The Apple Tart of Hope Read Online Free Page B

would be the depressing activity that we both knew well. By the time October came everyone’s teeth would be chattering, their hands fused in clawlike grips around the handlebars of their bikes because of the icy rain that would be pelting down from a great height.
    â€œHow many people do you know who have ever had the chance of a sunshine-filled expedition to a new bright land with white beaches and outdoor parties and surfing lessons?”
    I kept doing my best to try to think that he was right. But there was an anger in me that seeped into almost everything during those weeks before I left. My parents hadn’t had the decency to check with me, not even out of curiosity, whether the trip was something I was interested in. I couldn’t stop thinking about that, and dwelling on it, and it had soured the air around me.
    I’d wanted a mature discussion, which would have included me informing my parents—because it had obviously escaped their notice—that I wasn’t cut out for New Zealand, what with my love of temperate climates and my shrimplike complexion.
    Oscar said lots of things to me from his window in those weeks before I left. He told me that he’d miss me a lot. He told me that he had a whole load of information about New Zealand, which was going to come in fairly handy. He said he’d email it to me as soon as I arrived.
    I wanted to say lots of things to him too. Things that had gradually become clearer just before I was supposed to leave. But sometimesthe things you want to say most are exactly the things that somehow you are least able to.
    And then there were the things my parents kept
on
saying such as, “Meg, thousands of children would be so
grateful
for an opportunity like this.” And, “We really have no idea why you’re being so difficult.”
    I went over to Oscar and Stevie and their dad and they all said things wouldn’t be the same without me, and Stevie whizzed in circles. He said he was making a force field that would stop me from being able to leave, but his dad told him he was making everyone dizzy.
    When you’re supposed to feel positive and warm about something that’s filling you with a rigid kind of dread, it makes you quiet. It makes you not want to talk to people. It makes you wish you could tell everyone to go away and leave you alone.
    My parents had started to beg.
    â€œPlease, Meg,” they would say as I flopped on the sofa in a listless stupor that can only happen when you’re feeling as sad and uncertain as I was.
    â€œWill you please do your best not to be so sullen and gloomy.”
    Gradually they gave up, the way logical people do when begging is not making any difference. Instead they became sullen and gloomy themselves. They began to speak about the trip as if it was going to be an unavoidable ordeal. They’d lost the excitement that they’d started out with. They talked about the travel arrangements in whispers as if they were sharing news of a sudden illness or some massively expensive bill they hadn’t been expecting. Soon it was as if some big sword was swinging over their heads.
    I felt guilty. I’d infected the house with a crotchety mood. My parents’ prospect of their trip of a lifetime had been drained of its happiness and it was my fault.
    The whole world felt bar-taut and joyless. And it probably would have stayed like that. That’s if it hadn’t been for Oscar.
    Me and Oscar never used to get bored talking to each other at the windows. When we’d been younger we’d got into the habit of telling each other lots of quite personal things. Our best subjects. Our favorite colors. What we wanted to be when we grew up (me: a train driver, him: a trampoline man). I never asked him what exactly a trampoline man was. I should have, but I never did. There are lots of things I should have asked him.
    I couldn’t stop thinking about us when we were kids, and remembering