Free The Burying Beetle by Ann Kelley Page A

stay here, though Mum says it’s a good place to grow up in. I don’t even know if I am going to be able to start school here in the autumn. It depends.
    Summer asked me once if I was frightened to die. She is. But then she’s frightened of lots of things – the dark, kidnappers, viruses, eating meat, the Big Wheel, the IRA, Dobermans, hospitals, maths. That’s not counting the usual things like spiders, beetles, moths and bats, and snakes too, I expect, but we didn’t get the opportunity to meet up with many snakes in Camden Town.
    I don’t know if I am or am not frightened to die. I think I might have been quite close once or twice – to dying. I don’t remember feeling scared then, just very, very tired. And when I had my operation last year to try and help my heart condition, I didn’t feel scared, really, just nervous. I didn’t enjoy the pain, obviously. But I did enjoy the attention I got from everyone – Daddy especially, and Mum and the doctors. It was as if suddenly I had become special – a celebrity – because of my heart, and people listened to me, as if what I had to say was suddenly important. Of course, they stopped listening once I was out of danger.
    The worst thing about the operation was the nightmare I had under the anaesthetic. I was in a huge ball of pain made up of all the people in the world who had ever lived, were alive, or were going to live in the future. I was all the pain in the world and in all time. I gradually flattened out the pain and spread it out to invented people in invented time – as if I was God and had made people in order to share my pain, so I could cope with my small share. It was a horrid dream, and I kept going back into it every time I fell asleep, for about a month. Weird. But it sort of stopped me thinking about Daddy leaving, and Grandpop and Grandma dying.
    I think I’m quite philosophical, really. If it happens, it happens. Nothing I can do, so why worry? Just make the most of now. Enjoy life to the full.
    I reckon dying will be like falling asleep and not dreaming. Like it was before I was born. Nothing. At least, I hope that’s what it will be like. I don’t fancy being in a nightmare all the time. I sometimes dream I’m being chased and I have heavy feet and legs, so I can’t run; or I’m driving a car and I don’t know how to drive.
    I dreamt once I was blind. That must be worse than being dead, I think. I would hate to be blind. Though I suppose I would still be able to hear the sea, and stroke Charlie’s soft fur and hear her purr.
    And I could listen to great music and perhaps I could become an expert on recognising birdsongs. Miss Kezia Stevens, the world-famous birdsong expert. They could take me to a rainforest and I could tell them which birds were there in the high canopy where no one could see them.
    Perhaps I could be a famous detective who always gets her man because she can hear things that seeing detectives can’t hear. I remember when I was little I used to walk along with my eyes closed pretending I was blind and seeing how long I could go without falling over something.
    When I was staying with Grandma and Grandpop I was allowed to go to the seafront shelter near their bungalow and sit with the blind man who always sat there in the mornings. They knew him, so it was all right to talk to him. I used to tell him all about what was going on around him. I never used the verb to see though, in case it upset him. It was very difficult sometimes, knowing what to say and what not to say. For example, there was this very beautiful dog – a Dalmatian – and I described it to him: a tall dog with short hair, white with black spots. But did he know white? He knew black. Or when you’re blind is everything a white mist? Sometimes, when I concentrate, and close my eyes, I can see amoeba-like blotches of colour pass over my eyeball, red usually. Maybe blind people get patterns and things they can sort of see.
    Rambo just had a sniff of