Laugh Your Head Off Again and Again by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Illustrated, Australia, Humor, Children's Books, Fiction
ISBN: 9781760557768
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2017-10-30T13:00:00+00:00

The girl slept for two days and when she woke she was famished. Over a breakfast of porridge and honey and hot buttery raisin toast, Mr Sneddley asked. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Skylar.’

‘Where do you belong, Skylar?’

She shrugged. ‘Nowhere.’

‘Everyone belongs somewhere,’ Mrs Sneddley said.

‘Not me. When I was a baby, I was dumped on the doorstep of two people who smelled like cabbage and, when I was older, made me clean the house and scrape cow manure off their boots. We lived on a dairy farm. There was a lot of cow manure.’

‘They’ll be missing you,’ Mrs Sneddley said.

‘They’ll be missing their clean boots, that’s all.’

‘Surely not.’

‘They said I had a dangerous imagination and the only thing for it was to send me to bed without supper. Which happened a lot.’

‘Maybe they meant well,’ Mrs Sneddley said, even though it was hard to imagine how they could.

‘You’ll miss school,’ Mr Sneddley said.

‘I’ve never been.’

An unexpected anger rose in Mr Sneddley’s chest.

Mrs Sneddley asked, ‘So how did you write the letter?’

‘I didn’t. It was in the box with me when I was found on the doorstep. I was given a home the first time, so I thought it might work again.’

‘Still,’ Mrs Sneddley decided. ‘We should take you back.’

But they didn’t.

One day became another, and Skylar stayed. Mrs Sneddley showed her how to find the plumpest berries in the forest and Mr Sneddley taught her to read and write. ‘Not reading is like not eating,’ he said. ‘A child needs both or they simply waste away.’

Every night, he read to her in bed. ‘We’ll start with Charlotte’s Web, one of our favourites.’

Skylar loved the story of the little girl called Fern and how she saved the runt pig called Wilbur. Mr Sneddley put on a different voice for every character, so it felt as if they were real.

One night, after Mr Sneddley finished another chapter, Skylar asked, ‘Why do you have a children’s bedroom?’

Mr Sneddley took a long time to answer. ‘We once had a little boy, but his lungs were weak and he didn’t last.’

‘Is that why you don’t have a cake shop any more?’

Mr Sneddley gave a single, sad nod.

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