Cicada Summer Read Online Free PDF

paint lid, without success.
    ‘Are you going to help or not?’ she said, after some struggle, and frowned up at Eloise. She poked a long strand of hair behind her ear, where it immediately fell forward again.
    Eloise looked at her. She knew her own face was creased up with anxiety, a hard lump in her throat. Suddenly she felt dizzy, the ground spinning down and away. Where was this place? Who was this girl? What was she doing here?
    Eloise jumped up and ran out of the summerhouse into the blinding sunlight. There was an instant of silence while the world slid out of focus before Eloise’s eyes, and then the cicadas roared.
    Everything was back to the way it had been before. The pool was empty, the garden tangled, the grass high and yellow. The white fence had disappeared. Eloise turned and pushed back into the summerhouse, but the girl was gone, everything was gone. It was empty. Without looking, she knew that the house had gone dead too, blind and abandoned, slumped into the hill again.
    Eloise pressed her hands to her forehead, trying to understand. She’d seen a movie once about an enchanted garden. But that was just a story; things like this didn’t happen in her world.
    The sun had slid mysteriously down the sky. Eloise was ravenous and ragingly thirsty. What had happened? The garden was neglected, unkempt, unhealthy. And it was boiling hot again. She wasn’t imagining that. The cicadas shrieked in a steady din that filled her ears and wouldn’t let her think.
    A trickle of sweat ran down Eloise’s neck. She began to run. The long grass clutched her ankles. If the bike was gone . . .
    But the old bicycle was exactly where she’d left it, tipped over on the weed-strewn gravel. Eloise bent over and gasped for breath. Of course the bike was there. Where else would it be? She was fine. She was safe.
    But something had happened. And something had happened in the house yesterday, too. She’d seen two girls now. Or maybe it was the same girl . . . They could have been the same girl . . . But the summerhouse girl was no ghost. She’d grabbed Eloise’s hand; her breath had tickled her ear; she was real. So who was she? Where could she have come from?
    Trembling, Eloise climbed onto the saddle of the bike and pushed off with one foot, faster and faster, back down the shadowed tunnel of pines toward the outside world.

5
    M o lowered her glasses to the tip of her nose and glared at Eloise. ‘I don’t care what you get up to. I don’t care where you go. That’s not the point. I’m sure you can look after yourself, and the streets are safer than they ever were. But running off the way you did this morning was downright rude, and it will not happen again.’
    Eloise hung her head. She’d forgotten that she’d run away to avoid that Tommy boy.
    ‘He came over to invite us to dinner – don’t panic, I said no. Not for your benefit, I might add. I’d rather cut my hand off than go to dinner in someone else’s house. Don’t tell anyone I said that.’ Mo looked at her. ‘No, I don’t suppose you will. Where were you today, anyway? You’re covered in scratches. Did you go to the creek? Or the trickle, as we should call it these days, so they tell me.’
    Eloise shook her head.
    Mo stared at her hard. ‘But you’re all right. No traumatic experiences.’
    Eloise wondered if seeing ghosts, if that was what she’d done, or going into another world, counted as traumatic experiences. She thought for a second, then shook her head again.
    ‘Next time Tommy comes over I expect you to . . . well, shake his hand, at least.’ Eloise nodded, and Mo sighed. ‘You don’t make things easy for yourself, do you? All right, buzz off and let me get back to my sea voyages.’ She turned back to her computer and began to type.
    Eloise eased the study door closed. She took a packet of biscuits from the kitchen cupboard and retreated to her fold-out bed, still unmade from the morning. Eloise took her sketchbook and pencils out