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Scott weren’t behind the rock!
    Luckily the smarter part of my brain is studying the rocks while the other part’s whining. I need to slide down to the first bump . . . which doesn’t seem quite so easy now I’m doing it. I hug the rock as I wiggle across: right foot slide, right hand grab; left foot slide. Slip down between the two rocks where they’ve split, catch my breath and study the second one. If I jump and reach high as I can . . .
    â€˜OW!’
    I suck my finger till it stops bleeding: the left pointer fingernail is ripped down to the quick. It must be called quick because it makes you jump so fast.
    What’s scary is that if I hadn’t been wedged between the two rocks, I’d have fallen off, because as soon as it got hurt my hand forgot all about holding on.
    So when you’re climbing, it’s just tough luck if you hurt yourself. The only thing that matters is not falling off.
    I don’t know if I can remember that.
    Anyway, now I’ve slowed down I can see there’s another way up to the second rock, that doesn’t need me to rip off any more fingernails. I wiggle on my stomach, across and up . . . and I’m at the other end of Lily’s cave.
    It wasn’t just the nose that fell off the mountain.
    This end of the ledge, right to the bend, is covered with a pyramid of rocks higher than my head.
    But each one is a rock, not a boulder. I could move them.
    If I take them down, one by one . . .
    . . . it’ll take days.
    But what else can I do?
    The pile is too wobbly to climb. I lean into it and push off the highest rock I can reach.
    â€˜OW!’
    I shove the rock off my toe and over the ledge. My finger’s bleeding again too. Maybe I should start lower down.
    Sitting with my back against the mountain, I kick off all the loose rocks around the edges. ‘Ten down, a thousand to go!’
    It feels good. I’m getting somewhere.
    The easy ones are gone, my legs are getting quivery from shoving, and the pile doesn’t look any smaller than when I started.
    There’s still one big rock at the bottom that I might be able to move. I brace my back and shove with both feet . . .
    I’ve done it! The big rock disappears over the side.
    Another big one crashes towards me. I fling myself back, my knees tucked against my chest, my head thumping against the cliff wall.
    The rock brushes past my toes, smashes onto the ledge, and bounces over the cliff.
    The whole pile shivers behind it; rocks roll and settle. But only two go over the cliff   – the rest must have rolled into Lily and Scott’s cave.

8

4:05 FRIDAY AFTERNOON
    Crawling back across the boulders to Lily’s side of the cave makes my hands bleed more, but it’s easier than telling her I can’t dig them out.
    I thought it was a rule: if you try absolutely as hard as you can when things are really tough, they have to work out.
    That’s what’s fair.
    It’s not fair that Scott’s knocked out when he’s the one who’s supposed to be taking care of us.
    It’s not fair that Lily and I are both sitting with our faces against this horrible door rock but we can’t even see each other through the gap. And I don’t know why I keep calling it a door when there’s no way we can open it.
    It’s not fair that there’s another stack of rocks inside the cave just as big as the one outside, and when the rocks I tried to push off the ledge smashed into the inside pile, they bounced towards Scott and Lily.
    â€˜One nearly hit Scott   – he kind of twitched, but he didn’t wake up.’ Lily stops for a second. I can hear her breathing, as if she’s trying not to cry. ‘Raven, you can’t try to move any more of those rocks. If the whole pile crashes in here we’ll be buried alive!’
    Her words hit my ears as if they’re coming from a long way away, or she’s speaking a foreign language; I can