The Apple Tart of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald Read Free Book Online

tart—and how good and kind I realize you’ve always been. It wasn’t until this morning when you sent me an apple tart of my own that I finally knew what it is that I have to tell you
.
    The timing is pretty terrible, but, you see, the reason I haven’t wanted to go away is because I’ve wanted to stay here, and the reason I’ve wanted to stay here is because of you
.
    I’ve nothing against New Zealand or anything but because of how I feel, specifically about you, the whole world looks different
.
    I don’t know whether it’s because everything has got darker or lighter. I guess that depends on how you feel about me which is, I hope, the same
.
    So anyway, look, you’ve convinced me that I should, as you say, “embrace the adventure” so that is what I have decided to do. It was the taste of your apple tart that finally made up my mind to give this my all. But I need to know you’ll be here when I come back
.
    I love you, Oscar Dunleavy
.
    I’ve been falling in love with you since the day we first met
.
    I need to have some idea about whether you feel the same way about me. Send me a sign. Anything will do
.
    Love
,
    Meg
    I put my hand flat on the paper and I thought for an insane moment that I’d stroll over to his house and drop it into the mailbox. I wondered about the possible things that Oscar would say or think or do if I’d ever had the courage to send it.
    I never sent the letter because I was afraid. I was afraid he would laugh at me. I was afraid that what I had written would seem ridiculously stupid. I was afraid it might break something that me and Oscar already had. I was afraid that he didn’t . . . that he would never feel the same way. So even though I put the letter in an envelope, and even though I wrote “To Oscar Dunleavy” on the front of it, and even though for a while I thought about running next door, right then in the middle of that night to post it, in the end I never did.
    Instead I turned and twisted that letter in my hands until it got puckered and crumpled, and then I smoothed it out again and I shoved it under my mattress—a soft, silent, stifled place that nobody can see.

the sixth slice

    When Meg left for New Zealand, I missed her all the time. I’d look over at her window and when I saw her room, blank and vacant, something inside me would twist, like a pain. I’d got so used to seeing her face that not seeing it felt wrong and miserable and kind of hopeless.
    So when Paloma Killealy moved in . . . of course, she wasn’t Meg and she could never replace Meg or anything . . . but I did think that maybe she would be a person I might get to know, and it turns out that she thought the same, and that was pretty good, I thought. At the time.
    The Energizer was on and during the first week Paloma arrived and the day before it at school, in front of a whole load of people, including Andy and Greg, Paloma asked me if I’d take her to it.
    It was obvious that she’d no clue about how The Energizer worked, because it is this event that happens a couple of times a year in a big hall with fields around it outside of town.
    When you arrive, you spend the whole night shouting at yourfriends just so they’ll be able to hear you and you watch people like Andy and Greg kissing girls. That’s all that happens. It’s a bit boring to tell the truth, but everyone goes. I’m not sure why.
    One thing that I do know, though, is that nobody “takes” anybody else to The Energizer. That’s not the way it works. I explained that to Paloma and she said, “Oh right, I see, okay then,” and she walked out of the yard, and her hair swung from side to side and Andy and Greg were like, “Oscar man, are you
crazy
? She definitely wants you, and would you
look
at her?”
    They claimed that our school had never had someone as fit as her in it, in its