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Back Things that Fall from the Sky Save as PDF
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. A Walled-In Girl
  4. 1
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  6. 3
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  8. 5
  9. 6
  10. 7
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  27. 24
  28. 25
  29. 26
  30. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  31. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  32. A Mermaid Splashing
  33. 1
  34. 2
  35. 3
  36. 4
  37. 5
  38. 6
  39. 7
  40. 8
  41. 9
  42. And That was The End of That
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  55. 13

That’s what Mum’s like alive.

That’s what Mum was like when she was alive.

We eat ice creams as the tyres are being exchanged. The old tyres aren’t thrown away – they’re piled on to the back seat, because Mum’s going to use them to build a pyramid at the edge of the garden, then fill it with earth and plant strawberries there. Because the back seat is filled with tyres, I’m allowed to sit in the front.

We drive into the front garden.

Dad picks up two of the old tyres from the back seat and starts carrying them into the garden. I follow him. We plan to wash the tyres and then help Mum fill them with earth. Mum’s shown us a picture of a strawberry pyramid in a magazine.

There are five stone steps at the corner of the house.

‘Look, Dad. Ice,’ I say, pointing at the crushed ice on the steps.

‘Can’t be,’ Dad replies. ‘Maybe Mum’s broken a glass?’

I pick up a piece. It’s cold and wet, bluish.

Just then Dad reaches the top step, and a scream escapes from his mouth. The tyres drop and roll down the steps towards me. Dad looks at the garden and then at me. His eyes are huge and white; his mouth is open. When he shouts, I see teeth.

‘No, Saara! Don’t look!’

The first tyre hits my knee; the second rolls past me. Dad stumbles, on the tyres and me. My leg hurts, and my bottom, and my elbow.

‘Don’t look, Saara, don’t look, don’t look, Saara, nonono…’

His eyes are scaring me. I cry, but Dad doesn’t comfort me, Dad roars, Dad calls for help, we fall on the steps and I’m in pain. Dad yanks me by the wrist, away, away, away, though I’m not on my feet and my arm feels like it’s being ripped off.

‘You mustn’t look!’ Dad screams. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but Dad screams the same thing again and again, tearing at my hand all the time.

We run, I don’t know where, it goes on all day and night and the whole of the following week. ‘No no no!’ Dad’s still shouting when the police come, people come. I don’t know where we are, why Dad keeps screaming. Someone shakes him, so hard that in the end he throws up.

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