Nim at Sea Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Postscript

  Also by Wendy Orr

  Copyright

  For Paula, who believed in Nim

  LONG AGO, when Nim was a baby, she’d had both a mother and a dad. Then one day, her mother had decided to investigate the contents of a blue whale’s stomach. It was an interesting experiment that no one had done for thousands of years, and Nim’s dad, Jack, said that it would have been all right, it should have been safe—but the Troppo Tourists came to make a film of it, shouting and racing their huge pink-and-purple boat around Nim’s mother and the whale. The whale panicked and dived so deep that no one ever knew where or when he came back up again.

  Nim’s mother never came back up at all.

  So Jack packed his baby onto his boat and sailed round and round the world—and finally, when the baby had grown into a very little girl, he found the perfect island where he could do his science and Nim could grow, wild and free like the animals they lived with.

  The island has white-shell beaches, pale gold sand, and tumbled black rocks. It has a fiery mountain with green rainforest on the high slopes and grasslands at the bottom. There is a pool of fresh water to drink, a waterfall to slide down, and the hut that Jack built in a hidden hollow where the grasslands meet the beach. And around it, there’s a maze of reef guarding the island from everything but the smallest boats, so Jack knows the Troppo Tourists or anyone else can never find their island.

  But one day, Jack and his boat got lost in a storm—and Nim was left alone on the island, until her e-mail friend Alex Rover, the most famous and cowardly adventure writer in the whole world, crossed the sea to rescue her. And then Nim’s most secret wish came true: Jack came floating back—and Alex stayed.

  IN A PALM TREE, on an island, in the middle of the wide blue sea, is a girl.

  Nim’s hair is wild, her eyes are bright, and around her neck she wears three cords. One is for a spyglass, one is for a whorly, whistling shell, and the other holds a fat red pocketknife in a sheath.

  With the spyglass at her eye, Nim watched the little red seaplane depart. It sailed out through the reef to the deeper dark ocean, bumping across the waves till it was tossed into the bright blue sky. Then it rose so high and so far it was nothing but a speck, and floated out of sight.

  “Alex is gone,” Nim told Fred.

  Fred stared at the coconuts clustered on the trunk.

  Fred is an iguana, spiky as a dragon, with a cheerful snub nose. He was sitting on Nim’s shoulder, and he cared more about coconuts than he did about saying goodbye. (Marine iguanas don’t eat coconut, but no one has ever told Fred.)

  As Nim threw three ripe coconuts thump! into the sand, she remembered Alex saying, “I never knew anything could taste better than coffee!” the first time Nim opened a coconut for her.

  Nim looked down at her father, sitting like a stone on Selkie’s Rock. Jack’s head was bowed and his shoulders slumped. Nim had never seen him look so sad.

  And suddenly she knew she’d made a terrible, terrible mistake.

  The mistake began when she answered Alex’s very first e-mail, back when she’d thought that the famous Alex Rover was a man and a brave adventurer like the hero in the books “he” wrote. That led to Alex’s ending up on the island—and when she did, Jack and Nim wanted her never to leave. Sometimes it felt good to be three instead of two.

  But other times Nim wanted Jack just for herself, the way it used to be. Or she wanted Alex just for herself, because Alex was her friend before she was Jack’s. Sometimes, when Alex and Jack told Nim to go to sleep while they talked late into the night, Nim felt left out and lonely.

  Then, earlier this morning, the little red seaplane had arrived, bringing all the things that Alex had asked her editor back in the city to send. It was the first time a plane had ever landed on Nim’s island. Nim could tell that Jack was worried that the pilot would notice how beautiful the island was and would want to come back again and again.

  Whenever Jack was worried, Nim was too. And when Nim was worried, so were her friends Selkie and Fred. (Selkie is a sea lion who sometimes forgets that Nim is a girl and not a little sea lion pup to be looked after and whuffled over.) They both stuck close to Nim every time she walked back and forth between the plane and the hut.

  “I’ve never seen animals do that before!” exclaimed the pilot.

  Nim didn’t know what to say, partly because she didn’t know exactly what he hadn’t seen before, and partly because she’d never spoken to any person besides Jack and Alex. She grabbed a crate and opened it up. Inside there were books! Thin books and fat, short books and tall, history and science books, mysteries, adventures, and more and more and more! Nim started to look through one when—

  “Come on, Nim!” said Alex. “There’ll be time to read when everything’s off the plane.”

  The pilot pulled out two big solar panels. “Great!” Jack exclaimed, because he wanted them for the new room he planned to add to the hut—one created especially for Alex to write her books in. Jack balanced the panels on his head and walked very slowly and carefully up toward the hut.

  “Who’s going to take this one?” the pilot asked, pointing to a crate.

  Nim stepped forward eagerly. But just as she was about to reach for the crate, the pilot handed it to Alex. First Alex stumbled, then she tripped, then crash! the crate fell with a tinkle of broken glass.

  “Oh, no!” Alex wailed. “What have I done?”

  “Jack’s test tubes!” Nim shouted. “You should have let me take it!”

  “I was trying to help!”

  “But I didn’t need help! You just got in the way!”

