Excerpt from Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Darra is a dream, a stench, a spilt garbage bin, a cracked mirror, a paradise, a bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup filled with prawns, domes of plastic crab meat, pig ears and pig knuckles and pig belly. Darra is a girl washed down a drainpipe, a boy with snot slipping from his nose so ripe it glows on Easter night, a teenage girl stretched across a train track waiting for the express to Central and beyond, a South African man smoking Sudanese weed, a Filipino man injecting Afghani dope next door to a girl from Cambodia sipping milk from Queensland's Darling Downs. Darra is my quiet sigh, my reflection on war, my dumb pre-teen longing, my home.

'When do you reckon they'll be back?' I ask.

'Soon enough.'

'What'd they go see?'

Slim wears a thin bronze-coloured button-up cotton shirt tucked into dark blue shorts. He wears these shorts constantly and he says he rotates between three pairs of the same shorts but every day I see the same hole in the bottom right-hand corner of his rear pocket. His blue rubber thongs are normally moulded to his old and callused feet, dirt-caked and sweat-stunk, but his left thong slips off now, caught on the clutch, as he slides awkwardly out of the car. Houdini's getting on. Houdini's caught in the water chamber of Brisbane's outer western suburbs. Even Houdini can't escape time. Slim can't run from MTV. Slim can't run from Michael Jackson. Slim can't escape the 1980s.

'Terms of Endearment,' he says, opening the passenger door.

I truly love Slim because he truly loves August and me. Slim was hard and cold in his youth. He's softened with age. Slim always cares for August and me and how we're going and how we're going to grow up. I love him so much for trying to convince us that when Mum and Lyle are out for so long like this they are at the movies and not, in fact, dealing heroin purchased from Vietnamese restaurateurs.

'Lyle choose that one?'

I have suspected Mum and Lyle are drug dealers since I found a five-hundred-gram brick of Golden Triangle heroin stowed in the mower catcher in our backyard shed five days ago. I feel certain Mum and Lyle are drug dealers when Slim tells me they have gone to the movies to see Terms of Endearment.

Slim gives me a sharp look. 'Slide over, smartarse,' he mumbles from the corner of his mouth.

Clutch in. First. Steadily on the pedally. The car jolts forward and we're moving. 'Give it some gas,' Slim says. My bare right foot goes down, leg fully extended, and we cross our lawn all the way to Mrs Dudzinski's rosebush on the kerbside next door.

'Get onto the road,' Slim says, laughing.

Hard right on the wheel, off the gutter onto the Sandakan Street asphalt.

'Clutch in, second,' Slim barks.

Quicker now. Past Freddy Pollard's place, past Freddy Pollard's sister, Evie, pushing a headless Barbie down the street in a toy pram.

'Should I stop?' I ask.

Slim looks in the rearview mirror, darts his head to the passenger side mirror. 'Nah, fuck it. Once round the block.'

Slip into third and we're rumbling at forty kilometres an hour. And we're free. It's a breakout. Me and Houdini. On the run. Two great escapologists on the lam.

'I'm driiiiving,' I scream.

Slim laughs and his old chest wheezes.

Left into Swanavelder Street, on past the old World War II Polish migrant centre where Lyle's mum and dad spent their first days in Australia. Left into Butcher Street where the Freemans keep their collection of exotic birds: a squawking peacock, a graylag goose, a Muscovy duck. Fly on free, bird. Drive. Drive. Left into Hardy, left back into Sandakan.

'Slow her down,' says Slim.

I slam the brakes and lose footing on the clutch and the car cuts out, once again parallel to August, who is still writing words on thin air, lost in the work.

'Did ya see me, Gus?' I holler. 'Did ya see me driving, Gus?'

From Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton. Copyright © 2019 by Trent Dalton. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.