Read Online On the Run by Tristan Bancks - Free Book Online Page A

had bought other presents for Ben and Olive too. Clothes for each of them in various sizes, just to be sure. Shoes for Olive. For Ben, a robotic Lego kit and a Mad magazine. For Olive, a pirate outfit and a hot-pink remote control pickup truck that could drive across the sandy clearing out the front. She loved her skateboard best. She rode it round and round inside the cabin.
    It felt more like Christmas than any Christmas Ben had ever known. For that moment, everybody was happy. The way things were meant to be, the way they were in movies. The way Ben always imagined other families being. Maybe better.
    As dark closed in on the cabin, Dad decided to try lighting a fire outside, and they laughed at his pathetic camping skills. Only Mum managed to get a decent flame going.
    *   *   *
    Later, as Ben lay on his squeaky new air mattress in the darkness of the cabin, with a belly full of food and his parents outside laughing and talking, he wondered … if life was full of good things and presents and they were all happy, did it matter where the money had come from? Did it matter why his father had driven off from the police? Did it matter that his mum had lied to him? Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe they really did sell the wreckers. Maybe that old corrugated iron office building and the broken-down machinery and all those smashed-up cars were worth that much money. And that’s how they got the presents. What if it could always be like this? A million dollars could buy a lot of happy.

 
    DETECTIVE BEN SILVER
    Ben’s eyes half opened. He was cold and had no idea where he was. No roar of cars or semitrailers on the highway. No trains. No background hum of electrical tower.
    His eyes adjusted to the darkness. He saw Olive lying on her air mattress next to his. Mum and Dad’s voices trickled in from outside. Not laughing and chatting like they had been earlier. Arguing now. Ben had that knife-in-the-belly feeling that he got when they argued late at night. He lay in the dark, alert, listening. Olive sucked her thumb, making a quiet squeaking noise.
    There were other sounds too, when Ben listened deeply. Crickets or insects. A frog somewhere. Scurrying in a tree and a screech from high above. Not silence but not sounds that he knew. The noise of trucks and cars and trains was comforting. Known, mechanical things. But here everything was unknown. The only familiar sound was the arguing.
    â€œWhy?” Mum asked.
    â€œBecause we have to sit tight. It won’t be forever, but we can’t just…” Dad lowered his voice. Ben could not hear the rest of what he said, but it was spoken with intensity and Mum responded fiercely.
    â€œPlease. Just. Listen to me,” he heard Mum say. “I never feel heard!”
    Ben crawled across his air mattress, crept to the window, peered out.
    A near-full moon shone through the pines, and the white-sand clearing gleamed like silver. Mum and Dad sat on their camp chairs next to a few smoldering coals. Dad poked the coals with a stick, sending orange splinters of light shooting into the air. They continued to argue in low voices, silhouettes lined with moon-glow.
    Ben worried sometimes that his parents would not be together forever. But he also worried that they would be together forever. He lay down on his mattress with a grunt, pulling the dark blue sleeping bag up to his neck. Like the fire, happiness had flickered and died. He looked around at the roof beams, the shelf with the food, the dark cupboard. This was the creepiest place he had ever slept. He felt a sharp bite on his elbow and thought of all the spiders that must be in the cabin with him. And ghosts. If he were a ghost he would hang out in this cabin. It was perfect for ghosts, just not for humans.
    Ben lay still, watching, feeling, listening. He couldn’t count the number of nights in his life that he had gone to sleep with his parents fighting. Too many. Even after all these