Hello God by Moya Simons Read Free Book Online

with me.Adam brought his magician’s hat yesterday. First he juggled a few balls, then he managed to pull the most extraordinary things out of his magician’s hat—scarves knotted together, paper kites, even a toy rabbit. I guess it had a secret lining inside, but it didn’t matter. All the kids’ eyes lit up, and everyone, including the nurse on duty, said, ‘Ooooooh.’
    Steph let him paint a picture of Spider Man on her scalp. Now that was really cool. The nurse came and watched him. The nursing staff are great, like big kids. They never get angry, and join in and play with the kids if they have time. There’s even a school and a playroom for kids as they get better.

Hello nobody,

    If you’re there and not having a tea break, you might want to know that Steph’s illness is having a huge effect on me.
    I feel so helpless. I just had to do something.
    I locked myself in the bathroom and hacked as much hair as I could with the scissors. Then I used Dad’s electric shaver. It was hard to see my brown popcorn hair shaved off, lying in little curly piles on the floor, and I couldn’t do the back of my head really well. I didn’t look pretty or have a well-shaped head that made the baldnesslook better, but I gritted my teeth, and thought, I can do this. I can really do this. Mum was with Nan, so I wasn’t missed, even though I was in the bathroom for ages.

    Still, I had to face my parents, so I thought I’d break it to them slowly. I put on my purple and red striped winter beanie, then walked into the laundry where Mum was loading the washing machine. Nan was beside her.
    ‘I can’t find my lipstick,’ Nan was saying.
    Mum told Nan not to worry as she threw in my pyjamas and tops, she’d find the lipstick.
    When Mum noticed me standing there, she straightened up and frowned at me. She wanted to know what I was doing with a beanie on my head in summer. She looked again and dropped a handful of washing onto the floor.
    Nan stared at me vaguely and said what a pretty hat I was wearing.
    I took off the beanie. Nan immediately asked me what had happened to my hair. Mum wrung her hands together, God, like I’d committed a major crime, and asked me what on earth had I done.
    I explained that my hair was on the bathroom floor, that I’d used Dad’s razor. I told Mum not to go nuts about this, and that I’d sweep up the mess in the bathroom.
    While Mum blinked in disbelief, Nan told me that I looked better with hair. Then she began to search in the washing for her lipstick.
    Mum stumbled past the washing and Nan and the peg bag to where I was standing. She didn’t say a word. She just held me to her and stroked my bald scalp. It tickled.
    ‘I understand,’ she said.
    A boy came into the wilderness. He had fair hair and eyes as dark as midnight. He didn’t look lost. He seemed to know just where he was, even though it was strange for a boy to be there in the snow and ice. He wore a sailor’s cap, which was even stranger, for where was the ocean?
    He quickly found the cave where the bears lived, and the small cat curled up in the warmth of Sharmi’s fur. He held out his hand to the cat. The cat looked up at the boy. She didn’t want to leave the bears. They were her family. But there was something about the boy; something that pulled her to him.
    She struggled to stand upright, and though Sharmi and his mother and all the other cubs pleaded with her, she decided to follow the boy.

Dear nobody in particular,
    Your silence is deafening. Yes, I know all about the starving kids in different parts of the world, and I feel bad about them too. But you could fix everything, if you wanted to. What is it you do anyway? Create us then leave us to make sense of our crazy world.
    I decided not to wear a beanie to school today. It felt like the only way I could relate to what was happening to Steph.
    When I entered the playground, Adam and Matt came over to me. They took one look at me and understood immediately.
    Adam