Not That Kind Of Hero (eBook)

Alexia Casale (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
368 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-37439-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Orla has always been the sidekick, never the hero . . . Until, that is, she secures a funded place at an elite drama course and puts her own dreams first for once in her life. Suddenly, Orla is centre-stage and loving it! But the drama crowd are experienced performers and their parents have shelled out a fortune for them to be on the course. Orla can't help but feel left out - she has to earn her pocket money and her responsibilities at home can't just be ignored. Then again, doesn't she deserve to want things for herself? Especially when beautiful and funny drama boy, Cass, starts flirting with her . . . With life-changing auditions around the corner Orla finds herself torn in two by an impossible choice. Should she protect her chosen family, or herself?

A British-American citizen of Italian heritage, Alexia is an editor, teacher and writing consultant. After studying psychology then educational technology at Cambridge, she moved to New York to work on a Tony-award-winning Broadway show before completing a PhD and teaching qualification. In between, she worked as a West End script-critic, box-office manager for a music festival and executive editor of a human rights journal. The Bone Dragon is her first book. Alexia has always wanted a Dragon; luckily, she has her very own rib in a pot...

Textauszug

Saturday 28th August

At Some Point This Day Will End

Closing the door softly on the boys, asleep in their bunk beds in the box room, I glance into the master bedroom where Bunny and Issie are asleep in the further bunk bed while Jas and Cait sit quietly together on the upper level of the near one, headphones on, catching up on homework. They look quietly content, then Jas tugs a strand of hair over her shoulder and puts the ends in her mouth. Nightmares tonight then. I reach into her beside drawer, pull out her lavender spray and spritz some on her pillow. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes is better than nothing.

‘Two more minutes, then lights out.’ Pressing a kiss to her head, I leave them to it.

Next door, in the space advertised as ‘perfect for a study’, there is just enough room to fit beds for me and Roks, with a tiny side cupboard crammed in on either side, while the wall along the foot of the beds is taken up with a little desk and a wardrobe. We tried pushing the beds against the side walls, but it meant bashing our heads together every time we got up. This way we can tip out on opposite sides, though the space is only just wide enough to squeeze through. Still, it’s ours, so it’s perfect.

I grab a cardigan due for a wash, then poke my head into Mum and Raim’s room. The beds are rumpled, Mum’s cleaning uniform draped over a chair, while Raim’s favourite outfit for working the market stall is crumpled on the other. I set everything straight, then gather up their laundry basket and take it through to the kitchen, where Roks is unloading the washing onto the laundry rack.

‘You know the story about Sisyphus being cursed for all eternity to push a rock up to the top of a hill, only for it to crash back down to the bottom every time? He was lucky it was a literal rock, not the “the rock of shopping” or “the rock of laundry”.’ As the washing machine whooshes to life, she drops into a chair and, pushing her phone aside, starts pairing socks. She glances at a notification as the phone pings, then returns to her folding with renewed determination – and aggression.

‘Ven and the others up to something nice?’

Roks grunts. ‘Benjo’s away with his folks, but apparently Maddie and Fred and George were over earlier. And of course Ren is practically glued to her these days.’

I raise an eyebrow and get a huff in return.

‘I’m not jealous.’

‘Of the boyfriend, or your non-me bestie being wrapped up in him?’ I prod sweetly.

This gets me a dose of the evils. ‘Given that Ven’s being particularly Ven, they’ve been sorting out arrangements for our busking session at Halloween and our big New Year’s Eve performance in Market Square.’ She sighs and I can hear in the sound that she wishes she were there with the others even if all they’re doing is working. ‘I know she’s not trying to rub it in, but …’

‘But you wouldn’t mind an evening filled with snogging instead of puke.’

Roks rubs the heels of her hands into her temples. ‘No-o,’ she says in a voice that means ‘ye-es’.

‘Maybe you should flirt with the next cute person in the market.’

Roks grabs a dinosaur-patterned sock, then curses when her finger passes straight through a hole. She hurls it against the window, glaring as it slithers down into the sink.

‘You could have gone over, you know,’ I point out, scooping the rapidly tilting structure of successfully paired socks into the clean-laundry basket before they cascade onto the floor.

‘To join their date night?’ Roks snaps.

