Two Wolves by Tristan Bancks Read Free Book Online Page B

front of a mountain with a falcon about to land on his arm. My Side of the Mountain. Ben flicked through. There were pictures showing how to make a trap for deer and a fishhook out of twigs. He read the back cover. It was about a kid called Sam Gribley who runs away from home in New York to live in the Catskill Mountains by himself. He sleeps inside a tree and survives off the land.
    Ben threw the book onto the rock next to him. His eyes darted around. He knew that he would have no chance out here alone. Ben’s survival skills included hunting for left­overs in the fridge, lowering bread into the toaster and switching on the heater when it was cold. None of these talents would be useful here.
    He breathed hard and sat up straight. He felt better, even with a bellyache. It was cooler down by the water. The moist, woodsy air and the steady shhh sound of the creek seemed to swallow him and make him part of it all. Ben looked up through the ferns and spiky plants sticking out of the rocks, but he couldn’t see the cabin.
    â€˜Mum,’ he called.
    No response.
    â€˜Mum!’
    The echo of his own voice off the rocks.
    He was alone. Just Ben. And creek and bird and frog. And snake.
    He stood and lifted a palm-sized rock and threw it into the creek just to see the splash . He stuffed the book back into his pocket and grabbed another rock, throwing it as high as he could, the impact kicking splash all over him and putting a smile on his face for the first time in days.
    As Ben turned to look for another rock he saw something move at the corner of his vision. It was a rabbit, a light-grey one, hopping from the tree line to the top rock. It stopped, looked down at him, still.
    Ben began to move slowly up the rocks but the rabbit skittered off the way it had come. He smiled again, looking all around. At home the closest thing he had to his own secret place was the crusty patch of land at the back of the wrecking yard. The tall grass there was peppered with graffiti-stained cars and the trains speeding by were loud and annoying. But here there was nothing man-made. Only Ben.
    Why would Mum and Dad come out here just because they had sold the wreckers?
    The money. So much money. He took his backpack off, pulled out his notebook and sat down to jot the following sums:
    $100 x 500 notes in bundle
    = $50,000
    $50,000
    x 20 bundles
    =
    Ben stared at the page. There might not have been five hundred notes in a bundle but Ben figured there must have been close. And there might have been fifteen bundles, not twenty. But there could have been twenty-two. How could their old wrecking yard be worth a million dollars? The place was a disgrace. And if they did sell it for that much, why had Dad hidden the money? Why hadn’t they told him about selling the business earlier? And who had bought it? Uncle Chris? Maybe. He had given Dad the bag full of money. Dad didn’t even like Uncle Chris. Maybe that’s why he sold it to him. Payback for all the beatings Uncle Chris gave him as a kid. Dad still had scars from Uncle Chris’s babysitting techniques.
    There were all these missing parts of the story. Adults never told kids anything. Nothing worth hearing anyway. Ben felt as though he spent his entire life trying to work out things that adults knew but wouldn’t tell him. He would do some detective work, search for clues, put the puzzle together.
    Ben pulled the police business card out of his notebook. ‘Dan Toohey’. The sea eagle emblem looked a bit like the bird on the front of My Side of the Mountain. Ben whispered the words ‘ Culpam Poena Premit Comes’ and decided that he would have his own police business card one day. One day when he was in charge of himself. He slipped the card back into the notebook. The creek rushed by. Three birds, rosellas, flew past, chasing one another out over the creek, then up into the trees. Ben flipped back a couple of pages and read:
    Police
    Holiday
    Uncle Chris.