Page 105 of The Vanishing Place
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“Tia.Tia.” Effie shook Tia’s arm. “Wake up.”
Her sister stirred and rolled over. “What?”
“We’re leaving.”
Tia frowned. “Leaving?”
“Dad’s gone again.” Adrenaline quickened Effie’s words. “Onone of his trips. I’ve packed enough stuff, and we can use the pink markers to navigate a way out via the river. I’ve been thinking it over, trying to work out the easiest route, and—”
“Why would we leave?”
Effie moved back, the expression on her sister’s face punching the air from her stomach. “I…” she stuttered. “Cos…”
Tia yawned and pulled herself up, sleep clinging to her face, and Four stretched and murmured in the bundle of blankets next to her.
“Because…” Fire tingled in Effie’s palms. “Because of Dad.”
Tia looked at her. Not nodding. Not understanding.
Effie’s heart thumped against her ribs. “Doesn’t he scare you?”
“Why would he scare me?” Tia clutched her duvet. “You scare me more than Dad.” She mumbled the words into her chest. “Dad’s sad and, you know, quiet. But you…” Her words shrank further. “You get mad. And sometimes when you shout at Dad, it makes Four cry. Four says you’re keeping Dad away from us. As a punishment or something.”
“What?” A lump swelled in Effie’s throat. “No. No.” She shook her head. “This is all wrong. I’m protecting you. I’m trying to keep you safe. Dad’s not well.” Effie stared at her sister. “It’s not safe for us to stay with him. We have to leave.”
“Dad loves us.”
“Dad is never here!” shouted Effie. “We do everything for ourselves. We don’t have a dad.”
Tia shook her head. “I’m not leaving.”
Effie stopped as tears dampened her sister’s eyes.
“I hate it out there,” said Tia. “With all those people. I hate leaving the bush.”
Effie frowned, the world suddenly less solid. “You love visiting Koraha. You love staying with June.”
“No.” Tia shook her head. “I don’t. I only liked it when June came here.”
“But I thought—”
“The kids at school are horrible,” she said. “They call me bush rat. A stinky little bush rat. And they rub mud in my hair.” She wiped a hand across her face. “The girls always laugh at my clothes, and they throw my lunch into the trees, like rat scraps.”
The floor shifted and dissolved under Effie’s knees, like she was falling through a cloud. Down. Down. Down.
“Tia, I didn’t…”
“The kids are too scared to tease you. They think you’ll bite them with your wolf teeth, or that you’ll make gloves from their skin. And Lewis is, like, real big now. Leanne said he tried to kill his own dad.”
“Tia, that’s not true.” Effie paused. Leanne, the tall kid from Tia’s class, was a lying bitch. She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Tia.”
“If we leave, those government people with fancy suits will cage us up like possums. Then they’ll throw us into one of those foster homes that smell like cats and cigarettes. Foster parents are mean. They beat kids, and they scare them so much that the kids wet the bed. Then the kids have to sleep in it, in the pee, and they have to go to school smelling of wee and cats.”
“Tia, I don’t think that’s true. I bet there are loads of nice foster homes.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Leanne knew a kid who got fostered, and they made her sleep in a cardboard box and gave her dog food for dinner. The wet stuff that slops out of cans and looks like sick.”
