Read an Excerpt
1
They look at him like they want to kill him.
This seems a little harsh, given Nick is already lying on a hospital gurney being fed into an ambulance, IV trailing from one arm. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who intentionally screws up anyone’s vacation. Aunty Vinka’s latest (and hottest) new boyfriend is all dark hair, slow smiles, and cheekbones—he’s part aging member of a K-pop band and part surfer, with shockingly green eyes.
“Sorry,” Nick says, his perpetual grin finally fading into something closer to sheepishness. “I really thought I could catch it.”
Aunty Vinka, who is definitely not delusional enough to believe she could catch a venomous snake using only a pair of kitchen tongs, smiles up at the nearest paramedic. Aunty Vinka smiles up at everyone: she’s five foot nothing and likes to say my dad sucked up the entire height allocation in their family. “Can I ride with you guys to the hospital?”
The paramedic grunts, which I guess Aunty Vinka can decode, because she climbs in, inadvertently (at least I hope so) flashing the family as she picks up the hem of her skirt, the silver charms on her anklet jangling.
“I’ll call you when we get there!” she says, and the ambulance doors close before anyone can remind her that she can call all she likes, but we won’t be picking up: There’s no phone reception here at the family farmhouse. There’s no internet, either, in case you were wondering how personally stoked I am to be here.
“I guess it’s not his fault,” Bec—Aunty Bec, I should call her now, for reasons I’ll get to in a sec—says to Dad as the ambulance bumps off down the tree-lined driveway.
This is overly generous, because it really, truly is Nick’s fault. Not the murder, which hasn’t happened yet, but getting bitten by the snake. Turns out snake handling isn’t actually “just a matter of confidence.”
“Of course it’s his bloody fault.” Dad always says what I’m thinking and can’t say. (Mum thinks he says what nobody should say, which might be why they’re divorced.)
“He was trying to help,” offers Shippy, who is Aunty Bec’s (not so new, and not so hot) boyfriend.
“Help who—the snake? Mission accomplished.”
“D’you reckon he was trying to impress us?” Aunty Bec says.
“What? Why?”
“Meeting the family, you know. He was probably nervous and wanted to make a good impression.”
“I told him to put down the tongs,” Dad says.
I’m not sure Nick heard Dad over Shippy whooping with encouragement and Aunty Vinka shouting at him not to hurt the snake. If you’re wondering why Nick wouldn’t just leave the snake to slither back into the bush or call a professional, all I can say is: Me too.
“Let’s go inside,” Bec—Aunty Bec—says, sounding tired.
It’s Aunty Bec, not Aunty Vinka, who you’d expect to have the hot younger boyfriend. Aunty Vinka is probably quite pretty, but most of the time she looks like she’s recently escaped from a hippie commune (and not the kind with running water and yoga classes, but more of a make-your-own-compost deal). Aunty Bec, in contrast, is camera ready: all pressed clothes, swishy bob, and no visible pores. That’s what makes it all the weirder that she’s voluntarily tied herself to Shippy.
“I thought he had it,” Shippy says, scratching at his floppy blond curls like someone whispered the word nits in his ear. “Just before it bit him.”
“Another entrant for the Darwin Awards.” Dad puts his arm around me as we head back into the farmhouse. “Do you think Vinka finds all these guys outside the lobotomy clinic, or is it just a coincidence?”
“Nick’s a sweet guy, Andy, don’t be a . . . jerk,” Bec—Aunty Bec! Aunty Bec!—says, clearly remembering my presence and catching herself. She looks around for her son, Dylan, but he’s probably in his room. Dylan’s usually in his room.
We troop inside the farmhouse, which I probably shouldn’t call a farmhouse because there’s very little farming going on these days. When Dad and Aunty Vinka grew up here, Grandad ran cattle and sheep, but then the family moved to Perth and it became more like a vacation home, or a hobby farm at best. Grandad sold the last of the livestock before he and his second wife, GG, moved back here, but the name stuck.
It’s still got that vacation-home feel: mismatched furniture, hand-me-down appliances, and the smallest TV you’ve ever seen in your life. GG talked about removing the wallpaper and painting the place when she first moved in, but somehow they never got around to it, just like they never got around to replacing the bed Grandad and his first wife, my grandma, had shared in the downstairs bedroom (um, creepy). That’s probably why GG insisted on using the upstairs bedroom, even though Dad reckons she’s taking her life in her hands every time she goes up and down the staircase Grandad built. Even when the whole place is clean, which it is right now because we’re supposed to be driving back to Perth, it still looks grubby: There are stains on the wall that won’t come out, and the couch is more patch than original material. I found mouse poo under my bed last night (or at least I really hope that’s what it was, because the alternative is a rogue possum).
