Lightning Chase Me Home

by Amber Lee Dodd

  “You used to love going there, didn’t you, Amelia?” Da said, packing the fridge full of the cheese that made everything smell like feet.

  “No. I never go to bookshops. I didn’t even know we had a bookshop. I don’t even read,” I said, overdoing it a bit.

  Da shot me the look that said “behave yourself” and I shot him a look right back that said “I am”.

  “Well, you probably have things to do. I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Da said to Hettie and Penny, trying not to sound rude. “Thank you for looking out for my da,” he added.

  But Hettie didn’t move or stop staring at me with her intense, golden eyes. “Of course, we must be off to attend to all our important things,” she finally said.

  “Oh, really?” Penny asked, looking disappointed as Da unpacked the biscuits.

  “Yes, things to do, my dear, especially with the storm coming in.”

  “A storm? I haven’t heard anything about it on the shipping news?” Da said.

  “Oh, it’s going to be a big one,” Hettie replied and turned her heavy gaze on me until I thought her amber eyes would drill right into the centre of me.

  I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until after Hettie and Penny had left. I wondered what they were off to do. Boil up children’s bones, eat frogs, or something else equally as terrible. As they pottered down the lane arm-in-arm, Da asked, “You don’t know anything about what happened at the bookshop, do you?”

  “I wasn’t even there,” I said, which was half-true. But the thought of disappearing and leaving Tom all alone made me feel bad all over again. I couldn’t help it, right then and there at the kitchen table I burst into tears. And it wasn’t the kind of crying you could cover up with blowing your nose or pretending you had hay fever. It was the kind of crying that came with embarrassing squeaking noises.

  “Hey now, what’s this about?” Da said, his eyes filled with worry.

  But I didn’t know how to answer and I couldn’t stop making weird, noisy crying sounds. Pipi nuzzled into me but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  “What can I do? Is there something you need? Tissues, plasters, a hot drink?” Grandpa asked, looking slightly alarmed.

  What I really needed was for Tom not to hate me and for all this truly weird stuff to stop happening. But Da putting his arm around my shoulder helped. I breathed in the musty smell of his wax jacket.

  “Did something happen?” Da asked as he stroked my messy hair.

  I nodded my head. I wanted to tell him all about the bookshop and Tom and the disappearing. I wanted to tell him everything so badly that it made my insides ache. But even if I could have found the right words, or knew how to explain everything in a way that would make Da believe me, it would just be another case of me causing trouble again. I could already see how disappointed Da would be. So I mumbled something about an argument with Tom and let Pipi lick my toes until I stopped blubbing.

  When I had finished wiping my nose on the tea towel Grandpa had passed me, Da decided we all needed cheering up. Grandpa suggested going to the pub, which I thought was quite a good idea. But Da decided to make the “Da Spectacular” for dinner instead. The “Da Spectacular” is a bit of everything. Eggs, bacon, beans, bubble and squeak, potato smiley faces and, just to be fancy, French toast. It usually takes all of us to make everything. But Grandpa wasn’t much help. He kept putting the wrong things in the toaster. Da persuaded him to go and listen to one of his stories on the radio, so we could cook in peace.

  But even though everything came out perfectly, I couldn’t eat a thing. I couldn’t stop thinking about Tom and how angry he had been earlier. So I just pushed my food around my plate and when I thought no one was looking, I fed it to Pipi. Da must have noticed though, because when he came up to my bedroom that night he was carrying a packet of biscuits.

  “Just in case you were hungry,” he said, “and I thought maybe we might read something. In case you couldn’t sleep.”

  Da used to read to me every night. But I couldn’t remember the last time he had done it. So many big things had changed after Mum left that I hadn’t noticed all the little things too.

  “I’m too old for bedtime stories,” I muttered as I tried to disappear under the bedcovers.

  “I know,” Da said, pulling the cover back and brushing my curly hair out of my face. “But I sort of miss reading our stories, and reading to your grandpa isn’t quite the same.”

