Two Wolves Read Online Free Page B

handed it to Dad, who guzzled it all and wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.
    â€˜What do we do now, Ray?’ Mum asked.
    â€˜Stay here for a bit,’ Dad said. ‘Then keep going up to the cabin.’

Ben awoke to darkness all around as the car climbed a steep hill into rainforesty woods. Trees flicked quickly by. Tiny red eyes watched them from the blackness. Mum and Olive were asleep, Dad lit by dashboard glow.
    Ben stretched and groaned. ‘Where are we?’
    No answer.
    The car raced ever upward.
    Ben’s back and muscles ached. His neck hurt. They had been driving all day and he had fallen asleep after a drive-thru dinner of burger, shake and fries.
    â€˜Dad?’ he asked again.
    â€˜Nearly there.’
    â€˜The cabin?’
    Silence.
    Ben sat, quiet and wide awake. The headlights sliced through the night, opening it up for a moment, then snapping it shut as they passed. He nervously touched each one of his fingertips to his thumbs over and over again. He had seven million questions surging through him but he did not know how to ask Dad without riling him.
    I’m me , he thought. Not this again , said another voice inside him. But if I’m me then who is everybody else? Ben often had these ‘I’m me’ sessions. It was usually when he was walking home from school or before he went to sleep. What does that mean – ‘me’? he wondered. He sometimes drove himself crazy with these thoughts. He tried to concentrate on the road, the headlights carving up the night, the flattened animal carcasses. Cane toads sitting up, tall and proud, then bam. Tyres. Pancake.
    Thoughts drifted out of the darkness. I am me. But, if I’m me, then who are Mum and Dad? Who are James and Gus? Are they ‘me’, too? They think they’re ‘me’. They call themselves ‘I’ just like I do. So how am I different? I’m in a different body but are we the same thing somehow?
    Ben’s ‘I’m me’ sessions always brought up more questions than answers. Each time he tried to capture ‘me’, it would disappear into the dark corners of his mind, like a dream he was desperately trying to remember. Where did his thoughts and ideas come from? Even the thought ‘I’m me’ – what was that? It felt like there was someone back there saying things that Ben couldn’t control. His mind flicked between sharp corners, darting animals, dashboard glow and ‘me’ until Dad suddenly slowed on a corner and took a left onto a dirt road.
    â€˜Is this it?’ Ben asked.
    Dad skidded to a stop. He nudged Mum.
    â€˜I think this is it.’
    Mum stirred and sat up in her seat. Her jaw clicked when she yawned – a childhood collision with a wire fence. ‘What?’
    â€˜I’m not sure but I think this is it.’
    Mum looked around. Trees. Dirt road. Dark. ‘Okay.’
    â€˜I haven’t been here in thirteen years but I went through that little town with the water tank and the store with the metal cow out front, then uphill for about ten minutes and . . .’
    Mum thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I just woke up. Maybe it is.’
    Silence all around. Headlights trained on tree trunks. Eucalypts. Olive out cold. Ben waiting, nervous.
    â€˜Well, should we go down and check?’ Dad asked.
    â€˜It’s your family’s cabin.’
    â€˜What do you mean by that?’
    â€˜I mean that you’ve dragged us up here so you make the decision,’ Mum said.
    Dad waited a few seconds and then let out the handbrake. The car began to climb steeply downhill. Olive’s head was tossed around by every bump in the road. Trees crowded in overhead. Ben was alert and focused on the track diving into the valley. Questions about ‘me’ were left back on the tarred road. He wished that they were arriving in the day.Dad drove slowly, weaving to avoid