Ring Around Rosie Read Online Free Page A

the front door. The old stairs creaked as he climbed them
and he flinched with every step.
    “Rosie? Is that you?” Ted froze at the
sound of his mum’s voice calling from her room.
    “It’s both of us mum, sorry, we had a long
swim and forgot the time,” he called upstairs, cringing at his hideous lie.
    “Ok, as long as you’re both safe. I
couldn’t go to sleep without knowing. Mum’s prerogative and all that! Night
darlings.”
    “Yeah, night mum, night dad,” answered Ted.
    Ted went into his room and shut the door.
He felt sick for lying to his parents and sick for the reason he’d had to.
Where the hell was Rosie?
    He lay down on his bed and stared at the
ceiling. Some big brother he was, no wonder she was always getting into
trouble. Everyone knows younger siblings always try to mimic their older
brothers and sisters, and he had definitely not set a good example, what with
his partying and staying out all hours. But now he was realising the error of
his ways it was too late, the damage had been done. And she was calling him boring ,
accusing him of bailing when things got tough. Run home to mummy and daddy ,
indeed. He definitely hadn’t run; in fact he’d practically crawled.
    Ted stared at his bedroom door, willing it
to open. All the worse case scenarios flicked through his mind like a badly
edited movie. He tried to get an image in his mind of where Rosie might be, on
the off chance he had psychic potential; it was unlikely but anything was worth
a shot. He did begin to get a vision, but hoped it wasn’t real, because he
pictured her being dragged from the forest by a ten-foot-tall pirate with
seaweed for hair. He had her under his arm and was running towards the water,
giant strides eating up the beach and leaving craters where his feet had been.
As the man reached the breaking waves he flung Rosie onto his back and broke
the water’s surface with a huge splash, taking Rosie down with him into the
murky depths.
     
    Ted awoke to the sun streaming through his
window. For a brief moment all was well with the world, then he noticed he was
fully clothed and reality hit him like a herd of galloping mustangs. He flew
out of his room and along the corridor towards Rosie’s room, his heart
pounding, a prayer on his lips. Please let her be there. I’ll be a good
brother from now on if you just let her be there this time . He flung her
bedroom door open so hard that it slammed against the wall.
    “What are you doing?” asked his mum,
appearing from her room, her arms laden with clothes.
    Ted just stared at the empty bed in front
of him.
    “Ted?” came his mum’s voice, more urgently.
“What’s going on?”
    Ted couldn’t turn around; he couldn’t look
his mum in the eye and tell her he’d let them all down.
    “Ted!” said his mum again with more
aggression.
    He turned around slowly, knowing his mum
would read his expression in an instant.
    “Oh my god, where’s Rosie?” she shrieked,
dropping the clothes and shaking him by the shoulders. Ted’s eyes fell to the
floor.
    “What’s wrong with you? Speak to me, goddam
it!” His mum was reaching hysteria as Ted searched desperately for the right
words. He knew his silence was creating its own horror in his mum’s mind, but
he just didn’t know where to begin.
    “What’s going on?” asked his dad, appearing
from downstairs.
    “Something’s happened to Rosie, and Ted
won’t speak,” she shrieked in frustration.
    “Ted,” came his dad’s rational voice from
amidst the screaming, “where’s your sister?”
    Ted looked into his dad’s eyes and saw the
calm that he needed. He started from the beginning and told them what had
happened.
    His mum started crying as Ted relayed the
events of the day before.
    “Everyone just keep your cool. We don’t
know that anything has happened to her. There’s no need to jump to the worst
conclusions, there are a thousand explanations for why she didn’t come home
last night and we’re not going