A sudden commotion above us and birds—a pair of black cockatoos—shot out of one tree and swept across the open clearing, squawking. Elias was grinning so widely I thought he’d pull a muscle. ‘Ohmigod. This is so cool.’
‘I’m going to check it out,’ I announced, heading for the stairs. I took them two at a time, and pushed open the gate at the top. From the veranda there was a clear view of the river, a muddy brown expanse in the grey afternoon. There was a wooden picnic table—also mission brown—at the other end of the veranda, with two long bench seats.
The key was where Sephora had said it would be. I pulled open a screen door and then pushed a thicker, glasspanelled door inward. Then I paused for a moment to let my eyes adjust.
There was a large kitchen window opposite me that allowed some light in. The curtains at the other windows were closed, and it was still fairly dim inside. Light streamed through from the open door behind me, catching dust motes in the air. I swatted them away reflexively, took one step forward, stopped again. I could hear Elias and Vogue clattering up the outside staircase and I took a final second to absorb the peace, the stillness, knowing it was about to vanish.
‘No way!’ Elias: very loud.
‘What?’ I know I sounded irritable. I was getting irritated.
‘I have zero reception on my phone. How am I supposed to post anything?’
Vogue was fiddling on her phone, too. ‘Maybe there’s wifi.’
‘We’re in the middle of the frigging bush! There’s no mobile reception, and there’s no wifi.’ Thank God.
Vogue looked up from her phone to give me a hurt look, apparently not liking my tone. Then she looked around the room, forehead furrowing. ‘Why’s it so dark in here?’
I resisted a sarcastic comment and headed across to the nearest window to draw the curtains. I moved around the main room, opening the rest of the curtains and mentally cataloguing everything as I went.
Main room the size of a large open-plan living room, with a wood heater in the centre. A low dividing wall, waist-high, separated it from the kitchen. The floor was earth-coloured tiles, the interior walls just unfinished logs. Along with the timber furniture and kitschy country-themed hangings, the place reminded me of the back issues of Country Style Living my Year Eight art teacher kept for throwaway paint palettes. There was a solid timber dinner table, with bench seats and a couple of mattresses on solid bases, like simple couches or daybeds. Each had been made up with a patterned doona and matching pillow, worn but clean. At the far end of the cabin were a small master bedroom and a bathroom.
I glanced back at Elias. He was snapping pictures on his phone, apparently not worrying for now about how he’d post them. I headed back to start unpacking the car.
Hardly anything in the back was mine. My backpack and the Lonsdale bag Elias had loaned me. There was a second gym bag, stuffed like a sausage, which I could only assume held Elias’ wardrobe changes. Vogue had not come prepared for a road trip. Then there were just the bags of food we had picked up. No just about it, really. There was so much food it was ridiculous.
I met Elias coming down the stairs as I was going up, loaded with gear. ‘Go Linds!’ he cheered, waving his arms in the air like he had invisible pom poms. I would have hit him except I didn’t have a free hand.
‘Don’t call me that,’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘Or your voice will be going up an octave. Permanently.’
I found Vogue and sent her out to grab a load, and between the three of us we got the rest of the bags in fairly quickly. I was unpacking the food when Elias’ cheerful voice broke my concentration. ‘I’ve got dibs on the king bed.’
‘Fine,’ I said flatly. ‘Vogue and I will sleep out here.’ I’d already worked out that I’d be stuck sharing a room with her; there was no way I was sharing an actual bed.
‘Lucky me,’ I heard her mutter. I ignored her, and shoved a packet of biscuits in the pantry before slamming the door shut.
Elias wandered up to me, bumping lightly against me. He whispered conspiratorially, ‘Good idea. Better not to have witnesses if you’re going to kill her.’
I bit back a smile and gave him a warning look. ‘You owe me.’
‘I do. Like, literally.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you still on the clock?’
I shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’ That was the truth. I’d come along at his request, so technically I supposed I could charge him for all of this. I needed to get my act together and sort out how much he owed me. The least I could do was make a shed load of money out of the whole weird saga.
