2: Chocolate Box Girls: Marshmallow Skye Read Online Free Page B

above it, and half a dozen horses, big and patterned with variations of black and white, are grazing nearby. Two small girls in raggedy dresses play a hiding game among the trees, and a couple of dark-haired men are mending pots and pans beside the fire.
    There’s the sound of twigs breaking softly behind me, and a skinny, dishevelled dog that looks like a tawny-coloured toilet brush rushes up and nudges my hand. I stroke the dog and scratch its ears, and turn round slowly. Suddenly, my heart does a backflip inside my chest and my cheeks flush.
    The boy walking towards me through the trees is a stranger, but it feels like I have known him forever. He is tall and tanned, with dark hair that flops down across his face and eyes so blue they take my breath away. His clothes are strange, old-fashioned, a white shirt with no collar and the sleeves rolled up, a threadbare waistcoat and cord trousers the colour of bracken. At his neck is a red scarf, knotted carelessly.
    Just then, a bird flies up from a nearby branch, a flash of red and brown, a flurry of wings.
    Finch, I think . The boy’s name is Finch.
    ‘Hey,’ he says, and his face breaks into a grin. His hand reaches out to catch mine, holding tight.
    I sit up, pushing the hair back from my face, my heart racing. I wonder where I am for a moment, but in the half-light of dawn I can see I’m in the room I share with my twin. Iremember trying on Clara’s clothes last night, before supper, then squabbling with Summer about it. I remember Summer, Cherry and Coco choosing a DVD and curling up on the sofas to watch, but I was tired and sloped off to my room, flaking out early.
    ‘That,’ I say out loud, ‘was the weirdest dream ever.’
    ‘Huh?’ Summer murmurs from under her duvet. ‘What dream?’
    ‘It seemed so real,’ I frown. ‘Like it was actually happening. But I wasn’t really me. Or if I was, then everything else was just kind of muddled and wrong … I don’t know. Weird.’
    Summer doesn’t reply, but she blinks at me with sleepy, troubled eyes, her brows slanting into a frown.
    That’s when I realize I am still wearing the white cotton petticoat that once belonged to Clara Travers …

6
    I don’t say any more to Summer about my dream, although I’m still thinking about it all the way to school. First period is history. Mr Wolfe is new at Exmoor Park Middle School, and everyone thinks he is wired to the moon. He wears tweed jackets with elbow patches and corduroy trousers in beige or mustard yellow, and he always smells faintly of toast. He looks like he might be better suited to a career at Hogwarts, or perhaps as an extra in a horror movie featuring werewolves. No wonder Alfie Anderson likes to tease him.
    I think history is cool. It’s all about stories, about how the past shapes the present and the future, and I’ve loved it ever since I can remember. Back in Year Four I got a gold star for my Egyptian project, which involved trying tomummify a Barbie doll with lengths of toilet roll in front of the entire class. ‘Awesome, Skye,’ Alfie said. I think he liked the bit where I told the class how those ancient Egyptians used to remove the mummy’s brains by dragging them out through the nostrils with a hook. Boys are kind of bloodthirsty for stories like that.
    I think I prefer the Clara Travers kind of history – doomed love stories and amazing clothes. But even though I love history, I am not at all sure about Mr Wolfe. I can’t help feeling a little bit sorry for him, though.
    Today he is late coming to class, and Alfie has set up a practical joke. As the new history teacher walks into the room, a wastepaper basket balanced on top of the slightly open door topples down on him, showering him with scrunched-up paper.
    He peers at us through his horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Amusing,’ he says. ‘Do you know something, class? History is full of unpredictable events, but we can learn from them. They teach us to expect the unexpected –’
    Mr