Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [18]
She stood up. “I’m going out to the deck to have a smoke. Don’t you dare move from that seat.” She pushed past the teenager into the aisle. Theo lifted her eyes only and watched her leave the lounge.
When she was sure Rae was gone, she closed the book and leaned back against the seat, trembling and trying not to cry. She looked out the side window and saw Rae’s back, leaning over the railing of the deck with a cigarette between her fingers. She took short, angry puffs of it, threw it overboard, and stomped out of sight along the deck.
Theo kept staring out the window. If only her mother would never come back! If only Theo were sitting here in the midst of her brothers and sisters. Two boys and two girls …
She closed her eyes. What would their names be? Maybe John for the oldest, like the John in the Ransome books. The other boy could be Timothy, and the girls would be called Rosalind and Rosemary … or maybe Suzanne and Samara … The girls would look like their mother and the boys like their father …
Never had Theo yearned for a real family so much. As long as she kept her eyes closed she could see them—four children and two parents talking and laughing around her. With Theo securely in the middle.
But of course when she opened her eyes Theo was still alone. The lounge full of people was a bright blur through her tears. The boy beside her was opening a bag of chips.
And that nosy woman was still staring at her! Her glittering eyes pierced right through Theo. They seemed full of compassion and curiosity—and excitement, as if she knew Theo from somewhere.
Why was she still standing there? She didn’t seem to mind that Theo noticed her rudeness. Theo felt flushed, as if the woman had found out something about her. She wiped her eyes and pretended to read. When she looked up again the woman had gone.
PART 2
The Family
6
Theo waited in a numb trance for Rae to come back. Being on the ferry was a nothing time, before the next awful thing that would happen. She felt as empty and lost as a husk that someone had thrown away. It was no use wishing that her life was different. It was no use wishing for a family. It didn’t matter what happened to her. She didn’t matter.
She noticed listlessly that the lounge was more crowded. Toddlers reeled up and down the aisles, followed by protective parents. All around her kids leaned over the backs of chairs, asked for food or demanded money for the arcade. A little girl walked by chanting, “Follow the pink, follow the pink,” as she balanced on the strip of pink in the green carpeting. She paused by Theo’s chair and swung on one of the skinny poles that dotted the room.
A group of small boys had assembled on the rug between the windows and the front row where Theo sat, kneeling over tiny cars. Other little kids joined them as if magnetized, their older brothers and sisters watching from the sides. It was as if all the kids on the ferry belonged to a tribe—all except Theo.
“John, wait up!”
John? Something quickened in Theo’s empty insides as she heard the familiar name.
She turned around swiftly.
Four children were coming up the aisle—two boys and two girls. The oldest boy held a much younger boy by the hand. Behind them was another girl. A smaller girl was running to catch up with them. “John!” she called again to the older boy. “Mummy says don’t go outside without jackets.”
“We’re not going out yet,” said John. “Ben wants to see what these kids are doing.”
Theo felt a twinge of disappointment that the youngest boy wasn’t called Timothy. But that didn’t matter. She trembled as the four gathered right in front of her.
Ben and the younger girl dropped to the floor and joined the gang of little kids there. John and the other girl stood by the window, smiling at their brother and sister.
John had light brown hair that hung like a curtain on each side of his face. His ears and hands and feet looked too big for his skinny