Bad Dreams by Anne Fine Read Free Book Online Page A

has never been the best way of making and keeping friends. Don’t tell me all those early soothsayers were daft enough to stroll around turning ashen every five minutes, and pointing at the next person who was going to fall down the well, because I don’t believe it. The rest of the villagers would have stood for it only once or twice, and then drowned them in the duckpond.’
    Imogen was silent. I do believe it must have been the very first time she’d given a thought to all the people who’d had the gift in centuries before. But that’s one of the things you get from reading all the time – a sense of other places, other times, and other ways of doing things.
    â€˜So what are you telling me?’ she asked at last.
    â€˜I’m not telling you anything,’ I said, ‘because I don’t yet know. But you can be pretty sure that, whatever it is you want to find out about, somebody wanted to know it before you. And books have been invented for over four hundred years. So there’s usually one about it somewhere.’
    Again, I reached up to the very top shelf, this time for a volume called Magical Thinking which had caught my attention.
    â€˜My bet’, I told her, ‘is that most of these special people must have had the sense to lose this so-called “gift” of theirs as fast as they could. And I’m going to find out how they did it.’

    â€˜I bet they didn’t all want to lose it,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I bet some of them thought that it was interesting .’
    â€˜Or fun ,’ I said scathingly. ‘People like your mother.’
    I heard the sharp intake of breath. But, struggling with my balance on the top step, I must have missed the sound of her footsteps walking away, and the swish of the swing doors closing behind her.
    That, or another of her skills was Levitation. Or even Vanishing. Because, when I looked round again, Imogen had gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    W hen someone storms off like that, you’re not quite sure if they’ve gone off for good, or if they’re going to show up again in a few minutes, pretending they just went off to buy sweeties or gum.
    So I sat on the ladder a little while, hoping she’d reappear, and flicking through Magical Thinking by Prof. J. B. Blackstaffe. It was a bit of a surprise, that book. You’d think someone like me, who reads so much, would have got used to the fact that titles so often turn out to mean something quite different from what you imagined when you first saw them on the shelf. I would have thought that Magical Thinking would be about spells, or the power of thought, or voodoo, or something.
    In fact, it was poor old Professor Blackstaffe trying to persuade us to use our brains.
    He posed little problems at the top of each page, and asked you questions. Then he told you what the Great Thinkers of the Past would have thought about each one.
    While I was waiting for Imogen, I read the first.
    Your good friend is wasting time
in terrible company. One day, the wastrels
move, and ask you to pass on their new
address and phone number.
    Do you:
    A:Refuse to accept the task?
    B:Take the details, rip them up, and say nothing?
    C:Pass the information on, with your usual warning?
    Most of the Great Thinkers of the Past turned out to be Stellar Fusspots, too, if you want my opinion. They mostly went for A or C . (I’d have picked B .) But when it was obvious Imogen wasn’t coming, I gave up and put the book back on the shelf, and went on home.
    I hoped by morning she’d have forgiven me for being so rude about her mother. But when I took my place beside her in the class, she turned away.
    I tapped her shoulder. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘That was a horrible thing I said, and I’m really sorry. But I was only trying to help you.’
    â€˜ Help me?’ She glowered. ‘You mean, bully me, don’t you?’
    I stared at her. ‘Is that really what