If I Could Fly by Jill Hucklesby Read Free Book Online Page B

a big split in it. I mended the tear so now I have a chair of my own.
    Most days, I curl into it like a banana, my feet sticking up at one end, and read to myself out loud, doing different voices for all the characters. I like feeling that there are lots of people around me.
    ‘Can you tell the BBC to shut up, mate!’ Dair often yells from next door. ‘If I’d wanted a costume drama, I would have got a television.’
    I don’t think he minds, really. Sometimes, I know he comes and sits outside my house, just so he can listen. I try extra hard to read well then. I hear him laugh, or sigh, or tut tut, or draw his breath in, if it’s an exciting bit. Once, he even corrected my pronunciation. Tee-totaller seemed the oddest spelling I’d ever seen.
    ‘I think you’ll find it’s “teetotaller”,’ a squeaky voice whispered through my window. ‘It means someone who doesne drink a dram. Although I’ve never met such a person.’
    I think Dair loves stories as much as I do. Maybe,one day, he’ll read me one of his favourites or, better still, make one up. It would be more fun than reading the horrible stories on the front pages of the papers about the rising violence on the streets since the food shops have stopped opening every day.
    I don’t want to think about that. I just focus on building my house, making it stronger and cosier. It even has a roof now, made from plastic sheeting, newspaper and pages from magazines, placed over a string frame. When I go to sleep, I’m staring up at wild horses galloping over the prairie, a double page spread from
National Geographic
. It’s usually too dark to see them, unless there’s moonlight. But in the morning they are always there to greet me – Flash and Racer, Sundancer and Wings.
    I haven’t tried to find the hospital. Every time I think about going, I feel too frightened by the things Dair said. Even going out foraging makes me very nervous. I do it at night, but before the curfew. The pain in my leg means I’m limping and can’t run fast,so getting caught is becoming more likely. Each time I jump into a skip to rummage for treasure, I wonder if a big net will be thrown over the top, trapping me, as the container is craned on to a low-loader and taken to the dump.
    A homeless man was killed last week when the wheelie bin he was sleeping in was emptied into the crusher.
    ‘Nowhere is safe now,’ said Dair.
    Nowhere except my house of books – and that’s where I want to stay, with my little china Buddha and my dancing flower, my chandelier without a bulb and my framed photo of guinea pigs playing tug of war, until I can find the missing jigsaw pieces in my brain and put them back, one by one.
    Dair and I haven’t spoken much since our argument. He’s keeping himself to himself. He hasn’t sat in his chair for days and, apart from ear wigging at story time, he just stays in his space next door, making plans to storm the Hive and ‘set the people free’. Sometimes, hevisits the library I’ve set up. He can borrow three books at a time for as long as he likes. But they must be ones from the shelf and not from my walls.
    Andy the bear has a new job. He’s my doorbell now, thanks to some new batteries I found in a paper bag at a bus stop. If I hear, ‘I love you,’ or, ‘I just
lerve
honey,’ I know I have a visitor. No surprises who it is.
    I would give anything for it to be Little Bird. I want to speak to her so much, to hear her voice, to ask her a big ‘Why?’ Maybe I could call her? I’ll need money to do that – some change or maybe a pound coin. I could find that tomorrow, if I look hard. But if I call her, the FISTS can find me – Dair says the pay machines are bugged.
    I could write to her – but Dad thought our post was being opened before it got to us. If the FISTS are reading the mail, they would identify the postmark and the security teams would start scouring the area, inch by inch.
    I’ve got to think this through, so I’m heading