I grabbed the bottles of soft drink from the last grocery bag and leaned down to put them in the fridge door to chill, then swung it closed. ‘Food’s sorted. What’s the plan now?’
‘I’m starving.’ That was Vogue. She came wandering into the kitchen and opened the fridge wide open again. ‘I need food.’
‘You just ate half a packet of chips.’
‘Yeah. I need chocolate or something.’
‘I could totally go some chocolate,’ Elias chimed in.
We hadn’t had lunch. I’d had no breakfast either, and I didn’t know if Elias had had anything beyond coffee and the tea at Yvonne’s. Like always, I was going to have to be the grown-up. It sucked.
I reached for the loaf of bread and pulled the ham and cheese back out of the fridge. ‘We’re having actual food.’
Vogue shot me a look that would have given Grace—in all her seven-year-old disdain—a run for her money. ‘Who died and made you queen?’
God, I wanted to smack her. I could see Elias was about to burst out laughing and I glared. Bad enough to have one child with us, but if he kept siding with her…
I threw my hands up. ‘Forget it. I’m having a sandwich. You guys do what you want.’
I found what I needed to make my sandwich and took it all out to the table on the veranda. Through the open window I could hear Elias and Vogue giggling. Maybe at me; maybe just a sugar high from the chocolate they were scoffing. I fumed silently, barely tasting my sandwich, then took my lunch things back into the kitchen and dumped it all on the bench to deal with later.
‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back.’
I thought that would have been a clear indication that I wasn’t expecting their company. Like either of them could take a hint. Elias jumped up. ‘Ooh, wait for me.’
I didn’t. I was halfway down the hill by the time he caught up. It was a bumpy slope, with loose sandstone and bush rock, leaf litter and sticks, and a few wiry plants sticking up determinedly here and there. There were hoof prints dried into muddy patches, and big piles of horseshit here and there. Hooray for nature.
‘Hey, hold up.’ He sounded breathless. ‘I brought you chocolate.’
Okay, I’ll admit that stopped me in my tracks. I’m not made of stone. I surveyed the offering. ‘I thought you guys had started the Lindt.’
‘You’re clearly a Cadbury girl.’
‘You’re a weirdo, you know that?’
‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’
I took the chocolate. Vogue was nowhere in sight. It felt petty, but I was glad to get Elias to myself again. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from asking as I broke off a row of chocolate, ‘Where’s your shadow?’
‘What? Oh, Vogue? She didn’t want to come.’
I nodded, handed the rest of the chocolate back and started down towards the river again, this time at a pace more appropriate for the terrain. Elias was right on my heels.
‘Why don’t you like her?’
‘Why do you?’
‘She’s a nice kid.’
‘She’s not a “nice kid”,’ I corrected him. ‘She’s an egocentric little manipulator.’
I turned back to see him shrug. ‘She just wants company.’ A pause. ‘Besides, aren’t all kids egocentric and manipulative?’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘No, you were a grumpy, know-it-all killjoy. Sooooooo much better.’
That actually stun
g a bit. I clamped my lips together and pushed on down the hill. What did he know about me, anyway?
We reached the river and I went in search of some rocks to skim. I studiously ignored Elias as I dug around in the pebbles at the banks, letting the water lap at my fingers. It was warm at the surface, heated by the hot days we’d had.
I found three flat-enough pebbles and straightened up, surveying the flowing water. Upstream were some small rapids, and the current calmed a little as the river widened again. At its widest point, the opposite bank was a good ten or fifteen metres away. From what I could see, it was pretty shallow the whole way across, no more than a few feet deep in the middle. We could wade across if we needed to. Not that I had any intention of doing so. There was a proper bathroom in the cabin, and I was already looking forward to my first hot shower in days.
I braced myself and lined up the first pebble in my right hand, then let it go. It skimmed across the surface, bouncing one, two, three times before it broke the surface of the water and sank.
