Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

was trying to steal her from her parents, he just sat and listened with his head down and told her he was sorry, he’d fix it next month, next month wasn’t far away.

For a long time she thought, They’ll come back for me. Later she thought, They’ll call. She didn’t remember when she stopped thinking that, when she put it away. She stopped asking Val if he had credit, and then she didn’t mark off the days anymore, and then she never spoke about them again. She turned to Val completely, tried to keep him in her sight at all times. And she felt so sorry for abandoning them, for not being there when they tried to call.

In the morning the rest stop was heavy with snow and snow was piled up at the edge of the overhang, and still falling. Without Emily’s blanket, Li didn’t think she would have made it through the night.

No headache but her hands and feet were numb and uncooperative. She put on all her clothes and packed up and then stood under the overhang, looking at the children beside the dead fire. They had come through the night unchanged. She couldn’t bury them, except under snow. It was too high and too cold for dingoes now, at least she hoped it was. Better to leave them together like this, visible to any driver who cared enough to lift them and take them on the rest of the journey. She looked through their clothes for status cards or anything that might identify them, so that someone could know for sure, but there was nothing, so she pulled a few hairs from each of their heads as gently as she could, gold and brown, and wrapped them in a corner of the pellet packaging, and put them in the buttoned pocket where she’d carried the horse.

She walked out into steady falling silence. There had been enough traffic in the night that the road was fairly clear so she walked on the road, listening for trucks. Each time she heard one going the right way she turned to face it and stuck her arm out, but they passed her like she wasn’t there. She wore the blanket and draped a plastic sheet over everything. As long as she kept moving, as long as it was light, it would be okay. When she was thirsty she wet her mouth with snow.

Li arrived at the top almost without noticing. There was a lookout but whatever there was to see was hidden behind low cloud and drifting snow. She felt no closer to Permacamp, or anything that was here in front of her. Now that she had let herself remember, she couldn’t stop. If she listened hard enough, was there still time to hear her mother in the other room? Was she crying? Had they always meant to come back and get her, like they said they would, and take her inside? Had they meant it at the start, at least, until things got too hard? Or had they always known it wouldn’t be possible? They got in on a one-child visa, she knew that much. Fengdu brought in One Child years before everyone else. That was the condition, and they took Chris. She assumed they’d left her because she was older, more capable. Or maybe Fengdu wasn’t looking for girls then. Val was their closest friend on the circuit, the one they trusted most, and he’d been dry for years. She knew they’d sent him money for a while. Had it been a slow, deferred decision, creeping up with an inevitability that surprised them, even while they resisted it? Had her mother always lost her voice on Sundays because the alternative was unbearable?

She didn’t know, she never would. There was no sound from the other room. She could push past the fear, the refusal, in Chris’s voice and ask what he thought, if they ever spoke about it later, about her. But what would be the point, now? And it wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t his fault that he was chosen.

After she’d been walking downhill for a long time, she heard another truck coming up behind her and stuck out her arm without turning. It went past, but slowly, and she heard the gears changing down. She watched it round the bend and then heard the whump and squeal of hydraulic brakes. Tried to run but only managed a stumble. The truck was waiting, pulled over on the siding. She saw the Homegrown logo on its side and thought somehow it would be him again, the driver with the melon. You couldn’t stop for everyone, he’d said, but he’d stopped for her.

The cab window slid down and she looked up at a face she didn’t know.

Jus you, is it?

She nodded but he looked back past her anyway.

How’d you get this far?

I had a vehicle. Wrote it off yesterday.

Black ice, hey? He nodded unhurriedly, sucked his teeth. Lucky you weren’t a gonner.

His face was ruddy with the heat from the cab, freckled forearms bare. I’m not sposed to take passengers.

I know, she said, and she was ready. She lifted her heavy arms clear of her sides, letting him see.

He nodded again and kept nodding, thinking it over. Nothin in the pack?

You going camping?

I’m not going camping.

Then there’s nothing in the pack.

If he drove on now, took his cubicle of heat and left her in the snow, she didn’t know what she would do. All she could do was stand there and let him look.

Fair enough then, I spose. Can’t have you freezing to death.

He kept the engine running. Her fingers wouldn’t work so he got down and helped her with the buckles of her knee crutch. She was greedy for the heat but she almost couldn’t feel it when he pushed her up and through to the bed in the back of the cab, helped her get the plastic off and the