The Scent of Apples Read Free Page B

take her upstairs instead?’
    Lucy’s eyes sparkle at the thought of staying indoors and not having to slide her dumb socks into muddy boots. She trips on the stairs in her eagerness to get up them.
    I flop down onto my bed.
    Lucy stands in the middle of my room and scans every inch of my space. She looks at the white painted headboard, with gilt around the edges, and the matching dressing table.
    â€˜Mum did my room,’ I say, in case she thinks I chose the ugly pink rosebud wallpaper and the duvet cover and lamp in the same shade of pink.
    â€˜Oh my gosh!’ Lucy screams.
    I sit up so fast that it takes a moment for my heart to stop pounding.
    â€˜You’ve got Swan Lake Barbie!’ She rushes over to the shelf above the window, where Mum has lined up my collection of Barbie dolls.
    Every Christmas, I peel coloured ribbons and tissue paper from the gift Mum gives me, praying with all my heart that it’s not another Barbie. But it always is. I remember the excitement in Mum’s eyes last year as she showed me how Swan Lake Barbie had wings that lit up and a golden crown.
    â€˜I always wanted this one.’ Lucy says. ‘Can I get her down?’
    The hope in Lucy’s eyes confirms all my suspicions about her. ‘Yeah, I’ll get it for you. Take it out of the box, do whatever you want.’ Even if I did like Barbies, I’m sure we’re too old to play with them. I slide the whitewashed chest at the end of my bed over to the window and stand on it. The dolls are all encased in the cardboard coffins they came in. I pass it down to her and as I do, I spy Poppa out in the orchard.
    The wind blows his unruly hair around as he ducks down under the branch of an apple tree. I know if I was out there with him, even though I’m almost too big, he would pick me up by the straps of my dungarees and show me some treasure, like an eleven-spotted ladybird that could eat up to fifty aphids a day.
    He’d be telling me weird facts about insects and plants and filling my head with more of his theories. Yesterday, I was like the new fruit. He told me that in order to grow strong, I had to soak up everything on offer. I don’t understand half of what he tells me, but Poppa says we have storage boxes in our minds. Anything I see or hear that I don’t understand, I can just file into one of those boxes, and it might make sense later.
    I turn away from the window and sink again onto my bed. I watch Lucy as she sits on the floor and adjusts the crown on Swan Lake Barbie before placing her in a carriage drawn by a unicorn. I do sometimes wonder if I was born into the right body. I would rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick than play with dolls.
    I once tried talking to Nan about it, in our secret cubbyhole. That’s what we call the little pagoda that seats two at the edge of our garden. Poppa built it for Nan, to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. A screen of bamboo shelters it from the rest of the garden. I often find Nan here alone, and sit and talk with her for a while. This is where I found out about Patrick.
    One day she just blurted out how my sweet face and the colour of my hair were identical to my brother’s. As soon as she said it, I knew she wanted to take it back. That’s when we came up with our Pagoda Plan: no secret told here can be taken away.
    I’m always careful not to ask too many questions at once. I sit quiet and wait. While we watch the sparrows glide in and feast on the seeds we’ve scattered or take a drink from the birdbath, she feeds me little stories.
    On days when she doesn’t want to talk, I ask her about things I’m not sure of. Like, did she think I might make some friends if I pretended to like the things the other girls did? And maybe try to stop climbing trees? She isn’t always much help, saying things like, ‘I think you should do whatever makes you happy.’
    It’s fine to say