Close Your Pretty Eyes Read Free Page B

probably A*s, so I can go off to university and never have to talk to ridiculous little kids like you for the rest of my life.” She stuck the book up over her face and turned the page, very deliberately.
    â€œCan babies go to university?” I said.
    â€œAargh!” Grace flung down the book. “Yes, of course they can! They get top marks in crapping and dribbling!”
    I giggled. Grace gave me an evil look.
    â€œAre you always this annoying?” she said.
    â€œAre you always this grumpy?”
    â€œNo,” said Grace. “Usually I’m worse.”

NIGHT
    Some houses have proper strict bedtimes and some don’t. Jim’s did. Maisy went to bed first, then Harriet, then Daniel and me. I don’t know if Grace had a bedtime or not, but probably not because she was nearly grown-up.
    I didn’t want to go to bed, but I did anyway. It’s usually a good idea to be well-behaved with new people, in case they turn out to be secretly evil. I was pretty worried when Jim left, though. Ihate the first night in a new place. Anyone could come in and do anything to you. If I was a foster parent, I’d put locks on all my kids’ doors, so no one could get in. But they never do.
    â€œSleep tight,” said Jim, and he left me.
    I lay there in the dark, listening to the creak creak creak of his feet in the corridor. As soon as he’d gone downstairs, I got out of bed and turned the light back on.
    I lay on my back and listened. These are the things I could hear:
    â€œAll I Need Is a Miracle”playing on the kitchen radio.
    Jim talking to Grace about me.
    The walls going creak creak creak .
    Harriet turning over in bed.
    The wind blowing around the house, trying to get in.
    A tree rhooshing as the wind lifted it up and all its leaves rustled.
    A dog barking.
    An owl going hoohoo somewhere in the night.
    Something – mice, maybe – scratching in the walls.
    A fly buzzing against the windowpane in the bedroom next door.
    Something else tap-tap-tap -tapping at my window.
    A creak  – was someone coming upstairs? No, just Jim shutting the kitchen door.
    I have superpowers. I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. I have supersonic hearing and a super sense of smell. I hear things other people don’t – tiny noises, scratchings, creakings, whispers. I hear foster parents telling each other they can’t cope with me any more. I hear other kids rifling through my stuff downstairs, and my mum opening a can of cider at the other end of the flat. I can tell just by the way a person is standing what they think of me. My therapist, Helen, says they aren’t really superpowers. She says I can do these things because of the bad things that happened to me when I was little. She says because my body is so worried about being hurt, it pays attention to everything , pretty much always . Other people mostly just pay that much attention when they’re somewhere scary, but I do it all the time because when I was little and lived with my mum, I was always afraid.
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    These are the things I could smell from my bed:
    Cold air from the half-open window.
    Dust, and bare wood from my wooden floor.
    Fairfields shampoo in my hair.
    Soft, dry hair smell.
    Clean sheets.
    Hairs from Daniel’s cat, Zig-Zag.
    Wet-leaved ivy-smell from outside.
    Lavender from the paper in my new chest of drawers.
    Tomato-and-onion-and-mushroom smell, drifting up the stairs from dinner.
    None of it felt familiar. None of it felt safe. Some of it felt very unsafe . That tapping at the window. I knew it was just a branch or something, but it freaked me out. I’d be lying there, trying to sleep, and I’d just be drifting away when I’d hear it again.
    Tap tap tap.
    I’d jerk awake, stiffening. What was that? Oh. That tree. I’d lie there, listening, waiting to hear it again. Was it just a tree branch? What if it was something else? Someone’s fingers,