Power to Burn Read Online Free PDF Page A

nagging and their dull conversation and even the swallowing noises they make when they eat.
    Suddenly, sitting there alone, staring down at the lakes as small as fish ponds, I remembered being eight years old and going to stay at Alex Dunn’s place. There was cricket and cards all weekend, and I couldn’t play either. By Sunday night I was so depressed and homesick that I began to cry. I was convinced my parents were never coming to get me, and so, to explain my tears, I said my leg was aching unbearably, and I was sure it was a terminal tumour. Afterwards, I was so ashamed that I never spoke to Alex Dunn again.
    Now the stewardess bent over and asked us if we’d like tea or coffee.
    â€˜Coffee,’ I told her, and then I remembered how dry my throat was. (Another symptom of panic.) ‘And milk, please.’
    â€˜Do you want them separate?’ she asked.
    I thought she said, ‘Are you desperate?’ and wildly I replied, ‘Only a little.’
    After we got it sorted out (I know she thinks I’m peculiar now and it’s a shame as I’m dying to talk to someone) I settled back and sipped from my plastic cup, and tried to relax.
    Well, it’s hard to relax when you’re thousands of feet up in the air and a baby is screaming in the aisle next to you. But you know what is
really
alarming is to make an earth-shattering discovery about yourself and your parents and then fly away for twenty-six hours and stay on the other side of the world without even discussing it.
    Goosebumps prickled up my arms as I thought about my mother’s voice that night.
    â€˜He has the power,’ she’d said, as if she knew about every little secret buried inside me.
    She knows. She
knows
. It’s so strange to think of her like that – Mum, who only worries about steak on Mondays and whether I’ve done my English homework. But Mum knows about the power – knows more about it than I do! So why hasn’t she mentioned it all my life? I must have really missed something all those years I was asleep.
    I wished I could fall asleep now, and stop thinking. This anxiety was exhausting, like carrying a big package around and never being able to put it down. I kept trying to look over it and under it and around it, but it was always there, right between my eyes.
    All around me people were pulling down the little blinds on the windows and wriggling like puppies under their airline blankets, trying to get comfortable. I took a quick glance at the man next to me. His head lolled to one side and his mouth was open, just like a dead person. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people being able to sleep when I can’t. It seems so rude, the way they just shut their eyes and zoom off into slumberland, leaving me there at the station.
    I had this uncontrollable urge to shoot out my bony elbow and give the man a sharp nudge in the ribs.
    â€˜Whaa, what, am I late?’ His head snapped up straight and he looked around, bug-eyed.
    I stared out the window. Only twenty-four hours to go.
    We arrived at Rome airport at eight in the morning. The wait for the baggage was endless, and my mouth felt cracked and crusty from lack of sleep. But my nerves were racing and reluctant tingles of excitement were inching up my back.
    I’d seen photos of my grandparents, but they were all about twenty years old. As I lumphed out of the terminal with my fat bag thumping against my knees, I peered at the waiting crowd. People were kissing each other and crying and suddenly I felt as lonely as a seagull in the desert.
    A plump grey-haired woman was pushing her way through the crowd. I saw the dark eyes, almond-shaped like my mother’s, and the little mole beneath the long nose. This was my Nonna.
    â€˜Roberto, oh my Roberto, how tall you are!’
    And what big teeth you have!
I couldn’t help thinking.
    Nonna flung her arms around me and crushed me to her and all the soft parts of her were