North of Nowhere by Liz Kessler Page B

sense. Here’s what I had come up with. It wasn’t much.
    I’d seen Peter yesterday. He’d wanted to take the boat out but he’d promised he wouldn’t. At some point after that, he’d gone missing.
    That was about it. And in among the thin scraps of information that wouldn’t piece together was one question that nagged at my mind:
did he take the boat?
    I looked at Sal. Her eyes were full of sadness and confusion. I couldn’t keep the doubts to myself any longer.
    “Sal,” I began. “I need to tell you something.”
    She looked up. “What?”
    I opened my mouth to continue, but I couldn’t find the words. Surely my doubts would only make her even more anxious. And was it fair to give her even more to worry about?
    No, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give her an extra burden to carry, as well as what she was already feeling.
    And another thing, if Peter had delivered this bag to the shop, didn’t that mean that he was still on the mainland?
    Truth was, there were still too many question marks surrounding my troubled thoughts, and it simply wasn’t fair to share them with Sal till I knew where they would lead. Which meant I had to come up with some way of finding out where that might be. Or coming up with a plan, at least.
    I smiled at her. “I just want to say, I’m sure it’ll all work out,” I said. “We’ll find him.”
    Sal smiled back. “Thanks,” she said. “I really think we will, now that we’ve got you and your family helping. The police were helpful, but I could tell they thought Peter was just a typical teenage boy — going off without telling anyone — and he’d turn up any minute. At least I feel like we’re doing something useful now. Your family has been so kind.”
    I wasn’t sure she really had anything to thank me for. If my looming worries turned out to be right, it could well be that
I
was the reason Peter had disappeared in the first place.
    It was time to change the subject.
    “OK, let’s take a look at this package,” I said. I pulled at the tape and opened the bag.
    “What is it?” Sal asked as I lifted out the object that was inside — a big round brass dome. I turned it over in my hands.
    “Wait, look — it opens up,” I said. There was a catch on the top of the dome. I clicked the catch and slid it open. The top half slid underneath and clicked into place, to leave a semicircular dome shape with a flat glass surface on top. Inside the glass was a large star surrounded by a bunch of letters and numbers, and with a dial in the middle.
    “A compass,” Sal said. “I don’t understand.”
    “Neither do I,” I said. I stared at the compass. There was something familiar about it. Had we used something like this in school? Did Dad have one at home? Or maybe there was one at the pub. That was probably it. It was exactly the kind of thing Grandad would have in the lounge somewhere!
    Sal pointed at the bag. “There’s something else in it,” she said.
    I rummaged in the bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. I opened it up.
    We both leaned over it, trying to figure out what we were looking at. At first glance, I’d have said it was a piece of trash that had accidentally gotten into the bag with the compass. It was crumpled and ragged and looked like the kind of thing you’d find down the back of a very old sofa.
    Someone had doodled all over the page. Words I couldn’t read, as they were heavily crossed out. Scribbled pictures of arrows pointing in every direction, most of these crossed out, too. The only ones that weren’t were the ones pointing directly upward.
    In the top-right corner, a capital “N” stood out. It was the only letter on the page that wasn’t crossed out.
    “Just a piece of trash,” Sal said. “Must have gotten in by mistake.”
    I was about to throw it away in a nearby wastebasket, but just as I was scrunching it up, I noticed writing on the other side. I opened up the paper again and turned it over.
    Keep this compass with the