Claire knew magic wasn’t real. It was a shame. If it were, she’d blast everyone out of existence and there’d be no one in Shale but her parents and her and Marcus. Her knuckles whitened as they clutched the handles of her family’s shopping trolley. If only her mother would hurry up with choosing a peanut butter brand. Another minute or so and someone from Shale High was bound to run into them.

“Come on,” she muttered.

“What have I said about taking more care with your manners?” Suranne asked, placing a hand to her messy bun to touch it back into place. She needn’t have bothered. Strands of auburn were already falling out of her hair tie. She turned with a half-dazed expression, like she was seeing the aisle for the first time, her baggy green cardigan sliding off one shoulder to show the butter-yellow t-shirt beneath.

Claire had expected her mum’s vague look. When she was a kid, she hadn’t minded her mother’s almost mystical air, thinking it exciting rather than embarrassing, but these days it was yet another thing that marked Claire and her family out as different.

“Your mum’s such a hippie,” the kids had said to Claire on her first day of high school. “Will she sell us some of her stash?”

Her dad had been furious when Claire had come home repeating that question, eager for a quick buck and pleased by the sudden attention of her fellow classmates.

Claire and Marcus had learnt not to ask about Suranne’s half-there looks or to repeat what the kids at school said, but the truth was, Suranne was a little weird with her odd way of speaking and her permanent aura of having her head in the clouds. She looked at Claire now with a faint smile and a tinge of sadness in her eyes.

Oh, no, Claire thought. Here we go.

“I began to tell you a tale earlier. When we were foraging for cereal?”

“Nope.” Honestly, Mum. Who uses the word, “foraging” anyway?

“Don’t mark me for a liar, child, I was telling you a story. Your father stole my heart and me both, though I thought at first that I was stealing him. I still miss them sometimes—”

Claire sighed. “Who’s ‘them?’” Suranne was no born storyteller the way James, Claire’s dad, was. Her stories came out garbled, like she thought other people knew what she was talking about. They didn’t.

Suranne didn’t answer. She blinked, inspecting her shopping list. “I forgot about the milk when we were in the diary aisle,” she said. “We’ll have to venture back.”

Claire rolled her eyes. It had been like this for most of Claire’s sixteen years; her mother would start a story but never finish it. “Stuff the milk. What’s next on the list?”

Suranne checked. “Bread.” She smiled as Claire steered the trolley towards the bakery section. “James finishes work in an hour. I fancied we could make something hot for the homeless shelter. James and Marcus can see the dish safe to them later.”

Claire’s mother didn’t join craft groups or gossip at the shops, she didn’t do the tuckshop roster, but she did insist on making food donations to the local not-for-profits. Claire liked helping, as long as Marcus and James took the stuff where it needed to go.

Where was Marcus? He’d spotted Laura with her older sister and headed off in the direction of aisle seven ages ago. Marcus had always said he liked hanging out with Claire after school, that he didn’t need anyone but her, but ever since he’d started training for the big regional footie match – well, he had mates now, and Laura, the prospective girlfriend.

Adults moved out of her and Suranne’s way, glances skidding past them and noses slightly upturned. If her dad were here, things would have been easier. James had grown up in Shale and he knew how to be polite, how to deflect the questions and the nasty comments in a way that made people laugh and forget their animosity. And if Marcus were here, he’d shoot them a roguish grin they couldn’t resist …

As things were, Claire passed two school mums she recognised, her gaze unable to meet theirs.

“The O’Connors are an artistic family. Temperamental, you know,” one of them said in a stage whisper to the other.

“They can’t help it, I suppose,” her companion agreed.

Suranne didn’t say a word, her hand against Claire’s elbow, guiding her forward. Claire felt her cheeks burn, wishing she could pull away and disassociate herself from her mother, not that it would work, since Claire looked so much like her. But then they were past the gossips, moving silently towards the bakery shelves.

Claire went to grab some rye bread, skirting around the fruit and vegetable section. Right in front of the bread were kids from her year. She stopped and turned to face a pile of apples, hoping they hadn’t noticed her.

School was never fun for Claire or her older brother Marcus – although people stopped picking on him when they discovered he could kick a ball. Though Marcus had been a gifted painter, he’d soon given it up when he’d realised how much attention football got him. It made up for a lot of sins in Australia, being good at sport. Other kids had tried to bully Claire but once Marcus found out – well, no one tried it again. She didn’t have any friends, not really, but at least she wasn’t actively targeted.

No, she and Marcus weren’t the other kids’ problem. It was the stigma of having Suranne for a mum that stuck; endless looks and whispers, and only the four of them to deal with it. Claire had never known Suranne’s parents to ask them if they knew where things had gone wrong. They’d died in an accident before Claire was born and the rest of that side of the family – all city slickers – didn’t talk to her family either. James’s parents, Maggie and Dermot O’Connor, had been nice and kind and a bit vague, the way old people got, but they were both dead now too.

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Instead, Claire had gathered rumours, eavesdropped in the library and the local shop, anywhere she could really, trying to understand. The gossips said that James and Suranne had met in some big town like Sydney or Melbourne, then eloped to the sleepy town of Shale where James had grown up. There was a scandal, they reckoned, but they couldn’t say exactly what – only there had to be a scandal because who’d come to Shale willingly? Apparently, Claire’s grandparents were tight-lipped about their daughter-in-law as well and none of the rumourmongers got any joy out of them while they were alive. Anyway, the point was, Claire didn’t want to face kids from school with her mum.

“Whatever is wrong, dearest?” Suranne asked. “Why don’t you try and converse with some of those nice kids?”

“Nothing,” Claire muttered. Her mum was the worst. It was bad enough Claire looked so much like her, but did she also have to sound so stiff and formal on top of being off with the fairies? Not to mention, she literally had no idea of what kids Claire’s age were really like.

