Page 84 of The Vanishing Place
He’s lying. I saw him.
Effie dug her fingernails into her hand. Lewis wouldn’t understand. He’d just overreact. And besides, her dad wasn’t anything like Lewis’s dad.
“Griff drove Dad up the road to Fox,” said Lewis. “Told him to catch a bus there.”
“Constable Griffiths?” she asked. “The old police guy?”
“Yeah. Griff spotted Dad walking down Pauareka Road and followed him to Nan’s.” Lewis picked up a shell and chucked it into the sea. “Griff’s often hanging about Nan’s, fixing up the caravan and dropping off deer and pig meat for the freezer. Reckon he’s keeping an eye on us.”
“Why?”
Lewis looked at her. “Dad left me with Nan when I was seven. Parenting wasn’t for him apparently. Him and Nan got in a big fight about it, about him being a piece of shit, and Dad left Nan with two broken ribs.” He turned back to the water. “I think Griff and Mum were friends too, before Mum died. Anyway…Griff barged in before Dad could make a mess of my left eye too.”
“Isn’t Griffiths, like, real old?” Effie frowned. “Is your dad strong?”
“Ain’t nothing strong about a grown man who hits kids and old women.”
Effie stared, not knowing how to respond.
A smile tugged at Lewis’s mouth. “Griff says that Dad is nothing but a puffed-up weasel in gum boots.” The smile faded then, and he looked at her funny. “But I guess you’d understand that.”
“I don’t,” she said, too quickly.
Lewis looked at her like she was lying, but Effie didn’t react, and he kept his mouth shut.
“Right,” he said, pulling his T-shirt over his head. “I’m done feeling shite about this crap. Done feeling sorry for myself.”
He tugged off his shorts, naked but for his gray boxers, and threw his shorts onto the sand. “You coming?”
Effie gawked at him.
“It’s just a bit of water,” he said through chattering teeth.
His lips had gone blue, and he was clenching his fists at his sides, jumping.
“You’re mad,” said Effie.
“Suit yourself.”
“You’ll probably die.”
Lewis gave her a quick salute, then ran at the water, his knees pumping up to his chest.
“I’m not dragging your body back to Koraha,” she shouted. “I’m going to leave it here for the birds.”
Lewis bopped and jumped in the waves, and Effie watched, unsure where to look. The shape of Lewis, the lankiness that she knew, had changed. His arms and legs were more solid, and his chest was puffed out—his body suddenly more man than boy. Like he’d been blown up. As Effie watched, a warm sensation moved through her, a feeling she didn’t have words for.
“The birds will eat your eyes first,” she shouted.
“Oh god. Oh god.” Lewis bounded back toward her. “It’s bloody freezing.”
Effie rolled her eyes.
Lewis grabbed his clothes, the material sticking to his wet body—clinging to the strange new mounds and bulges—as he pulled his T-shirt on.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold.”
“You’re an idiot.”
