First Fruits by Penelope evans Read Free Book Online

After all the commotion she caused last night, it was bedtime when
I finally got to look at the alphabet. And even then there was no peace.
Sometimes things just seem to conspire against you, stopping you doing the
things you should, feeling the way you ought.
    In other words, I had the dream again.
The one I keep thinking will go away. After all, surely no-one was meant to
dream the same dream, time and time again. That's not what people go to sleep
for.
    It's hardly worth talking about really.
But I'll mention it now, just this once, just in passing, even if it does make
me like Hilary who does it constantly, insisting on describing every dream
she's ever had. Mostly to do with sitting exams, or playing music on a piano
that won't keep still.
    Never the same dream though. I asked her
once, and the silly girl just gave a me a funny look, as if she didn't
understand the question.
    My dream then. I'm small and lighter
than feather. But my father is a giant, holding me to his chest as he strides
through a house where the walls are nothing short of dangerous, threatening to
fall in upon us. Yet nothing touches us. And as he walks, he shines, lit up by
the brightest of lights that glows on me as well, so both of us are brilliant,
dazzling, with pure light flickering up around us.
    So much light, and his arms around me,
it should feel like heaven. But it never seems that way. And maybe, that's the
worst of it. Knowing I should be thankful, and feeling - nothing.
    Is it any wonder then, when Dad comes to
wake me in the usual way, I've forgotten every word I'd tried to learn? After a
dream like that it's hard work remembering who I am, let alone a few
Greek letters.
     
    Last two periods of the day, and we troop outside into
the cold for P.E. Not that it is any concern of mine. No-one could expect me to
run around a netball court with a leg that won't do what it's told. I get to
sit on the sidelines and pretend to keep score.
    Who would want to play ball at our age
anyway? Fiona McPherson and Jackie Milne apparently. It must be the stupidity
of it that makes me stare the way I do, sitting here next to the fence,
watching them so hard that something goes wrong with my eyes and I seem to be
seeing them in slow motion. When they run, it is as if they are dancing, long
legs kicking patterns in the air, while the ball appears to hang by a thread
from the ends of their fingers. Feet that do as they are told. Watching them,
the leg that's wrong begins to throb. And even then I can't look away.
    Only today it's different. Moira has
been told to play.
    Miss Botham must have put her foot down,
and dismissed all that stuff from Moira's Gran, about her having asthma, and
being too frail to play. Moira, frail!!! I'd bet Miss Botham is regretting
it now, though. Moira is standing there in the middle of everyone, like a piece
of furniture someone has dragged onto court; something massive - like a double
wardrobe say - getting in the way, stopping everything.
    And that's without mentioning Lydia, on
court for her first ever game of netball. She's standing there, miles apart
from everybody else, yet impossible to ignore. Her arms and legs are pulsing as
if her braces were receiving invisible signals and transmitting them to every
nerve in her body. She has all the fingers and toes a person could wish for,
but can she use them? Don't ask.
    But the funniest thing of all is Miss
Botham herself. She must believe so deeply in the benefits of Sport. You see,
even though it's impossible for someone in my position ever to play, she'd like
to have me on the court. I can tell from the way she looks at me every now and
then - as though she has temporarily forgotten the ball and Moira and Lydia and
everything. Some days, like today, Miss Botham can't seem to take her eyes off
me.
    Especially when I give her that certain
smile, the one I keep just for her. The one that makes her look flustered and
turn quickly away.
     
    After school, Hilary is showered, dried,