‘Not bad,’ Elias observed.
I lined up the second pebble. ‘I can do better.’
‘Of course you can.’
I ignored him and tossed the pebble with a flick of my wrist. We both watched it bounce three times before sinking, just like the first.
‘Bugger.’ I tossed my third pebble impatiently, and it didn’t skim at all, just landed with a plop.
‘So,’ Elias piped up, ‘why don’t you like Vogue?’
‘Didn’t we already have this conversation?’
‘You didn’t answer me.’
‘I told you. She’s egocentric. She’s annoying.’ I was digging around for more pebbles. There were rounded ones, long skinny ones. Brown ones, black ones, red ones—no good flat ones. I was getting increasingly irritable. ‘She makes you annoying, too.’
‘What?’ That little nervous laugh he did when he wasn’t sure if I was kidding or not.
I straightened up, hands on my hips. ‘You get all…you turn into a fourteen-year-old girl, basically. It’s not pretty.’
‘Wow. Say what you really think.’
I shrugged. He should know me well enough by now to know I wasn’t going to sugar-coat anything. I held out my hand. ‘Chocolate?’
‘What’s the magic word?’
‘You owe me a bunch of money.’
‘Close enough.’
I took the chocolate and stood watching the river flow as I ate. It occurred to me, as I stood there, that his questions about Vogue were a smokescreen. After all, she wasn’t why we were here. We had a job to do, and he was stalling.
I studied Elias in my peripheral vision. At a glance he might have looked relaxed, but I saw the little details: the tapping foot, the twitch of his hand at his side. He was nervous. And why wouldn’t he be? This was momentous for him. Despite my shitty mood, I did understand that.
‘So,’ I said finally. ‘You ready to go meet her?’
33
He wanted to walk. I nearly overruled him on the grounds that it was like pulling off a band-aid—the sooner over and done with, the better. But on the other hand, I had realised with a sinking feeling that Sephora had a lot in common with her mother, and I wasn’t in a huge rush to get trapped in a tearful reunion. I let him call the shots.
The road to the manager’s cabin ran along the river. It was much sandier than the road in, but mostly flat. Huge gum trees grew along the riverbank on our right and in the scrub to our left, along with a whole range of other trees and prickly shrubs. The sun had come out properly, chasing the grey away, and the sky was a deep and cloudless blue. Birds called, things rustled in the undergrowth. We didn’t see any other people. I liked that bit in particular.
If I could have just got rid of Vogue it would have been perfect. She heaved a dramatic sigh as we rounded another corner and the manager’s cabin was still not in sight. Elias saw me shoot her a venomous glare.
‘At least she’s not asking how much further,’ he pointed out.
‘Yeah, ’cause that would be annoying,’ I retorted.
Elias was still twitchy, lurching from brooding silence to rapid-fire observations and back again. He’d found a long stick and was alternately swinging it and poking it into mud puddles. As we picked our way through a longer muddy patch he dragged the stick along behind him, making a zigzagging path as he went.
A question suddenly occurred to me. ‘Did you tell your parents you were coming here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And they were okay with it?’
‘Yeah. They’re cool.’
I just shook my head. He had no idea how much I envied that. The openness. Even if I wasn’t already officially AWOL—and who knew what sort of trouble I’d be in for that—there was still no way my parents would be fine with me taking off somewhere random with people I barely knew. Like everything else, I would have had to hide it from them so they could keep pretending they had everything under control.
I found a loose rock on the road and kicked it along as I went, wondering. We were about to meet Elias’ birth mother, for better or worse. Then what? We would go home, eventually, and then where would I go? Back to the house? I couldn’t stay there forever. I had hardly any clothes, and even less money. Though if I ever got around to working out how many hours I’d done for Elias, that would solve at least one of my problems…
‘You should go home to your parents.’
Damn. Who gave him the right to read my mind?
‘Why?’ I asked, for the sake of being argumentative.
