Kalpana's Dream Read Free Page A

for you – don’t you feel a different person then? A secret person? And mightn’t that secret person be the real you, that rare person who’s never been on earth before? Mightn’t you then, in the quiet, hear the heavenly music of your own soul?’
    Huh?
    It was all too much for Blocky Stevenson. His hand shot up. ‘Miss!’ he called sternly. ‘Miss!’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Miss, I’m not rare . I’m just an ordinary kid who likes football. But, ’ Blocky folded his arms across his solid chest, ‘I’m not a leatherbrain.’
    ‘Leatherbrain?’ echoed Ms Dallimore.
    Big Molly Matthews creaked round in her chair. ‘It’s what Mr Crombie – he takes us for history – calls boys who love football, Miss. Boys who play football even in the summer!’
    ‘I didn’t say “love”, I said “like”, ’ muttered Blocky.
    ‘Mr Crombie thinks they’ve got shrivelled brains, ’ Molly went on. ‘Shrivelled brains like leather, see? He says for every goal they kick they lose a hundred brain cells, and in the summer, it’s a thousand – but that’s not true, is it, Miss? Because if Blocky had no brains, then he wouldn’t care about being called a leatherbrain, would he?’
    ‘I suppose not, ’ replied Ms Dallimore, a little uncertainly. ‘And Miss, what you love shows who you are, doesn’t it? So if you wrote about something you love, you’d be writing about your real true self, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘Oh yes !’ replied Ms Dallimore.
    Molly beamed at her. ‘So I’m going to write about my baby shoes!’
    A muffled groan rose from the Short Street kids. Molly Matthews’ baby shoes! She’d talked about them at Show and Tell for years: how beautiful they were, how soft and tiny, how she could remember her mother’s hands fastening the two little buttons on the side . . .
    Molly glared round at them. ‘I’m going to!’ she cried. ‘I can, can’t I, Miss?’
    ‘Yes, of course you can, Molly.’
    ‘ See ?’ Molly flounced in her chair triumphantly, and the chair gave a mighty creak.
    Molly Matthews was a big, big girl. Her hands were big, and her feet, and her kind face was round as a plate – a very big plate, a Christmas plate you could fit a whole turkey on. There were kids from Short Street who said Molly Matthews had never worn those shoes. They were made of soft blue leather, tiny as fairy slippers. Even when she was five, both little shoes had fitted neatly into one of Molly’s broad pink palms.
    ‘It stands to reason, ’ Kate had said to Neema when they were both only in Grade Three. ‘She’d have been an enormous baby, with enormous feet. Her gran might have bought those shoes for her, like she says, but I bet her mum could never squash them on.’
    It was one of the few things Kate and Neema disagreed about, because Neema felt certain there would have been a time, even if it was a very short time, a few days, or perhaps a single week, when Molly’s new pink feet would have fitted perfectly into those fairy shoes.
    Neema’s gaze drifted towards the window: across the playground she could see three boys helping Mr Lazenby carry sports equipment, and one of them was the boy she’d met outside the library on her very first day at Wentworth, the one who’d seemed so strangely familiar. His back was towards her, yet she knew it was him – something about the set of his shoulders and the way he moved. And once again those words came drifting oddly into her mind: sheep, shepherd, lamb . . .
    ‘Ms Dallimore?’ Brainy Jessaline O’Harris raised an earnest hand.
    ‘Yes, Jessaline?’
    ‘Ms Dallimore, when does the essay have to be handed in?’
    ‘Oh, six weeks or thereabouts, ’ said Ms Dallimore casually.
    Jessaline gaped at her, and so did the rest of 7B. Six weeks? It was ages; in six weeks a whole long summer holiday could pass, a kitten grow into a cat, a baby learn to smile. You could grow your hair long, fall in love and out again, get slim, grow fat, learn Russian, become an