  “I’m always in the way these days!” Alex snapped. “Maybe you and Jack would be better off without me.”

  “I think we would!” Nim shouted, and stomped off without waiting for an answer.

  She’s right! Alex thought. Nim and Jack lived here perfectly happily all those years without anyone else—they don’t really need me. Nim’s been cross with me a lot lately and I’ve never seen Jack be so worried. I think…I think I’m changing their lives too much. What if they’ve secretly been wanting their old lives back—and just haven’t wanted to say so?

  Alex understood about being afraid to say so. Before she came to the island, she was so afraid of saying anything to anyone that she hardly ever left her apartment. She was a famous person, but only through her books. Her life had totally changed since she flew across the world to find Nim.

  “Last one!” The pilot handed her a large envelope. “And now, time for me to go.”

  Alex opened it. She pulled out the letter and stared at it without reading.

  “Wait! Can I…can I go with you?”

  “Sure!” said the pilot. “But don’t you need to pack?”

  Alex knew that if she saw Jack or Nim she would never be able to leave, even if it was the right thing to do. “No,” she said, “I’m ready to go.”

  Alex Rover climbed into the little red seaplane. And was gone.

  Hours later, Nim scrambled down from the coconut palm and buried he
r face in Selkie’s warm neck, because the sea lion loved her no matter how bad Nim was—and the feeling in Nim’s stomach told her this was the very worst thing she’d ever done.

  Jack loved her too, but Nim didn’t know if he still would when he realized it was Nim who had chased Alex away.

  “Meet me at the Emergency Cave,” she told Selkie, because suddenly the sun and sea were shining much too bright. Only the deepest, darkest cave could match the way she felt inside.

  Selkie gave a disapproving sort of hrumph and lolloped down to the sea. Nim and Fred headed inland, toward the bottom of Fire Mountain, past the Hissing Stones, and across the Black Rocks.

  Scrambling up the boulders was good because it was such hard work Nim couldn’t think about anything else. But when she got to the cave, she remembered: Alex telling her stories when they were trying to sleep on the hard cave floor, Alex watching the sunrise on the very first morning, Alex crying when Nim skinned her knee.

  Nim crawled into the deepest corner of the cave to be as sad and alone as she could possibly be. She hiccuped and coughed and cried and blew her nose, then dropped her hanky.

  It was when she was feeling around in the dark for her soggy hanky that she found the map.

  Alex had drawn the map when she told one of her stories. It showed an island that was part of a city with even bigger parts next to it. It was as different from Nim’s island as anywhere could possibly be.

  It was the place where Alex’s books were published, in a tall, shining building whose top floors were up above the clouds. It was where Alex’s editor worked—the one who’d sent the supply plane.

  Nim stuffed the map into her deepest pocket and started crying all over again. She cried so hard that Selkie pulled herself all the way up from the sea to the cave to comfort her. But when Nim wouldn’t stop crying, no matter how much Selkie whuffled and snuffled, Selkie went just outside the cave entrance so that she could do tricks to make her friend smile. She balanced a rock on her nose, then threw it up in the air and off the cliff. She sat up high on her tail and flapped her flippers as if she were trying to fly. She did a handstand on her front flippers. She went through all her tricks over and over and barked at Nim in between to make her stop crying.

  Finally Selkie showed Nim her best trick ever—a handstand right on the edge of the rocks, then a flip into a perfect dive all the way down to the water.

  It was a long way down, and it was a very good trick—but Nim wouldn’t come out to see.

  And so Nim also didn’t see the giant cruise ship that had come around the point and anchored not far from the cliffs.

  She didn’t see the inflatable motorboat with people snorkeling around it, or the second motorboat chugging quietly out from the other side of the ship. She didn’t see the man watching the sea lion do her tricks lift his rifle and shoot Selkie with a tranquilizer dart. She didn’t see him instruct his crew to heave Selkie into his boat and speed away with her to their ship.

  But Fred did.

  Fred had been watching Selkie and hoping she’d do his favorite flipping-a-coconut-high-off-the-cliffs-smash!-onto-the-rocks trick. When she did the handstand-dive, he ran to the edge of the cliff to see if she’d smashed a coconut on her way down.

  What he saw made Fred forget all about coconuts.

  First he scrambled down, then he scrambled back up. Then he rushed into the cave and head-butted Nim’s leg. When she still didn’t pay attention, he climbed onto her shoulder and sneezed his cool saltwater spray in her face.

  “Yuck, Fred!” said Nim. But when Fred scurried to the edge of the cliff, Nim followed.

  The boat was chugging back to the ship. Through her spyglass Nim could see Selkie at the bottom of the boat.

  “They’ve killed her!” Nim screamed.

  But then Selkie lifted her head, and Nim saw the men tying ropes and nets around her.

  She had to save her friend! Fast!

  Fred scrambled to her shoulder and clung on tight. Nim stood on the edge of the cliff. The water was a long way down.

  What if I hit the rocks? Nim thought.

  She jumped, as high and far as she could, and twisted into a dive.

  She hit the water.

