Riley. Please . ”
He looked so pained I almost laughed.
“I love it when you beg.”
I found Dylan. He looked like he was still shitty with me.
“Heard you’re going into town.” I waved the page at him.
Dylan’s eyes were bleary. “I have to get a new prescription.”
I raised my eyebrows, remembering his portable pharmacy.
“Trevor ‘Parks and Wildlife’ is giving me a lift after lunch.” He shrugged. “Just don’t ask me to get you anything illegal or period-related.”
“You wouldn’t buy me tampons? That’s cold.”
I looked at the sheet of paper.
Fleur: menthol throat lozenges, Evian atomizer. One blue rose.
I guess this meant she was talking to him now. “Is this a request list or a scavenger hunt?”
Dylan shrugged again.
Laura & Lisa: Violet Crumbles x2, family-size block of Cadbury Dairy Milk. 2L Pepsi Max.
Richard: The Financial Review. Time magazine. Ethan: sour snakes.
Sarita hadn’t written anything. I looked at her braids, her bushy eyebrows. I unclipped the pen and wrote:
Riley: metal comb, sharp scissors, Hella Hot Oil hair conditioner, tweezers.
I could feel Bird staring at my back. I turned to see his panicked grin. He was giving me the thumbs-up. I worried that he might cut off his own circulation. That can happen. I turned back and wrote spark plugs. Don’t ask .
I passed the list to Dylan and turned my attention to the stage. Trevor and Neville were bonding over the slide machine. They were talking closely. Could they make it any more obvious?
Neville introduced Trevor in exactly the same words that he’d used in his office. Trevor did his broad Aussie “G’day” and the audience echoed him, ruffling with laughter. Roslyn hit the lights and the first slide came up.
Trevor said, “This picture is what it’s all about. For a while there it looked like we were going to lose the Little Desert. Developers wanted it for farming. If there hadn’t been such a massive public outcry, well, we wouldn’t be here now. It just goes to show you that sometimes the people have the right idea and sometimes the people actually win.”
Trevor clicked to the next slide. “This aerial view was taken in the winter. Those ridges there are sand dunes. You see those water holes—soaks, we call them—some of them are recurring salt lakes. Fraser—the bloke who used to own this place before Neville’s mob took over—believed that one of the lakes had healing properties.” Trevor looked down and smiled. “He went a bit loopy-loo in the end. He thought the crater on the southwest of the property was caused by a spaceship.”
Neville coughed loudly. Trevor glanced back at him. “Righto.” He clicked onto the next slide. “What are we looking at?”
We all stared. A few dim nothings surfaced. Bird piped up, “Malleefowl. Leipoa ocellata . ”
Trevor pointed to a bird camouflaged in the scrub. Echoes of recognition bounced around the room.
“Right. That fella is a lowan bird, aka malleefowl. He’s indigenous to the area, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”
The Mallees chortled and goggled at their namesake.
“He’s a stately gent, I reckon,” Trevor went on. “You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he’s just put in a twenty-four hour day.”
More slides followed the mallee through his workday. Trevor provided the soundtrack. “The malleefowl is a megapode. That means he doesn’t have a typical nest—he’s a mound-building bird. Megapodes are rare enough, but the malleefowl is rarer still because they have to incubate their eggs in a basically hostile environment. Think about the extremes in weather you’ve had just in the last couple of days. This land is a contradiction. It’s a desert, but it’s full of life. And all the flora and fauna here are built to survive. Nature adapts. If you ever needed an argument for evolution—”
Neville coughed again. Trevor looked across, copped a headshake and a frown. He readjusted the slides before continuing with a new line.
“In
He looked so pained I almost laughed.
“I love it when you beg.”
I found Dylan. He looked like he was still shitty with me.
“Heard you’re going into town.” I waved the page at him.
Dylan’s eyes were bleary. “I have to get a new prescription.”
I raised my eyebrows, remembering his portable pharmacy.
“Trevor ‘Parks and Wildlife’ is giving me a lift after lunch.” He shrugged. “Just don’t ask me to get you anything illegal or period-related.”
“You wouldn’t buy me tampons? That’s cold.”
I looked at the sheet of paper.
Fleur: menthol throat lozenges, Evian atomizer. One blue rose.
I guess this meant she was talking to him now. “Is this a request list or a scavenger hunt?”
Dylan shrugged again.
Laura & Lisa: Violet Crumbles x2, family-size block of Cadbury Dairy Milk. 2L Pepsi Max.
Richard: The Financial Review. Time magazine. Ethan: sour snakes.
Sarita hadn’t written anything. I looked at her braids, her bushy eyebrows. I unclipped the pen and wrote:
Riley: metal comb, sharp scissors, Hella Hot Oil hair conditioner, tweezers.
I could feel Bird staring at my back. I turned to see his panicked grin. He was giving me the thumbs-up. I worried that he might cut off his own circulation. That can happen. I turned back and wrote spark plugs. Don’t ask .
I passed the list to Dylan and turned my attention to the stage. Trevor and Neville were bonding over the slide machine. They were talking closely. Could they make it any more obvious?
Neville introduced Trevor in exactly the same words that he’d used in his office. Trevor did his broad Aussie “G’day” and the audience echoed him, ruffling with laughter. Roslyn hit the lights and the first slide came up.
Trevor said, “This picture is what it’s all about. For a while there it looked like we were going to lose the Little Desert. Developers wanted it for farming. If there hadn’t been such a massive public outcry, well, we wouldn’t be here now. It just goes to show you that sometimes the people have the right idea and sometimes the people actually win.”
Trevor clicked to the next slide. “This aerial view was taken in the winter. Those ridges there are sand dunes. You see those water holes—soaks, we call them—some of them are recurring salt lakes. Fraser—the bloke who used to own this place before Neville’s mob took over—believed that one of the lakes had healing properties.” Trevor looked down and smiled. “He went a bit loopy-loo in the end. He thought the crater on the southwest of the property was caused by a spaceship.”
Neville coughed loudly. Trevor glanced back at him. “Righto.” He clicked onto the next slide. “What are we looking at?”
We all stared. A few dim nothings surfaced. Bird piped up, “Malleefowl. Leipoa ocellata . ”
Trevor pointed to a bird camouflaged in the scrub. Echoes of recognition bounced around the room.
“Right. That fella is a lowan bird, aka malleefowl. He’s indigenous to the area, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”
The Mallees chortled and goggled at their namesake.
“He’s a stately gent, I reckon,” Trevor went on. “You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he’s just put in a twenty-four hour day.”
More slides followed the mallee through his workday. Trevor provided the soundtrack. “The malleefowl is a megapode. That means he doesn’t have a typical nest—he’s a mound-building bird. Megapodes are rare enough, but the malleefowl is rarer still because they have to incubate their eggs in a basically hostile environment. Think about the extremes in weather you’ve had just in the last couple of days. This land is a contradiction. It’s a desert, but it’s full of life. And all the flora and fauna here are built to survive. Nature adapts. If you ever needed an argument for evolution—”
Neville coughed again. Trevor looked across, copped a headshake and a frown. He readjusted the slides before continuing with a new line.
“In
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