Viva Alice! by Judi Curtin

Alice. ‘We’re stuck, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’
    As she said the last words, there was a suddengust of wind, and she shivered. She and Grace were both wearing light pyjamas like mine. Lucky Alice hadn’t got around to taking her socks off, but, like me, Grace was barefoot.
    ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Come over here. No point in anyone freezing to death.’
    Alice and Grace came over and sat beside me, and we wrapped the blanket around the three of us. For a minute, no one said anything. It would have been lovely sitting there, looking out at the beautiful sea, with my two friends beside me – if only the balcony door wasn’t locked, and if Lorna and Eddie and Gavin were downstairs, and if, when we got tired all we had to do was go inside to our warm and cosy beds.
    ‘We’re going to be in soooo much trouble when Gav gets back,’ said Grace. ‘When he finds the whole house locked up, and Mum and Dad gone, and the three of us frozen nearly to death out here, he’s going to figure out what happened.’
    ‘Maybe he won’t tell,’ said Alice. ‘He doesn’t seem the sneaky type.’
    ‘He’s
not
the sneaky type,’ said Grace. ‘He’s really cool most of the time – but he takes his role as big brother very seriously. He’ll tell on us, I know he will. Mum and Dad are going to go crazy when they hear that we pretended to them that Gav was here, and pretended to Gav that they were here. I’m going to be grounded for days.’
    ‘Lucky you,’ I sighed. ‘If my mum and dad find out about this, I’ll be grounded for months – or maybe forever.’
    ‘I don’t care about being grounded,’ said Alice. ‘No one ever died from being grounded. I just hope we don’t freeze, or starve to death. Or we could die of thirst. Anyone know how long a human can survive without water?’
    Even though I was scared, I had to laugh. Trust Alice to be so dramatic.
    ‘It’s not going to go that far,’ said Grace. ‘Robyn and her dad are playing golf at ten, andthey’re dropping Gav back before their game. That means he should be here around nine. That’s not so bad, is it? None of us will have starved to death by then.’
    Unusually for her, Alice didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak either. I huddled closer to my friends, and tried not to cry.
    * * *
    Usually, when Grace and Alice and I are together, we talk a lot. There never seems to be enough time to say all the things we want to say. Now though, when we had all the time in the world, we were silent.
    I stared at the sky. Maybe if I saw a shooting star, it would be sign that everything was going to be OK. But I stared until my eyes were tired, and all the stars stayed in the same place, twinkling away madly, like they didn’t care.
    I thought about movies where groups of friends are trapped on a desert island, or in acave high in the mountains. In those films, the friends always pass the time by saying deep, thoughtful stuff, like how much they love each other.
    I couldn’t think any deep thoughts though. All I could think about was how cold my toes were, and how hungry we were going to be if we couldn’t get any breakfast, and what was going to happen when one of us wanted to go to the toilet.
    This could get totally gross.

Chapter Seventeen
    ‘A bout those secrets,’ said Alice after a while.
    ‘You can stop right now, Al,’ I said. ‘Things are bad enough already. There’s no way I’m going to let you bully me into telling you more secret stuff.’
    ‘Megan’s right,’ said Grace. ‘That secrets game is stupid, and I’m not playing it any more.’
    ‘It isn’t a game this time,’ said Alice. ‘You two don’t have to tell secrets if you don’t want to.’
    ‘We don’t want to,’ I said quickly. ‘Game over.’
    ‘But there’s another secret I didn’t tell you before,’ said Alice. ‘And I feel kind of bad about that.’
    ‘So tell,’ said Grace. ‘It’s not like Megan and I are going anywhere any time soon.