Boy in the Tower by Polly Ho-Yen Read Free Book Online Page B

started to cry a little bit themselves, although I wondered if they knew why.
    I looked over to Gaia, who was looking down at her table, concentrating on a tiny spot on her desk.
    Miss Farraway left the room in the end. She just walked straight out. Miss Arnold, the deputy head, came in a few minutes later and found us some maths questions to do but we were all too stunned to do any of them.
    ‘Is Miss Farraway OK, Miss Arnold?’ Olu asked.
    ‘She’s very upset, as you have all seen. It’s been a very upsetting time for lots of people at the moment. How are you all feeling with what’s been going on?’
    ‘I’m scared,’ said someone straight away. I turned round and I saw the voice had come from Michael.
    ‘Me too,’ a few people agreed.
    ‘I worry every night that our block will collapse,’ said Paul. ‘I can’t sleep because of it.’
    ‘I’m frightened about being outside,’ said Olu.
    ‘I’m scared something will happen to my little sister and my mum when they’re at home during the day,’ said Martha. ‘What if I come home from school and our building’s collapsed? What would I do?’
    We went round and round, talking about our fears and worries. Miss Arnold never said that we shouldn’t worry or that we’d be OK or anything like that. She just smiled sadly as someone else started speaking.
    Gaia and I didn’t say anything.
    I listened to the sound of everyone’s voices. They sounded high and coiled, as though they’d been wound up tighter and tighter until they were taut and could break any moment. I didn’t want to hear their words any longer. I could feel my chest folding in on itself, smaller and smaller, as though it was trying to fit into a small square box, and my breaths came quickly and shallow. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
    I heard someone say my name, and when I looked up Miss Arnold was standing over me and she’d put her hand on my shoulder.
    ‘Are you all right, Ade?’ she said.
    I nodded, but she didn’t stop looking away from me with the same worried eyes and I wished I could have told her the truth, right then. I wished I could have cried like some of the others and have Miss Arnold pat my back comfortingly. I wished I could have told her that I was scared.
    Just like everyone else.

Chapter Eighteen
    We had PE outside and threw brightly coloured balls to each other, standing in long lines across the playground. Gaia said that she had a stomach ache so she sat on the wall watching us. She kept pulling her sleeves down so they came over her wrists and her hands and then wrapping her arms around her like she was cold, even though it was another hot, sunny, airless day.
    By lunch time she seemed to be feeling a little better. She ate a couple of mouthfuls from her plate, chewing steadily and staring into the distance, and then she turned to me suddenly and said, ‘So, what do you think they’re going to do now those men have died?’
    ‘I don’t know. They don’t know how they died. I watched the news all night. They just said the same thing again and again. That their deaths were being treated as suspicious.’
    ‘I don’t think someone killed them,’ Gaia said.
    I looked at her questioningly.
    ‘If no one killed them, how did they die?’
    ‘I think,’ Gaia continued, and she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘I think it had something to do with the buildings.’
    ‘The buildings?’
    ‘We had a bad feeling about them for a reason. I think there’s something wrong with them,’ she said.
    ‘But how could a fallen-down building kill two men just by them standing next to it?’
    ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with them, Adeola. I’m just saying I think they’re something to do with it.’
    Gaia looked cross for a moment. Then her face changed. She looked very worried.
    ‘And I definitely don’t think we should get close to them again,’ she said. ‘You won’t, will you – go close to one again? I can always bring you some food from my house so