CHAPTER ONE
‘It’ll be like a holiday!’ my mum says, beaming at us with her head vein throbbing.
‘Fairyland Caravan Park?’ My sister, Taylor, looks across the table with such disgust that I almost feel sorry for Mum.
‘It’s the termites!’ Mum says, although we know it’s got nothing to do with termites. Having to sell our home has everything to do with Dad getting laid off and developing a strong attachment to the pokies down at the pub.
Which is why Mum’s telling us the bad news and Dad’s outside hiding somewhere. If he’d been in here, I’m pretty sure Taylor would’ve reached across the kitchen table and ripped out his eyeballs.
‘I’m not going,’ Taylor says. I’ve never met anyone else like Taylor. She’s short, like Dad, and wears her powdery-blonde hair very short. Although she’s got this very sweet, gentle voice, she’s extremely brutal. I spend most of my life walking into things and falling over, and yet Taylor’s still responsible for more of the scars and marks on my body than I am.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ Mum says, equally sweetly.
They stare at each other and then Taylor groans and stands up to peer out into the garden, and I hope Dad’s hidden himself well. Or maybe I don’t hope that. Maybe I hope she finds him.
I lean back in my chair and look up at the ceiling because ceilings have a sort of soothing effect on me. ‘A caravan,’ I say.
‘It won’t be forever,’ Mum says, as Taylor disappears out into the garden and starts yelling at something behind the garden shed.
I keep staring up at the ceiling. There’s the crack Dad plastered but never painted. There’s the stain where Taylor used to throw the food she didn’t like. ‘A caravan, though.’
‘It’s not a caravan with wheels.’
‘So it’s a useless caravan.’
‘What I mean is that it’s got rooms,’ Mum says. ‘Two bedrooms. And a bathroom.’
‘Whoop-di-do.’
‘Stella, it’s the best I could do.’ Her voice is flat and I feel instantly awful because it’s not Mum’s fault that Dad’s a latent gambling addict.
‘I know,’ I say.
‘We’ll get through it.’
I look at the tarnished light fitting and the crooked bulb above the dining table. It’s getting dark. We’ll need to turn it on, soon. ‘I know that, too.’
***
This has been a pretty bad week, even before the whole we’re-moving-to-a-caravan-park thing. The piece of post that I’ve been wishing for and dreading for as long as I can remember finally arrived.
The day the letter came was the day I’d decided to photocopy all my important documents. I’d watched a special on a news program that mentioned you should have copies of everything you’d need in an emergency and keep them in a separate location from the originals. I need to start thinking about these things. I’ll be eighteen soon.
Mum’s a bit sloppy with some stuff – mostly because she’s so busy – but she’s always been meticulous at keeping everything important in her desk, so I’d gone rummaging without really thinking about it. I’d been alarmed at the number of unpaid bills and loan applications, but that still felt like adult stuff that didn’t really concern me. I mean, I had a plan for how to become an adult. And that plan started with copying my emergency documents.
When I picked up my original birth certificate, the unfamiliar name had snagged my eye, like a stranger posing in a family photo. Kelly Russo. But I’d known I was adopted since forever. It just wasn’t a big deal. It almost felt like a fairy story. Kelly Russo – who had me too young and knew my parents really, really wanted a baby. The End.
I’d gone outside to bring in the mail before the snails ate them and there was that name again. Kelly Russo. For a moment, I’d been completely certain that I was going to throw up all over the letterbox snails, so I stood with my head curled in towards my chest, taking deep breaths, until the feeling passed. Until all I was left with was a pounding headache and the urge to both rip the letter into tiny pieces and also shove it down my top, right next to my heart, because it felt so precious.
I’d meant to tell Mum and Dad about the letter and have a bit of a self-indulgent tantrum about the whole thing, but before I’d worked out the most dramatic way to do it, Mum had dropped the caravan news and then Taylor was having a self-indulgent tantrum, and self-indulgent tantrums are sort of Taylor’s thing so I haven’t told them. Not yet.
I’ve been keeping the letter close to me. I like to imagine what’s written in there. Whether she’s left-handed, like I am. Anything to distract me from the fact that it’s taken her seventeen years to write me anything.
***
Sutherbend is a weird place – a bit too close to the city to be considered a country town, but also a bit too far out to be considered the suburbs. It has a very big river and a very wide highway, and the caravan park is kind of wedged in between the two.
Our house is on the other side of town, tucked into a street that’s not the worst (that honour belongs to Sunshine Road), but definitely on the lower end of the ladder. Both my parents had worked really hard to buy the place and I’m pretty mad about them losing it.
Fairyland Caravan Park. I roll onto my stomach and bury my head under my pillow. If anyone at school finds out, I’ll be a social outcast for the rest of Year Eleven and the whole of Year Twelve.
Taylor comes into my room. She never knocks and I’ve given up asking her to. She sits down on the floor with her head tipped back onto my bed. ‘I don’t want to leave here,’ she says.
‘Me either.’
We hear the squeak of the couch in the next room. Dad’s been sleeping in the living room for the past month but pretending he’s not.
‘There’s gotta be a way to get the money,’ Taylor says.
‘I think we’re past that, Tay. I think that’s what Mum’s been telling herself for months.’
‘But maybe . . .’
‘It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ve got about two hundred saved up – how about you?’
Taylor sniffs, which I guess means less than two hundred.
‘At least we’ll be close to the river,’ I say. ‘We can swim over summer.’
Taylor looks at me with her eyebrows raised. It’s one of the first things you’re taught in Sutherbend – to never go into the river because you’ll catch a dreadful disease and then you’ll die. I mean, even the bravest kids only ever go as far as poking the shallows with a stick. Some people swear they’ve seen it glowing green at night, but I’ve never believed that.
Taylor starts picking the polish off her toenails and my voice gets louder. ‘Mum says there’re rooms and stuff. It’s not a caravan caravan.’
‘If it’s in a caravan park, it’s a caravan.’
‘Apparently, there’s a pool and a tennis court.’
Taylor sniffs again. ‘I hate Dad.’
‘He’s seeing a counsellor. To help with his gambling.’ I don’t know why I always do this; try to spin things for her so they sound better than they are. Maybe it’s because I’m eight and a half months older, I don’t know. It’s just the way it’s always been. The only reason that I know Dad’s been seeing a counsellor is because I heard him telling Mum last night that it’s a waste of time and he won’t be going back. Mum had made this weird, cackling sort of laugh. Dad had asked her if she wanted some tea and she’d said yes. I don’t get adults. I really, really don’t.