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the blue trim and white hull chipped and stained. Hadn’t been in the water in years. A forgotten member of the rich men’s fleet.
    I laid my hand against its stern and gazed up at it, wondering who owned it, wondering why he’d left it here, neglected, like a dead dream.
    ‘See anyone?’ a voice beside me asked.
    I glanced at Lynk, shook my head.
    He pushed his long, dark hair away from his forehead. ‘That was fucking stupid, Owen. Roland leads the way.’ He had his hammer hanging in his belt. ‘Gribbs might’ve seen you.’
    ‘Nobody saw me.’
    ‘How do you know? He might be calling the cops right now.’
    ‘There’s no phone line going to that shack,’ I said.
    ‘How do you know, asshole?’ Lynk pushed past me and quickly climbed the scaffold’s ribs.
    I watched him scramble into the aft deck as Roland and Carl joined me.
    ‘Anyone see you?’ Roland asked.
    ‘No.’
    He grinned. ‘You go next.’
    This was our second visit to Mistress Flight. The first time, a week past, we had boarded the boat on a whim, bored with our wanderings along the riverbank. Assailing the scaffolding and gaining the rail had made it seem like a capture, but I think now it was the other way around. Like us, Mistress Flight seemed lost here, a presence unremarked, a promise unheeded.
    We’d claimed each other, then, and in this our second visit the four of us arrived with a mission. The idea had been mine, to make Mistress Flight ours, to merge something of our futures. I’d thought of a clubhouse, secret and forbidden – an idea to snare the imaginations of the others – but for some reason the image that rose in the back of my mind had nothing to do with a clubhouse. In fact, it had nothing to do with my friends. The image had been, inexplicably to me, that of my father’s machine in the driveway.
    I slipped over the rail and crouched on the aft deck. Roland and then Carl climbed aboard, Carl licking his lips and breathing heavily through his mouth. Lynk had gone ahead, down into the cabin. I moved to the narrow doorway and leaned into the cabin’s dusty gloom. ‘This place stinks,’ I said over my shoulder to Roland. ‘Smells rotten. Let’s open the ports.’
    Roland shrugged. ‘Smells like my father’s truck.’
    ‘It’s just old,’ Lynk said, emerging from the forward cabin.
    I unlatched the nearest port and opened the small round window. The hinges were stiff. ‘We’ll need to oil these,’ I said.
    We opened the rest of the cabin’s ports, letting in the cool breeze.
    ‘There’s fuckin’ beds up front,’ Lynk said. He swung to Carl. ‘I’d love to see your old man try sleeping in one of those!’
    Roland set his backpack down and loosened the flap. He rummaged inside and withdrew a crescent wrench and a screwdriver with extra bits in its hollow handle.
    ‘I brought the soap and rags,’ Carl said.
    I stared at his yellow-coated grin. ‘Why don’t you use them on your teeth?’ I pushed past him to return to the aft deck. Lynk’s laugh rattled behind me. I reached down and lifted the hatches covering the big engine. ‘If we clean this up and put in new plugs we might even get it started.’ I went down on my knees beside the opening.
    ‘What for?’ Lynk asked, dropping down beside me. ‘You plan to drive it over the ground and back into the river?’ He sneered. ‘We can throw confetti and cheer you on, and if the rich guys say so the cops will beat the shit out of you.’
    Ignoring Carl’s snort, I reached down into the engine hold and tested the spring on the carburettor. ‘Yeah, right. If this boat’s going to be our secret fort, it’s gotta be in good shape. Besides, if we get caught we can show them all the good stuff we’ve done to it.’ As I stared down into the dark hold, I thought of rats. ‘You don’t want to live in a dump, do you?’
    Roland said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ He looked at each of us and added in his usual measured pace, ‘I mean, about showing them all