Ask Eva by Judi Curtin Page B

I asked.
    Aretta nodded. ‘It isn’t perfect, but mostly it’s OK. The building looks like it’s about to fall down, but the people who work there are nice. The manager treats us well. The only problem is……’
    Before she could finish, the bell rang to tell us that lunch-time was over. I felt like crying.This was like my mum telling me to put away my book when it’s time to go to sleep – only a million times worse.
    Ella jumped up. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said. ‘But Mr Dean’s on the warpath. If he catches us here when we should be on the way to class, we’ll be in after-school detention for a week.’
    She was right. And even though after-school detention wouldn’t be much fun for Ella or me, it would be even worse for Aretta who was always gone from school about three seconds after the last bell rang.
    As we stood up, a sudden gust of wind caught the wrappings from Ella’s sandwiches and they flew through the air.
    ‘Quick, Eva, help me,’ shouted Ella. ‘If we’re caught littering, we’ll get double detention.’
    I raced after her, and when we came back with the scraps of paper, Aretta was already gone.

    ‘Poor Aretta,’ said Ella as we hurried back to class. ‘Imagine having all those terrible things happen to you.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s totally awful, but still, I don’t get what’s going on.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, Aretta was kind of ok last week, and the week before, but today she’s all red-eyed and sad.’
    ‘She’s probably missing her mum and her brother.’
    ‘But they’ve been gone all the time.’
    ‘Maybe it’s just sunk in,’ said Ella. ‘Like delayed shock or something.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘That can’t be it. She wouldn’t have changed so quickly. Something else must have happened – and I think she’d have told us about it if the bell hadn’t rung right in the middle of her story.’
    ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right. We’ll have to try double-hard to catch her after school, and give her a chance to tell us what’s going on.

    But, once again, Aretta managed to leave school without us seeing her. I met Ella at the gate, and she shook her head.
    ‘I don’t know how she does it,’ she said. ‘It’s like she puts on an invisibility cloak once four o’clock comes.’
    ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Anyway, we can talk to her tomorrow at lunch time, and once we find out what’s going on, we can figure out a way of helping her.’
    But Aretta didn’t come to school the next day or any other day that week. Ella and I were totally worried about her, but we didn’t dare to go to the detention centre to find out what was going on.
    There was nothing we could do.

    That night my friend Kate FaceTimed me. (Kate lives in Seacove, where I go on holidays with my family. At first I thought she was totally weird, but when I got to know her, I realised that she’s really, really nice. The only problem now is that she lives so far away I hardly ever get to see her.)
    ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘It’s so good to hear from you. How are you?’
    She told me all the latest news from her school, and laughed a lot when I told her about how Ella and I sneaked Lucky into the nursing home to visit Gigi.
    ‘So how’s your adorable baby brother?’ I said then.
    She gave a huge, soppy smile. ‘Simon is the cutest baby in the world,’ she said. ‘He knows loads of words now, and every day he learns more. He comes into my bed every morning to wake me up, and even if I’m really tired, hisgiggling makes me smile. When he laughs, he makes everything funny. He’s just so …’
    She stopped talking.
    ‘What?’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Sometimes when I think about how much I love Simon … it scares me to think that if it weren’t for you, I might never even have known that he existed.’
    I hoped my red face didn’t show up on her screen. ‘I didn’t really—’
    ‘You were amazing, Eva,’ she said. ‘You fixed my life. You made everything perfect