Eva's Holiday by Judi Curtin Read Free Book Online Page B

those girls being so mean? Why is everyone saying that Kate is your friend, even though you deny it?’ Now Victoria folded her arms, and put on her crossest face. ‘Tell me, Eva,’ she said.
    I shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to tell. This place is full of weirdos. Didn’t I say that already? Now we only have a few hours, so let’s start enjoying ourselves.’

    We had a totally fun day, and when Victoria’s mum came to pick her up, I felt like crying.
    I gave Victoria one last hug, and then she climbed in to the front of her mum’s car and slammed the door.
    I waved and tried to smile as they drove off. I felt like Victoria was abandoning me. Without her, Kate was the closest I had to a friend.
    But how could someone be your friend if you were half-afraid of them?
    It just wasn’t fair.
    Summer wasn’t supposed to be like this.

    Kate called over first thing the next morning.
    ‘Did you have a nice time with your friend?’ she asked.
    I went red. ‘I’m sorry about … well you know … I’m sorry,’ I said.
    Kate smiled. ‘That’s OK.’
    She seemed so nice, and so forgiving, that for one second I felt like hugging her. Then I remembered that she wasn’t really a huggy kind of girl, so I just smiled back, and we set off for another day at the beach.

Chapter Fourteen
    T he next day, Kate and I were lying on the grass in the Island of Dreams. We were watching the clouds drifting overhead, and Kate was inventing stories about where they were going to end up.
    ‘Don’t you ever wish that you could know what’s going to happen in the future?’ she asked suddenly.
    ‘No,’ I said quickly, before I remembered. ‘Actually once I did,’ I said. ‘I even went to see a fortune-teller.’
    Kate rolled over and lay on her stomach. She rested her chin on her hands and stared at me.
    ‘Tell me,’ she said.
    ‘I was going through a really hard time,’ I said. ‘Dad had lost his job, and we’d had to move to a much smaller house. I had to leave the school I loved and go to one where I didn’t know anybody. My life was a total disaster.’
    Kate said nothing, but suddenly I realised that, compared to Kate’s life, mine had never been even close to being disastrous.
    ‘At the time, my life
seemed
like a total disaster,’ I corrected myself.
    ‘And?’
    ‘And I went to see a fortune-teller, Madame Margarita. And she told me that if I helped people, my life would get better.’
    ‘You needed a fortune-teller to tell you that?’
    I smiled. ‘I was very mixed-up at the time. So I spent months helping people, and in the end it turned out that Madam Margarita was right. Things did start to get better.’
    ‘I’m glad,’ said Kate, and I knew that she meant it.
    ‘But the funniest thing is, there was a girl in my class called Ruby, and I helped her the most. So one day she invited me over to her place and it turned out that Madam Margarita was her mum!’
    ‘No way!’
    ‘Yes way. Except she wasn’t a real fortune-teller at all. She was just an ordinary woman called Maggie.’
    ‘That’s totally amazing,’ said Kate. I could tell by her face that she was really interested.
    I had a funny feeling that if I’d been friends with Cathy and Lily, I never could have told them this story – they’d have laughed or teased me about being so stupid.
    I knew from the start that Kate was different, but now I realised that she was different in a nice way.

    The next few weeks went by very quickly. Kateand I spent every day together. She didn’t know much about cool stuff like clothes or music, but she knew loads about plants and birds, and she knew all kinds of strange places to explore.
    Kate didn’t mention her mum or dad any more, and neither did I. That whole thing was much too embarrassing for me. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, so I decided it would be easier to say nothing at all.
    I couldn’t say that I was
loving
my time in the country, but I was sort of getting used to it. Victoria still