With a smile on my face, I turn the ignition.
Chapter Six
Lilly: 18 November 2015, Early Evening, Port Somers
We’ve made it to Port Somers! I had my doubts, but my inspired idea to send our phone with the plumber’s truck to Whakatane was a winner.
“Oh no, Elise, you’re not driving. In your state, you’re bound to hit a tree or drive off the cliff.”
She doesn’t hear me as usual. Miss Marple said she won’t until she wants to hear us. That hasn’t happened yet. Elise wants us to go away. She has no idea how well I understand that. I want her to go away too. Elise is a master of wallowing in self-pity. It makes me cringe. When has self-pity ever served anyone? But Sky says we should be nice to Elise and try to get her on board. I agree. Someone needs to do the boring things like brushing teeth or having lunch with Helen.
But she’s like a wet blanket. Why can’t she toughen up? She’s got none of the horrible memories Maddie or Casper have and still she is moaning and moping around. Can’t she be fun, or witty, or at least a little less mediocre?
My energy must be much stronger than hers because as soon as she turns the ignition, she gets sucked into the vortex of our inner world. Here’s my idea of how this coming into and leaving the body works; It’s a mixture of opportunity and necessity. If we are attacked, Amadeus comes into the body, because he’s our warrior. No questions asked.
Other situations are less black and white. Like driving the car. That’s when it’s about opportunity and energy levels. Luke drove for over fifteen hours. No wonder he was tired, and his energy was low. In comes our default person and drama queen, Elise, worried and moping around, which started in high energy and sank to low, depressed energy. When I saw her turning the ignition, I got all hot with worry and annoyance. On an energy level mine was much higher than Elise’s.
Luke had been behind the wheel since three in the morning. He deserves a rest. He drove us all the way to the beach in Port Somers. There he stared out over the wide ocean, wiped a tear from the corner of his eyes and drifted to the tree house whispering Freedom.
I love this guy. After all the running and doing to get away, the significance is sinking in now, bit by little bit. Precious freedom is in our grasp and we better make sure we hold onto it.
Et Voilà! I’m driving us to our new home. I like that. The choices left were Amadeus or me. In my hands the van drives with precision and within common boundaries of traffic rules. I never run a red light, even when there is no traffic at all. It costs me heaps of flak from Amadeus who calls me stuffy. It has nothing to do with stuffy but with following rules or risking mayhem… and maybe a teensy-weensy bit with being German.
However, I prefer driving a BMW or Mercedes and detest our flimsy tin-trap import. But Elise insisted on the HiAce when she got a new car so she could transport her beloved animals. And I admit, for our getaway it was ideal.
Amadeus has no preferences in cars. He has only one driving style, as if the devil is after us. Just like Vin Diesel in The Fast and The Furious. I kid you not. More than one of us ended up with wet pants when he was behind the wheel. That’s not going to happen today. This is a new beginning. Less fear, less hurt, less wet pants. We have nothing to gain by acting recklessly.
I’m German, not Kiwi like the others. Don’t ask me how that came about. I think it has to do with my German great grandmother and happened when Elise was kindergarten-age. We could already read back then and started learning different languages. We wrote diary notes and swore in foreign languages when bad stuff happened. It helped us express our anger or hurt without being punished because our parents and other people didn’t understand a word.
It reduced the number of punishments we received. If you think about it, that’s super clever. I’m so proud of the Tribe. What we’ve achieved—given the circumstances—is mind-blowing.
Horace and his friends always said we were stupid. Lizette gets angry when someone calls us stupid. “Au contraire,” she would say. Lizette speaks fluent French. For the same reason that I speak German, I think. It conceals what we are saying. Plus, when we speak a different language, we can pretend we don’t belong to the Tribe. It might sound strange, but pretending we are not part of the Tribe often helped us cope.
Casper speaks fluent Finnish. That’s a language you don’t want to learn because you’ll break your tongue pronouncing the words. For example: ‘We can’t come today’ is translated as Emme voi tulla tänään. I ask you; how does that make sense? I haven’t seen Casper for a long time. He lives in one of the outer rooms of the tree house. I think he’s hurting a great deal. We used to be like brother and sister. I miss him. I don’t miss his Finnish though. It would have been his turn to talk to Miss Marple next. Our escape has put a stop to that for now.
“Let’s go.”
Oh, Sky, you are always so subtle. I smile and steer the van out of the parking bay and into the traffic. It’s mid-November and the tourist season doesn’t get into full swing until after Christmas. Still, I like what I see. Compared to Auckland, the pace of this small town is very sedated, as if they’ve added Valium to the drinking water. No, just kidding, of course, they didn’t. It will be good for us to get away from the
