What I Was by Meg Rosoff

Author:Meg Rosoff [Rosoff, Meg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Young Adult Fiction, Coming of Age, Boarding schools, Problem Children
ISBN: 0141322462
Publisher: ePenguin
Published: 2007-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

17

The sound of Finn boiling water woke me at dawn. He wasn’t much for talking, especially at that hour, and wouldn’t answer any conversation I initiated. Like the hut, he warmed up slowly, and I had a feeling his habit of solitude had existed for so long that it surprised him every morning to find me asleep where his granny had once lain.

It occurred to me that I had been at boarding school for a good many more years than Finn had lived alone, so perhaps my social skills were a little on the odd side as well. Whenever I was at home, I watched my mother chat brightly over breakfast the way an anthropologist might note typical social behaviour of the human species.

I hated getting up in the cold, and slept buried up to my eyes in blankets, removing them only to wrap my hands round a warm cup of tea. Finn had added sugar to mine unprompted and I turned away to hide my flush of pleasure. I knew that if I waited in bed for him to build up the fire and perform his morning tasks, the hut would gradually fill with a kind of fuggy warmth, so I lay still, savouring the familiar sounds and postponing re-entry into full consciousness for as long as possible.

Nothing in my life so far compared with those first minutes of the day, half-sitting in bed, still swaddled in warmth and with no imperative to move, just staring out of the window as the first pale streaks ignited the sky. I watched boats chug slowly past the windows: fishing boats returning from a long night of work, sailing boats from the nearby estuary taking advantage of the favourable tide, little tugs on their way back to port. At night passenger ships twinkled on the horizon like stars, but the daylight made them invisible.

‘We’ll take the dinghy,’ Finn said over his shoulder, heading out of the door. Through the window I watched him go, watched his outline soften and blur as he disappeared into the morning haze. The world had not yet come into focus. Even the sound of the sea seemed muffled, as if heard from a long distance away. From where I sat it was nearly invisible, lost in a cloak of grey mist. I knew this moment of half-light wouldn’t last, that in less than an hour daylight would have burned off the fog and restored the shape of things.

When I finally dressed and joined him, he was outfitting the little boat for our expedition: a wooden mast and sail retrieved from the dunes, a long coiled rope, a tin for bailing, an anchor. The sun blazed down and I knew that my thick jersey would soon feel uncomfortably warm.

Finn hauled up the little sail, swung the boat into the wind and pointed to where he wanted me. I climbed in at the bow and with a push and a jolt we were off, Finn handling the tiller and sail, and me singing pirate songs and ‘What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?’ to amuse him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.