The Stranding Read Online Free

a child, her parents had been painfully embarrassing. Now, from adulthood, she admired their courage to be different and their strong stance on living what they believed. But it hadn’t been so easy when she and Jordi were young. They had grown up isolated and sparsely clothed, running barefoot through the bush, scaling trees and devouring plates full of lentils, bean sprouts, brown rice and home-grown vegies. They hadn’t known until they went to school that it was unusual to be vegetarian. At school, everything they did or wore was open to ridicule—their lunches, their home-made bright-coloured clothes, their wild unbrushed hair, the smell of garlic on their breath. All of it became a cause for shame. They were glaring exceptions in a conservative rural community—a town where dairy cows and timber-cutting were still the predominant sources of income. The other children jeered at them so that Callista longed for a pair of blue jeans, a sweatshirt and vegemite sandwiches so she could be like everybody else.
    Over time things changed. Attitudes shifted and hippies became more socially acceptable. Eventually the children Callista had grown up with broke awkwardly into adulthood, and some tried to talk to her in the street—uncertainly, as if they weren’t quite sure whether she remembered. It was too late by then. She and Jordi never could assimilate. Jordi lived alone in a shack in the bush up behind her parents’ place, playing his guitar and smoking dope. He barely scraped a living from the meagre wage he earned pumping petrol down at the local servo. Callista couldn’t merge with the local crowd either. She lived on a different fringe. Nobody could understand someone trying to make a living out of art. And, despite much encouragement from some of the young males, who fancied her curvy figure and exuberant curls, she just couldn’t make it through the front door of the church to meld with their social group.
    Over the years, she’d attempted a few dates with some of the local boys with no luck. Once or twice things had advanced to a fumbled kiss or an embarrassing grope in the back of a car, but that was it. They still considered her too weird, with the dabs of paint that were permanently on her hands and scattered through her hair, and the family that still lived by choice in a rough home embedded in the bush. She was just wired differently—she simply didn’t think the same way as them. That was why she lived in her secluded gully. On her own at thirty-three.
    Mrs Jensen lived with her husband in a large old home overlooking the river. It was one of the better bits of real estate in town. They had bought the house when Mr Jensen retired, selling his dairy farm to a big conglomerate that was buying up dairies in the district. The locals resented an outside company buying up their farms, appointing managers and taking the profits away from the community. And it was becoming harder for local owners to compete. But it was the way of the future and there was nothing they could do about it.
    The sale of their farm placed the Jensens among the wealthiest people in town, as well as cementing their position as powerful members of the church. Their donations had helped finance most of the renovations at the church over the past few years, and they’d helped to put missionaries overseas in Africa and West Papua. Yes, the Jensens were held in high esteem by the church-goers of Merrigan. But Callista and Jordi reckoned the Jensens weren’t being selflessly charitable. They were simply buying their tickets to heaven.
    Callista parked the Kombi at the gate and sat behind the wheel for a moment staring at the big house and rambling old garden. She had never seen eye to eye with Mrs Jensen, and it was hard to come asking for hand-outs, although Barry had said she’d be doing Mrs Jensen a favour. She could see the palings piled up by the new fence. It’d be easy to just help herself and drive away, but she ought to do the