Hero by Lean Sarah

Author:Lean, Sarah [Sarah Lean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

Everyone in our house went to bed. I should have gone too. But I walked the streets. I stuck the posters up until Jack Pepper shined in the copper beams of every lamp post in our road.

I was still in bed, trying to forget, to fill the hole in me with sleep, but I couldn’t find much of that either. Kirsty and Milly were hovering in the doorway.

“Leo, you have to get up,” Kirsty said. “You’re not going to find Jack Pepper lying there.”

I’d tried to find Jack in my dreams. I tried to bring him back with my imagination. But it was no use. He wasn’t really there. I didn’t want to think about Grizzly any more. I saw Jupiter, giant like a mountain, and the audience outside my window, leaning in, bearing down on me, Jupiter’s outstretched thumb about to crush me. The lion trembling as Jupiter held him back.

“Did anyone phone after seeing the posters?” I said.

“We’ve had a few calls,” Kirsty said, “but it’s only people asking if he’s the little dog from town, Grizzly’s dog. Nobody’s seen him, but they’re all going to look in their garages and sheds and under their hedges.”

“You should keep looking, Leo,” Milly said.

“You should go to all the places Jack Pepper has been before,” Kirsty said. “Where else did you take him?”

Everything I’d done, all of it, including going to the Rec, made me feel small and weak.

“I’ll stay here in case anyone else rings,” Kirsty said. “Now get up, Leo; anyone would think you don’t care.”

“I do!” I yelled, throwing back the covers. “More than you understand.” Jack was my partner, my lion in the amphitheatre. He made me feel strong. It was all down to him. Not me.

“What don’t I understand?” Kirsty said.

She had no idea about all the events, the truth that led up to this. Nobody did. How did wanting to be a hero turn out like this?

“It’s all my fault,” I moaned, sitting down heavily, hiding my face in my hands.

“Then do something about it,” Kirsty said. “Or can’t you do anything unless Warren Miller says so!”

“It’s nothing to do with him,” I said quickly. “Why did you even mention him?”

“He phoned.” She left that hanging in the air with a question in her eyebrows, as if she had more information than she was letting on.

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d seen you with Jack.” Was she deliberately leaving big gaps between her words?

“What else?”

“He said … Jack was scared of you.”

“That’s not true!” I said.

I couldn’t defend myself. I was too afraid I’d let the whole story slip out.

“He had no right to say that.”

Kirsty frowned. She went downstairs, taking Milly with her. I heard Milly say, “What’s happened to Leo?”

The Rec was a big open space edged by the old Roman wall, so I knew straight away that Jack wasn’t there because there was nowhere to hide. I had to go back there though, to the places we’d been together. I was

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