  Grandpa only liked to be told grisly ghost stories or whodunnits where everyone got murdered by the butler.

  “Well, if you really want to,” I said.

  Da looked over my bookcase and picked up the lady adventurers book. I’d put it up there to dry after I’d tried to stick it back together. But I hadn’t done a very good job. The glue had made the front cover go all wobbly and some of the pages were stuck together.

  “What happened to this?” Da asked.

  I didn’t want to tell him about Blair because then I would have to explain why I had taken the book to school in the first place, so I just shrugged. Da flicked through the sticky pages until he found one Blair hadn’t managed to rip out.

  “Junko Tabei,” Da read, showing me a picture of a small Chinese lady in big sunglasses and orange climbing gear holding a Japanese flag at the top of a snowy mountain.

  “Junko Tabei started off as a small and sickly child. But even at a young age she dreamed of scaling mountains. At a time when few women climbed, Junko set her sights on getting to the top of Everest. However, with many people believing women weren’t built for climbing, Junko and her team of all-women climbers couldn’t find enough money for the trip to Everest. For three years the women trained and fundraised and saved their own money. But it was never enough. Finally, a Japanese newspaper decided to give them the money to get them to the mountain. But a few days into their climb, disaster struck. An avalanche engulfed the camp. With most of the climbers buried under snow, only Junko’s guide was left to search for her. He had to dig through a foot of snow only to find most of the climbers injured and Junko unconscious. But despite her close call, Junko was determined to fulfil her dream. Twelve days later she became the first woman to climb Everest.”

  It was nice having Da read to me. But I couldn’t help thinking about Mum and how these were all her stories; she was the intrepid adventurer in the family. Da had never even left Dark Muir. I wished more than anything that I could be with her, far away from this island and my problems.

  When Da switched off the light and opened the door I asked, “Do you think Mum will ever come back?”

  Sometimes it’s easier to ask things in the dark. But either Da didn’t hear me, or he pretended not to, because he clicked the door shut behind him.

  I couldn’t sleep. I kept staring up at my glow-in-the-dark stars and thinking about the book and Tom and everything that was happening with the disappearing. So I pulled out Miss Archibald’s blue exercise book from my backpack. I couldn’t believe how much I’d written. There were pages and pages of my big blobby handwriting. I’d never written so much in my whole life. But this time I couldn’t think where to begin. Every time I had written in my journal before I had imagined talking to Mum and telling her about all the scary mad things that were happening to me. But I wasn’t looking forward to telling Mum about how I abandoned Tom. How I hadn’t been brave when I needed to be. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what she might say. How disappointed she would be in me. So I picked up my pen and wrote instead.

  Dear Mum,

  Here are the things I miss about you:

  •I miss how when I had a bad dream you would climb into my bed and we would pretend it was a ship and we were sailing to all kinds of fantastic places until I fell asleep.

  •When I really struggled to understand my schoolwork and thought I was stupid, you would take me to Puffin Cave and we would scream out all the bad thoughts I had and listen to the echoes fade away.

  •Most of all I miss you. Because I really need you
, Mum. More than ever. Which makes it even harder to keep writing to someone who might never write back.

  Before I went back to bed, I pulled out Mum’s gold compass from my bedroom drawer. It was still in my birthday box with the ribbon wrapped around it. I tipped it into the palm of my hand and watched the needle wobble. I wished that it would point the way to Mum. But it just twitched and settled on north. Instead of putting it back into the box, though, I pulled the ribbon off and threaded it through the loop at the top. I tied it around my neck. It made me feel better having a little piece of Mum next to my heart.

  Chapter 18

  After the holidays, everything changed. For a start, Tom wouldn’t talk to me at school, and then the weather got worse. A thick mist settled over the island. The days suddenly got darker, the wind was flecked with ice and I could even taste snow in the air. I wore my heavy, yellow rain mac and the red woolly hat and scarf Grandpa had knitted, but I still felt cold and shivery. It was as if everything Hettie and Penny had said was starting to come true.

