AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He looked down at his bare feet. “Yeah, well, we haven’t exactly communed yet.”
“Ah. Should you be alone?”
“I built a kit house. Too spoilt for camping. Going to find someone to give it to when I’m finished with it.”
“Answer the question.”
“I’m not alone and you know it.”
“She found you.”
“Yeah, she found me.”
“She’s on a mission you know. I gave her a hard time about it.”
“It’s the first thing she told me.”
Pete breathed into the phone. “All right then. You’re a big boy. You can work out what to do about it.”
“Yep.”
“What’s it really like?”
A black cockatoo and two green lorikeets screeched overhead, the cicada buzz going silent for a few seconds before starting up again. “Strange. Bo thinks it beautiful. I guess it is. We never saw it like that.”
“Is it mucking with your head?”
“A little.” A lot, as he knew it would. “Had a fit of the giggles today, fall on the floor kind of laughing. Made me remember how it wasn’t all bad here. Do you remember?”
“I remember how glad I was to leave.”
“Come on. You remember how we used to laugh.”
“I remember we used to read comics you nicked, Spidey and The Hulk.”
“I used to look at the pictures.”
Pete gave a grunted laugh. It gave Will his opening. “Ahoy.”
There was a pause, a crackle, then Pete, “Did you just say ‘ahoy’?”
“Ahoy.”
Pete laughed, a honking sound, a cartoon character noise filtered through the earpiece from continents away. “Ahoy.”
Will grinned to hear him. They’d come a long way for two boys who lived in a hot, smelly shipping container and the tent attached to it like a spinnaker.
He said it again. “Ahoy.” He waited to see if Pete remembered the rest of the joke, the nonsense response he’d made up from a list of nautical terms that sounded like swear words sailors would use.
Pete wheezed down the line. “I’m not saying it.”
“Go on.”
“No, it’s dumb.”
“You don’t remember it do you?” Will knew he did, Pete just didn’t want to say it.
“Gash fanny jibe-ho,” Pete choked out. Will waited, a roar of laughter burbling in his chest.
