Read Online The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rosamund Lupton
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left Fairbanks yet, haven’t even left the yard, so it’s too early to be looking for him. And anyway, he’s in Anaktue, waiting for us. I just really want to see him.
Mr Azizi is trying to turn out of the yard onto the road, but there’s loads of trucks coming in and we can’t fit past them. Most of them have ‘AM-FUELS’ or ‘F.B.F.’ on them, which the man at the airport said stands for ‘Frack Baby Frack’, but Mum said he was only joking. Some of the trucks have houses on them, like the one we’ve got. Mum’s asking Mr Azizi questions, like how he stops fuel freezing. I’m not even trying to lip-read his answers because I’m pretty sure we won’t have done that in science. Last week we put baby teeth in Coca-Cola to see-what-happens, (borrowed from the Year Twos after the tooth fairy’s visited as most of us Year Sixes have lost our baby teeth). So instead of trying to lip-read their conversation I look out for Dad again.
The slimeball man is next to me; BANG next to my window. He must be standing on something because his face is close to mine. I can see the top of his head; there’s a horrible grey line either side of his parting, like a rat. I try to get further away from him, but I can’t get very far away because I’ve got a seat belt on and Mum is next to me.
Mum hasn’t seen him because she’s turned away again, probably hiding her filmy eyes from me.
The slimeball man is taking off his big mittens, but it’s so cold, why’s he doing that? He opens his bare hand and puts two fingers against his palm, which means ‘Mummy’ – MY sign for her.
Mr Azizi hasn’t seen him, because he’s looking straight ahead, waiting to turn onto the road.
The slimeball man is moving his fingers slowly around his face, the sign for ‘beautiful’.
His pudgy hands must be getting really cold because they’re turning all mottled, like ugly blue and mauve jellyfish. He signs, ‘Get your mummy for me.’
He’s pointing one of his horrible fingers at Mum.
There’s a gap for us to go and Mr Azizi drives out of the yard and onto the road and slimeball man is running after us, but he’ll never catch us.
I don’t know if I should tell Mum about him. I pat her arm and she turns to me and her eyes are filmy, just like I thought they’d be. I don’t want to make her more upset. And we’ll never have to see him again. He’s miles away from us already.
@Words_No_Sounds
651 followers
CREEPY: looks like hands turning into jellyfish; tastes like cakes that are alive; Feels: too close
Chapter 5
It was inhumanly dark. Yasmin’s eyes couldn’t make sense of the blackness. They’d been driving for seven hours and she’d long since stopped looking for glowing halos from far-off cities or towns because there were no cities or towns. Clouds made a barricade over the earth, so there was no moonlight or starlight; nothing to pierce through the weighted darkness apart from the truck’s headlights. Adeeb had told her that they shone for a quarter of a mile ahead, and to Yasmin they seemed like a search beam over an immense black ocean; a person disappeared in such a scale.
She remembered her terror of the dark as a child, how sometimes it had stopped her from even breathing, and it was linked to her being flung to the edge, a void in the centre of her life, where once her mother had been.
Her brothers and father had thought her fearless; they’d enjoyed her fists in the air to settle an argument, her bruises and grazes; the kid’s got balls. It was one way to try and fit into the all-male family. But being physically unafraid was easy; because after her mother died, what was there left to be scared of? Eight in the evening in February when they’d left the hospital. She’d tried to get out of the car but her father had put the child-locks on – the metal handle digging into her fingers, the smell of old takeaways, stale cigarettes, her nine-year-old arms in the cheap fleece too weak to force the door
Mr Azizi is trying to turn out of the yard onto the road, but there’s loads of trucks coming in and we can’t fit past them. Most of them have ‘AM-FUELS’ or ‘F.B.F.’ on them, which the man at the airport said stands for ‘Frack Baby Frack’, but Mum said he was only joking. Some of the trucks have houses on them, like the one we’ve got. Mum’s asking Mr Azizi questions, like how he stops fuel freezing. I’m not even trying to lip-read his answers because I’m pretty sure we won’t have done that in science. Last week we put baby teeth in Coca-Cola to see-what-happens, (borrowed from the Year Twos after the tooth fairy’s visited as most of us Year Sixes have lost our baby teeth). So instead of trying to lip-read their conversation I look out for Dad again.
The slimeball man is next to me; BANG next to my window. He must be standing on something because his face is close to mine. I can see the top of his head; there’s a horrible grey line either side of his parting, like a rat. I try to get further away from him, but I can’t get very far away because I’ve got a seat belt on and Mum is next to me.
Mum hasn’t seen him because she’s turned away again, probably hiding her filmy eyes from me.
The slimeball man is taking off his big mittens, but it’s so cold, why’s he doing that? He opens his bare hand and puts two fingers against his palm, which means ‘Mummy’ – MY sign for her.
Mr Azizi hasn’t seen him, because he’s looking straight ahead, waiting to turn onto the road.
The slimeball man is moving his fingers slowly around his face, the sign for ‘beautiful’.
His pudgy hands must be getting really cold because they’re turning all mottled, like ugly blue and mauve jellyfish. He signs, ‘Get your mummy for me.’
He’s pointing one of his horrible fingers at Mum.
There’s a gap for us to go and Mr Azizi drives out of the yard and onto the road and slimeball man is running after us, but he’ll never catch us.
I don’t know if I should tell Mum about him. I pat her arm and she turns to me and her eyes are filmy, just like I thought they’d be. I don’t want to make her more upset. And we’ll never have to see him again. He’s miles away from us already.
@Words_No_Sounds
651 followers
CREEPY: looks like hands turning into jellyfish; tastes like cakes that are alive; Feels: too close
Chapter 5
It was inhumanly dark. Yasmin’s eyes couldn’t make sense of the blackness. They’d been driving for seven hours and she’d long since stopped looking for glowing halos from far-off cities or towns because there were no cities or towns. Clouds made a barricade over the earth, so there was no moonlight or starlight; nothing to pierce through the weighted darkness apart from the truck’s headlights. Adeeb had told her that they shone for a quarter of a mile ahead, and to Yasmin they seemed like a search beam over an immense black ocean; a person disappeared in such a scale.
She remembered her terror of the dark as a child, how sometimes it had stopped her from even breathing, and it was linked to her being flung to the edge, a void in the centre of her life, where once her mother had been.
Her brothers and father had thought her fearless; they’d enjoyed her fists in the air to settle an argument, her bruises and grazes; the kid’s got balls. It was one way to try and fit into the all-male family. But being physically unafraid was easy; because after her mother died, what was there left to be scared of? Eight in the evening in February when they’d left the hospital. She’d tried to get out of the car but her father had put the child-locks on – the metal handle digging into her fingers, the smell of old takeaways, stale cigarettes, her nine-year-old arms in the cheap fleece too weak to force the door
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