Page 43 of The Vanishing Place

Effie lay on her back, her red hair splayed like roots through the undergrowth as she looked up at the rimu trees. Giants that had been born into darkness, into the dirt, but that had crawled out of the cracks to fill the skies.

She curled her fingers into the damp soil, digging hard and deep enough that the earth clogged under her fingernails and the bush seeped into her. She a part of it, and it a part of her. A girl made of dirt and possum shit, tangled in the roots.

The highest branches moved with the breeze, the long leaves swinging and dancing, while the lower branches had withered and fallen to the forest floor with her, decaying like old bones.

No crawling out. No reaching the skies.

Effie wiped a dirty hand over her top, her newly inflated breasts pulling the material tight, and she whispered into the air.

“I’m scared, Lewis.” She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and swallowed. “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it, then kick you in the balls. But…I’m scared.”

She blinked away tears, then bit into her tongue.

Her thirteenth birthday had come and gone.

Then her fourteenth. The exact days were hard to tell.

But she’d watched the kōwhai trees flower in spring, their drooping branches bursting with color.

In autumn, they’d darkened with the cold, and by winter the tūī had deserted them.

In August, with the approach of spring, the trees had shed their darkened leaves, and the color returned.

Two springs. Twenty-two months.

Just bush and trees and nothing. No mention of school. No trip to Koraha. No June. No Lewis. Just trees.

Dad lived as a shadow, dark and untouchable. A phantom that haunted the corners of the hut.

“He’s keeping us here, Lewis.”

Effie sniffed.

“He’s forbidden us to leave.”

—

Another full moon passed, shining as bright as the sun, but the light just made the shadows darker.

One moon, then another. Month after month.

Effie stood in the hut—in her prison—gazing out the window.

The kahikatea and tōtara stretched their long limbs to the skies, swaying and toying with the wind.

The tōtara leaves had already turned yellow with the warming air, but the color taunted her, and Dad’s stomping boots and clenched fists pissed on any pleasure the summer might bring.

She sighed and turned from the window. Then she spooned up a serving of lentils and vegetables and placed the bowl in front of Four.

She made sure that Tia and Four ate three times a day and that they washed at least twice a week.

Four had shot up in the last year, his pants no longer reaching his ankles, and he was always dirty.

Dirt stuck to six-year-old boys like sap to tree bark.

“You need to eat the green stuff too,” she said.

Dad came to the hut less and less, preferring the company of trees and feral pigs to his children.

And when he did, Effie didn’t let him eat with them.

She left his meals on the deck. He’d starve otherwise.

Since Aiden’s death, Dad had shriveled away, a skeleton moving beneath skin, his cheeks hollowed out to shallow caves.

Effie half expected to find him slumped dead against a tree, his body wet with booze and vomit.

As they bent over their bowls, swallowing down the tasteless goop, Tia talked about summer flowers and fantails and warm river swims. And as their spoons scraped the bottom of their bowls, Dad’s footsteps climbed the outside steps. Thud. Thud. Thud . Then the door creaked open.

“I have fish,” he said, holding his offering up in the doorway. “The boy needs protein.”

Effie didn’t turn. “I made him lentils,” she said.

“It’s fresh.”

She didn’t look at him. She didn’t acknowledge him as family, as the man whose blood matched her own.

“He needs—”

“You don’t know shit about what he needs.” Effie spun around and glared at him, the hut silenced.

He set the bucket on the floor, metal clanging wood, then walked out.

Dad always went hunting after he’d had a bad night. Effie touched a hand to the soft blue of her arm. He always brought them fish or meat after he’d hurt her. After the ugly drink, and empty bottles left discarded on the floor.

—

“Tia. Tia .” Effie shook Tia’s arm. “Wake up.”

Her sister stirred and rolled over. “What?”

“We’re leaving.”

Tia frowned. “Leaving?”

“Dad’s gone again.” Adrenaline quickened Effie’s words. “On one of his trips. I’ve packed enough stuff, and we can use the pink markers to navigate a way out via the river. I’ve been thinking it over, trying to work out the easiest route, and—”

“Why would we leave?”

Effie moved back, the expression on her sister’s face punching the air from her stomach. “I…” she stuttered. “Cos…”

Tia yawned and pulled herself up, sleep clinging to her face, and Four stretched and murmured in the bundle of blankets next to her.

“Because…” Fire tingled in Effie’s palms. “Because of Dad.”

Tia looked at her. Not nodding. Not understanding.

Effie’s heart thumped against her ribs. “Doesn’t he scare you?”

“Why would he scare me?” Tia clutched her duvet.

“You scare me more than Dad.” She mumbled the words into her chest. “Dad’s sad and, you know, quiet.

But you…” Her words shrank further. “You get mad. And sometimes when you shout at Dad, it makes Four cry. Four says you’re keeping Dad away from us. As a punishment or something.”

“What?” A lump swelled in Effie’s throat. “No. No.” She shook her head. “This is all wrong. I’m protecting you. I’m trying to keep you safe. Dad’s not well.” Effie stared at her sister. “It’s not safe for us to stay with him. We have to leave.”

“Dad loves us.”

“ Dad is never here! ” shouted Effie. “We do everything for ourselves. We don’t have a dad.”

Tia shook her head. “I’m not leaving.”

Effie stopped as tears dampened her sister’s eyes.

“I hate it out there,” said Tia. “With all those people. I hate leaving the bush.”

Effie frowned, the world suddenly less solid. “You love visiting Koraha. You love staying with June.”

“No.” Tia shook her head. “I don’t. I only liked it when June came here.”

“But I thought—”

“The kids at school are horrible,” she said. “They call me bush rat. A stinky little bush rat. And they rub mud in my hair.” She wiped a hand across her face. “The girls always laugh at my clothes, and they throw my lunch into the trees, like rat scraps.”

The floor shifted and dissolved under Effie’s knees, like she was falling through a cloud. Down. Down. Down.

“Tia, I didn’t…”

“The kids are too scared to tease you. They think you’ll bite them with your wolf teeth, or that you’ll make gloves from their skin. And Lewis is, like, real big now. Leanne said he tried to kill his own dad.”

“Tia, that’s not true.” Effie paused. Leanne, the tall kid from Tia’s class, was a lying bitch. She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Tia.”

“If we leave, those government people with fancy suits will cage us up like possums. Then they’ll throw us into one of those foster homes that smell like cats and cigarettes.

Foster parents are mean. They beat kids, and they scare them so much that the kids wet the bed.

Then the kids have to sleep in it, in the pee, and they have to go to school smelling of wee and cats. ”

“Tia, I don’t think that’s true. I bet there are loads of nice foster homes.”

She shook her head. “Nope. Leanne knew a kid who got fostered, and they made her sleep in a cardboard box and gave her dog food for dinner. The wet stuff that slops out of cans and looks like sick.”

“I think Leanne’s lying.”

Tia shook her head again. “Leanne pinkie-swore it.” Her eyes widened. “I don’t want some stupid foster family and their eight stupid cats. I want Dad.”

Effie opened and closed her mouth, and glanced over at the packed rucksack. With her insides trembling, she looked back at her sister.

“Mum and Aiden are here too,” spluttered Tia, her face hard. “This is our home. If you make us leave, I will hate you forever.”

Effie closed her eyes, aching in her stomach and bones, and when she opened them again, Tia’s cheeks were damp.

“Please,” said Tia. “Please don’t make us leave.”