  As the weeks went by, I felt weirder and weirder. My belly was filled with sparkles and my tongue tingled like I had just eaten a giant sherbet dip. And the hand that had touched the Serpent’s Tooth Rock felt achy and sore all the time. I was sure something big was going to happen. I just didn’t know that everything would start with Miss Archibald’s goldfish.

  On the first day back after half-term Miss Archibald moved me next to Tom in our STAR class, which would have been awesome if we had been talking. But Tom treated me like I really had disappeared for good. He wouldn’t even look at me. Every time I tried to ask him what happened in the bookshop, Tom wouldn’t answer. I knew he was upset, because he spent all lesson rearranging his pens in order of colour and height. But he still ignored me. Even Ian and Gregory joined in. Every time I said something they jumped and looked around with a stupid confused look on their faces. Which was really immature, but seemed to make them laugh. I will never understand boys.

  Miss Archibald peeped worriedly over her glasses through all of this.

  “Has something happened between you and Tom?” she asked after one of our classes.

  I hadn’t known what to tell her. I watched her rainbow eyebrows crinkle with concern. But I didn’t want to get Tom into any more trouble, so I just shook my head.

  “You know my door is always open if you need to speak to someone,” she said, pushing her glasses back up her beaky nose.

  On a list of people I was likely to tell about the disappearing, Miss Archibald was right at the bottom. But I had started to like her. She still looked like an owl but more like a little snowy owl than a stern barn owl. She didn’t understand what had happened between me and Tom, and neither did I really. I mean, I knew why Tom was angry. If he had left me to face getting caught all alone, I would be angry too. But I had tried to apologize. I had tried over and over again. I’d even tried to draw Tom a sorry card in art. I had wanted to draw a picture of us on it. But every time I tried to draw Tom, I made him look weird. First I drew him with a big balloon head, and then I accidentally made him look like a giant stick insect, with these long legs that finished off the page. In the end I balled up the card and threw it in the bin. I was about to give up for ever on me and Tom ever being friends again when Blair returned.

  Blair had been missing for the whole of the first week back – her mum had taken her on holiday even though that wasn’t allowed. I hadn’t even noticed she was gone. It’s really easy to forget about things like the school bully when your best friend won’t talk to you. But Blair certainly hadn’t forgotten about me.

  When Miss Archibald asked us to pair up for a reading exercise, Blair moved as far away from me as she could. I looked over at Tom desperately but he was already sitting next to Beth, who had spat her hair out in surprise. Gregory was sitting next to Ian obviously. So that just left me and Blair Watson.

  “Don’t you even think about sitting next to me,” Blair growled, but she had gone very pale, ghost pale. Just like she had in science class after I disappeared right in front of her.

  I thought of Mum’s wildlife advice. “It’s best not to look dangerous animals right in the eye.” Mum told me that she had learned this from her guide when she was filming wildebeest in Africa. I imagined Blair as a dangerous wildebeest, her pigtails turning into pointy horns in my head. So I edged into the seat next to her, staring straight ahead. But it didn’t help. As soon as I was in my seat, Blair thumped the desk.

  “Get away from me, freak,” she said drawing out the “freak” part.

  Blair knew my secret and she wasn’t going to keep quiet.

  “Look, about what happened when we were fighting. It’s not what you think,” I stammered, trying to come up with an explanation that didn’t involve magical rocks.

  But Blair leaned in closer, her dark eyes flashing.

  “I know what I saw. You vanished, right in front of me, because you’re a freak with freak powers,” she said at the exact moment the class went quiet.

  “What was that, Miss Watson?” Miss Archibald asked, looking up from the board.

  Every pair of eyes was on Blair. I could tell the whole class had heard what she said, including Tom, who had finally stopped pretending I didn’t exist and was staring at me in panic. But the thing was, as soon as Blair said it out loud it sounded just as ridiculous and impossible as when I tried to tell Da for the first time. I looked around. No one believed her. Everyone was whispering and nudging each other.

  “Well, Miss Watson, please do share with us,” Miss Archibald asked again.

