I realise I can’t hear any music. She’s just put the earphones in without turning on the Discman. We stare at the shells that have been glued to the ceiling. The place is decked out in a jungle theme. Jungle prints on the wall, vine wallpaper in the tiny bathroom.
‘What if we never get out of here?’ Taylor asks very quietly.
‘We will,’ I say, thinking of Taylor and me. But Mum and Dad? I try not to think about it too much. The idea of them working for as hard as they did for so many years only to end up here forever is too depressing to think about. But I can help them. I know I can.
Taylor clears her throat. ‘So, there’re a lot of little kids around here.’
‘Yeah. I noticed that.’
‘And old ladies. Lots of old ladies.’ Taylor props herself up on her elbow. ‘I didn’t expect kids and old ladies.’
‘Yeah. I don’t think our corkscrews are going to get much use.’
‘We need to watch Dad really closely. I feel like we got side-tracked with all the packing and everything. We need to keep a proper eye on him. We should set up a roster.’
We’d started checking his black bag, but we hadn’t found anything incriminating. Either he’d cottoned on to us prying, or losing the house had shocked him enough to stop him in his tracks – at least for the time being.
‘I guess,’ I say. It’s not like I’ve got a better idea.
‘Plus, it’d be good to keep the manager at the River Pub on his toes.’ Taylor yawns. ‘Dad won’t know what hit him. We’ll make his life hell.’
I lie there long after Taylor’s gone to sleep with her earphones still in her ears. Eventually, I get sick of lying on my quarter of the bed and get up and head into the annex, where I sit down in one of the camp chairs and stare at the unpacked boxes stacked next to the camp table.
The thing is, I’m mad at Dad, but I don’t really want to make his life a living hell; I just want him to stop gambling. I want to live in a place with an inside kitchen and be able to leave my things in my room and know they won’t have disappeared the next time that I reach for them. I steel myself. I might be adopted and I might be furious about the whole thing, but I’m with Taylor on this. If Dad can’t help himself, we’ll help him. Whether he wants that help or not.
***
When I wake up in the night, everything feels too stuffy. I shove Taylor’s leg off me and kneel up on the bed so I can lean out of the open window and breathe the outside air.
I see something move outside and for a moment my whole body tenses. I notice the raggedy shirt and ripped shorts. I breathe out. It’s just Dad, sitting by the road, smoking something that may or may not be a cigarette.
My dad’s changed since he stopped work. It was in little ways at first: the ironing board being put away because it no longer mattered if his shirts were creased. Dishes left on the coffee table and newspapers stuffed into all the dark corners of the house with the racing section ripped out.
He grew quieter, he slept more. He’s always been a crier, but his crying has changed. He cries less, but for longer. The sound is sort of gut-wrenching and much harder to block out. What I noticed most was that he stopped asking us questions. In our family, my mother’s always been the one who tells you who you are and what you like, and I think both Taylor and I have found a certain comfort in that. My father has always been the questioner – always asking us what our opinion was on things, even if it made Mum roll her eyes and say we were too young. He always asked us what we liked; what we were thinking. He asked us, endlessly, what we were doing.
There’s a sort of emptiness without his questions. It feels as though he’s stopped caring.
I asked Taylor about it once, whether his sudden quietness bothered her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d be so mad if he pretended we weren’t mad at him.’
I don’t really understand how asking us things – talking to us – is pretending, but it seems to make perfect sense to Taylor.
***
I wake up to the sound of voices. I can hear Mum and Taylor talking in the annex. ‘There are no crocodiles,’ I hear Mum saying in her quiet, soothing, you-can’t-take-your-books-to-Fairyland voice. ‘I promise there are no crocodiles. Go back to bed, love.’
‘No!’
‘Put down the frypan. There are no crocodiles.’
‘Crocodiles!’
‘No crocodiles.’
I yawn and sit up. ‘Mum? Need a hand?’
‘I’ve got it,’ Mum says, but I get up anyway.
Taylor is crouched on the floor with a frypan clasped in both hands. ‘We need more birds!’ she says. ‘The crocodiles! Birds!’
‘Yes, yes,’ Mum says, unclenching Taylor’s fingers from around the frypan handle. ‘That’s a very good idea. We definitely need more birds. I think I saw some in the other room.’
Taylor lets go of the frypan and bounds into the bedroom. By the time we’ve got in there, she’s passed out across the bed with her arms thrown up above her head.
‘Bless her,’ says Mum, and pads off back to her bunk.
***
‘Why crocodiles, though?’ Taylor asks the next day as we slide on our T-bar shoes without doing up the buckles. It’s lame to do up the buckles, even though I itch to, every single time.
‘How should I know? It’s your subconscious.’ I’d gone through a phase of trying to analyse Taylor’s dreams. I’d borrowed books from the library on theories by Jung and Freud, but they’d been too dense for me to properly understand. I’d read up all sorts of articles and books on how to prevent sleepwalking, but nothing really seemed to stop it. It happened when she was stressed, although sometimes it happened for no reason at all. Once she’d become stuck in our garbage bin and another time she’d ended up on the neighbour’s porch.
‘Who have you told about moving here?’ I ask.
‘As if I’d tell anyone about moving here,’ says Taylor. ‘Except Adam. Obviously.’
I’m surprised, but I just nod. I would’ve expected Taylor to be loudly whining about the whole thing to anyone who’d listen. But maybe this feels different to her than anything else.
‘You?’ she asks.
‘No one.’
She nods. ‘Good.’
We actually don’t need to go for another half-hour, but Dad’s sitting out in the annex and Mum’s reading an old newspaper on the worn-out cane chair in the small living room and there is a thickness in the air between them. After their response last night, I’m too indignant to bring up marriage counselling again.
Taylor and I trudge side by side across the caravan park. It’s a weird place. It’s almost pretty, with the river and stuff. But then you look closely at the caravans and cabins and there’s this air of decay around most of the places that makes me feel unsettled. Although, when you’re close enough to really see the gardens and cabins, you can tell that many of them have had a lot of effort put in to making them homely. Pots of flowers and wind chimes; cheerful paint and wonky paving stones.
There’s another kid leaving the caravan park, wearing the Sutherbend High uniform. He startles when he sees us and then beams like we’re the best things he’s ever laid eyes on. He’s broad and tall, and I’ve seen him around, I think, but in that blurred way that you see kids in lower year levels.