her every move.
He sighed and wheeled himself away from the fence, resentful about the new
neighbours. He wasn’t sure where to project his anger, but he was certain it was
somebody else’s fault. It had to be. What a misfortune it was to have newcomers
bothering his tranquility, especially an unstoppable ball of energy in the form of a tenyear-old girl.
Her shine caused a sharp pain in Angus’s stomach, an emotion he was unable
to pinpoint: Jealousy? Anger? Melancholy? Resentment? Whatever it was, he needed
her gone.
A cold breeze tickled Angus’s neck, and he looked up to find the crow. Black
as tar, it hovered over his head and cast a shadow over his brown eyes. It had been
around for as long as Angus could remember, and it always made visits – sometimes
daily, sometimes monthly, sometimes not for a while. Angus didn’t understand why,
since there weren’t many crows in Kalgoorlie. But he figured there was no point
scaring it away, so he accepted its existence. He closed his eyes and ignored the
giggles from next-door.
“Hey Angus”, he felt a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve invited the new family
to have lunch with us, we thought it would be nice to welcome them. And Tori’s
about your age! Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Okay, sure Mum,” Angus shrugged. “What time are they coming?”
“Around half an hour, aren’t you excited?” she squeezed his arm in
encouragement and grinned at Angus, unaware of his repulsion at the girl next-door.
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Her smile faded quickly, however, when she noticed the bird flapping its wings above
them. She eyed the crow and waved her hand anxiously at it, hoping it would fly off.
“Leave it, Mum. It’s always here”
“Sure, sweetie. I’ll be inside if you need me!” she waddled her way into the
house, leaving Angus in the garden.
___
Wheeling towards the front gate, Angus smiled at the family as he walked into his
garden, his personal space.
The couple quickly made their way inside, making small talk with Angus’s
parents. But he wanted to stay outside for a little longer. He wasn’t particularly fond
of new people.
He noticed something was missing, and he lifted his neck in search of the girl
he’d been observing earlier. “Weird,” he thought. “Why isn’t she coming?” But he
didn’t have to wonder for much longer, as she bounced into his garden a minute later.
“Hi, I’m Tori!” the girl squealed, more enthusiastically than Angus thought
possible.
“I’m Angus,” he forced a smile. “Welcome to the neighbourhood.”
“Thank you,” she replied giggling. “This is all so exciting!”
“I suppose.”
“Wow! What a pretty garden, look at all these flowers! And the grass is so
green!”
“It’s just grass.”
“But it’s wonderful.” She closed her eyes and began spinning around, so all
the colours blended into one. A sharp laugh escaped from her lips as she lifted her
arms towards the sky, her feet bouncing quickly over the ground. Her features blurred
into an fluorescent rainbow, which made Angus nauseous.
“Would you stop spinning?” he asked.
“But it’s fun,” she grinned. “Why don’t you do it with me?”
Angus raised his eyebrows, wheeling himself towards her.
“Oh. Sorry.” Tori halted.
“It’s okay. Just stop spinning, it’s making me dizzy.”
“Alright.” She ruffled her hair with her fingers. “What else can you do around
here?”
“Why do you care? You should be inside having lunch, not out here.”
“But I want to be in the garden. I’d rather play than sit still.”
“Okay, do what you want. There’s nothing to do anyway.” Angus looked
away from Tori and towards the tree above them, where the black, furry crow hovered
menacingly.
“There’s always something to do. Let’s see...” She searched the garden,
spotting a neglected cubby house in the corner. Her green eyes lit up, shining with a
light all their own.
“Wow! I’ve always wanted a cubby house! That’s it, we’re going in.”
“I haven’t used it since I was seven, it must be covered in cobwebs.”
“We can dust them away!”
“But there’s nothing to do in there, it’s empty.”
“We can think of something”
“What if I don’t want to?”
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“Oh, you’re so cantankerous.” She rolled her eyes at him. The last thing
Angus wanted was to look stupid, so he pretended to know what the word meant. He
assumed it meant argumentative, perhaps boring.
“Do whatever you want. I’m staying here.” He crossed his arms.
He found this girl abhorrent: too loud, too energetic, too colourful, too
unrealistic – too much in every way conceivable.