  Blair flushed several shades of red and then opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Perhaps you can enlighten us after you’ve finished doing your very best impression of my goldfish,” Miss Archibald added, tapping Colin’s bowl.

  A tiny snigger escaped from me. I tried to cover it up as a cough. I knew making fun of Blair would be the very worst thing I could do. Suddenly I could see Tom in the corner giving me full-force wibbly-wobbly eyebrows that were trying to tell me to stop. But I couldn’t help it. After everything that had happened, it felt so good to surrender to the laughter bubbling through my body. My little snigger got louder and louder until it was an unstoppable belly laugh. Then everyone joined in. The whole classroom fell about laughing at Blair Watson.

  It took Miss Archibald threatening to make us stay during the break before everyone quieted down. But that didn’t stop everyone whispering about it throughout the rest of the lesson. I could even see Gregory do a goldfish impression. Blair saw it too. She twisted in her seat and silently moved a finger across her neck.

  “You’re dead,” she mouthed.

  When the break bell went everyone filed out of class still sniggering. As I packed up my things I could see Blair loitering in the library across the hall. She was pretending to read a book but it was upside down and Mr McNevis, our ancient librarian, was nowhere to be seen. I was going to have to plan my escape route very carefully. I ducked behind one of the bookcases when Blair wasn’t looking, then peeped around the corner. Tom had come back to grab a folder, which was just the distraction I needed. I crouched down and ran to the bookcase at the end and then darted across to the staircase. I was halfway down the stone steps before I heard Blair shout.

  “You better not be sneaking off if you don’t want your boyfriend to be in a lot of trouble.”

  I could have just run, or pretended not to hear. Tom had spent days now being so unfriendly that it would have served him right. But I wasn’t going to abandon him. Not again.

  In Miss Archibald’s classroom Blair was sitting on top of Tom, who was wriggling like an upturned beetle.

  “Leave him alone,” I said. I was trying to sound brave but my words came out with a wobble.

  “Not until I get proof,” Blair smirked, then fished her phone out of her pocket and pointed it at me. “If you want your friend back then I want everyone to see what I know I saw you do.”

  “I ca
n’t,” I stuttered.

  “Oh, we both know you can,” Blair said, pushing Tom’s head into the carpet. “So show me your freak powers.”

  “Don’t do it, Amelia!” Tom squeaked.

  “Oh yeah, and why not?” Blair said pulling at Tom’s ear.

  “Get off me!” Tom roared, freeing an elbow and shoving it hard into Blair’s side. It only knocked Blair back for a second but it was enough for Tom to wiggle his other arm free and pull Blair’s long braid. Blair yelped and twisted away, giving Tom enough time to leap to his feet.

  “Fine,” Blair said, pushing a desk between her and Tom and grabbing my blazer collar, “let’s repeat what we did before. I’ll punch you and then you do your great vanishing act!”

  “Won’t be very easy to beat someone up and film it at the same time will it?” Tom said.

  “Good point, ostrich boy,” Blair snarled as she rushed to the other side of the room and grabbed the fishbowl off Miss Archibald’s desk. She gave the bowl a shake, swishing Colin around.

  “Fish don’t get dizzy,” Tom said, brushing himself down and pulling his backpack back on. “Come on, Amelia, let’s get out of here.”

  But I knew Blair wasn’t finished. She was smiling that same terrible smile she had on her face the day she destroyed my precious book.

  “You know what else fish don’t do?” Blair said, smirking as she stepped over to the open window. “Fly!” she finished, balancing Colin’s bowl precariously on to the window ledge.

  Tom rushed forward.

  “No, no, no.” Blair said, one hand rocking the fish bowl. “You don’t want to make my hand slip.”

  Tom took a step back and I could see he had his fists clenched so tight that his knuckles had turned white.

  “Now see, I can easily hold this goldfish bowl in one hand and film with the other. So either you’re going to reveal to the world what a massive freak you are, or Colin is going to have a very unfortunate accident,” she said, her lip curling into a cruel little grin.