Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [22]
Her mother was coming closer and closer. Theo had never seen her look so angry.
She looked back at the moon and wished out loud. “Please! I wish I belonged to this family right now!”
7
Something was dripping. A steady soft splash close to her. Theo opened her eyes.
She was cocooned in rose-coloured flannelette—sheets, pillowcase and fluffy quilt. She stretched out her legs and wriggled her toes. It was like being in a warm nest.
Theo turned over on her back. Above the bed was a skylight shaded with a striped blue and white blind. Rain was dripping onto it; that’s what had woken her.
No … she couldn’t be awake. She must be dreaming she was awake.
She turned her eyes to the large room. Opposite her was a set of bunk beds, a bunched-up quilt strewn on each one. One pillow was on the floor, the other, patterned with alphabet letters, hanging precariously over the edge of the mattress. Each bed was crowded with stuffed animals.
On the wall opposite her was a large poster of a hockey player and a smaller one of a running horse.
The floor was thick with stuff. Swimming goggles, a purple plastic purse, a red and yellow backpack, various shoes, a drinking straw twisted into a treble clef, an empty plastic bag, a small book closed with a padlock, a broken Slinky, many clothes and a tape recorder. A large cardboard box overflowed with Barbie doll paraphernalia. Balled-up tissues and gum wrappers surrounded an empty wastepaper basket.
The walls were lined with shelves decorated with stickers. The higher ones were crammed with books and magazines, model horses and two china piggy banks. On the lower shelves were more books, notepads, straw baskets overflowing with jewellery and shells, a snow dome, a pink dinosaur, a photograph of a lot of girls dressed in soccer uniforms, a baseball glove and dozens of hair elastics. Two dressers were against the far wall, their tops strewn with more stuff and most of their drawers gaping open.
From the ceiling were suspended a rooster puppet on strings and two mobiles, one of felt flowers and one of whales. A poster labelled “My Grow Chart” went up one wall and all around the top of it ran a peeling frieze of Beatrix Potter characters.
Theo kept gazing at the colourful chaos. Then she sat up gingerly; she didn’t want to wake herself up. She glanced at the table beside the bed and gasped.
“THEO!” Her name shouted at her from the top of a piece of paper.
She picked it up and read with trembling fingers.
Good morning! We hope you’re feeling better. Mum and
Dad said we had to go to school, so we won’t see you until
lunch. I’ve put a housecoat and slippers for you on the chair.
Mum is working in the room at the back of the kitchen.
She says to come down when you’re ready for breakfast.
Can’t wait to see you again!
Love, Anna.
Theo tried to steady her breath. Had it happened? The last thing she could remember was standing on the windy deck of the ferry, while Rae strode towards her. Then Theo had made a desperate wish on the new moon. Wishing she could be in this family …
Had her wish come true? But how was that possible? She must be dreaming! She pinched the skin on the back of her hand—it hurt.
“It has happened!” she whispered. She felt ripped open with joy.
She stood on the bed and tugged at the blind covering the skylight. It shot up with a rattle, exposing tree branches dripping with water.
Now the colourful room was even brighter. A blue housecoat and furry red slippers lay on a chair beside the bed. Theo stepped onto the bare wood floor. She looked down—she was wearing red pyjamas she’d never seen before. They were too big and the sleeves and legs dangled below her hands and feet. She rolled them up and put on the housecoat and slippers.
The fat slippers made her feet look like red cushions. She padded around the messy room. The bottom bunk must be Lisbeth’s—a small pink nightgown was scrunched on it. A beautiful, new-looking doll was leaning against the headboard. It had red hair and