Page 28 of The Vanishing Place

Effie slammed the door shut on the outside toilet and stood, staring down at her legs. The blood had seeped through her trousers, and the damp cotton was sticking to her thighs. It was disgusting and filthy and embarrassing.

She was gross.

She was a horrible gross thing.

Effie blinked, her eyes red and swollen from refusing to cry, and she tore off a handful of toilet paper.

June said it wouldn’t hurt. She said that the first time there would only be a little bit of blood.

Effie tried to dab it away, the white paper turning a vibrant red, and her arm started to shake.

Something was wrong. Her body didn’t know how to do it right.

She was bleeding too much, not the little amount that June had said.

Effie stuffed the paper into her underwear, sickened by herself.

She was going to bleed out in a shitty toilet in the middle of the shitty bush.

Effie ground her hands into her eye sockets. She wouldn’t cry. She pushed her hands in harder, bruising her eyeballs, as she pictured the box of pads hidden under the floorboards, far away, in Dad’s room.

“You okay?”

Asher’s voice drifted through the door, only a few inches away, and Effie wanted the ground to swallow her up.

“Go away,” she shouted.

“Are you sure…”

A fiery anger pulsed through her. Her thoughts and words and underwear, all of it red.

“Just fuck off.”

Effie’s heart thumped in her chest as she listened to the softening of Asher’s footsteps as he hurried away.

For ten minutes, maybe ten years, Effie didn’t move. Then Asher’s voice rang out, calling the kids, getting them to chase him.

“You can’t catch me,” he sang. “I’m the big bad wolf.”

“Pow. Pow.” Four’s voice.

Then Aiden. “You can’t run from us, Mr.Wolf. We’re coming.”

Effie sniffed back tears. Asher was leading them away. Away from the house.

When it went silent, she ran out and sprinted to the hut, to Dad’s bedroom. She squeezed under the bed and lifted up the loose floorboard. Then she dashed back to the toilet, her fingers gripped around the prized box of pads.

—

A couple of days later, Effie woke early to find a small plastic bag next to her head. Inside were ten ginger teabags and a folded piece of paper. Effie took the note out, careful not to wake Tia, then opened it.

I grew up with an older sister.

She said that ginger helped .

Effie threw the bag across the room, and it hit the wall with a soft thud. What sort of creep snuck into someone’s bedroom when they were sleeping? She turned over and closed her eyes.

But that afternoon, when everyone was out in the garden, she made herself two cups of tea and gulped them down as fast as she could.

Within a few hours, the cramps had eased.

—

Dad hadn’t smiled all morning.

The darkness had crept into his cheeks and eyes, too heavy to lift. So Effie made Tia take the boys out onto the deck for lunch while Dad ate alone inside.

Effie walked around to the garden, looking for Asher. She couldn’t let him see Dad today. She spotted Asher hunched near the vegetable garden, probably overwatering something, and walked over with her arms crossed.

“Are you ever going to leave?” she asked.

He looked up as she approached, showing his blue-eye side. He was hammering nails into a plank of old wood, fixing one of the cages.

“Morning to you too.” He smiled.

“You’ve been here like six weeks.” She scuffed at the dirt with her foot. “Isn’t there, like, anyone out there who can stand you?”

“You don’t like me much, do you?”

“Not much to like.”

Asher sucked on his thumb, his finger disappearing into the circle of yellow beard. Cage fixing was a horrible job; the splinters were a bitch. It was probably why Dad got him to do it.

“Was it something that I did?”

Effie shrugged. “I don’t care what you do.”

“Your siblings seem to think I’m okay.”

“Well then.” Effie let out an exaggerated puff of air and clapped her hands twice. “Gold star for you. My baby brothers find you more interesting than a tree.”

Asher smiled at that. No shock there.

“And Tia?”

“She’s nine. And you’re nineteen. Bit sick, don’t you think?”

“I’m just looking out for her. Playing kid games and searching for fairies.”

“Said every pedophile ever.”

Asher didn’t rise to it, didn’t even frown. He just picked up another nail. Dad would have lost it.

Effie sat on a stump, ignoring him, hoping the splinters hurt his fingers.

“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.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“No,” he replied, serious. “I don’t work for social services.”

“Why are you here, then?” Effie raised an eyebrow. “Cos I reckon the whole back-to-nature thing’s total bullshit.”

Something changed in Asher’s face, like he had an itch under his skin, and he swallowed. Then he set the pliers on the ground.

“My sister,” he said. “She went missing when she was fifteen.” He looked down, his voice quiet. “I doubt she’s alive, but…”

Effie’s skin tingled, her body suddenly cold, and she pulled her sleeves over her hands. “Are you looking for her?”

“I’ll always be looking for her.”

“What happened?” Effie frowned. “Why’d she go missing?”

“Someone took her.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Effie!”

Her heart pulsed at the distant yell of her name.

“Effie!”

It was Dad, shouting for her.

“Effie.” His voice was heavy. “Are you coming fishing or not?”

“Yes,” she shouted as she shot up. “Yes. I’m just—”

Then Dad appeared, emerging from the side of the hut.

“Go get your stuff,” he said. “I’m leaving in five minutes.”

“Sure.”

Then he turned away, leaving a black hole.

Asher looked at her like he wanted to say something—about Dad—but he thought better of it.

“Please,” Effie whispered. “Dad…he just has bad days sometimes.”

Asher stayed silent. Which was worse. He just looked at her—pitying her—with his stupid judging face. His stupid didn’t-know-nothing eyes.

It made Effie angry.

“Do you wish your eyes weren’t all creepy like that?” she said, irritated.

“God willed it that way.”

“You don’t actually believe in all that crap?”

“I do.”

“Well, your god must be a bit of an arsehole.”

Asher didn’t say anything, and Effie turned and hurried after her dad.