Page 1 of Catch a Kiwi
1
FAILURE TO FAILURE
Summer
“We could totally crash right now,” my cousin Delilah informed me from the passenger seat. “Meet somebody coming around a corner, and—boom. That would be just the crowning glory. After another job bites the dust, because a café can’t be open when it’s flooded. And, of course, when our last shower was two days ago and our worldly possessions have been reduced to a campervan. We’re like the ‘before’ scene in a movie. Do you still count as homeless if you have a campervan? I’m guessing yes.”
Breathe,I told myself, and redoubled my focus on the winding road, ignoring the fern trees that were whipping around on the downhill side like they were auditioning to be in a hurricane on the news. There were no roads as narrow as New Zealand roads, which meant that Delilah was right. If anybody came around the corner, just a little over the nonexistent center line …
I’d have rubbed my forehead with trembling fingers like somebody in a book, but my death grip on the steering wheel had other ideas. “Why would we crash?” I asked Delilah. “Because it’s raining? And we’re living in a campervan because we’re on a working holiday. A working holiday in New Zealand. That’s not homeless. That’s a dream life.”
“No, because it’spouring,”she said. “Brilliant idea to drive to the beach. Hello? It’s a cyclone. That means a hurricane. Have you ever watched TV? Palm trees whipping in the wind much?”
“It’s raining practically everywhere in the South Island,” I reminded her as the ancient gray van did some more groaning—whatwasthat?—and the windshield wipers slapped frantically in a futile attempt to keep up with the sheets of water. “Things aren’t flooded here, though, you notice, unlike in Fiordland. The road isn’t closed, and nobody’s evacuating over here last I checked. Onward and upward. Whoops. We turn here.” I could barely see to make the turn onto Purakaunui Bay Road, and once I did, I realized the road was gravel. That was OK, though, right? Gravel drained the water. That was the whole reason for gravel.
“I hate your new looking-on-the-bright-side thing, so you know,” Delilah said. “I liked you better when you were snarky and dark, like me.”
I inched around a hairpin curve as the headlights flickered. So did the dash illumination. The windshield wipers faltered, and my heart skipped a beat. They restarted, and I breathed again. Never mind. I could look out the window to drive if I had to, right? Right?
I thought about it for two seconds, until the horn let out a blast and startled me.
Wait. I hadn’t pressed it. Had I?
It stopped. Good. “Too bad you’re stuck with me, then,” I said. “Darkness is for teenagers who can afford it. Which you are. Sort of. Except for the affording it part. Teenagers who can existentially afford it, I guess. ‘Success consists of goingfrom failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ Winston Churchill. The guy knew something about adversity.”
“Now you’re just messing with me,” Delilah said. “The campground will probably be closed, too, or if it’s open, it’ll be a sea of mud. Also, you notice what there isn’t around here? Cafés, that’s what. Or, oh, let’s see.Anythingelse, job-wise, other than possibly cleaning motel rooms again, if there evenareany motels. Somehow, you can always getthatjob, you notice? Nothing else that could employ one marginally employable barely-woman and one woman who won’t use her most valuable skills, because—why, exactly?”
“We have a campervan, though,” I said. “We don’t really need a campground.” The van did some more groaning, at least I thought that was what it was. It was hard to tell, with the rain and wind and all. The lights were still flickering, too. Could your headlights get waterlogged and short out? I had no idea. It didn’t seem possible, or everybody would constantly be driving through the rain in a blackout.
Cars can be fixed.
With what money? And out here, in the middle of possibly the most remote spot in New Zealand? Who’s going to do it?
Never mind that.“What was I saying? Oh, yeah. We don’t care about mud, or whether the campground’s closed. We have gumboots and a campervan with a toilet and fridge. If the campground’s closed, we park on the road. Who’s going to stop us, in the pouring rain? And there’s a town here, just north of where we turned off. Owaka.”
“Sounds like the teeming metropolis,” Delilah said. “I’m sure there aretonsof jobs there.”
“Cafés, though, I’ll bet. Tourism is mighty. We’ll check it out as soon as it stops raining. It’s summer, it’s New Zealand, and I’m sure it’s extremely beautiful here. It’s the Catlins. Famous undiscovered beauty spot.”
“Undiscovered is right,” Delilah said. “There’s literally nobody out here.”
“This is a very popular area,” I informed her, mostly to distract myself from the blinking headlights. “Ninety minutes from Dunedin. Undiscovered to tourists, not to Kiwis. Day trips! Holiday weekends away! But we’re not worrying about that now. We’re stopping for the night and then looking around.”
“I notice you didn’t address the valuable-skills part,” Delilah said. “I noticed that because I’m very bright and have an excellent memory. Like you.”
“Yeah, well, for me to get a job in software engineering, I told you, we’d need to be in the city. Not too many campsites in the middle of Auckland. Besides, I’m enjoying the cafés. It’s like a vacation.” There, that sounded good.
“Other than that we’re not, you know, on vacation,” Delilah said, “and are washing dishes and cleaning toilets and serving lattes all day, it’s exactly like that. You’re being cheerful again. You realize that just makes me more irritable. I hope this place has hot showers. Why do you keep honking the horn?”
“I’m not. It’s doing it by itself. That must be a thing.” It was getting hard to see, although it wasn’t close to sundown yet, but we couldn’t be far from the coast, even driving as slowly as we were. I wasn’t going to tell Delilah that the campground didn’t have showers. We’d figure something out tomorrow. We always had so far, more or less.
“Great,” Delilah said. “That’ll make us extra-popular, honking our horn through the countryside. Like farting your way through a crowd.”
“That’s refined,” I said. “You can disable the horn, I’m pretty sure. I’ll look it up when we get there.”
“There you go again,” Delilah said. “You used to besarcastic. I distinctly remember sarcasm. And don’t tell me I don’t remember. You’re only twelve years older.”
I started to say, “I’m still sarcastic in my head, but people don’t appreciate sarcasm as much as you think,” but I didn’t manage it. That was because the car started lurching like a drunk on a sidewalk. The lights were flashing like crazy, the horn was honking, and all the warning lights on the dashboard were on. Like,allof them. Also, the windshield wipers had stopped.
