Tao Read Online Free PDF Page B

before?” wondered David, suddenly showing more interest.
    “Hold that face,” I said and took his photo, but he put his hand out to block it just at the wrong time. I sent Mimi the photo anyway – which wasn’t easy because David was trying his best to grab the phone off me and if we weren’t careful, Sam, the grumpiest driver in the world, would kick us off the bus.
    David
    was all I managed to write.
    Ten seconds later my phone yelled again.
    ANSWERMEANSWERMEANSWERME
    It was a photo of a girl with brown hair and glasses and a big grin.
    My best friend Orla. She says David will live til hes 90 n hav an interesting love life. She’s weird. Mimi XXX
    I showed that to David, who was as puzzled as I was – Kalem said he got it, but he said he wouldn’t explain it until he got some answers first.
    So when we got off the bus, I told them all about my long-lost Chinese sister.
    “She’s my twin. There was a mix-up in the orphanage in China and she went to a family in Ireland and I came here,” I explained. It was strange to be saying all this as if it was nothing much really, when in fact it was the biggest thing that had ever happened in my life … so far.
    “Wow,” said Kalem. “And how come you only just found out?”
    “My parents didn’t tell me when I was seven because they were too busy having their divorce,” I explained. I felt like I was outside my body, listening to myself talking as if it all had nothing to do with me.
    “Then they didn’t tell me the next year, or Mimi – that’s her name by the way…”
    “We know that,” interrupted David.
    “…because her mother got killed by a bus and she was too upset,” I continued.
    “Wow!” said Kalem. “I mean, that’s sad.”
    “Anyhow, her sister Sally—”
    “She has a sister?” put in David.
    “Yes!” I said impatiently. “And a brother, Conor. Let me get on with the story.”
    “Are they Chinese too?” David wanted to know.
    “Let him get on with the story!” Kalem shouted.
    “No, they are Irish,” I told David, who looked very confused, so I showed him their photos on my phone. He laughed when he saw Sally.
    “She’s a vampire, Tao,” he said. “Keep away from her or she’ll bite your neck and suck your blood and you’ll be a vampire too, for ever more.”
    “Can I get on with the story now?” I asked him. “Sally, the vampire, found a letter that her father was writing to Kate all crumpled up in the waste-paper basket and it had our number on it, maybe he had decided to ring up instead. So Sally made Mimi ring the number. But we were rushing out to the cinema and I thought it was a wrong number…”
    “That’s where I heard the name Mimi before!” shouted out David as if he had won a prize. “I knew it. I just knew it!”
    “Well done, David,” drawled Kalem in his most sarcastic voice. “The Brain of Britain does it again.”
    David went quiet for a minute, but then another hare-brained idea rushed into his head and he had to blurt it out. “Maybe she is just pretending to be your sister. She claims that she’s your sister … to get all your money. In your will! You’d better be careful, Tao. This Mimi could be a very clever con artist.”
    David was very pleased with himself for working all this out, so it was disappointing for him when I said, “What money? I don’t have any money.”
    Kalem just sneered at him and said David was watching too much rubbish on television and he should get his head examined.
    I had to turn off the phone in school or else have it confiscated and I suppose that it was the same for Mimi because when I turned it back on after school there was only one text with a photo of a big bottom.
    My teacher Ms Hardy’s bum. Orla took dis pic with my fone. Lucky she was not cot or we wud both b ded. Mimi XXX
    I wished I had been brave enough to photo my teacher Mrs Piggott’s bottom, but if I had been caught my phone would have been confiscated for a week.
    “That’s one big