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Too Many Secrets
Chapter 1 - Becs I woke as we jerked to a stop. I must've fallen asleep. Mum said it would be a long trip to our new place. She wasn't kidding. My bum was numb and I rubbed the crick in my neck. I climbed out of the ute to see I was in a clearing surrounded by bush. When I turned to see where Mum and the others were, I wished I'd stayed in the ute. 'You've got to be joking.' They all smiled back at me and i wanted to throw up. 'No way! You can't be serious? Not in a million years.' 'Yep,' said mark. He grinned even wider. 'Is he for real?' I asked Mum. 'Come on Becs. It's not that bad.' 'You mean you dragged me away from my friends and school and our perfectly good house to live in that?' I glared at mark. This was all his fault. We were perfectly happy before he came along. Mum told all her friends he'd swept her off her feet. Yeah right. No-one ever asked me what I thought about it. And look where we end up. Out in the middle of nowhere facing a shack. That's the only word for it. A tumbledown, rickety shack. It looked like bits had been added on all over the place. The walls were bits of brick and bits of logs and bits of planks nailed together. The windows were smeared with gunk and the roof looked like it could slide off any second. 'Cool,' said Nick. If I'd been standing any closer to her, I'd have throttled her on the spot. Yes, her. Nick is short for Nicola. She prefers 'Nick' because she's in the middle of an identity crisis. Her hair is cut short and I've never seen a skirt near her, let alone on her. Just my luck. I get a sister who hates shopping. Nicola is my stepsister who came with her father when he married my mother. The 'complete' family. Right at that moment I thought they were all completely crazy. 'Can we go inside,' asked Nick. She bolted around the left side of the shack, past a lean-to. This one leaned way over. With any luck, I thought, it would pull the whole place down with it and we could all go home. 'Come on, Becs,' called Mum as she followed Nick and mark around the back. 'Oh my god,' I groaned, trudging after them. 'How can this be happening to me?' The back was worse than the front. Same deal with the bitsy walls and even bigger lean-to. I figured that the previous owners kept building them on to help steady the place. 'Look, Nick,' said Mark. 'That must be the vege garden.' Vege garden? A crooked stick fence leaned around an area of knee-high weeds. 'And look at the cute chicken house, Dad,' Nick ran over to a smaller version of the shack. Poor chickens. Not that there were any. She looked disappointed. What was really scary was the bathtub. It squatted on bricks - outside the back door. A tin bucket filled with leaves sat next to a pipe sticking out of the ground with a greasy tap on top. I looked from one to the other, the awful connections clicking in my brain. I shook my head. 'Uh uh.' 'Yep.' To my horror, Mark was nodding. 'We have to use that?' I spun to fave Mum. 'Are you nuts? This is a joke right? Our real place is up the road a bit. This is all a trick.' 'I'm afraid not, Becs.' She smiled at the others. 'This is our new home.' |
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