Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings by Sophia Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

but the rebels still haven’t given in. I’ve been checking. Look.” She turns her head back to her screen. “Thousands of people are still too scared to return to their villages. Or they don’t have villages to return to. They’re living in camps in tiny huts all packed together, in fear of bandits. And James and Grace, Crow’s parents, are trying to help them. James is one of the few qualified teachers. He’s trying to help the children learn something, even without books and desks and blackboards. But he’s in danger, too. So Crow can’t go back. You see? Or she could, but from where he’s sitting how could a life here in Kensington possibly be worse than a life there in a camp? As far as he’s concerned, she’s one of the lucky ones. If things don’t get better, he’ll send Victoria when she’s old enough.”
    It’s hard to imagine. I mean, I know this sort of thing is always happening somewhere in the world, but it’s hard to imagine it affecting people I know. It’s hard to picture that tall, elegant man in the photograph deciding to send his daughters to a country where he can’t see them grow up. It’s hard to think of Crow packing up her things every afternoon and walking for miles, withonly other children for company. In London, you’d probably be arrested. And it’s impossible to imagine what would have happened if the rebels had got her. It is for me, anyway. Edie seems to have imagined it all.
    “What are you doing now?”
    Edie’s rattling away at her computer, her fingers flying over the keys.
    “I’m setting up some new links on my website. You know I’ve got all that stuff about recycling and fresh water for villages?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I’m going to add some pages about Invisible Children. Those are all the ones who’ve been displaced by this war. Boys and girls with no proper homes, no proper education. Lots of them have been split up from their families. There’s this campaign to help them. I’d never heard about it before. And I’m actually interested in this stuff. So it obviously needs lots more publicity.”
    “Edie, I hate to say this, but how many people look at your website?”
    “About two thousand a week.”
    “Oh? Really?”
    Edie rarely mentions her website. She’s been running it for a year now, between homework, chess, orchestra, and the other stuff. As it’s about water andrecycling, it’s not exactly YouTube for entertainment value. I was expecting her to say she gets about four visitors and I was going to explain, kindly, that putting links on her website wasn’t really going to make a huge amount of difference. But two thousand sounds quite impressive.
    “Yes, really. They like my blog, mostly. I talk about what I’m up to. What you’re wearing, obviously. School stuff. And what I really care about and what I think we should do about it. I get loads of comments and questions. Lots of other bloggers point to me now. Look.”
    We spend the next half hour skipping backward and forward across links on the Internet, revealing a network of Edies across Europe and America and Africa, all trying to change the world and talking to each other about it. I had no idea. I’m quite glad to realize she’s not alone, because obviously she doesn’t get a huge amount of sense out of me on most of these subjects. Just as I find her a bit limited on the history of punk or the advisability of the gladiator sandal.
    “Hang on a minute!” It’s just sunk in. “Do you tell two thousand people a week what I’m wearing ?”
    “Yes,” Edie says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “You don’t mind, do you? Some of them are quite interested.”

Chapter 11
    I wake up next morning and my brain is aching.
    First, there’s the thought that the little girl who likes to wear fairy wings was nearly captured by rebels and made into a soldier or a slave. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to me was forgetting to wear underpants to games when