Kite Spirit Read Online Free PDF Page B

been Kite’s fourth kiss, and the best yet, but still not that special.
    ‘Well, at least you’re not sixteen and never been kissed!’ Dawn joked.
    ‘Never by anyone I really
wanted
to kiss!’
    After that Kite had handed over her present: the little reed box with the green velvet lining. Dawn had cried as she’d inspected the soft leather box.
    ‘It was supposed to make you happy!’
    ‘Best present you’ve ever given me.’ Dawn hugged her tightly.
    She’d bought it while Dawn spent hours searching for what might turn out to be ‘a golden reed’. Kite had thought Dawn mad when she’d told her that her favourite place in
the world was Howarth’s wind instrument shop, until the day she’d gone there herself.
    Kite stepped inside Howarth’s smart door, ran her fingers over the smooth wooden counters, and watched the man in the old fashioned hessian apron and double rimmed spectacles taking out a
tray of reeds.
    ‘Smell that!’ Dawn sighed as she breathed in the rich oboe resin.
    Dawn led Kite along a wall of oboes sniffing as they went like a couple of dogs picking up a scent, making each other giggle as usual. Dawn was inspecting a basket full of bamboo. She picked up
a stick and felt its weight.
    ‘This bamboo’s from a farm in France. It’s the one my teacher makes her reeds from!’ Dawn explained.
    Kite peered down. To her it was nothing more than a stick.
    On the way out they passed a wall of portraits of famous wind musicians.
    ‘I bet you’ll have your picture up there one day!’ Kite commented as they walked out of the shop.
    ‘I doubt it!’ Dawn replied.
    I doubt it.
    No matter how much people told Kite not to rake over things she couldn’t help casting back to these moments. Her mind was like an endlessly whirring film reel with scenes cut up in the
wrong order, flitting backwards and forward in time, desperately trying to search out what might have been a cry for help. But how could she have known? Everyone her age had insecurities about
something.
    As she looked back on the scene, knowing what she knew now, she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t screamed at Dawn to stop worrying about things that didn’t matter instead of
trying to shrug everything off with a joke.
    What else had they talked about? It was all coming back to her now.
    ‘Somewhere down the line most of them are probably related to Brahms or Mozart!’ Dawn joked. ‘At least Ruby and Seth know about music and art and stuff like that. I never would
have got that scholarship for music school without your dad’s help. My mum and dad don’t know about that stuff.’
    ‘But look how proud they are of you. Photos and certificates on every wall . . .’
    Dawn groaned.
    ‘And remind me! Who’ve they made the first oboe in your posh orchestra?’
    She wished now that she had sat and listened to what Dawn was trying to say. Instead she had changed the subject and started complaining about Ruby and Seth.
    ‘It’s all very well for you; you don’t have to live with them!’ Kite laughed. ‘Or a name like Kite!’
    ‘Dawn.’ Kite spoke her friend’s name into the mirror, letting the tip of her tongue rest on the roof of her mouth. It was as if she was saying the name for
the first time. And for the first time, she registered the meaning of her friend’s name.
    Dawn is only the break of day, the beginning, you can’t end at the beginning, Kite pleaded. But who was she pleading with? Her head clamped as if someone was tightening the pressure inside
her mind. Until the Falling Day she had never once experienced the headaches that had gripped Dawn so suddenly and so often. She scrunched up her eyes and wished as hard as she had ever wished for
anything that she could fall asleep and wake up in the nursery playground on the day that she and Dawn first met, peer down through the playground ladders of long ago and start all over again . . .
at their beginning.

 
Climbing Frame
    I’m standing at the top of the