“I do like my dad.”
“You didn’t like him much then. I don’t understand why. Just because he isn’t the one who ran away is not a very good reason.”
“Well, he laughed at me.”
“Everyone laughs at you, Jake. That’s nothing to get upset about. You can make a career out of that, you know. It’s called being a comedian.”
“But I want to be a fish painter,” Jake pointed out. “Or something along those lines.”
“Ah, yes,” said Brian. “I remember. The boy with the fish tank, that was you. Remember the day you took the girls over there, Stella, and Joey came running home all excited about the ‘fiss.’”
Jake froze. He didn’t know where to look. They’d mentioned the thing he didn’t dare even to think about.
Stella was laughing too. How could they laugh? After the dreadful thing that had happened. He couldn’t understand that, how they weren’t all swimming in a black murk of depression all the time. He thought about Daisy, and he shivered at the thought of anything happening to her, anything like the horrible thing that had happened to Joanne; the thing that had nearly happened to Nuala Something.
“How come you can laugh?” he asked.
There was silence for a few moments. Perhaps he shouldn’t have asked.
Jake sucked in his breath and waited, and then Stella said, “Because we can’t always be crying. That’s why. And anyway it would be silly only to cry, when you can laugh sometimes.”
“That’s it,” her dad said. “There are enough sad things to cry about without crying about the funny things too.”
“I see,” said Jake. Something clicked in his head. Something he hadn’t understood before. “Like how life is not a bowl of cherries, but a bowl of cherries is still a bowl of cherries.”
Stella stared at him. She didn’t get it. But her dad did.
“Something like that,” he said. “Sort of.”
“Mrs. Kennedy told me that,” Jake explained to Stella.
“Oh,” said Stella, but she still didn’t see.
It didn’t matter.
“Let’s go to the park,” Jake said, “while your dad is getting the wood and stuff. Let’s have a game of one-a-side football, you know, goal to goal, and afterward, I’ll buy you an ice cream. I got extra pocket money this week for cleaning the downstairs windows.”
“OK,” said Stella. “Sounds good. Let’s go. If that’s OK with you, Dad? Can you manage the rest by yourself?”
“That’s OK,” said Brian, who had taken the pencil from behind his ear and was writing down measurements. “I think I can cope. Just about.”
“And then,” said Jake, “after the ice creams, we can go to see Mrs. Kennedy. I want to tell her about the tree house. I bet she’d love to hear about it.”
“Yeah,” said Stella, “and we have to make sure she doesn’t let her son put in an objection with An Bord Pleanála.”
“An Bord what?” said Jake.
“The planning people,” Stella explained. “You know. They stop you building things.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Jake. “Daisy murderer,” he hissed. “Fish faker.”
“Curmudgeon,” added Stella. “That’s my word of the week. Good, isn’t it? And after all that, can we go and see Daisy?”
“Yeah,” said Jake. “The small marauder.”
“What?”
“Oh … nothing. Come on, then. Let’s go!”
Copyright © 2006 by Siobhán Parkinson
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
143 West Street, New Milford, Connecticut 06776
First published in the United Kingdom in 2006 by Puffin Books, London
All rights reserved
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
First American Edition March 2006
eISBN 9781466892934
First eBook edition: February 2015
Something Invisible Page 10
