Read Online Cicada Summer by Kate Constable - Free Book Online Page A

didn’t drop the bike at the steps, but rode right around the house and through the tangled grass all the way to the summerhouse.
    Let Anna be there. Let Anna be there , she prayed. She couldn’t waste this idea. It filled up her head, she had to paint it. If only she could get it right.
    She wobbled desperately past the screening trees, jumped off the bike and leapt through the silence into the other time.
    ‘You nearly knocked me over!’ shouted Anna indignantly.
    ‘I know what to paint today!’ burst Eloise. ‘Better than yesterday—’
    ‘Yesterday? That was days ago. I’ve been waiting and waiting, every day, and you never came! Don’t you want to be my friend any more?’
    Of course I do , Eloise tried to say, but her voice clogged her throat. She stared at Anna, mute and miserable, and Anna stared miserably back.
    Then Anna underwent one of her sudden transformations. ‘Oh, let’s not fight, you’re here now.’
    ‘I try to come every day,’ whispered Eloise unhappily.
    ‘What do you mean? Why don’t you just come? Does someone stop you? Do they lock you up?’
    ‘No . . . but . . .’ Eloise stopped. How could she explain to Anna who she was and where she came from? How could anyone handle a glimpse into her own future – a future where she was no longer alive? Eloise could never tell her, never.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I come as often as I can. Promise.’
    ‘Okay,’ mumbled Anna. ‘I just get lonely, that’s all.’ Her eyes filled with those sudden tears that seemed to rise and fall like the tide, and she said, ‘I miss my mumma.’
    ‘Me too,’ whispered Eloise. ‘Me too.’
    The two girls were silent, their loneliness wrapped around them like a dark mist. Eloise stared at the ground, a lump pressing inside her throat.
    ‘Where’s your mum, then?’ Anna said in a small voice.
    Eloise swallowed. ‘She died.’
    Anna’s eyes went completely round. ‘Oh . . . oh, no. What happened?’
    ‘It was a car crash.’ Eloise felt her voice scratching as she spoke. ‘She didn’t feel anything. It was instant.’
    Her scalp prickled; she’d never told anyone about Mum’s accident. She shouldn’t be telling Anna now; surely it was wrong tell someone about their own death, even if they didn’t know it . . . She grabbed up her pencil. ‘Wait, see my idea,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Look at this.’
    She swept the pencil across the pale expanse of the two walls they hadn’t painted on yet, the two walls that faced the doorway and had clear light falling across them. She had to pin down her idea while she could still see it; the image had come to her so clearly in the shower, all in one piece, perfect.
    Anna watched as Eloise sketched and paused and looked and sketched some more, lines of firm grey pencil laid over the pale boards, a picture emerging out of nothing.
    ‘It’s a girl. A girl flying? Ooh no, I see now. Is she swimming?’
    ‘She’s inside the ship.’ Eloise’s hand swooped over the wall. It was hard to get the scale right across the angle of the two walls; the girl’s head was the wrong size. Impatiently she rubbed it out and tried again. ‘She’s under the water.’
    ‘Drowned?’ asked Anna ghoulishly.
    ‘No, no – maybe – I don’t think so.’
    Eloise kept drawing. She wasn’t sure about the edges of the picture, but the central image was strong and clear: the swimming girl, hair streaming in the water, bare feet kicking behind her.
    ‘What’s she holding?’ Anna stepped in close to stare. ‘Is it a mirror? A painting? Something in a frame.’
    The girl held it out in front of her with one hand, as if she were about to swim right through the frame. Eloise scribbled, stood back, erased, scribbled again. She couldn’t make the angle work.
    ‘That hand looks all wrong,’ said Anna helpfully.
    ‘I know!’ snapped Eloise.
    ‘Look,’ said Anna. ‘Why don’t you draw me?’ Carefully she posed her hand, angling her fingers backward, and