  Nim’s lungs were bursting and her ears were hurting. But soon she saw light above her head, and kicked and spluttered her way up to the air.

  The boat was already a long way out, and the waves were strong on this side of the island, but Nim had no choice. She took another deep breath and began to swim with all her might.

  JACK SAT ON SELKIE’S ROCK for a long, long time, staring out at the empty sky. He felt as if a part of his world had vanished with Alex’s plane and he’d been left behind.

  He reread the letter he’d found on the beach.

  Dear Alex,

  I’m glad the materials I organized for the supply ship were useful; I hope these things will all be too. I guess that new cabin must be just about finished by now and you’ve all got clothes to wear again. It was quite amusing to read about your banana-leaf dress in your first e-mail!

  Your apartment and furniture have been sold, as per your instructions. I’m enclosing all the paperwork. However, just in case you change your mind about staying on that little island forever, I’m also enclosing a new passport and credit card to replace the ones you lost.

  Now, enclosed please find the reason I’ve been so busy: the first copy of your new book! I am very proud to be the editor of this book: I think it’s wonderful, and we’re going all out to make sure it’ll be your biggest bestseller.

  Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.

  Yours,

  Delia Defoe

  “Why would she…?” said Jack. But no matter how many times he read the letter, it still didn’t explain why Alex had gone.

  “What could have suddenly made her so unhappy?” he asked the sea. “Did the things on the plane remind her of what she’d been missing? Did she suddenly want to go and be famous again? And why couldn’t she tell me?”

  But the sea didn’t answer, and it didn’t matter what Jack wondered, because Alex was gone—and soon he’d have to tell Nim, which would be almost worse than knowing it himself.

  Jack had seen Nim’s face when she’d opened that big crate of books. He knew she’d be lying somewhere, her head on Selkie’s back and Fred curled on her stomach, lost in a story, not even realizing everything had changed.

  Meanwhile, Alex sat in the passenger seat of the seaplane, too frozen with sadness to even be afraid. She looked back at the gold sand of Turtle Beach, the light clear blue of Keyhole Cove, the palm tree Nim always climbed, and the shack they’d just built, and she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake.

  Then she thought about what Nim had said, and knew she cared too much about her friends to stay if Nim didn’t want her.

  Fred jumped off Nim’s shoulder when they hit the water, but he stayed under only long enough to grab one big mouthful of seaweed before popping out beside her.

  Selkie was part of Fred’s life, and Fred wanted her back.

  They were both swimming as fast as they could, straight out to sea, but the boat was pulling away even faster. Nim’s heart was pounding; it hurt when she breathed and she was swallowing too much water.

  I…huff…can’t…go…huff…fast enough! she thought. She rolled onto her back. Fred kept on gliding under the water just beside her.

  When Nim had caught her breath and rolled over again, the cruise ship was getting closer—but the motorboat with Selkie and the seal-nappers had disappeared.

  It can’t have gone! Nim thought. It must be on the other side of the ship.

  That was when she saw the huge pink-and-purple name on the ship’s bow: THE TROPPO TOURIST, the company that Nim was more afraid of than anything in the world.

  Nim tried to swim faster, but it didn’t take long before she was gasping, swallowing water and spitting it out again. She rolled onto her back; her arms whirred, her legs kicked…and her head
knocked hard against a rubber boat.

  Hands grabbed her arms. A man and a woman, with horrified faces and matching pink-and-purple T-shirts, stared down at her.

  “Fred!” screamed Nim.

  Fred scrabbled to her shoulder, and they were hauled into an inflatable motorboat like the one that had seal-napped Selkie.

  “You said you’d counted, Kelvin!” shouted the woman, whose T-shirt said I’M KYLIE.

  “I did!” Kelvin answered. “There were fifteen kids in that snorkeling group and we took fifteen back…I think.”

  “If you’d counted,” Kylie insisted, “we wouldn’t be fishing this poor kid out of the water now!”

  “Maybe she’s a castaway from that deserted island: Kid Crusoe!”

  Nim didn’t have enough breath to say her name was Nim Rusoe, not Kid Crusoe.

  “Where were you heading to, honey?”

  “To the boat,” Nim whispered.

  “Just in time,” said Kelvin. “We’re about to set sail.”

  Nim still couldn’t see the other little boat. All she could see was the cruise ship: its white length stretching forever in front of her, and its towering decks reaching to the sky.

  It was the only place Selkie’s boat could have come from, and the only place it could have gone. If Nim was going to rescue Selkie, she had to get on the ship.

  Fred sneezed.

  “What is that?” Kelvin asked.

  Fred clung tight to Nim and glared his fiercest dragon glare. “He’s my friend,” Nim explained.

  “If you say so!” Kelvin grinned. He didn’t look as if he really wanted to touch Fred anyway.

  “Not to worry, you can keep your, er, pet,” said Kylie.

  “She’s delirious,” Kelvin whispered.

  “Hey, where’s your snorkel?” asked Kylie.

  “I don’t know,” said Nim.

  “Never mind,” said Kylie, with a big anxious smile. “We won’t tell anyone you lost a valuable snorkel if you don’t tell anyone you nearly missed the boat.”