Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) Read Free Page A

course Mom’s shoes had arrived in this stuffy old apartment, while my crates of books were gathering dust in some container belonging to the same firm, along with my secret notebooks and my guitar case.
    I glared at Mom’s slender back. It wasn’t surprising that Mr. Spencer had fallen for her. She looked pretty good for a professor of English literature. She’s a natural blonde, long legs, blue eyes, great teeth. She was forty-six, but you wouldn’t guess that except in bright daylight when she’d drunk too much red wine the evening before. On good days she looked like Gwyneth Paltrow. Although her new haircut was frightful. She must have been to the same hairdresser as Duchess Camilla.
    Mom dropped the shoes she didn’t need on the rug behind her. Our dog, Butter—full name Princess Buttercup, formerly known as Dr. Watson (the name Dr. Watson dated from before we’d realized that she was a girl)—snapped up a jogging shoe and dragged it off to her improvised sleeping place under the coffee table, where she began chewing it with relish. None of us stopped her; after all, she wasn’t having an easy time either. I bet she’d been looking forward to the cottage with the garden as much as we had. But of course no one had asked her opinion. Dogs and children had no rights in this household.
    Another jogging shoe hit me on the shin.
    “Mom,” I said fretfully, “do you have to do that? As if it wasn’t chaotic enough here already?”
    Mom acted as if she hadn’t heard me and went on rummaging in the box, while Lottie gave me a reproachful look. I stared grimly back. If I wasn’t even allowed to speak my mind anymore, this really was the end.
    “There they are.” Mom had finally found the shoes she wanted—a pair of black pumps—and held them triumphantly aloft.
    “That’s all that matters, then,” said Mia venomously.
    Mom slipped the shoes on and turned back to us. “Right, as far as I’m concerned we can go,” she said cheerfully. She didn’t seem a bit bothered that Mia and I were looking at her in a way that could have curdled milk.
    Lottie hugged us. “You’ll be fine, dears. I mean, it really isn’t your first first day at school.”

 
    3
    I RAISED MY CHIN and straightened my shoulders as well as I could in the tight-fitting blazer. Lottie was right—this really was not our first time at a new school. We’d been through much worse already. At least this time we knew the language of the country and could speak it, which had not been the case in Utrecht, for instance. Although Mom insisted that anyone who knew German and English could understand Dutch as well (yes, sure, and the Earth is flat, Mom!).
    Because people could speak English almost everywhere our respective parents took us, they’d decided to turn Dad’s German surname of Silber into Silver for Mia and me, and that was one thing at least to make life easier here in London for us. And we certainly needn’t be afraid of meeting a millipede in the toilet, like in Hyderabad. (I still sometimes dreamed of that creature—it was longer than my forearm, and worse than that, it had looked at me with its horrible millipede eyes.) No, everything here was so hygienically germ free that you could even sit on the seat of the toilet without worrying. The Frognal Academy for Boys and Girls was a private school in Hampstead, a posh part of London, which meant that the kids didn’t have to be searched for weapons in the morning with metal detectors, as in the junior high I attended in Berkeley, California, three schools ago. And certainly there must be nicer students here than the girl who’d been assigned to show me around, who was staring at me as if I smelled bad. (Which I didn’t—I’d showered for quarter of an hour longer than usual on account of that cheese.)
    I could only hope Mia had a nicer “big sister” to show her the ropes.
    “Is Liv short for Livetta or Carlivonia?” mine asked.
    Is it what? Was she trying to make a fool