Arlo and the Vortex Voyage
Winner, IP Picks Best Junior Prose, 2010. When Arlo and Kate go rock-climbing, the last thing they expect is to be caught up in a vortex and transported through to another universe. The absence of television and junk food is the least of their problems.
So there I was, at ten past midnight, sitting like a seagull on a rock. A very wet rock.
I was wondering whether Kate would show up, and whether it would be better if she did or she didn’t, and feeling like a complete nigel.
My name isn’t Nigel, by the way. It’s Arlo, which is just as bad. I’m called after a folk singer from the distant past, like the seventies or something. Get used to it. I had to.
She was ten minutes late. Maybe I should go home, I thought. A deserted beach at night – there’s no place lonelier. And it was freezing cold, too. I tied the string of my hoodie tighter. It didn’t help much. And what was I there for? To do some midnight rock-climbing. I hate rock-climbing, even in the daytime.
Kate loves it. What we had planned for tonight was nothing to her. “It’s a cinch,” she’d told me. “Even for a beginner. And the rock shelf is only half-way up. Perfect viewing platform.” Perfect for her, maybe.
I wanted to do the climb in the afternoon, but there’s a ‘danger, falling rocks’ sign there, and Kate said that someone would be sure to stop us. “No, it has to be midnight,” she said. “It’s nearly as bright as day, with the floodlights, and there aren’t so many people around.”
I moved further into the shadows. Kids hanging around the beach at night attract attention. Not that I thought I was a kid – I was thirteen, after all – but that’s what a guy in a car had just yelled at me: “Watch where you’re going, kid!”
The more I thought about this climb, the less I liked it. But Kate was set on it. She said she had something to show me.
“It’s hard to explain. It’s a sort of spiral of tiny lights. You can hardly see it at all in daylight, but in the dark you can’t miss it.” Order Arlo and the Vortex Voyage here
