Free Olivia Flies High by Lyn Gardner

determination.
    “That Kylie, she is like a donkey,” said Pablo loudly and proudly during one session.
    This unflattering comparison made Kylie shriek all over again. “First you say I’m fat and now you say I’m a donkey!” But she had a big smile on her face.
    Once the pinya was in place, smaller children scrambled up their bodies and on to their shoulders. Then smaller children still took their turn to create higher and higher tiers as the human tower grew taller and taller. Pablo and Olivia clapped as the castell , five storeys high, rose seamlessly up towards the ceiling.
    Emmy clambered to the top and raised her hand in a point. She was completely fearless, and she reminded Olivia of Eel. Olivia felt a terrible pang; she had barely spoken to Eel since Alicia had gone away, and she missed her even more than she missed Tom and her friends. She remembered what Jack had said in his e-mail about looking out for Eel and she felt guilty.
    The tower melted away almost as quickly as it had been built. A huge cheer went up as soon as everybody’s feet were safely back on the ground.
    “Brilliant,” said Pablo. “Your best yet. We’ll get to seven tiers, I’m certain. You’re all fantastic; it is hard for me to believe you have got so high so fast. You are not ugly ducklings, you are beautiful Swans. I’m really proud of you all. I’d like very much to take you all to Spain to show you to my grandmother. When she waslittle she climbed right to the top just like you, Emmy.”
    Even Olivia was smiling, which was a rare sight these days. She was so pale and listless. The only time she seemed to come alive was when she was practising the trapeze, and then she did so with a fever and intensity that was quite remarkable but also a little frightening. She clearly had a gift for it, just as she did for the high-wire, and was progressing at an astonishing rate, but Pablo found her complete lack of fear and her recklessness worrying. It was as if she didn’t care whether she fell or not; she had no sense of self-preservation at all.
    Sebastian Shaw, the acting teacher, who was now acting head of the Swan, had noticed Olivia’s regression too. Sebastian liked Olivia a great deal; he knew that it was her quiet intensity, her ability to experience the world a little more sharply than most people and then express what she saw and felt that gave her the potential to be a great actor. Sebastian had taught Olivia’s mother, Toni, and he thought that Olivia might even be better still. If she would only let herself.
    Romeo and Juliet on the High-Wire had brought Olivia out of her shell, but now it wasas if she had retreated back inside again. Sebastian, who noticed everything that was going on, was certain that it was not Alicia’s absence, or even her separation from Eel, but her falling-out with her friends that was worrying Olivia. He wondered whether he should try and have a word with all of them, act as a mediator. But when he raised the issue with Alicia on the phone, she had advised him not to intervene.
    “I see it happening all the time, Sebastian,” she’d said. “At their age children fall out with each other and then they make up, or friendships dissolve and reform in a slightly different grouping. It’s all part of growing up. Olivia has got to sort this out for herself. But she seems to take these things harder than most children. She’s exceptionally sensitive, which makes it more difficult to cope with. But she’ll have to learn to cope.”
    Sebastian had seen Olivia and Tom and the others before the falling-out and understood the strength of their friendship. Something big must have happened to terminate it so decisively. But running the Swan was keeping him busy and he had other things to worry about, including aleak in the theatre roof.
    Pablo was rather pleased that Alicia was not there to look over his shoulder all the time and worry about the welfare of her Swans. He rather doubted that Alicia would