Page 48 of The Vanishing Place
“Hey.” It was Lewis shouting. “Let her go.”
The man, with hair to his shoulders and arms covered in puffy veins, smelled of sweat and cigarettes. Effie squirmed in his grip, his breath hot and moist on her face, but he was too strong.
“I see you, girl,” he spat, the words spraying on Effie’s cheek.
Lewis lunged at him, trying to pry the man’s arms from Effie’s body, but his stringy muscles were useless. Kids, even twelve-year-olds, were nothing compared to adults. The man kicked, slamming his foot into Lewis’s stomach, and Lewis fell back, landing on a rock with a sickening thud.
“Leave him alone,” shouted Effie.
The man strengthened his grip, and a new fear, colder than the first, flushed through her skin. He was trying to drag her with him, to take her away. She thrashed and scraped with her teeth, but it didn’t help. A horrible sound crawled out of the man’s mouth and he pushed his lips to her ear.
“I know,” he sneered, panting, and warm saliva trickled down Effie’s face. “I know what he did to that nice girl. He needs to be punished.”
Effie tried kicking, but the man lifted her up so that her legs flailed in the air. She screamed and he thumped the side of her head with his own. The pain was instant, like every feeling she had was suddenly in her head, and she blinked white spots.
“Let go of her, you ugly shithead.”
A blur of red—Lewis’s cap—flashed through the white spots, followed by a yell and a sudden release. Dazed and on the ground, Effie looked up. Lewis and the man were mushed together somehow, and one of them was bleeding. There was a rock the size of Four’s head discarded a few meters away, and one edge was splotched with blood.
“Run!” Lewis yelled.
But Effie’s legs wouldn’t move. Her muscles had frozen, hard and weighty, like maybe they weren’t even hers.
“Effie,run!”
Adrenaline pushed through the cloud, her head impossibly heavy, and she stumbled to stand. Lewis needed her. The man was on top of him, forcing his head into the ground, and Lewis was too scrawny to fight back. Too scared to even hurt a possum. But as Effie stumbled forward, his eyes met hers. Pleading.
“Please,” he mumbled. “Go.”
She turned, her heart pumping, then she ran.
“I know what he did to her,” the man shouted after her. “I know.”
Effie sprinted from the park, her lungs screaming as her legs carried her up the road. Then arms wrapped around her, scooping her up, and she was no longer running.
Dad.
“Lewis…” Tears dripped into Effie’s mouth. “Lewis is—”
“Come on.”
Dad lifted her onto his back, her body draped like the dead chamois, and he ran back in the direction that Effie had just come from.
—
That evening, Lewis sat on the sofa bed in June’s living room with Tia on one side and Aiden on the other. Aiden kept gawking at him like he was a superhero, and making him play silly kid games.
After they’d been to the clinic and the nurse had given Lewis loads of pills and two ice packs, June hadn’t let him go back to the caravan.Not a hope in hell,she’d said. His nan hadn’t even come to see him, which Effie thought was pretty shitty, but Lewis hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe it was because they were already in huge trouble. After hugging Effie so tight that she might pop, June hadgone proper mad. Like ballistic. Aiden had even burst into tears, and he wasn’t the one in trouble.
“Will the broken rib pop out of your skin?” asked Tia.
“Nah.” Lewis smiled.
“Did the nurse sew your ribs back together, then?”
“That’s not quite how—”
Tia’s eyes widened. “Do you think she forgot?”
