Free Cicada Summer by Kate Constable Page A

you.’

10
    A nna’s eyes widened in shock. Her father wrapped her roughly in a towel and rubbed her hair as if she were a much younger child. She craned to look past him, to reassure herself that Eloise was still there in the water.
    ‘Dad, look – she is – she really is—’ Anna choked.
    ‘ Enough! ’ Some words exploded from him, in a language Eloise didn’t recognise. Anna looked scared; she huddled away from him, cowering beneath the towel.
    Eloise felt her own face go numb, her own mouth sag open. It was plain that Anna’s father – her own grandfather, the grandfather she had never met – simply could not see Eloise there in the middle of the pool. He couldn’t see her.
    Eloise found she could move, though her arms and legs were heavy. She dragged herself slowly to the edge of the pool. She could hear her own voice, shrill and uncertain. ‘It’s okay. I wouldn’t let her drown. I was watching her . . .’
    But Anna’s father spoke over the top of her. He didn’t hear Eloise; he couldn’t see her and he couldn’t hear her. He put his hands on Anna’s shoulders and knelt to look into her face. ‘This is not funny any more, baby. This is dangerous now. So many times we told you, you can play in the summerhouse if you promise – promise - not to go into the pool when no one else is there. And now look at this.’
    ‘I’m not a baby.’ Anna pressed her lips together. ‘And she is here. I can see her.’
    ‘This imaginary friend of yours? Yes, I heard you talking about all the paintings you do together, the games you play, I heard you. But Anna, you know it’s not real. You know that, don’t you?’
    Anna said nothing. She flicked a glance over her father’s shoulder to Eloise, who still clung to the side of the pool. She pressed her lips together even harder, and blinked.
    Anna’s father put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Come up to the house now, you’re shivering. This is my fault. I shouldn’t let you be so much by yourself. I’m sorry for shouting, baby, but you have to understand . . .’
    Still talking earnestly, he drew Anna away from the pool, through the gate in the fence, around the trees and up the slope toward the house. Anna walked with her head bowed, saying nothing, her bare feet speckled with grass clippings.
    Eloise’s teeth chattered. She gripped the edge of the pool and tried to pull herself out, but she sank back, as if all the strength had drained out of her arms. She heaved again and rolled out of the water, and lay for a moment on the wet concrete, shivering. At last she managed to crawl into the summerhouse and find her towel. What would Anna’s father have said about the paintings on the walls? Would he think Anna had done them all by herself ? Or would they be invisible to him, too?
    Eloise wished she could forget how it had felt when her grandfather’s eyes raked past her, unseeing, but she couldn’t forget it.
    When she’d dried herself as best she could, she put on her hat and backpack and stood in the middle of the dark summerhouse with her hands limp at her sides. It was the first time she’d ever wanted to go home before the time-wave rushed to sweep her away, the first time she’d stood there, helpless, waiting.
    Outside it was twilight, and the indigo ink of night gradually darkened the sky. Eloise could see a single star. She left the summerhouse and the pool enclosure and walked around the screen of trees, where Anna had gone. Golden light streamed down the slope from the big house, remote as a lighthouse, as far away as another country. Slowly Eloise retraced her path, trying to walk back into her own time; she almost thought she could feel the dense shimmering wall between her time and the other, resistant against her skin. If only she could hold up a window, like the girl in the painting, and swim through it . . .
    Keep swimming through , she thought. You have to keep swimming through. Don’t give up. And so she walked steadily on, up the