Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [44]
She didn’t pretend any more, either; the puppet self that went through the motions of each day was too dull to make things up. She was simply here, doing what she was told in school, responding to other people when they talked to her. She noticed numbly that the kids in school accepted her and that Mrs. Corelli praised her for her work, but she didn’t care. “You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?” Sharon told her. “Never mind. I was shy, too, when I was young. I make up for it now!”
Sharon told Theo how she longed to travel, to go to the places depicted in the posters on the walls. “I’ve never even been out of B.C., but Mandy and I are saving up to go to Europe.” She bought lottery tickets every week, even though she’d never won anything.
Rae called twice. Theo held the phone a little away from her ear as her mother went on and on about Cal—the parties they’d been to, the trip they’d taken to Cultus Lake. She complained as usual about her boss and customers. She never said anything about coming to visit. At the end her voice became strained as she asked Theo how she was. “Good,” said the puppet Theo.
Then Sharon talked to her for a few minutes. The second time, she asked Rae about sending money and Theo could hear her mother’s angry excuses. After Rae hung up, Theo and Sharon paced the apartment separately for a few minutes. Then they gathered together on the couch, as if in mutual agreement to forget about Rae.
The puppet Theo didn’t mind that her aunt treated her like a much younger child. Sharon even washed her hair and reminded her to brush her teeth every night. She never let Theo go anywhere alone—not even to Skye’s house, or to school, or to play with Skye in Beacon Hill Park. “A little boy disappeared in Victoria a few years ago,” she shuddered. “You can’t be too careful.”
She was like a nanny in an English book—but not a magic nanny like Mary Poppins. The puppet Theo tried not to think about magic; nothing would ever be magical again.
EVERY NIGHT, however, the real Theo dreamt about the Kaldors. Now she didn’t want to dream about them, because these dreams weren’t the same. They were like ordinary dreams—fragmented and patchy, sliding in and out of details; not like the long, marvellous dream she’d had on the ferry which had seemed so real and consistent. Her dreams still brought back the Kaldors, however—she could hear Lisbeth’s giggle or Bingo’s bark. They made her so unbearably homesick for the family, she tried to think of boring things before she went to sleep to keep the dreams away. It didn’t work. Every night the real Theo woke up in tears that she was living with Sharon and not with the family she had once belonged to.
After a month with Sharon the real Theo began to come back in the daytime, too. The pleasant but dull sameness of her new life started to irk her. “This program is boring,” she said one evening, as she and Sharon watched their usual Tuesday night sitcom.
Sharon looked surprised. “Do you think so? Go and do something else, then, if you’re bored.”
But there was nothing else to do. Theo strode around the small apartment and looked out the window. The trees across the street were a froth of pink blossoms and the ground beneath them blazed with crocuses. Spring was here—again!
Two boys bicycled towards the water. Theo remembered riding a bike with the family—puffing at the tops of hills, then coasting down with the wind in her face.
She turned around to Sharon. “Can I have a bike?”
“A bike?” Sharon looked apologetic. “Oh, hon, bikes are expensive.”
“You could get me a secondhand one,” said Theo. “Skye’s mum got her one at the police sale.”
“I’m sorry, Theo, but I’d worry too much about you if you had a bike. There’s a lot of traffic around here and it gets much worse in the summer with all the tourists. What if you had an accident?”
“Could you borrow Skye’s mum’s bike and come with me?” Theo tried.
Sharon laughed. “Me on a bike? No, thanks—I’d rather drive. What’s got into you tonight? Spring fever? Are you feeling okay?”
“Uh huh,” muttered