Meg Rosoff: How I Live Now

Later when I get a chance to look around the house I find out the inside is much more jumbled up than the outside with funny corridors that don’t seem to lead anywhere and tiny bedrooms with slanty ceilings hidden away at the top of stairs. The stairs all creak and there are no curtains on any of the windows and all the main rooms seem huge after what I’m used to and they’re scattered with big old comfortable furniture and paintings and books and huge fireplaces you can walk into and animals posing around the place to make it look even more authentic oldy worldy.

The bathrooms turn out to be pretty oldy worldy too or maybe I should say antique and make a huge noise whenever you want to do anything private.

Behind the house is tons of farmland some of which looks just like meadows and some of which is planted with potatoes and some is just starting to bloom in an acidy yellow color which Edmond says is rape as in rapeseed oil but the only kind of rape I know is the kind you read about in the paper ten times a day and always ignore unless the rapist turns out to be a priest or someone on TV.

There’s a farmer who comes and does all the planting because Aunt Penn always has Important Work To Do Related to the Peace Process and anyway wouldn’t know the first thing about farming according to Edmond. But they keep sheep and goats and cats and dogs and chickens For Decoration said Osbert in a slightly sneery way and I’m getting the feeling about him that he’s the one cousin who reminds me of people I knew in New York City.

Edmond and Piper and Isaac and Osbert, and Jet and Gin the black and white dogs, and a bunch of cats all went into the kitchen first and we sat down at a wooden table and someone made cups of tea and then they all stared at me like I was something interesting they’d ordered from a zoo and asked me lots of questions in a much more polite way than would ever happen in New York, where kids would pretty much wait for some grown-up to come in all fake-cheerful and put cookies on a plate and make you say your names.

After a while I was feeling woozy and thought Boy, could I ever use a drink of freezing water to clear my head, and when I looked up Edmond was standing there holding one hand out and in it was a glass of water with ice cubes, and all the time looking at me with his almost smiling look and though I didn’t think much about this at the time, I noticed Isaac looking at Edmond in a funny way.

Then Osbert got up and left, he’s sixteen and the oldest in case I didn’t say it, which is a year older than me. Piper asked if I wanted to see the animals, or just lie down for a while, and I said lie down because even before I left New York I hadn’t exactly been getting my fair share of sleep. She looked disappointed, but only for a second, and really I was feeling so much more tired than polite that I hardly cared.

She took me upstairs to a room down at the end of a hall which was the kind of room a monk would live in—small and plain with thick white walls that weren’t straight like new walls, and one huge window divided into lots of panes of yellow and greenish glass. There was a big striped cat under the bed and some daffodils in an old bottle and suddenly that room seemed like the safest place I’d ever been in my life, which just goes to show how wrong a person can be about what’s in store for them but here I go jumping the gun again.

We pushed my suitcase into a corner, and Piper came in with a big pile of old blankets and she said in a shy way that they were woven from the sheep on the farm a long time ago and that the black ones were from the black sheep.

I pulled the black sheep blanket over my head and closed my eyes and for no good reason I could think of, I felt like I’d belonged to this house for centuries but that could have been wishful thinking.

And then I fell asleep.

Ididn’t mean to sleep practically a whole day and a night but I did. And when I woke up I thought how strange it was to be lying in someone else’s bed thousands of miles from home surrounded by grayish light and a weird kind of quiet that you never get in New York City where the traffic keeps you company in a constant buzzy way day and night.

The first thing I did was to check my phone for messages, but all it said was NO NETWORK and I thought Oh boy so much for civilization and felt a little freaked out and thought of that movie where they say No One Can Hear You Scream. But then I went over to the window and looked out and there was the slightest bit of pink light over to one side where the sun must have just started coming up and a totally quiet gray mist hung over the barn and the gardens and the fields and everything was perfectly still and beautiful and I stared and stared expecting to see a deer or maybe a unicorn trotting home after a hard night but I didn’t see anything except some birds.

After a while I was cold and got back under the blankets.

I felt too shy to come out of my room, so I stayed there and thought about my old home which unfortunately led to thinking about Davina the Diabolical, who sucked my father’s soul out through his you know what and then got herself knocked up with the devil’s spawn which, when it pops out, Leah and I are going to call Damian even if it’s a girl.

According to my best friend Leah, D the D would have liked to poison me slowly till I turned black and swelled up like a pig and died in agony but I guess that plan flopped when I refused to eat anything and in the end she got me sent off to live with a bunch of cousins I’d never met a few thousand miles away while she and Dad and the devil’s spawn went on their merry way. If she was making even the slightest attempt to address centuries of bad press for stepmothers, she scored a Big Fat Zero.

Before I could work myself up into a full-blown attack of hyperventilating, I heard a tiny noise at the door and there was Piper again, looking in, and when she saw I was awake she gave a little happy squeak like a mouse cheer and asked Did I want a cup of tea?

OK, I said, and then Thank you, remembering to be polite, and I smiled at her because I still liked her from yesterday. And off she drifted just like the fog on little cat feet.

I went to the window again and looked out and saw the mist had cleared and everything was so green and then I put some clothes on and managed to find the kitchen after discovering some pretty amazing rooms by mistake, and Isaac and Edmond were there eating marmalade on toast and Piper was making my tea and seeming worried that I’d had to get out of bed to get it. In New York, nine-year-olds usually don’t do this kind of thing, but wait for some grown-up to do it for them, so I was impressed by her intrepid attitude but also kind of wondering if good old Aunt Penn had died and no one could figure out a good way to tell me.

Mum was working all night, said Edmond, so she’s gone to bed but she’ll be up for lunch and then you’ll see her.

Well that answered that, thank you Edmond.

While I drank my tea I could see Piper squirming around wanting to tell me something and she kept looking at Edmond and Isaac who just looked back and at last she said Please come to the barn Daisy. And the Please was more like a command than a request, and then she gave her brothers a look like, I couldn’t help it! And when I got up to go with her she did the nicest thing, which was to hold my hand and it made me want to hug her, especially since Being Nice to Daisy hadn’t been anyone’s favorite hobby lately.

In the barn, which smelled like animals but in a nice way, she showed me a tiny black and white goat with square eyes and little stubby horns and a bell around its neck on a red collar and said his name was Ding and he was her goat but I could have him if I wanted and then I did hug her because Piper and the sweet baby goat were exactly as nice as each other.