Tori tilted her head to one side, squinting her eyes at the frowning boy in front
of her. He jerked his face away from Tori, and she followed his gaze to a black crow
flying ominously above them.
“I thought there weren’t crows around here,” Tori said in confusion.
“There aren’t. But this one’s always here.”
“Weird,” Tori shrugged, smiling.
Angus felt a drop of water drip down his cheek. Tori jumped in joy as she
noticed the rain on the boy’s face.
“It’s going to rain! We have to go into the cubby house! Let’s go!” Tori
hopped towards it. “We can play pirates! Or sailors! Come on!”
“Pirates? We’re ten years old. That’s double digits. We’re way too old for
that.” Angus moved himself reluctantly behind Tori
“Nonsense.” She looked back at him, “You can never be too old to enjoy
yourself.”
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CHAPTER TWO: A RAINY DAY
The cubby house closely resembled a broken, overrun dunny. Looked like it
belonged in a shanty town. It was unkempt, unpainted. The wood had begun to
splinter, to the point where the tiniest cracks had slowly started to disperse and cover
its body like the old purple veins on grandma’s legs.
She flinched at the revulsion of the thought.
Inside the thing, they sat in mutual silence. The interior of the shack was
perhaps what a real estate agent would call ‘fairly decent’. There were windows on
opposing sides, a door at the front without a handle, and a tin roof which had begun to
decompose and rust. Acid rain. The phrase left a sour flavour on one’s tongue. The
scent of old rust lingered in the shack leaving an overpowering metallic taste in the
air. Poignant.
She tried to push open the window. It was stuck and was obviously beginning
to feel the aging powers of rust. But she managed to push it up and latch it at the top
with a small metal hook. The humid air poured in like smoke, hot but damp. Her
clothes clung to her body as if a magnetic force was attracting them to her sweatdampened skin. She’d always hated the heat.
Angus sat looking timid. Intimidated. His cubby house did not reflect the
reality of his life. His dad owned the goldmine, and everyone else just lived here, in
Kalgoorlie. It only took her a few minutes to sum up the situation.
“So I see you’re rich.”
“Excuse me,” Angus replied. The rhetorical shock was reciprocated by his
words.
“Well, you basically live in the biggest house in town, and your dad owns two
cars. I heard them say he owns the goldmine. He owns the town.”
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Angus sat there, unsure of himself and what to say.
Finally he replied, “The drought hurt my family too, and I never wanted
money, I want shoes. We don’t always get what we want”.
She pondered this phrase: we don’t always get what we want. She looked at
him, her lips pursed into a thin line, and her forehead creased, a symbol of her
frustration. She wasn’t used to confrontation, especially not from someone like
Angus.
The sky was beginning to grow restless, like the night before you go on a
vacation and all but sleep prevails. Rain was coming. But it would be welcomed with
open arms.
The marching beat of thunder unleashed upon the drums in the sky and
trumpets came raining down, they beckoned the oncoming storm, a dance that would
quench the undying thirst of the red sandy dessert and would heal the cracks in the
drought ridden earth. Rejuvenating. She rolled the word around on her tongue and
shaped it like clay, a malleable figure she could manipulate for herself.
Perched on the windowsill was the black crow, its head cocked to one side, It
stared at us sideways. Its black eye, the epitome of darkness. It stared at them, at
Angus, and sat there, unmoving. The crow released a bellowing screech. It burned
their ears. The screeching was relentless, reminiscent of a banshee wailing.
And that’s when it hit them. The first one. Then another. And then another.
Like bullets hailing down from the sky, the raindrops pelted the tin roof, threating to
collapse the unsound structure.
Tori turned, fear in her eyes. Angus’ face was twisted in torment.
He couldn’t swim.
Tori pounced on the open window, slamming it down with an unnecessarily
loud “THUD.” She began to rearrange the furniture, blocking the door and the
windows, preventing any more of the torrential rain from entering without invitation.
She walked over to where Angus was sitting and sunk into the soggy, puddle ridden
floor next to him. His eyes were closed; he looked almost peaceful, as though he was
praying. The calm before the storm, although this was not before. This was blissful
ignorance. But this peace came at the expense of the cubby house, which was now in
its entirety a boat.
