Indigo's Star by Hilary McKay

Author:Hilary McKay [McKay, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781444903454
Publisher: Hachette Children
Published: 2011-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

While Rose and her mother were in the music shop Indigo was lurking around the main entrance of the town library, waiting for Tom to turn up and trying to look inconspicuous.

He felt like a suspicious character. He felt as if the words LIBRARY CLIMBER were written across his head. For this reason, and also because the computer games shop along the road was a Saturday meeting place for the red-haired gang leader and his friends, he could not wait openly on the pavement. The gang and its accompanying rabble still gave him a sick, helpless feeling in his stomach, and it was worst of all the times he encountered them out of school. So Indigo kept in close to the library walls, and only went out into the open every now and then to crane his neck back as far as it would go, and look up. He pretended to himself that he was interested in the pigeons that circled overhead, but really he was measuring in his mind the height of the library roof.

It was very high indeed, he decided.

The library was a new building, and some people in town were very proud of it, claiming that it reminded them of Sydney Opera House. It was built of white slabs of concrete, with a flat roof from which rose seven large skylights of glass and steel shaped like enormous prisms. Indigo was gazing at them, and thinking how cold the pigeons looked when someone behind him demanded casually, ‘Feeling blue, Indigo?’

Indigo jumped and spun round.

Tom answered his own question, ‘Yes. He’s feeling blue!’

Tom’s battered guitar case was strapped across his shoulders and he was leaning against a telegraph pole, watching Indigo watching the pigeons. He lifted his eyebrows at Indigo, and Indigo laughed and his spirits rose unexpectedly.

‘Look at that!’ Tom said, and swung round so that Indigo could see the back of his guitar case. It was dirty and splattered and stamped with a large muddy footprint.

‘One of those fools who trail round school thinking they are so cool came up behind me. Kicked as hard as he could.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Shoved him under a bus!’ said Tom sarcastically. ‘I didn’t do anything! What do you think I could do with this on my back and the whole crowd of them watching? I don’t know where they are now. They disappeared a while ago.’

‘They’ll be in the games shop,’ said Indigo. ‘Look!’

He nodded down the street to where the red-haired gang leader stood smiling at them from a shop doorway. When he saw them looking he made a rude gesture and disappeared inside.

‘Hold this!’ commanded Tom, unstrapping his guitar. ‘It won’t take a minute!’

‘Tom, don’t…’ began Indigo, but Tom was already sprinting back down the street. As Indigo watched he stuck his head in the games shop doorway, and yelled, ‘Shop-lifting again, Red Head? You crook!’ so loudly that every single person within sight turned and stared.

‘Tom!’ exclaimed Indigo, in agony between laughter and fear. ‘He’ll have

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