But Uncle Robert (I try not to call him that at school) did come home safely. Phew!

The rain was falling even harder. At our place, Tipene and I had played all the card games we knew: Snap, and Sevens, and Five Hundred. At his place, we’d read books and listened to wireless serials: Dad and Dave, about life on an Australian outback farm; Dossier on Dumetrius, a spy story. Tipene taught me some more Maori words. He and Finola have learned lots from Auntie Whina. She taught our class some.

There’s no Maori language taught at high school, which I reckon is pathetic. There was an argument in the paper about it. One woman wrote that Maori was a dying language and not spoken anywhere else in the world, so kids should be taught Latin instead. My parents and Tipene’s wrote a letter saying Latin wasn’t a dying language; it was a dead language, and if New Zealand schools taught Maori, it would help make that language healthy again. The letter had all their names on, and it looked really good.

Since I’m quarter-caste and Tipene’s half-caste, there are some things we can’t do. If he ever becomes an All Black (and he’s really good at sport), he won’t be able to go to South Africa, because black people and white people can’t play sport against one another there. They’re kept apart other ways, too. Well, even in New Zealand, there are places that don’t like having Maori or part-Maori people. We had trouble one time in town just a few months back.

‘You feel more like a Maori or a Pakeha?’ Tipene asked yesterday — Tuesday, when we wandered down to the river again. The rain had lifted a bit, and Auntie Whina had chucked us out, just like Mum did on Monday.

I stared. ‘Dunno. Neither, really.’ Most of the time I just feel like … like Alan Hohepa. I’m Pakeha, and I’m Maori, and I’m OK being both.

Tipene’s darker than me, but we’re the same height, and people seem to guess we’re related. ‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘What do you feel like most?’

He shrugged. ‘Depends.’ We stood at the start of the ridge, watching the river storming past below. A chunk of bank had been ripped away; a raw gouge of clay the size of a house glistened.

Tipene gazed upstream towards the swamp, where floodwaters gleamed among the flax and reeds. ‘Sometimes I feel mostly Maori, like when Nana Ahorangi and Grandad Rawiri are telling me about special places like that.’ He jerked his head at the swamp. ‘Or in bad ways, like that milk bar. And sometimes I feel more Pakeha, like when we’re doing Maths and stuff at school. Or when I’m with some useless sort-of-white guy called Alan.’