Читать книгу The Land of Roar - Jenny McLachlan - Страница 12

By the end of the day the attic is empty.

Well, almost. The camp bed is sitting in the middle of the room, watched over by Prosecco, but everything else has gone: the dressing-up clothes, the plastic weapons, the Playmobil, the cuddly toys. Even the Quality Street tin is down in the garden in the tip pile.

I take one last look around the room, and turn out the light.

Grandad seems to have forgotten about the meal commonly known as dinner so Rose and I heat up a pizza we find at the bottom of the freezer then put ourselves to bed. We have to. It’s midnight and Grandad is out in the garden, dancing round a bonfire he’s made out of old newspapers and egg boxes.

The pizza and trampolining have put Rose in a good mood because she starts kicking the bottom of my bunk bed, distracting me from the book I’m reading. The only downside to staying at Grandad’s is having to share a room with Rose.

Eventually the kicking stops and I try to get into my book. Clearing out the attic has left me feeling a bit weird and on edge, but soon I find myself pulled into the story. It’s about a girl who discovers she’s descended from a Samurai warrior and can defeat any enemy by summoning the ghost of her ancestor. I wouldn’t be worried about starting secondary school if I had a Samurai ghost on my side.

Rose’s voice drifts up from the bottom bunk. ‘Arthur . . . Mazen says you’re going to be eaten alive at Langton Academy.’

Some people believe that twins can read each other’s minds. I can’t read Rose’s mind, but sometimes she can read mine.

‘Mazen says, because you can’t play football and you got a telescope instead of a phone for your birthday, everyone will think you’re weird.’

I really don’t like Mazen Bailey.

‘Oh, and Mazen says you should use product on your hair. To make it, you know, less big or people will laugh at you.’

Actually I think I might hate Mazen Bailey.

‘Arthur? Can you hear me?’ Rose gives the bottom of the bed an extra big kick. ‘Mazen was only trying to help. She’s in Year Eight so she knows.’

‘Mazen Bailey,’ I say, after a moment of dignified silence, ‘believes that The Force Awakens is the first Star Wars film, so obviously her opinion counts for nothing.’

Rose goes quiet and all I can hear is tap, tap, tap, tap.

‘Rose, are you sending her a message?’

‘Shh,’ she says. ‘Did you just say obviously her opinion counts for nothing, or clearly her opinion counts for nothing?’

I throw myself over the side of the bunk bed and make a grab for Rose’s phone, but she just pushes me away and keeps typing. ‘Rose, if you press send I’ll –’

She looks up, interested. ‘Yes? What will you do?’

‘I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’ What can I do? What power do I have over Rose these days? She doesn’t want to hang out with me. I don’t make her laugh any more. Everything about me annoys her. ‘I won’t sleep in here!’ I shout.

She bursts out laughing. ‘So? That would be great!’ Then she presses her finger down. ‘Ooops . . . I just pressed send!’

Rage surges through me and I badly want to hit Rose, but I can’t, because she’s my sister and hitting my sister when I was six might have been just about OK, but hitting my sister when I’m eleven is wrong.

Rose laughs. ‘You look funny, Arthur. Are you going to cry?’

Over my dead body, I think, but I do have a painful lump in my throat because what Rose just did was so disloyal. Rose and I are twins. We’re supposed to stick together!

The lump in my throat gets bigger and I have to squeeze my eyes shut to make it go away.

‘You are,’ Rose says confidently. ‘You’re going to cry.’

But I don’t cry. Instead I do the thing I always do when there’s a chance I might cry. ‘ARRRGHHHH!’ I scream in her face. Then I grab my duvet and stomp out of the room, slamming the door behind me.

No way am I sleeping in the same room as my disloyal, evil, mocking sister. No way am I ever speaking to her again. No way am I even going to breathe the same air that she breathes . . .

There’s just one problem.

Where can I sleep?

Grandad’s house is big, but it’s also full. There are two spare bedrooms, but neither of them has beds. One of them has got Grandad’s drum kit in it, and the other’s full of books and Nani’s old things. Then I remember where there’s a perfectly good bed. One that folds in the middle and has a mattress covered in orange and brown flowers and ‘Entur heer for the laned of ROAR!!!’ scratched into the headboard.

A bed that I’m ninety-nine per cent certain I didn’t wee in.