Dad said it would have to be impressive, because something impressive would inspire people to give us money. He was going to jog 450 kilometres through the Strzelecki desert, to raise money for my treatment.

I said, "Okay, but mum has to come."

Dad said he was going to ask mum anyway, because he only had weekend custody of me and Roberto and the run would take a week.


He started on the arid flats bordering the Flinders Ranges. Me, Roberto and mum followed behind in a Landcruiser. Roberto was angry, he was 14, only four years older than me, but he thought he was a big man, and he didn't want to "waste his holiday" on the "stupid desert."

Roberto said, "What's fun about this, you asshole?"

"Shut up," I said.

But I kinda got him, because the thing about the Strzelecki desert is that Nothing lives there. God brought forth living creatures, and let them creepeth over the land, but not in the Strzelecki; it's just sand and heat.

Roberto made a sign and hung it around my neck when I was asleep, and it said Don't Resuscitate, so his iphone got confiscated.


During the days my dad was the only living thing that tried to challenge the lifelessness of the desert, as he pounded away on roads whose ends were a never-ceasing mirage of the end. We'd camp in the afternoons, and Roberto would wheel me around to look for Dingoes.

Dad was sweating eight litres a day, so when he tried to go number two it was painful. He was upset about it, because he was trying to do something important and he couldn't believe that this, his bowel, was stopping him. Roberto and I just wanted to go to McDonalds which was 200 kilometers back. Dad said stopping was not an option. Dad said we weren't quitters. He meant him and me, the things we were fighting.


I woke up before dawn one morning and saw them through the windshield, mum and dad, standing atop a dune, skylit by the sinking moon. They spoke in their quiet voices. And when she started crying he put his arm around her.


That night I lay with my head in mum's lap, the smoke of our campfire drifting into the evening, dad stumbling around the sandhills with a spade and a toilet roll.

"Your dad needs to see this through," she said to me.

"Why?"

"Oh. I don't know hon, he wants to suffer."

"What?"

She sighed. "Do you how he keeps going?" she said. "He finds little holidays. He looks at a beautiful view of the desert, or listens to the rhythm of his feet, and he finds a holiday in that moment while he's running."

Sometimes I really blamed her a lot for not loving him anymore but still seeming to love him so much. The fire flickered and I could only see her mouth and chin and her hair backlit and dancing in the wind, and the cold desert around.


A hundred kilometres from Innamincka, Dad stopped running and just stood on the road. Then he knelt down on both knees and mum got out.

They argued.

Dad said, "We raised three thousand dollars we'll have to give back."

She told him to lower his voice. She spoke to him quietly. Sweat poured off his face onto the road, drying there immediately.

"He's crying," said Roberto.

"No he's not," I said. "Shut up Roberto."

Then she put her arm around him. "Breathe," she said to him, "just breathe."

An hour later we turned around, because dad couldn't go on. He sat between Roberto and me and didn't say much. Sometimes he pointed out a dune. Roberto and I got more and more excited as we came closer to the McDonalds which we could see on a road map of South Australia that was sponsored by McDonalds.


But by the time we got to Wilpena, I had started having a bad day and had lost my appetite. Dad carried me out to a bench seat near the golden arches and I sat in his lap, my shoulder under his arm and my face on his shirt, and he rested his chin on my head and we watched Roberto hang the Don't Resuscitate sign on a statue of Ronald McDonald.

"Did you find a holiday today?" I asked him.

I felt him smile. "Yes, here with you right now."

"Will I be better one day?"

He thought about it.

"Don't lie. If I died I wouldn't even want to be resuscitated," I said.

"What?"

"I don't care if I die."

"Yes you do."

He knew that's what I wanted him to say. He put his cheek on my crown, "Yes you do, silly."

"Don't be so sad about me all the time," I said. "Just be sad sometimes, not always."

"Okay," he said.

Roberto was eating an M&M McFlurry, and he got into a lot of trouble because he said it was the best fucking thing he'd ever tasted.


.