Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [3]
“She’ll get over it,” says Mrs. Currie.
“It’s just a phase,” adds Mrs. Roberts. “My niece was a loner too—until she turned fifteen. Then she noticed young men and now she’s happily married with two babies. Don’t worry about her, Philippa.”
“I try not to,” says Mother.
“We really must be going,” says Mrs. Roberts. The voices fade into the hall.
The child stays in her frozen position until the goodbyes are finally over and Mother’s footsteps go back to the dining-room. Then she releases a huge breath, as if she’s expelling all the words she’s heard. She looks down and lets the book take her away.
THE BRIGHTENING DAWN roused the ghost from her memories. She stood up, her book sliding to the floor. It was time to go.
After she left the house, she paused at the entrance to the cemetery, watching the early sun glint on the wet grass.
Reading had been a welcome escape from her restlessness, but now she paced in despair. When was she going to find what she’d spent the last forty years searching for?
The ghost turned away from the cemetery. What she yearned for—the reason she was compelled to linger in this world—wasn’t in there. It was time to do some more travelling.
PART 1
Theo
1
Across the strait, in a larger city on the same sea, another child sat as still as the long-ago child in the study.
The grade-four classroom thrummed with activity. Chairs screeched against the floor and high voices bossed and giggled. Pens and scissors clattered on desktops as the students drew and cut out and scribbled for their coastal forest projects.
Theo was as fixed in the middle as a rock. Waves of chatter rose and fell around her. The other three in her group—Robert and Yogita and Jason—made no attempt to involve her. When Mr. Barker had told her to push over her desk and join them, Yogita had held her nose and smirked. Now she and the others reached in front of Theo and argued over who would write about spotted owls as if she were invisible.
Theo held a book about trees open on her lap. But her eyes stared blankly as she retreated into her daydream.
She was thinking about magic. Last night she’d finished a wonderful book called Five Children and It. The story was about some kids who found a strange creature called a Psammead that granted wishes. There were four older children—Cyril, Anthea, Robert and Jane—and a baby brother. Theo liked Anthea the best. She seemed about eleven; Jane was probably nine, like Theo. Most of the wishes had backfired. They had wished to be beautiful—but then no one had recognized them.
I wouldn’t wish for that, thought Theo, I’d wish for—
“Hey, Licehead!” Robert jabbed her side with his ruler. “Didn’t you hear the bell?”
Theo blinked. The other kids were thundering out of the classroom for recess. She stood up slowly, forcing herself to come back.
Robert was hunting for something in his desk. He looked up. “Why do you always stare into space like that? What are you thinking about?”
Now he sounded more curious than mean. But Theo rubbed the place his ruler had poked. The Robert in the book wouldn’t have hurt her.
She noticed how Robert’s red hair stood up on his forehead. You look like a rooster, she decided. A stupid, show-offy rooster.
Robert backed away as Theo kept staring at him. “So don’t answer,” he said from the doorway. “Who cares? Nobody cares about you, Licehead.”
“HOW ARE YOU getting along, Theo?” Mr. Barker asked her after recess. Theo had already learned to linger by the outside door and come up to the classroom first, before she got trapped in a jeering group.
The teacher’s voice was kind, but Theo shrank from the hand he put on her shoulder. “Fine,” she whispered.
“It