I want to ask Dad if people still die from snakebites (like middle-class people with vacation houses, not hikers lost in the wilderness with only a warm can of Coke), but is it too soon?
“So,” says Aunty Bec, perching on the armrest of the couch, right over the biggest patch. “I guess we’re not going home today after all.”
“You guys can still go back to Perth,” Dad says. “Ruth and I will hang around to see if Nick’s okay, and maybe stick a pillow over his face if he’s not, teach him a lesson.”
Aunty Bec shakes her head. “Shippy and I drove down with Nick and Vinka, remember—my car’s at the mechanic’s. Couldn’t leave if we wanted to.” She says that like she wants to. “Do you think they’ll let him out of the hospital today? I’ve got a meeting tomorrow.”
“I doubt it.”
“Great,” Shippy says, flopping into the nearest armchair so violently that it rocks backward and almost tips over. “All chill and no Netflix.” I’m not sure he knows what that phrase means. Also: gross.
Aunty Bec’s reading the spines on the bookshelf. “Serves me right for forgetting my Kindle. These books haven’t changed in twenty years: It’s all Sherlock Holmes, Ngaio Marsh, and Agatha Christie.”
She’s right, but I don’t care. I love murder mysteries, the higher the body count the better. You wouldn’t think you could read a mystery more than once, but maybe my brain is defective, because I often forget who strangled so-and-so in the library or poisoned blah-de-blah in the conservatory. (I’m still not sure what a conservatory is, but they’re constantly popping up.)
I love real-life mysteries too, and I’m pretty good at solving them. Sure, as a fourteen-year-old who’s never lived anywhere but Perth, I only get to solve mysteries like the Mystery of the Weird Smell in My Bedroom (a moldy banana at the bottom of my bag) or the Mystery of the White Dots on My Black Skirt (a tissue in the wash), but they count. I’m sorry to brag, but, you see, it’s going to be relevant soon.
“There’s still the TV,” Shippy, who I am definitely not calling Uncle Shippy no matter what (he’s not Dylan’s dad so he’s barely family anyway), says. “Right?”
“You could always catch the bus back,” Dad says hopefully.
“I get carsick on buses and it’s, like, four hours.” Shippy brightens a bit. “Maybe I could check out the surf. Are there any old boards lying around here? Mine didn’t fit on the car.”
Dad shakes his head and doesn’t point out that neither his dead-dad hobby farmer nor his elderly stepmother is likely to be a big surfer, which is uncharacteristically restrained.
Nobody has asked me how I’m feeling about any of this, which is annoying because I’d love to complain. It’s not that I hate Dad’s family: Compared to Mum’s side, which is kind of a snooze (her only sister is a nun, and not the “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” fun kind), they’re good value, and Dylan is . . . I’ll get to him. The problem is that tomorrow night I’m supposed to be watching a movie with my best friends, Ali and Libby, and if they do it without me, they’ll probably bond over their mutual love of gore-free horror, and then the next time we have to pair up in PE, they’ll choose each other and I’ll be stuck with Viv, who will definitely want to do my personal astrology chart again.
The kitchen door bangs open and closed and in walks Dylan. He’s missed the whole thing, which is classic Dylan, really. At the sight of us all he stops and slides his over-the-ear earphones down to his neck. Something that might be Finnish death metal blares out.
A word about Dylan, on whom Ali and I developed crushes the summer he learned how to do something with his hair. It was awkward enough to have a crush on a family friend—Bec grew up around here too and stayed friends with Dad and Aunty Vinka when they all moved to Perth, so I’ve known Dylan my whole life. But it went full cringe about six months ago when I learned we’re not just family friends but related. Turns out his mum, Bec, is the half sister of my dad and Aunty Vinka.
It’s a whole thing, but the short version is that forty-something years ago my grandad had a super-sneaky affair with a woman he worked with, who put the resulting kid up for adoption. That much we know from a letter that surfaced after Grandad died. Turns out Aunty Bec’s mum, who was best friends with Grandma, thought it was a great idea to secretly adopt the kid and not tell anyone. This bit Aunty Bec only found out after her parents were killed in a car accident and she went through their stuff.
The word you’re looking for is: yikes.
Dylan looks at me and raises his eyebrows. He can’t raise just one, like me, and I know it kills him. I shrug, not sure how to communicate the whole Snake! thing with just my face. Now that we’re, what, half cousins, I haven’t even noticed this trip that he’s lost his curls (bad) and skinny jeans (good).
“What’s going on?”
“We’re staying another night,” Aunty Bec says.
“Why?”
“Ask Nick,” Dad says. That’s when he gets a look like he’s just been told the toilet’s overflowing and all the plumbers in the world are booked until Christmas. “Crap.”
