Tikka Malloy was eleven and one-sixth years old during the long, hot, Australian summer of 1992. That was the summer her friends, the Van Apfel sisters—Ruth, Hannah, and Cordelia—mysteriously disappeared.

And Tikka is the one who tells us their story, and her own, in Felicity McLean’s novel, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone. Full of dark humor, brutal honesty and naive curiosity, Tikka’s voice is unforgettable, both as a child and as an adult still haunted by the disappearance of the Van Apfel girls.

So, we let “Tikka” take over our Twitter account on June 27 to share her tale. Here is the #TikkaTwitterTakeover compiled all in one place so you can join Tikka as she wrestles with fears, regrets and still unanswered questions.

• • •

• “Thought I saw Cordie on the street today. Again. It’s as if the three of them were far more visible to me now than they ever were before they vanished.”
• “Being home in Macedon Close always brought that old familiar feeling of dread. It never stayed buried for long.”
• “For years the Van Apfel girls haunted my dreams. Fire dreams, as if I could smoke those girls out.”
• “It all started the summer Cordelia broke her arm, and Mr. Avery came to town. Back in the days before Cordie disappeared, when she was still real and soft and falling from trees.”
• “There was a clearing where we searched for artifacts for as kids – the girls, my sister, and me. How ironic that instead of appearing, the Van Apfel girls disappeared from that very place.”

• “There was nothing covert about the Van Apfels’ disappearance. They had vanished in front of our eyes.”
• “We looked everywhere for those girls, even in the septic holes. Laura yelled at me to get back as I peered over the edge, but my sister didn’t understand I had to see it for myself. How else to say for certain the girls weren’t down there?”
• “That summer, I found photographs of the Van Apfel girls: blonde hair, skinny limbs, missing teeth. Three daughters, frozen in an instant.”
• “Macedon Close was known for neighborhood gossip, but only Laura and I really knew what went on behind closed doors in the Van Apfel house.”

• “Laura and I have a hard time talking about it, now. For so long we’ve been haunted by those girls. Since the moment they first disappeared. We were the ones left behind.”
• “I can’t help but think about what Laura and I should and shouldn’t have done that summer. So many things we used to dig up that weren’t ours to touch. There were so many things in this life better left untouched.”
• “Looking back, maybe Mr. Avery was right and hell wasn’t a destination, it was just some state we exiled ourselves to when we couldn’t bear where we really were.”
• “I’ve spent a long time thinking about what I did and didn’t do, that summer. I was responsible and not guilty. I was both things, and neither.”
• “I know one truth about the Van Apfel girls that summer: they only ever wanted to run.”

• • •

Read more about The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone.