Bad Dreams by Anne Fine Read Free Book Online

started making plans. ‘Who wants to be shooter?’
    Me? I’d have been delighted if it happened. By the time Mrs Tallentire came back with the team sashes and ball, I’d have been tucked in the gap under the gym stairs, quietly reading. And if she was cross with me, I’d have been ready to argue. ‘Well, what was I supposed to do? Nobody picked me.’
    But Imogen stood there, drooping. (‘Like a lily in a flood’, as Mr Hooper calls it.) Her eyes were bright with tears. No-one in our class is positively spiteful. It was the old ‘drift-away’ business working again. Nobody else even noticed, not even Mrs Tallentire, who hardly gave Imogen a glance, let alone one of the sashes. So she did end up on our team, but on the very edge, along the wall, and I don’t think the ball was thrown in her direction once, for the whole game.
    â€˜That’s it!’ I told her, after. ‘Tomorrow, after school, we’re off to the library.’
    â€˜The town library? Why?’
    â€˜You’ll see.’
    She kept up the pestering, but I wouldn’t tell, in case she wouldn’t come. Next day, we walked straight up the stairs to Reference , and still she hadn’t guessed why we were there. I left her staring at the huge Map of World Animals while I got started.
    Magic . Superstitions . Legends . If you don’t believe them, then they’re fascinating. I’ve sat for hours hunched over tales of banshees wailing to warn of deaths on the way, and soldiers who had died at midnight in a field hospital along the line scaring the wits out of their fellow officers by turning up again on the dawn watch.
    But if, like me, you have begun to think you’re practically living in one of these stories, you’re looking for something different. And it wasn’t there. I ran my eyes down list after list on the computer screen, and scoured shelf after shelf. There were whole books on tarot cards and palm-reading, half a bookcase on haunted houses, tomes on black magic and spell-making, lots about poltergeists, even a pamphlet on spirit-writing.

    But nothing at all about giving it up.
    Imogen wasn’t helping. ‘Look, Melly,’ she kept saying. ‘This isn’t your problem. Stop worrying about me. I’m perfectly happy with things the way they are.’
    â€˜Oh, yes?’
    â€˜Yes.’ She made a face. ‘I know it’s all sometimes a little bit upsetting—’
    â€˜A little bit upsetting ?’ I stared down from where I was balancing on one of the stumpy little library ladders. ‘You practically fall into the most upsetting books. You even know when members of your family are coasting towards accidents. Everyone avoids you, and you can’t even get on with your work. And you call that “a little bit upsetting”? Well, you must have nerves of steel.’
    â€˜All right!’ she flared. ‘Sometimes it’s horrible, and I can’t sleep at nights. But I still can’t see what you’re hoping to find in all these books.’
    I reached up higher, to pull a couple of books without titles on their spines off the top shelf. ‘Listen, Imogen. There has to be some way you can get out of this.’
    â€˜Get out of it?’
    â€˜Lose this “gift” of yours. Turn back into a normal person.’
    â€˜I am a normal person!’
    â€˜You know what I mean. And if your mum’s right, and what you’ve got is like blue eyes, or curly hair, then you can’t be the first.’
    â€˜So what are you looking for?’
    â€˜A book,’ I said. ‘I’ll know it when I find it. It’ll be something that explains what all the people who were like you before did to get rid of it.’
    She looked quite blank.
    â€˜Listen,’ I told her patiently. ‘You don’t think you’re the first of your sort to be unpopular, do you? I’m sure seeing into the future