Читать книгу Mia's Optiscope - Natalie Rose - Страница 7

Chapter 1.

Sungreen Cottage

Mia Glasson sat on the edge of her bed, swinging her feet and staring at the boxes her mother had left for her to unpack. She had no will to take out all her toys and books and put them in the house she’d been made to move to. She’d rather watch television. But even that wasn’t working yet.

The Glasson family had moved to Sydney’s eastern suburbs to be closer to Mia’s new school and the nearby university where her mother studied. In the weeks that followed, Mia was quiet and retreated to her new room where she would look at her unpacked boxes, hoping they wouldn’t have to be unpacked in this strange house. She missed her old school and her friends from the large apartment building where they used to live. She’d often met them at the ground floor pool where they would have water fights and swimming contests. Other times they’d go outside on the lawn for cricket, cartwheels and netball. On rainy days, or after sunset, they played in the hallways, racing each other up and down the emergency exit stairs, playing at scaring one another in the mazelike halls or rolling balls at bowling pins along the carpet. Now everything had changed.

Mr and Mrs Glasson settled their daughter into the 1930s single level house, that so far was the only thing Mia liked about the move. Mia fell in love with its mint green walls, charcoal tiles, and rusted guttering. She enjoyed having her very own back garden with trees to climb. But her favorite part was a sunrise motif decorating the short ridge on the front of the house. When she saw it, Mia named her new home Sungreen Cottage.

The first week was a drag, with Mum unpacking during the day and Dad hanging pictures and fitting shelves at night.

‘You start school next week,’ her mother said, ‘and year four at that. Try to enjoy your time before it all begins, hey?’

But Sungreen Cottage was quiet. No children played in the street. Her neighbours, it appeared, were all adults. People passed by, barely looking up from their smartphones. Sure, the area was busy, as Mia’s mum liked to remind her, but it wasn’t the kind of busy Mia liked. People bustled about on the sidewalks going to work or university. The cafés and restaurants were nearly always full of people, strangers, without smiles. In such a busy place Mia felt lonely. She wished she had a friend nearby or, better still, a brother or sister to share her world.

Little did she realise that within months she would find herself searching for another world, one in an altogether different dimension.