In a Thousand Different Ways by Ahern Cecelia EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Ahern Cecelia
- Language: English
- Genre: Literary Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I MARCH TO THE BEAT of the uneaten apple clunking from side to side in
my lunch box. Roll, thump, roll, thump. It’s been in my school bag since
Monday, it makes my lunch look healthy, but it stays there for the week,
taking hits and getting more bruised by the day. My little brother Ollie
trudges along behind me, head down, occasionally kicking stones that dare
to block his path. Our house comes into view and I slow; school is too far
away in the morning, not far enough away in the afternoon.
I study her bedroom window. Curtains drawn messily, like they’ve been
pulled roughly and some clips have separated from the rings, leaving
gaping holes at the top. The Gangulys next door have tied-back curtains,
really fancy, like the ones you draw when you’re little and think that’s how
a house should look. Their front garden is a neat lawn; pretty, colourful
flowers around the edges with a red gate that matches the paint around the
windows. Not like ours.
Our grass needs cutting, it reaches above the garden wall like it’s
desperate to see over the top, maybe escape, but at least the jungle hides
some of the overflowing bins. Putting the bins out and cutting the grass was
Dad’s job.
I push our screechy rickety gate open, past the foul-smelling bins to the
blue door, the brass 7 of the 47 slightly crooked. I pick up the warm milk on
the step and bring it inside. It’s nearly 3 p.m. but the house is quiet and dark
and smells of stale morning. The kitchen table is decorated in sugar trails,
our cereal bowls are in the sink, soggy cornflakes floating in sugary yellow
milk. Chairs are pulled at odd angles from the table, the scene frozen from
8.30 a.m.
Ollie throws his school bag on the floor and falls to his knees at the
playbox that’s filled with mostly broken wheel-less cars from my big
brother Hugh and my decapitated dolls with no limbs. He plays with his
soldiers and wrestlers, making quiet boom-bash-bosh noises with his lips as
they pick up on a battle where they left off. I’ve never known a child to
whisper when they’re playing, but he rarely speaks, is always just there,
waiting, like the grass and the bins; silently growing and overflowing.
I place my schoolbag by the chair at the kitchen table where I’ll do my
homework. I wipe the table and scrape the hardened cornflakes stuck to the
edges of the bowls before stacking them in the dishwasher. I pull the
curtains open; the grey daylight reveals the dust particles floating in the air.
I watch them hover, ear cocked to the silence. My brother Hugh will be
home soon. He’s older and finishes school at four. Everything is always
okay when he’s home. But he’s not here now. A pulsating throb in my
temple like Morse code tries to tell me something. Nothing is different, but
something feels wrong.
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