This is Shyness by Leanne Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

that’s to visit Lupe. Everyone knows Lupe and her van. People go to her for the best kebabs in Shyness, and to get answers to their questions. Even before the Darkness my parents warned me not to speak to her, but after Gram died the pull was too strong. Lupe told me things I wanted to hear. It didn’t matter to me if they were true or not. She told me Gram wasn’t far away at all, just on the other side of a curtain. That was before the Darkness, or before we realised the Darkness was coming. Sometimes I think the sun must have started failing around the same time that Gram left us.
    I quicken my steps. I’m anxious to see Lupe’s van shining in the night like a carnival ride. Lupe is definitely on my list of must-do’s in Shyness. I know instinctively that Wildgirl will like her. And now that I’ve had the idea of food, I can’t think of much else.
    â€˜Look,’ whispers Wildgirl, leaning into me, spooked. It’s a moment before I spot him.
    A man stumbles along the road, about fifty metres off, walking towards us. He’s got a classic Dreamer walk, dragging each leg after the other, hovering in mid-stride. His jumper sleeves hang as if he has no arms.
    â€˜Dreamer,’ I explain. ‘It’s like a cult around here. All they want to do is sleep and dream. When they start out they take lots of pills so that they can sleep longer and dream more. But after a while they don’t need the drugs: they can sleep for as long as they like. They’re convinced that dreams are the true reality.’
    The Dreamer passes us without seeming to register that we’re here, his gaze fixed somewhere on the horizon. He barely has any colour at all, like he’s been through the wash too many times. A lost soul. Wildgirl cranes her neck to keep watching him.
    â€˜You can’t blame them, can you? You can do anything you want in your dreams, be anything you want to be.
    When you’re asleep anything can happen, anything can be fixed, or reversed.’
    She speaks like someone who’s tamed her dreams. ‘You should hear some dreamer-rock. It sends even me to sleep.’
    Wildgirl still walks close, and it gives me an excuse to slip my arm around her shoulder.
    â€˜What are you going to do with the card now that you know it works?’
    â€˜I’m going to get on a plane and fly somewhere far, far away.’
    â€˜Where will you go?’
    â€˜Uh, India, I guess. Maybe.’
    The only things I know about India are that it’s crammed full of billions of people all trying to find some space, and that the sun would fry me in thirty seconds flat. ‘Do you have family there?’
    â€˜Why would you say that?’ Wildgirl is brittle all of a sudden.
    â€˜I don’t know. You look like you’re half-something.’ Crap. She glares at me. ‘It’s…your hair is so dark, and your skin…’
    Wildgirl pulls out from under my arm. ‘Why don’t you ask my mum? She says she doesn’t know, but personally I think she’s just holding out on me.’
    I’ve ruined the moment.
    When I was younger I used to imagine what it would be like if I had different parents. It had to be a mistake that I got the ones I did. I was nothing that my parents wanted me to be. Neither was Gram, but I didn’t think it bothered him as much.
    Wildgirl should know that two parents are not necessarily better than one.
    â€˜My parents were some of the first to leave Shyness when things got difficult. My dad wants nothing but comfort and money. He wants all the dirt and noise in the world to be kept out of his house. He makes all the rules, but he’s soft. He never lifts a finger, except to send emails.’ I strike a body-builder pose. ‘Looks like Mum was secretly running with the pack.’
    Wildgirl smiles. She knows what I’m trying to do. She grabs me and turns me around, pointing at the ghostly Dreamer, floating