North of Nowhere by Liz Kessler Page A

mouthpiece and turned to both of us. “I’m done. Go on with you, now,” he said roughly.
    “But —”
    “But nothing. Go. I’ve given you the package. I’ve done my bit. I don’t want any more to do with this.”
    “Please, Mr. Travers,” Sal began. “It’s really imp —”
    “I said GO!”
    Sal and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows in a question. I shrugged back a reply, and we turned and began to scurry out before the weird old man shouted at us again.
    “Hey!” he shouted at us when we were halfway down one of the aisles.
    I turned back around. He was holding the plastic bag in his hand. “Don’t forget your package.”
    I ran back and grabbed the bag. I’d been so freaked out by everything I’d almost forgotten it.
    “Thanks,” I said. Then I turned and hurried out of the door, while the man went back to his phone call.
    Sal was outside sitting on a bench overlooking the harbor.
    “Well, that was weird,” I said, plunking myself down next to her.
    “Just a bit,” Sal replied.
    I turned to face her. “You want to go back and tell your parents?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “I want to get the rest of these posters up first — and find out what’s in that package.”
    “OK,” I agreed. “But when we get back, whatever else we do, we’re calling the police,” I said firmly.
    Sal swallowed. “What are we going to tell them?”
    I took a breath and turned away as I slowly let it out again. “That we might have just met the last person to have seen Peter before he disappeared.”

She sat by the window all day. Well, perhaps not the entire day. The first hour after her father had left was spent in her bedroom, shouting, cursing, pacing her room so hard it was a wonder there was any carpet left when she finally stopped.
    Finally, she tore a page out of one of her mother’s notebooks, and began to write her feelings down. It was the only way she could get them out. She would have used her diary but she had sent that away with her father.
    She wrote about how angry she was with her father, how he spoiled everything, how she hated him, hated Luffsands, hated everything right now.
    Finally, when the anger was out, she wrote about her fear.
    Eventually, all she wrote was, “Father, please come home soon. I love you and I just want you to be safe. I’m sorry. I’ll never get angry with you again, I promise. Just come home, please.”
    After that, she put down her pen, folded up the paper, and went downstairs. When she had hugged her mother tightly and whispered an apology that she wished her father would hear, she took herself to the window seat and sat, looking out at the sea raging below and trying to calm her heart.
    It was still two hours before high tide and already the angry swell was rising fiercely, beating against the harbor wall like an angry mob that would not recede until it had wreaked the havoc it craved. The few boats inside the small harbor reared like rodeo horses with every wave. Each time, Diane’s heart reared with them, so hard she feared it would come out through her mouth if she wasn’t careful.
    She watched the sea level inching ever higher with the tide, watched the swell grow more and more angry, all the time desperately hoping to see her father’s boat returning.
    Why had she let him leave her in such a mood? She faced directly out the window and offered her plea bargain to the sea: bring my father home, just let him come home today, and I swear I’ll never say a mean word to him again.
    Finally, with nothing left to barter, and all out of wishes, she curled up in the seat, closed her eyes, and prayed.

“Are you going to open it, then?”
    Sal was perched on the bench next to me. The package was on my lap. I didn’t know exactly how long we’d both been sitting staring at it, and I didn’t really know what Sal made of what had just happened. I didn’t know what
I
made of it. My brain turned over and over, trying to find an angle that made