Before Claire could change the subject, Marcus reappeared. “Sorry, Sis,” he said. “I wanted to catch up with Laura.”

She shrugged, not wanting to show him she was bothered. He saw Laura every day in class but that wasn’t enough these days. “Want to go for a walk later?” she asked him.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said unenthusiastically, but his acceptance was an apology.

Suranne smiled at Claire and Marcus, unaware of the tension between them. “As long as you return home with enough time to help with the cooking.”

“Sure,” Marcus said. “Right, Sis?”

“Yeah.” Claire was distracted. Ella, a girl from her year, hurried towards them, messy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and tanned face shining. She was a quiet sort, but that didn’t mean Claire wanted to stop and chat. It was the shy types like Ella who gossiped in their little cliques at recess and made Claire feel like she stuck out like a sore thumb. Claire was shy herself, and when she tried to talk to the other kids, her conversation was always clumsy. She was constantly missing social cues.

“What else did you say we needed, Mum?” Claire asked. “For tonight’s recipe?”

“I was contemplating baking a shepherd’s pie. You could acquire some mince if you like?”

Claire sped off. She didn’t need other people. She did get lonely, but at least her family had each other. All of Claire’s life they’d been a unit, links in a chain. She could rely on them no matter how different they were.

***

Marcus opened the gate that connected the dry National Park land to the family farm. The electric fences marked the end of their property. He glanced up at the cloudless sky, scowled at the absence of any sign of rain, then jogged onto the track, turning back and waiting impatiently for Claire. “You and Mum are too alike,” he said, his joggers kicking up orange-brown dust as he scuffed his shoe into the dirt like he couldn’t wait to get going.

“What do you mean? We’re both mad gingers?” Claire asked as she carefully latched the gate before the more inquisitive cattle could escape, then walked to join him up ahead. She glared at her brother, gum trees surrounding them either side. She was nothing like Suranne.

“Well ... I don’t know ... but I’m not like you and Mum. Dad and I are just so ordinary,” Marcus said, but he didn’t meet her eyes as they set off together along the trail.

“As far as I can tell you’re a big weirdo like the rest of us,” Claire snapped, scaring a blue tongue lizard sunbaking on the side of the track into the undergrowth.

“Ha, ha. Thanks, Sis. But seriously, you don’t have to avoid everyone like Mum does. Maybe it’s that?”

“I can’t help it,” Claire said, kicking at a rock. “I don’t like anyone but you guys.”

“You had friends in primary,” he said quietly. “What happened to them?”

“Turned out they weren’t my friends.” She could never admit it to Marcus, but those girls had only been nice to Claire because they’d wanted to get close to him. They’d giggled about his muscles and his height and when Claire had said she wouldn’t introduce them, they’d dropped her.

“What about Liz? There was that week you guys hung out.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Claire said.

Unwilling to push things, Marcus smiled and started to run instead. “Race you!”

They were going to “The Big Dam,” twenty minutes into the National Park. It had been their special spot since they had been little kids. No one got lost on the track; the path was well marked out thanks to generations of hikers lured onwards by the historic mushroom tunnels an hour on. Plus, people were forever going exploring in search of the ghosts that had been there since the 1840s; apparently, a coal miner had gone mad and killed his wife. “If you’re quiet, she’ll come out, all clad in white,” Claire’s dad always said.

Whenever Claire and Marcus wanted a bit of peace, they’d sit side by side on a bush gum stump, right beside the brown waters. One time, in a drought, Marcus rode his bicycle right through the mud to the other side. Suranne had been furious. She’d had to stop working on a painting to hose Marcus all over, and even then she couldn’t wash all the black muck away. It was a place of special memories.

“Come on,” Marcus shouted from a long way ahead. “Last one there has to wash up tonight.”

Claire laughed and started after him. A few minutes later, she stopped running, clutching at her side and trying to catch her breath as she watched him vanish around a bend. There was no way she could catch him, not with all his football training. The sunlight caressed the treetops, trying to find a way to reach tendrils to the ground. A bird called as the sound of her brother’s footsteps came to her from further along the path.

She began to jog again. “Slow down, Marcus. It’s not a sprint,” she called.

There was no response. “Damn!” She tripped on the steep, rocky scree. When the area wasn’t in drought, this part was difficult to navigate, with a tiny stream running between rocks. At the moment, it was a tiny trickle, moisture seeping through her joggers as she rushed on.

She heard his footsteps slow in the distance. “Marcus! Wait up!” But then: nothing. That was odd.

She sped up, scratching past bushes and trying to keep her balance as she leapt from uneven rock to uneven rock. She couldn’t hear Marcus at all now.

Rounding a bend in the trail, she saw a clearing ahead. Marcus was grinning as he waited for her beside a big gum on the far side of the clearing. As she paused to catch her breath again, ready to tell her brother what a pain he was, the sun concentrated like a spotlight directly on Marcus, on his gleaming white joggers and brilliant red t-shirt.

His mouth was a wide-open slash, his screams cutting through the air. Claire cried out, but he didn’t respond. She ran blindly, closing the gap between them and stretching out one arm to touch him.

Before she could reach Marcus, a loud crack rattled through her, knocking her off her feet. She hit the ground with a thud, surrounded by bright light. She would have screamed but nothing came out. In desperation, she crawled forward, temporarily blinded, scraping her palms against stone, her jeans ripping at the knee.

The sizzling sound and the smell of smoke brought panic to her throat in a low growl. She looked up as a scrap of red cotton floated down, almost caressing her face.

She reached out again but there was nothing there. Marcus was gone. The gum he’d been standing next to had cracked in half, a neat split ripped right through its thick middle.