Twenties Girl Read Online Free PDF

Where
is
it?”
    Her voice has a clipped, pinched accent, just like in old-fashioned black-and-white films. I glance wildly over at the rest of my family—but no one else has noticed her. No one has even heard her voice. Everyone else is sitting quietly.
    Suddenly, as though she senses my gaze on her, the girl wheels around and fixes her eyes on mine. They’re so dark and glittering, I can’t tell what color they are, but they widen incredulously as I stare back.
    OK. I’m starting to panic here. I’m having a hallucination. A full-on, walking, talking hallucination. And it’s coming toward me.
    “You can see me.” She points a white finger at me, and I shrink back in my seat. “You can see me!”
    I shake my head quickly. “I can’t.”
    “And you can hear me!”
    “No, I can’t.”
    I’m aware of Mum at the front of the room, turning to frown at me. Quickly, I cough and gesture at my chest. When I turn back, the girl has gone. Vanished.
    Thank God for that. I thought I was going crazy. I mean, I know I’ve been stressed out recently, but to have an actual
vision—
    “Who are you?” I nearly jump out of my skin as the girl’s voice punctuates my thoughts again. Now suddenly she’s striding down the aisle toward me.
    “Who are you?” she demands. “Where is this? Who are these people?”
    Do
not
reply to the hallucination
, I tell myself firmly.
It’ll only encourage it
. I swivel my head away, and try to pay attention to the vicar.
    “Who are you?” The girl has suddenly appeared right in front of me. “Are you real?” She raises a hand as though to prod my shoulder, and I cringe away, but her hand swishes straight through me and comes out the other side.
    I gasp in shock. The girl stares in bewilderment at her hand, then at me.
    “What are you?” she demands. “Are you a dream?”
    “Me?” I can’t help retorting in an indignant undertone. “Of course I’m not a dream! You’re the dream!”
    “I’m not a dream!” She sounds equally indignant.
    “Who are you, then?” I can’t help shooting back.
    Immediately I regret it, as Mum and Dad both glance back at me. If I told them I was talking to a hallucination, they’d flip. I’d be incarcerated in the Priory tomorrow.
    The girl juts her chin out. “I’m Sadie. Sadie Lancaster.”
    Sadie…?
    No. No
way
.
    I can’t quite move. My eyes are flicking madly from the girl infront of me … to the wizened, candy-floss-haired old woman in the Polaroid … and then back again to the girl. I’m hallucinating my dead 105-year-old great-aunt?
    The hallucination girl looks fairly freaked out too. She turns and starts looking around the room as though taking it in for the first time. For a dizzying few seconds, she appears and reappears all over the room, examining every corner, every window, like an insect buzzing around a glass tank.
    I’ve never had an imaginary friend. I’ve never taken drugs. What is
up
with me? I tell myself to ignore the girl, to blank her out, to pay attention to the vicar. But it’s no good; I can’t help following her progress.
    “What is this place?” She’s hovering by me now, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. She’s focusing on the coffin at the front. “What’s that?”
    Oh God.
    “That’s … nothing,” I say hastily. “Nothing at all! It’s just … I mean … I wouldn’t look too closely if I were you. …”
    Too late. She’s appeared at the coffin, staring down at it. I can see her reading the name SADIE LANCASTER on the plastic notice board. I can see her face jolt in shock. After a few moments she turns toward the vicar, who is still droning on in her monotone:
    “Sadie found contentment in marriage, which can be an inspiration to us all. …”
    The girl puts her face right up close to the vicar’s and regards her with disdain.
    “You
fool,”
she says scathingly.
    “She was a woman who lived to a great age,” the vicar carries on, totally oblivious. “I look at this picture”—she