They sat in front of the window, overlooking the garden. The water had given
the plants a dewy, youthful appearance.
“It reminds me of the jungle!” she exclaimed. “It’s strangely intriguing, like
everything is fading into the water.”
“Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“The cubby house…. I think…I think it’s floating.”
They had been lifted off its foundations as a cubby house and peacefully
began to float out of the garden and down the road, the road soon faded into the ocean
and they were lost at sea.
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CHAPTER THREE: SAILOR HATS AND FISHING RODS
The rain was barely hitting the roof at all now; however, the maleficent clouds
still hovered in the sky. The cubby house floated comfortably on the vast expanse of
water. This was so vast that it appeared to swallow the landscape.
“We should make it bigger,” Tori said.
Angus could hear the click of one of her extensions snapping into place as she
attempted to reattach it to her hair. He tried to manoeuvre himself so that he could
look at her, but she was just at the edge of his vision.
“Make what bigger?” he asked, craning his head to the left to look over his
shoulder.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shake her head in an exasperated
fashion, making her hair fly wildly around her head like some absurdly coloured halo.
“This!” Her arms flew up above her head as she motioned all around her at the
cubby house. “We could make it so much bigger.”
“What possible reason do you have for wanting to make this bigger?” Angus
sighed.
Tori appeared to ponder his question for a moment before answering, “Well,
because we can. We’re stuck here, and we might as well make it more comfortable. I,
for one, like to be comfortable.”
“That’s stupid,” he commented. “You’d end up doing it by yourself anyway.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” came the bright reply. “I’ve got it all mapped out in my
head! We can extend this bit here,” she knocked her fist against one wall. “And use
this.” Tori extended her other hand straight up so that it lay flat against the ceiling,
“To build the parts”.
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“That?” Angus looked at her skeptically. “That is the roof. We are not using
the roof.”
Tori rolled her eyes, but removed her hand from the roof dramatically.
“Fine.” She clicked her tongue loudly. “But we’re definitely extending this
bit.” And then suddenly she blurted, “We could build a boat!”
Angus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, internally reminding himself
not to throttle her. “You can do whatever you’d like but I’m not going to have any
part in it.”
Tori’s mouth curved into a smile and held her hand up to her head in the form
of a salute, “Well then I suppose that makes me the captain of this ship, or at the very
least, a sailor!”
She paused briefly, seeming to lose her train of thought, but quickly regained
composure as she found it again. “I suppose if I’m the sailor, controlling the ship,
then you can be…a fisherman!”
Angus cracked open one eye and raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“A fisherman!” Tori clapped her hands together gleefully. “Oh, it makes so
much sense! You can fish, and catch us food, while I steer the boat. That makes sense,
doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
There was silence, and it was evident Angus was not going to budge.
“Because, it’s utterly ridiculous!” His sudden outburst surprised her. Angus
rolled backwards as the cubby house was rocked by the waves. He slammed his hand
violently against the wall. “I just.” He stopped to run a hand through his hair. “I can’t
do anything, ok? I just can’t.” His placed his hands awkwardly in his lap, waiting for
any kind of response.
There was silence. Angus held his breath, cursing himself internally for his
sudden outburst. Opening up was never good; he’d learnt that from experience.
Drawing attention to himself, and his problem, was never a good thing.
“I’m sorry.” Tori’s voice was little and small. Her previous liveliness had
seemed to have recoiled back. “I don’t think sometimes, most of the time.”
“It’s . . .It’s okay.” Angus gave a half-hearted shrug and fiddled with his left
armrest. “It happens. I’m kind of used to it.”
She opened her mouth, possibly to offer some kind of apology, but then
decided against it. “You could still be a fisherman,” she proposed finally. “I mean,
you really could. If I’m the sailor, I can’t go around fishing.” Then with a small smile
she added, “I simply don’t have the time for that.”
He shook his head, the corners of his mouth threatening to turn up. “Alright,
alright fine. We’ll do it your way, Miss Sailor Tori, fisherman Angus reporting for
duty.”
He wheeled himself over to the edge of the cubby house, picking up an old
fishing rod-one that he had abandoned last summer in favour of a newer model-on his
way. Tori came up behind him and shifted him, with a great grunt, to position him
closer to the water’s edge.
