Bloom. Nicola Skinner
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That’s the problem with children these days it’s all take, take, take.
May the best child win.
Now, go and do your homework.
Your headmaster,
Mr Grittysnit
I put the letter down and took a big shaky breath. This was my destiny. Window girl and I looked solemnly at each other, as if bound by a silent pact.
Holding the letter as gently as if it was made of glass, I walked over to the fridge. I wanted to fix it there with a magnet so I could see it every day. But finding a space would not be easy. Already the fridge was plastered with yellowing bills, old recipes Mum tore out of magazines …
And, of course, that photo of us on our most recent summer holiday, taken just a fortnight before. It showed us on a small pebbly beach, huddled under a blanket, beneath a sky as grey as the bags under Mum’s eyes.
I stared at that photo, remembering. How the caravan had smelled of somebody else’s life that we’d wandered into by mistake. How Mum had spent the whole week begging me not to break anything. How it had rained for six days straight and then, just as we’d boarded the coach back to Little Sterilis, the sun had come out.
Which had made everything worse somehow.
Mum had spent the whole journey back – all five hours of it – with her forehead squished up against the window, staring at the blue sky like it was someone else’s birthday cake and she knew she wouldn’t get a slice.
Next to the photo was our calendar for the year ahead. I saw that Mum had marked our summer holidays on it already. CARAVAN, she’d written, in thick red ink. No exclamation marks. No smiley faces.
To be honest, it looked more like a threat than a holiday.
But if I won the Grittysnit Star competition, we could have a proper family holiday, somewhere sunny. Somewhere else. My yearning hardened into determination. All I had to do was be perfect for the next eight weeks.
No sweat.
I’d just fixed Mr Grittysnit’s letter over the photo, feeling immense relief as Mum’s troubled frown disappeared, when …
SLAM! The back door whipped open with a bang.
My heart hammered with fright. Who’s there?
But it was no one. Just a gust of wind and a door nearly swinging off its hinges. I must not have shut it properly after airing the kitchen earlier.
The wind roared in and seemed to fill the entire kitchen with anger. I felt as if I was standing in a room of invisible fury. On legs as wobbly as cooked spaghetti, I staggered over to shut the door and force the wind out.
Something white and fluttery flew over my shoulder.
I shrieked and ducked down.
Is a pigeon trapped in our kitchen?
I looked closer. It wasn’t a white pigeon, all claws and feathers. It was Mr Grittysnit’s letter! The wind had ripped it off the fridge and it was flying frantically about the room. When I jumped up to catch it, it darted out of reach, as if invisible blustery hands had snatched it away. I just caught a glimpse of the stick figures hovering in mid-air, their smiles turned to frozen grimaces, before they flapped and fluttered …
… out of the doorway and into our backyard.
I WANTED THAT letter. It would spur me on, a promise of better days. I took a deep breath and followed it outside.
I did a quick scan of the patio. It didn’t take long. Everything seemed the same. The two plastic chairs we never sat in. Weeds pushing up between the concrete paving slabs. And the tall weeping willow tree, right at the back, casting its shadow over our house.
I’d have been weeping too if I looked like that.
Its grey trunk was smothered in bright red hairy growths that looked like boils. Its branches dragged on the concrete as if it was hanging its head in misery. Even its leaves were ugly – black and withered and lifeless. Really, the tree didn’t so much grow as squat at the end of our garden, like a dying troll with a skin condition. Mum said it was diseased. I’d say.
And there was no sign of Mr Grittysnit’s letter. I was about to give it up for lost when a fluttering movement at the base of the tree caught my eye. It had somehow got wrapped round one of the tree’s withered branches. I could just about make out the words Each child will be judged and one stick figure pinned underneath a bunch of shrivelled leaves. I felt sorry for it. This wasn’t the holiday of a lifetime, lying under a septic tree in a damp backyard.
‘I’ll take that, thank you very much.’ I lifted up the branch gingerly – reluctant to catch its disease, whatever it was – and bent down to pick up the letter.
ZING! The air took on an electric charge and vibrated with a terrible force. The sounds in the garden became exaggerated with a horrid loudness. The rustling dead leaves in the branches above me were a booming rattle. A pigeon cooed and it sounded like a chainsaw. But more frightening than all of that were the gaps of silence between the sounds. They were eerie and powerful and strong.
It felt—
I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.
I spun on my heels. Who said that?
My heart thumped so loudly I could barely hear anything. Yet the patio was empty.
Icy sweat drenched my skin. Everything was real and unreal, too loud and too quiet at once.
Come on, Sorrel, breathe in and out, nice and slow. I calmed down enough to try to think. What had just happened? I’d only bent down to pick up the letter. Had the tree poisoned me, sent a hideous disease to my brain which had caused me to start hearing things? Or perhaps I’d had a rush of blood to the head when I’d bent down? Maybe I hadn’t had enough to eat. Maybe I should go into the kitchen and investigate the snack situation.
But what is that, moving near my feet? Rats?
There it was again!
But as I peered around me, shaking with fear, I realised there wasn’t anything black and wriggly next to my feet.
The movement had come from under my feet.
As if there was a … thing. Underneath the concrete.
Turning over.
Down there.
‘Hello?’
I sounded like a baby lamb bleating alone on a hill.
‘Is anyone there?’
The windows in the house gave me blank stares.
RUN, I told myself. NOW!
I managed one step away from the tree when the patio slab under my feet moved up and down, as if something deep down in the earth was trying to shake the concrete – or me – off itself.
Is this an earthquake?
My mouth opened to scream but no sound came out. Gasping, I looked down again. Like a twig snapping, the slab under my feet cracked clean in two. The crack gained momentum, ripping its way through the patio all the way from the tree to the back door. It broke the patio as easily as a warm knife slicing through butter, leaving behind a trail of smashed concrete.
The damage was worst by the tree. The concrete round its trunk had shattered outwards in a crude circle of fractured slabs. It looked like it was trying to smile through a mouthful of broken teeth. I saw something, stuck in the cracked