Closed Fleeting Friendships

[Kate McNamara]

Kate McNamara was eleven now, which meant two things: one, she was going to Hogwarts this year, and two, she was big enough to reach the creamy caramel chocolate bars. Was it stealing if Mammy and Daddy owned the whole shop? Probably, she thought sadly, as she took it to the counter. Appealing to Kieran for a discount was a waste of time - Mammy had obviously warned him about her - but she tried her luck anyway, just in case. She liked Kieran. He was eighteen, come down to work at the adventure camp for summer before he went off to university. He spoke a bit of te reo Māori and had been teaching her words and phrases in exchange for camp gossip. A small, selfish, part of her had devoted itself to convincing him to stay, but she knew that was a waste of time as well. Environmental Science was waiting for him in Auckland. You couldn’t compete with that.

Unwrapping the gold foil, she went out of the gift shop and into the sunshine. Chocolate always tasted better after playing on the obstacle course all morning. Sorry - not playing. Helping. Showing the guests how it was done. What could she do now? There was always something: cleaning, tidying, sweeping, folding laundry, clearing picnic tables. She didn’t trust herself to go deep into the woods, yet; Mammy said there were plants here she wasn’t supposed to touch, and she was still learning which ones were which. But she could still help out a little.

She hadn’t checked the toilets for a while. That seemed like a good place to start. And it was a good call. “Mammy! There’s nae paper in the bogs!” she called out of the door. Nothing. Mammy was ignoring her. She was around somewhere - Kate just saw her. “I’LL JUST TELL ‘EM TO USE A BROCHURE, THEN, AYE?” Still nothing. She rolled her eyes, heading for the outside storage cupboard. It was attached to the shop, not far from the entrance - and somewhere, in one of the many deep pockets of her cargo shorts, she had a set of keys. She fished them out and wiggled the correct one into the lock. Or at least, she’d thought it was the correct one. It wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t come out again, either. She jiggled it some more. Really? Well, that wasn’t very professional.​

 

[Laura Zavaglia]

This whole get acclimatised to New Zealand experiment mostly meant that Laura's aunt was leaving her to her own devices while she went to work. Sometimes they found cafes or Laura would get bored while her aunt spent a long time in a bookstore, but sometimes it meant Laura could go spend a day at an adventure camp as long as she didn't tell her mum if she went bungee jumping. That was fine, Laura didn't think she was quite old enough to actually go bungee jumping yet anyway. Maybe she'd go for her sixteenth birthday. If she was still stuck having to be a witch, at least.

She was just checking the details on the brochure again, making sure she was indeed in the right place (for she had again been left to her own devices) when she was briefly startled by a loud voice. Curious, Laura moved towards the sound, spotting a girl about her age fiddling with some keys. Laura sympathised, sometimes her house key decided it felt like getting stuck to the point she had planned to climb balconies to their seventh floor apartment as an emergency backup. "Do you need a hand?" she asked, not actually thinking about what she could actually do to help other than give it a bit more elbow grease. Or "I've got bobby pins if that's any use?".