Secrets at Silver Spires Read Online Free Page A

the passage and answer the questions.
    Go, Jess.
    First I looked for capital letters so I could find out who the characters were. There was T, A and B. The B turned out to be Birmingham, which took me a while, and the T was for Tom and the A for Alex. So then I went back to the beginning and tried to decode the words one at a time, but the first sentence was so long that by the time I’d got to the end of it I couldn’t remember what it said at the beginning. Perhaps it would be better to just keep reading until something made sense.
    So I slowly worked out every single word on the first double page, but I still had no idea what the story was about because of having to concentrate so hard on the individual words. I think it was saying that Tom and Alex had come across a homeless person on a bench, but that might not have been it at all. Then there was a long description of clothes, but I was a bit confused about whether the clothes had been in the shop nearby or if Tom and Alex had gone to get clothes for the tramp from their home.
    My mind was flooded with pictures, but then a scratching sound beside me made its way into my little world of images, and when I turned to see what it was I realized that Isis was scribbling away. She wasn’t resting the sheet of paper on anything but the desk, so the ballpoint pen made quite a noise. I nearly jumped a mile when Mr. Reeves’s deep voice suddenly announced that we had ten minutes to go, because I hadn’t written a single word or even finished reading the passage.
    I decided the best thing to do was look at the questions and get on with answering the first ones, because they were sure to be based on the first part of the passage, which I’d managed to read. Even though I wasn’t at all sure what was going on in the story, I might be able to guess some of the answers. My hands were shaking as I held the booklet up a bit closer and worked my way through the first question.
    Underline three words in the first paragraph that suggest that the weather in Birmingham made the atmosphere uncomfortable.
    It had taken me so long to read to the end of that sentence that I’d had to go back to the beginning to remind myself whether I was supposed to underline the three words or circle them. But at least it didn’t take long to find muggy , dusty and heavy in the passage, because I knew what I was looking for. Those words had stayed in my head as soon as I’d been able to picture the scene.
    The next few questions asked you to underline more words from the text, but I wasn’t so sure I’d got those ones right. And then there was a question asking us to explain how Alex’s thoughts and feelings about the tramp gradually changed. Just as I understood what I had to do, Mr. Reeves announced that there were five minutes to go, so then I went into a blind panic because I hadn’t written anything on the paper, and I felt so ashamed of myself.
    I thought I knew how Alex felt the first time she saw the tramp because I’d pictured her walking past on the other side of the road, tutting at Tom for stopping and actually talking to the tramp. But I had no idea how her feelings gradually changed. Maybe I hadn’t read that far. I spent about thirty seconds trying to find the right bit, but at the sight of Isis leaning back in her chair, looking round in a rather bored way to show she’d finished, I decided to simply make up an answer. At least the first half of it would be right.
    â€œOne minute to go,” came Mr. Reeves’s booming voice as I was finishing my answer. I’d written something about Alex deciding to give the tramp some clothes from her own wardrobe, only I’d stumbled over spelling wardrobe because it didn’t look right with the two rs so close together, so in the end I crossed it out and wrote that she’d got the clothes from home.
    â€œRight, stop working now, please.” My hands were still shaking