Read Online Anthem for Jackson Dawes by Celia Bryce - Free Book Online Page A

when not at school. And the hospital was so far away. When she came home, they said, they’d see her every day. It wouldn’t be long …
    Jackson was right, and for that Megan wanted to hate him, but couldn’t. He’d tried to warn her and she hadn’t listened. And she was missing her friends the way Kipper was missing her kitten, so much it hurt.
    The moon suddenly appeared in the window, frombehind a cloud. It looked like a ball of ice, illuminating the room with a light which made the anaemic walls more bloodless, more colourless, the line of blue chairs more shadowy somehow, their worn-down edges weary, raw, like wounds. Megan wiped her eyes. It was stupid to cry, but she couldn’t help it.
    A movement in the dark made her squeal.
    â€˜Ssshhhh!’ Jackson said.
    â€˜Well, stop creeping up on people!’
    â€˜I’m not! This is
my
hiding place, you know.’
    â€˜Not tonight, it isn’t,’ Megan managed, ‘and I’m not hiding.’
    Jackson shuffled up to her. ‘Are you going to at least share?’
    Megan couldn’t speak any more, not wanting to be crying in front of him, not wanting to be so weak, so stupid, but not able to stop any of it. And just like that she was thinking of Kipper again. Poor little alien princess. Why did she keep turning up? And changing her name? What was all that about? Yet, why not? Nothing was real in hospital. Not like home. Maybe changing your name made you feel better about being ill, being stuck on a ward. You could pretend it was happening to someone else.
    If only she could change
her
name. Be someone else.
    â€˜Am I making you worse?’ Jackson said, his voice soft. ‘Do you want me to go?’
    Megan looked up at him. She felt dwarfed, he was so tall. She barely reached his shoulder, yet there was something about his height which gave him a strength and steadiness, like a solid piece of rock, something that would never move or let you down.
    No, she didn’t want him to go.
    â€˜It’s OK,’ she said.
    â€˜So … what’s up?’
    â€˜Don’t know.’
    Megan so wanted to lean her head against his arm, rest it there, just for a second or two. She did know. It was everything. It was the way he could be so happy and cheerful all the time, when she was so angry and upset. It was not believing what he said about her friends. When he was right all along. It was not wanting him around her. When, really, she needed him more than anything. Especially now.
    â€˜Hey,’ Jackson moved closer. Their drip stands nudged into each other with a dull clunk. ‘Don’t worry, whatever it is.’
    Then his arm was around her shoulders, warm as jumpers, pulling her in so close that she melted into the shape of him, so that in the sharpness of the moonlight, the jazzy glitter of the city and the strings of brightly lit roads, it was all just a blur. Megan couldn’t see where she ended or where he began, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered any more.
    * * *
    â€˜Thank you,’ Megan said later. Her eyes felt swollen and sore with so much crying.
    â€˜For what …?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Being here, I suppose.’
    But it was more than that. It was everything else.
    It was Jackson making her feel that it didn’t matter if she cried. It was him making everything seem just that little bit more simple, that little bit less confusing. It was Jackson making her feel safe, there in the window, with the black sky all around her.
    At last she moved away, gently shrugging off his arm from around her shoulders. ‘We should get back, I suppose. Before they come and find us.’
    â€˜Let them. What’re they going to do. Sack us? Send us home?’ His face shone in the moonlight. He was smiling.
    It was a nice smile, not one which laughed at her, for a change. Megan knew that Jackson was trying to be her friend, trying to help, when there was no Gemma to