Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The Read Online Free Page A

The spaghetti had turned to eels in my stomach. I stood up. ‘Forget it. It’s not going to happen. Not now. Not ever.’ I left them sitting there and ran to my room. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t.

three
    I rang my friends.
    ‘Min!’ Lizzie gasped. ‘What about Seb? A whole year? You know the stats on long-distance relationships and yours has hardly started.’
    ‘Thanks for your support,’ I snapped.
    ‘Oh, sweetie! I’m sorry, I really am.’ I heard her take a huge breath. ‘Listen — you can come and live with me. I’ll ask Mum. It’ll be fun.’
    Colour filtered back into my world. I wanted to hug her. ‘Thanks, Lizzie — but are you sure? I mean, it’s a whole year.’
    ‘Course I’m sure.’ I could almost see her shaking her hair back (red right now, with blonde highlights). ‘Mum won’t mind.’
    God, I wished my parents were like hers. They trusted her. They weren’t always on her back. They would never even think about an idea as dumb as this one.
    I rang Addy. ‘You
can’t
!’ she shrieked.
    ‘Don’t stress,’ I said. ‘Lizzie says I can stay with her.’
    Addy was still gasping. ‘I can’t believe your Dad would even think about it. It’s awful — and Min — what about Seb?’
    ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It just rips my heart out even thinking about it.’ I swallowed. ‘Look, I’d better phone Jax.’
    We said nothing for a second. Jax was going to take it hard. It seemed every day she was falling harder and harder for my idiot brother.
    I phoned her, told her I had some horrible news. ‘A year,’ I finished up. ‘A whole year stuck on some idiot island. All four of us.’
    But the first thing she said was, ‘Oh, Min — you poor thing! A whole year away from Seb. That’s cruel.’
    I choked up. That was so Jax — always thinking of others and not herself. ‘Jax, I think I’ll be okay.’ I told her about staying with Lizzie. ‘But what about you? Noah’s going to be gone for so long.’
    She was quiet and then she sighed. ‘It’s not like we were going out or anything.’
    It wasn’t fair — life sure dealt a bad hand to Jax, what with her crazy mother, and now Noah was being taken away from her before anything could really get going.
    An island. In the middle of Cook Strait. No thank you, Father dear.
    Friday morning and the last day of term. Didn’t seeeither of the parents or the brother. Ran to meet my friends on our corner. Lizzie danced around and the other two wore huge grins. ‘You can stay! Mum says yes!’
    We hugged and yelled and did no work all day. The relief of it. I hadn’t realised I’d been so worried. I spent interval with Seb but didn’t tell him about the island. Why waste good time on something that wasn’t going to happen? Then I wondered if I should tell him because it would be so much easier to be together when I was staying at Lizzie’s. Interval ended before I had made up my mind.
    We went back to Jax’s house after school because her mother would be at work. Didn’t do much, just hung out. The rule was that I had to be home by six. I got home at seven. Mum didn’t show. Noah of course was where he always was — absent. Dad was as well, so what was new?
    I heated my dinner in the microwave and shut myself in my room. I was not going to spend twelve shitty months on some idiot island and that’s all there was to it. End of story. However, I felt it’d be strategic to keep out of Dad’s way on the grounds that if he didn’t see me he couldn’t bombard me with reasons why this would be the best thing ever for me, how it would be the making of me and how I’d look back on it as one of the defining moments of my life when I was old. Except I wouldn’t live to be old because I’d die of boredom and a broken heart, which he obviously hadn’t allowed for.
    What I hadn’t allowed for was his sneakiness.
    Saturday morning at some undefined but definitely uncivilised hour:
    Dad: (makes huge noise at my bedroom door)
    Me: