Page 63 of The Vanishing Place
“Is your dad from that Scandavia place too?” she asked eventually.
“Scandinavia. No.” Asher sucked on his other thumb. “He’s Kiwi. Olive-skinned, like my sister. I don’t look anything like him.”
Effie shrugged. “I don’t look like my mum either. She’s dead though.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s—”
“Were the kids at school mean to you? Cos, you know, your eyes look sort of weird.” Effie blinked as she said it. “Like an alien or something.”
A smile crinkled the sides of Asher’s eyes—a blue ocean and a dark abyss. “Sometimes, I guess.” He grinned. “But some of the girls liked it…thought it was exotic.”
“Jesus.” Effie stuck two fingers down her throat and pretended to be sick. “I think I might vomit.”
Asher smiled again and picked up a nail. They sat in silence for the next while as he hammered in the remaining corners. Then he grabbed a piece of the crappy wire netting and a set of pliers. Effie picked up a pair of gloves from behind the stump and chucked them at him.
“Don’t want you bleeding on the cage,” she said. “Your blood’s probably blue or something. Probably poison the chard.”
“That explains all the dead broad beans, then.”
Effie almost smiled. “Weirdo.”
Asher worked and Effie watched.
“My best friend says I shouldn’t trust teenage boys,” she said. “Says their brains are only made one way.”
“And what way’s that?”
“Dirty.” Effie shrugged. “Full of yuck stuff, he says.”
“Your best friend’s a boy?”
“Yeah.” Effie scowled. “So? Your best friend’s probably a possum turd.”
“Just seems a bit contradictory of him.”
Effie frowned.Idiot. “How else would he know what boys are thinking?”
Asher held up his gloved hands. “You got me there.”
Effie pulled at the grass and tugged a clump free.
“Do you work for social services?” she asked.
“Me?” His smile was almost a laugh.
Effie didn’t smile back.
“Do I look like the poster boy for children’s services? Shit, I once made a kid cry just by walking past him in the supermarket.” Asher used his fingers to shoot beams from his eyes. “The boy probably thought I was an X-man or something.”
Effie let his words sit a moment, refusing to ask what the heck an X-person was. “You’re right,” she said. “I’d be pretty peeved if you turned up as my social worker.”
“One Sunday at church, I sneezed real loud, and a young girl turned and stared at me. She peed herself, right there on the wooden pew. Ruined her best dress.”
Effie glowered at him. “You’re gross.”
“I wasn’t the one who peed myself. I just sneezed. There’s no law against sneezing.”
Effie didn’t know what to do with that.Such a weirdo.