He looked me in the eye, unbothered as usual by the back-off vibes I was sending. ‘Because otherwise you’re, you know, homeless.’
‘Is that so bad?’
He shot me a withering look. Then he turned serious. ‘Do you think they’re freaking out right now?’
‘Who?’ I knew exactly who.
Another look. Another tactic. ‘What if they’ve called the cops?’
‘They won’t call the cops.’
‘How could you know that? They must be shitting themselves not knowing if you’re okay or not.’
I sighed and explained to him about the text-message system Mum and I had agreed on.
‘Did you tell them you’d run away with a boy?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘No.’
‘Do you think that would make them freak out more or less?’
A half-shrug. ‘Depends on the boy, I guess.’
‘What, are there options?’ He raised an eyebrow teasingly. ‘Are any of them hot?’
I snorted. ‘Yeah, you know me. I’ve got more hot guys sniffing around than I know what to do with.’
‘I know you’re mocking me, but I’m telling you—you’ve got that hot, sulky look nailed. I can totally see you rocking a little black dress.’
Sulky? I shook my head definitively. ‘Not my thing.’
Maybe it would have been, if Frankie was still around. Maybe we’d have ended up caring as much about clothes and shoes and makeup as everyone else seemed to. Maybe we would have had a string of boyfriends between us.
‘You know you could find someone who likes you even without the dress,’ Elias said. My lips quirked into a slight smile and he laughed. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘There must be someone who finds the whole no-eyebrows, Elvis-hair look devastatingly attractive.’
He smiled, suddenly coy. ‘Maybe.’
That piqued my interest. I waited.
‘Okay, there’s a guy at uni. I sorta have a crush on him.’ He looked sheepish. ‘Nothing’s happened, but…’
‘Since when are you shy about telling people how you feel about them?’
Was he blushing? ‘It’s not the same.’
I was really curious now. Elias was happy to befriend just about anyone, but he seemed like the sort who would take a real relationship seriously. He didn’t seem like a player.
‘Did you ever date a girl?’ I asked suddenly.
&nb
sp; Confused. ‘Why would I?’
‘I don’t know. Just because you felt like it was something you should do.’
He shook his head. ‘No. I didn’t see the point. I mean, you wouldn’t date a girl, would you?’
The look on my face must have said it all. He laughed. ‘Exactly.’
‘But you’ve dated guys?’
He seemed a bit amused by my interest. ‘Three. Two in high school—not kids from school: slim pickings there—one last year.’
‘Any of them serious?’
‘Serious in what way?’
God, was I really asking for details? My turn to blush. ‘Like, you thought maybe they were…forever.’
He thought about it. ‘The second one, Marcus.’
‘So what happened?’
A shrug. ‘Stuff. Life. It turned out we weren’t as compatible as I wanted us to be.’ He drew a breath. ‘Anyway…’ An attempt to get back to the topic we’d left far behind: ‘Your parents…’
Not what I wanted to talk about. ‘If you’re so worried about my parents, how about we really do swap?’
Successful diversion; he smiled. ‘Might work. They like you.’ He paused, a wicked grin spreading on his face. ‘And Vogue’s parents love you. Maybe you could move in with them.’
‘Don’t even joke,’ I warned him.
‘You could be sisters!’
My fist itched to connect with his stomach and I fought the urge. At home the kids were always hitting each other for one reason or another, it was just the normal reaction in our house. Of course Mum yelled and time-outed and punished, but that never had much lasting impact.
‘I don’t need any more siblings,’ I said finally. ‘But I’d be happy to loan you two some of mine.’
My words were clearly sarcastic, but Elias seemed to ponder them seriously. ‘My parents used to talk about it.’
‘Adopting more kids?’
‘Yeah. But they’d been on the waiting list so long to get me, they didn’t have much chance of getting another kid in Australia. They won’t give you a kid once you get too old, you know.’
I vaguely knew that sort of thing, but let’s face it, my family kind of had the opposite problem.
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