With great ease, Angus flicked the road out into the blue and then turned to
Tori. “Shouldn’t the sailor of this ship be expanding the boat? That was what you
were intent on doing, wasn’t it? I’m doing my job after all.”
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Tori shoved his arm playfully and her bracelets clanked as she moved.
“Alright then fisherman Angus, I shall leave on the deck of this fine boat!”
“Ah,” Angus exclaimed. “Just before you leave me to my peace and quiet,
there’s a sailor had over there in the left hand corner. It used to be mine, I fancied
myself as a bit of a sailor when I was younger.”
Tori gasped and ran over to fetch it. The hat was old and well worn, evidence
that it had been a source of entertainment for Angus when he was growing up. It had a
cute little anchor sewn onto it, a mother’s touch, just slightly to the left of the centre.
With her new found sailor hat, Tori set about making adjustments to the cubby house.
From his position on the ‘deck’ of the cubby house, Angus could hear a
potpourri of noises coming from behind him. There were clanks, clangs, and bangs
coming from the inside of the house. It sounded absolutely hectic and out of control.
Tori let out the occasional squeal and wail as particularly loud crashes arose. Angus
shook his head and turned his attention back to his fishing rod. So far, there had no
bites, largely due to the fact that there was no bait.
Then suddenly, an extremely loud exclamation of joy from Tori caught his
attention. He felt someone attempt to turn him around, but they didn’t quite succeed
so he was left to strain his neck to look at the interior of the house.
The cubby house was no longer a cubby house. Tori had broken bits off one
end of the house, shoved parts onto another, and had transformed the place. The small
cubby house was now virtually unrecognisable. It now resembled a ship. He could see
that the exterior of the house looked very much like a boat.
Angus turned to look at Tori, mainly to congratulate her on her work, and
found her sitting on the floor.
“What are you doing?” he asked curiously.
Tori sat on the floor on the opposite side of the ship, idly breaking pieces off
of the sandwich she had brought on arrival, its plastic bag lying lifelessly on the floor.
She cupped the food gingerly in her hands and pushed herself up off the ground,
appearing to ignore Angus’s question. Her multi coloured bracelets, home-made by
the looks of the excess fishing line dangling from them and miss matched colours,
clanked against each other noisily.
He tried again, with a little more force this time. “Tori, what are you doing?”
She looked down at Angus from her position at the window, making him feel
terribly small from his seated position. “I . . .” Her voice was light and airy. “I am
feeding the crow. It must be hungry, the poor thing.” She cooed at it gently.
Angus looked up, and upon seeing the crow, that crow, hovering in the
window; he felt anger build up inside of him. She was mindlessly feeding the crow
pieces of the sandwich, oblivious to the fact that they had no other food in the ship.
“Stop.”
Tori turned in surprise at the sternness of his voice. “Excuse me?”
“Are you oblivious?” His intentions of congratulating her on her work were
now going out the window. They were quickly being replaced with anger and disgust.
“We have no other food, what are we going to eat?”
Tori tilted her head to one side, resembling a clueless puppy, and then
realisation seemed to dawn on her.
“Oh.”
“Yes.” Angus clenched and unclenched fists. “Oh.”
“Um.” She turned to look at the crow. It stared back at the two of them with
bright yellow eyes, almost mockingly. It screeched and stretched out its wings, batting
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them violently in the air before swiftly taking off. The air was tense. Tori clutched the
remaining half of her sandwich closely to her chest. “I-I-”
“- didn’t think, that’s right. That’s all we have now!”
Angus jabbed his finger at the sandwich, “we’ll have to ration it or
something.”
“Ration?”
“Wow.” He rolled his eyes. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”
“It’s not my fault that I brought lunch and you didn’t!” Tori argued. “You
don’t have to take everything out on me!”
“Well what are we going to do?”
“I’ll just break it in half, and then we’ll each have the same amount!”
“Yes, but what if we’re here for more than one meal, hm?”
That silenced both of them. The thought of going for days on end without food
was not an appealing prospect. Quietly, Tori divided the remaining sandwich into five
portions for each of them.
“There!” she exclaimed proudly. “Five meals.”