I apply myself to folding pants. Which seems symbolic somehow, but then a household of ten does go through a lot of knickers. ‘It can’t have been a double date with Maddie and Fred if George was there too, so what gives?’

She hurls a series of paired socks – one, two, three, four – into the ‘cleans’ basket, glowering as if she hopes to set it alight. ‘Let’s just finish this, then we can sort out your application. The deadline’s tomorrow.’

My heart leaps with hope – it would be so easy to manoeuvre things so that oops, rats, such a pity – but the look on Roks’s face means that although I really, really don’t want to spend the few ‘me’ moments of the weekend on this, I know that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

‘Is the issue wanting your own date night –’ Roks’s glare reaches levels where spontaneous combustion of the sock pile seems plausible – ‘or you deciding you’re not entitled to any fun this year because you’re going to uni next September and I’m not?’

Her hands crumple the vest she had been smoothing.

‘I know you don’t believe me when I say it’s OK—’

‘How can it be OK?’ she explodes.

I rescue the vest before it follows the holey sock into the sink. ‘Because it is. Or it would be if you’d just let it! I’m glad you’re going to uni, but that’s enough change right now for me.’

Roks groans. ‘Just promise we’ll do the application, OK?’

‘Fine! I’ll do the stupid application, even though it’s not what I want—’

‘Do you really not want to?’ says a little voice.

I turn to find Cait beside me. I smooth a finger through the frown lines on her brow. ‘Someone’s been dragging you into their scheming, huh?’

Roks shifts awkwardly. ‘I was just getting a second opinion.’

‘Yeah, because why ask me when you could ask Cait what I’d fancy doing with my life?’

‘But don’t you want your own adventure? Don’t you want something special just for you when Roks is going to get university?’ Cait breathes the word as if nothing in the entire world could ever be so wonderful.

I could joke that I’ve had enough ‘adventure’ for a lifetime, but the last thing I need is to trigger a barrage of questions from Cait about Before. We don’t talk about the day everything changed, or why we had to leave and never talk to anyone from Before again. Roks, Raim, Mum and I made each other a Promise to never, ever look up where anyone from Before is now or what they’re doing. The Brood are allowed to ask about happy things and silly things, like what colour our old front door was, but that’s it.

I move to the counter and start fetching down mugs. ‘Jas OK?’

She nods. ‘It wasn’t a bad nightmare – we’d only just gone to sleep. She started doing the whimpering thing – that was what woke me, so then I woke her before it got bad. We had a hug, then she went back to sleep, but I can’t and I’m grumpy,’ she whines, pulling up a chair next to Roks, then slumping sideways against her.

Setting milk to froth in a pan, I ferret out the pot of nutmegs and the tiny grater that came free with it. I still remember the rush of surprised delight as it tipped onto the counter the first time I opened the pot. That we could finally afford the odd non-essential grocery item had seemed like bliss, so to discover an unexpected gift, however tiny, made it feel like I’d found a hidden treasure.

For some reason, tears sting my eyes as the scent of freshly grated nutmeg fills the air. Milk with honey and nutmeg was Auntie Fionnuala’s traditional remedy for all ills. It’s been five years since I last saw her, but how I wish, wish, wish she were here. Here to make the milk. Here to sit me down, tucked into her side, both of us huddled under Granny’s favourite shawl, while she listened to me talk all the misery and frustration from my heart. Then she’d order me to drink up while I thought on the question she was about to ask. Somehow she always, always knew what the real trouble was, even when I had no clue.

‘I want to be special.’ Cait’s mouth is folded into a line of misery. ‘I want to be special and go to university and I want to do it now because I’m fed up of everyone and everything.’

And there it is – the reason I’m happy to be a sidekick instead of a hero. Like Roks, Cait is full of soul-deep wants. Maybe I do lack ambition, but I’m happier for it.

Cait’s little hands clench into fists, her whole body taut with anguish and rage at all the ways the world is standing in her way. ‘I’m fed up of the noise and never being alone and always having to share and compromise and take it in turns and help fold the laundry.’

Roks and I lunge forwards as she reaches for the pile of socks. Roks whisks them safely into the basket while I gently uncurl Cait’s fist, wrapping her fingers around the mug of frothy, nutmeg-topped milk instead.

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Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.4.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch
• ISBN-10: 0-571-37439-5 / 0571374395
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-37439-7 / 9780571374397