Read Online Cicada Summer by Kate Constable - Free Book Online

wreck it again!’
    Eloise took a deep breath. Anna was right; fiddling always made things worse. She forced herself to dunk and wipe her brush. Anna needed help with all that sea.
    Eloise mixed green and black into a murky colour, and swept her brush up and across into wave-shapes. No, that looked all wrong – too smooth, too curvy, a friendly summer sea. She tried again. Choppy shapes, hard-edged, almost square. Much better. Now it was a scary sea, a sea you could easily drown in.
    ‘Ooh, that’s splendufferous !’ cried Anna. ‘How did you do that?’
    Eloise showed her how to paint the shapes, then, suddenly inspired, she tipped the waves with a hard white edge of foam that echoed the white strands of lightning. Yes . This sea was vast, and cold. It would slap you in the face, grab your ankles and suck you under. This was an angry sea, a ruthless sea. It was overwhelming. No lifeboat, no oars could save you from this sea; nothing could.
    Eloise lowered her brush and shivered. For a second she thought she might faint.
    Anna said, ‘You’ve stopped again.’
    Eloise dropped her brush into the bucket. ‘Don’t want to . . . paint any more.’
    ‘You’re a lazy slug,’ said Anna, but she looked tired too; there were dark rings under her eyes. Neither of them had remembered to eat all day.
    Anna rummaged in her pocket and pulled out a jelly snake, dusted with lint. She offered it to Eloise, who shook her head.
    They stood side by side in front of the picture they’d made together: the black slab of sky, the choppy blocks of sea, the rocks. The toy-like ship, seesawing in the air as the black dots of people rained down. The single pale ghost face, floating blind as a jellyfish, open-mouthed in the unfinished sea, clutching its hopeless loop of rope.
    ‘No,’ said Eloise. ‘No.’
    ‘I don’t like it either.’ Anna stuck one end of the snake in her mouth and chewed. ‘It’s respulsive .’ ‘Have to start again.’
    ‘Paint it all over again?’ Anna sagged. ‘Will you come back tomorrow? Do you promise?’
    Eloise said wretchedly, ‘I’ll try . . .’
    But she was speaking to empty air, and a blank set of walls. The wave of time had swept her up and dumped her back on her own shoreline again, and she was all alone.

9
    E loise slid the plug into the bath and turned on the shower. It was hard to believe that not long ago, she would have just let the water pour away down the drain, that she hadn’t known how precious water was. Bree used to have twenty-minute showers. Eloise could imagine how Mo would have thumped on the door and yelled at her.
    Precious, beautiful water . . . She’d really like a swim today . . .
    Suddenly she wrenched off the taps and jumped out of the bath.
    She was barely dry, still buttoning her shorts, as she snatched some toast and crunched it down.
    ‘You’re in a hurry today.’ Mo stared over the top of her glasses. ‘Something urgent to do?’
    Eloise nodded, then, as she passed Mo’s chair, she impulsively dropped a kiss on her grandmother’s wiry tangle of hair.
    ‘Strewth! What’s brought this on?’ Mo looked up, startled. ‘Not going to do anything silly, are you?’
    Eloise shook her head and grinned as she flew out of the kitchen. She rushed out the back door, launched herself onto the bike and down the driveway, and nearly knocked over Tommy and a slightly-built woman in a blue headscarf as they stepped out onto the pavement.
    ‘Watch it!’ Tommy shouted after her, jolted out of his usual politeness, and Eloise glanced back to make sure they were all right. That must be Tommy’s mum, the doctor. But she couldn’t stop, not even for mothers; nothing could stop her today.
    The smoke had dispersed and the air was clear. Eloise rode the short way, along the main street and past the shops, even though that hill was steeper. She pedalled down the road and through the sagging gates, along the rutted driveway and across the gravel. She was in such a hurry that she