“You’re so insensitive.” Angus exhaled in frustration, his anger peaking. “You
feed a crow half of our only source of food without a second thought! You really
don’t think, do you?”
Tori crossed her arms. “And what about your fishing? You haven’t caught
anything!”
Angus let out a growl. “I can’t catch anything! Don’t you understand? I have
no bait, we’re in the middle of nowhere, and even if I caught something, what would
we do with it?”
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CHAPTER FOUR: PATCHING IT UP
Tori heard a pecking sound. The sound was short and blunt, but it echoed in her
ears. She turned and saw the crow, standing on the empty floor in the middle of the
boat, which silently swayed with the motion of the waves. It was hitting its beak
against the deck, its black tail feathers up in the air. Tap, tap-tap, tap.
“You’re so insensitive! Why can’t you look at me when I talk to you?” Angus
yelled.
“Sorry… I just got distracted.” Tori turned back to face Angus, who was rolling
his eyes. “It’s not my fault!” She felt her face getting all warm and red. He would’ve
gotten distracted as well if he had heard the tapping. Tap. Tap.
“Not your fault? Weren’t you ever taught normal manners?”
“What?” Tori was distracted. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
“Manners! What to say and what not to say! Sometimes you say and do things that
are so… so… I don’t know, just rude.”
“Rude? I’m not rude.”
“Maybe not rude. You just don’t know how to act around people! You can’t just
ignore people when they’re talking to you!”
Tori fiddled with the beads on her bracelets, each of which she had made all by
herself.
“I don’t play with other people that much,” She mumbled. “They never want to
play the same games!”
The bird pecked faster, and the boat heaved up and down as the water seemed to
wake up.
“That’s okay. I don’t have any friends either,” Angus admitted.
Then there was a crack. Tori spun around. The crow was still banging the point of
its beak against the wood. And the wood was splitting. Shards of wood poked up, and
splinters made small snapping sounds. And the crow kept pecking.
Angus looked out the window, and saw the rolling water hills. One was headed
straight for the side of their boat. It lifted the boat up, and lay it back down.
Water began to pool through the wood where the crow was pecking.
“It’s poking holes in the boat! Angus, the boat is ruined! We’re going to sink!
Angus!” Tori ran towards the crow that squawked and flew away, it’s wings hunched
and talons in fists. The boat kept swaying, the water kept rolling, and the hole that the
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crow had pecked was only getting bigger. Tori got down on her hands and knees,
taking no notice of the sea that soaked her hands and legs. She put her hands over the
hole, and pressed down. But the water kept coming.
“Angus, what do we do?” She asked desperately.
“We’ll have to patch it up!” Angus said, frantically looking for something to use.
Tap, tap, tap. The crow was in the corner, tapping again.
“Stop!” Tori yelled. She got up and chased after the crow, her socks oozing salty
water.
“I know!” She said. She abandoned the crow, and ran to the side of the boat. She
jumped, trying to reach the roof. “We can use the planks of wood from the ceiling to
patch up the hole! We don’t need it anyway, it’s not raining anymore.”
“But, Tori, it might rain again!” Angus protested.
“It might. It might not! I can’t reach, Angus, can you help? Oh. Sorry, I forgot.”
She stopped jumping, frustrated by her good idea and her inability to accomplish it.
“Come here, I might be able to help.”
Tori ran over to him, a bit confused, but excited nonetheless. He pushed his legs
aside and clasped his hands together, like a little step.
“Oo, that’s so clever!” Tori beamed. She heard the crow tapping, and some more
of the wood cracking. She stood on Angus’ hands and hoisted herself up, snapping a
bit of wood off the ceiling. The water was beginning to pool around the edges of the
boat, and the bit where the water was coming in was building up like an angry
fountain. She dropped down onto her knees and shoved the bit of wood into the gap.
The water stopped coming.
She looked up. The crow flew around the perimeter of the boat, laughing happily
with itself.
“There’s hundreds of them,” Angus said, in disbelief.
He was right. The crow had broken the whole floor, in lots of random places. The
wood was in tatters, snapped and torn with hundreds of tiny little holes. The water
came pouring in. Tori bolted upright.
“Quick! Help me up again!”
