The Letterbox Tree by Rebecca Lim & Kate Gordon

Author:Rebecca Lim & Kate Gordon [Lim, Rebecca and Gordon, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760657772
Publisher: Walker Books Australia
Published: 2023-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

I’m woken by the sound of loud, frightened voices. Right outside my house. It sounds like there is a crowd gathered out there in the street, arguing.

Fear crowding my throat, I pull on a pair of shorts and my least stained tee-shirt and run straight outside, not even remembering to call out for Dad, not remembering to shut the front door. Our cracked concrete driveway is searing and sharp with stones and bits of rubble under my bare feet.

The street in front of our place is full of people, talking, shouting, pointing.

‘What is it?’ I ask the backs of the people standing in my driveway, blocking my way so that I can’t see what’s going on outside in the road. ‘What’s happening? Has there been an accident?’ No one in our street can even afford an Auto, it’s hard to believe something like that could happen here.

I tug on the tee-shirt of a man leaning up against our broken gate but he ignores me. There are so many people standing out there that I can’t move forward. I’m trapped.

My hand drops as I suddenly remember the note I’d left Bea last night. I look around my front yard and it looks completely unchanged. Disappointment threatens to strangle me; it almost feels like a wave crashing over me, or through me, cutting off all my air.

It’s still a dusty bare patch of ground out here in front of my house.

She never came.

She never did what I asked.

It seemed such a simple request.

Maybe she didn’t understand what I was asking?

Dad trails outside looking rumpled and sweaty and tired. ‘What the heck is going on, Nyxie?’ he grumbles. ‘What’s all this noise?’

His eyes widen as he takes in the press of people out the front of our house – more people than we’ve seen in one place since they closed that swim centre despite the protesting crowd. Dad starts pushing his way through and forward. Because he’s a big man, the people standing nearest to us make way for him and he’s soon lost in the press of people. I collapse down on our top step, hemmed in by a wall of bodies and it’s so hot now, the wind so dry and rushing it’s like something that comes out of a machine, even though it’s not even mid-morning yet. Even my bum, on the hot concrete, feels like it’s sizzling in a pan. I squish into a small patch of shade near our front door and wait for Dad to come back.

I fall asleep where I’m sitting, because Dad has to shake me by the shoulder to wake me up. Cranking my eyelids open, I take in Dad’s jittery, feverish expression. The way he looks is exactly when he can’t get an uplink to his Lady Friend and things aren’t going his way.

‘It’s a sign,’ he mutters. ‘A sign that we’re doing the right thing by getting out of this place. Get up on my shoulders, quickly, Nyx. You need to see this.

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