Together they scrammed, breaking bits of wood off the ceiling and patching up
the wounded floor. The water kept rising, but they didn’t stop. Angus lifted Tori up,
Tori filled her hands with shards of wood, and filled the holes in the floor.
They worked for a long time. Hours, maybe. They took in sharp breaths, and
washed the sweat away with the water at their feet. The crow pecked new holes, but
they filled them. Eventually the whole roof was gone, and they had to use the wood
from other parts of the boat.
And even though he was exhausted and tired, Angus was happy. This was
fascinating to him, that he could help. He didn’t think he ever could.
When they were finished, it wasn’t a boat anymore. It was back to being a cubby
house. The floor was flat and dry, and the sun had come out. It streamed through the
window, and warmed Angus’ skin. Tori looked at him and smiled. She had always
though that his hair was brown, but the sun showed her that it wasn’t. It was red. It
was like the sun lit the fire that the darkness had dimmed.
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CHAPTER FIVE: THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP
Angus and Tori blinked into reality. Angus watched as Tori jumped up
excitedly, squealed and then attacked him with a hug.
“That was such a fun adventure!” Tori exclaimed. “Didn’t you have fun?” She poked
him.
“Yeah…it was good. I did end up having fun,” Angus said with reluctance.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” he said quickly, and blushed. “In a good way, I
promise!”
“Yeah, I know. That’s what makes me special,” Tori said, laughing.
They sat together in the cubby house for the next few minutes in a peaceful,
happy, and blissful silence, smiling like crazy and staring at each other. Slowly,
Angus’ mouth started to quiver, and he burst into hysterical laughter. Soon, Tori
joined in and they laughed and laughed until there were tears streaming down their
faces.
Once they were both able to calm down and regain their composure, Tori
noticed a patch of unusual color on the splintered wood. Upon realising that it was not
just a patch of colors, but a rainbow, Tori scrambled up from her sitting position on
the floor of the cubby house, flung open the door and ran outside. She looked up, and
saw the most beautiful, arched, shimmering rainbow.
“Angus! Angus! Come out right now, you need to see this!” Tori said
breathlessly. Angus slowly wheeled himself out of the cubby house, as his eyes
adjusted to the bright sunlight.
“Look up! Look up! There’s a rainbow!” she shouted.
“Gee, Tori, no need to shout. I can hear you just fine!” Angus laughed. He
looked up and, sure enough, there it was: a spectacular rainbow.
“Wow,” Angus breathed.
“I know, right! It’s gorgeous,” Tori replied.
Tori was always fidgety and could not keep still or focus on one thing for too
long. She liked to experience the world in bursts. And she always noticed details. Out
of the corner of her eye, Tori saw the black crow was still perched on the windowsill
of the cubby house. As she turned her head completely to look at it, the crow
squawked and titled its head. Tori slowly walked towards it, trying not to make a
sound. Angus started to protest, and Tori quickly shushed him with an abrupt hand
gesture. As she crept closer, the crow suddenly took off in flight, and she watched its
wings as they batted in the blue sky. Tori sighed and turned back to Angus, who was
staring down at his hands.
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“What’s wrong, Angus?” Tori asked him, concerned.
“Nothing’s wrong, I had a really good time with you. I was just wondering if
we would get to do that again?” he said.
“Of course, we can! What are you on about? We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
Tori smiled.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right…friends!” he replied.
Tori heard her mum calling her name from inside the house. It was time for
her to leave.
“Awesome! So, I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Tori asked.
“Yes, see you then!”
“Bye, Angus. I had a great time! You’re a wonderful new friend.”
“Bye Tori! You’re pretty amazing too.”
Then both smiled at each other and then parted ways, heading towards their own
houses.
End.
16
When Angus meets his new
neighbour, Tori, an unexpected
monsoon soon follows. As the storm
grows, so does their bond. Angus and
Tori are unsure of what to do. In the
presence of this mess when things
can’t get any worse, they do.
The unlikely pair find themselves long
gone from the rural mining town of
Kalgoorlie, central Western Australia
to what they believe is the middle of
the ocean. Angus is bound to a
wheelchair and a black crow follows
him. Two young children use their
imaginations to create a refuge from
the storm.
17