Annabelle Sami - Llama Out Loud!

I wish I could stand up for myself .

With her eyes closed, she listened out to hear if the shouting downstairs had died down.

What she heard instead was a thud. Coming from inside the cupboard.

And another.

And another!

Yasmin stared at the cupboard door. Where was the knocking coming from?

The cupboard fell silent. The noise from downstairs now seemed muffled compared to Yasmin’s own heavy breathing. She reached out and carefully knocked once on the wooden cupboard door.

The air seemed to chill around her. After a moment, she heard the knocking coming from inside again. Against her better judgment, Yasmin banged harder.

The knocking from within the cupboard was louder this time. Something was definitely in there – a mouse or a rat? – but Yasmin couldn’t ask her parents to come and investigate. She was still too angry with them.

She fetched her tennis racket from the corner of the room. Approaching the cupboard door on tiptoe, she closed her eyes, counted to three and then swung the cupboard open . . .

‘Oi, love! I’m having a kip here. Your stomping woke me up!’

In blind panic, Yasmin swung the tennis racket in the direction of the noise.

Yasmin slowly opened her eyes. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was, frankly, unbelievable.

‘Didn’t your mum ever tell you it’s rude to smack people with tennis rackets?’

Yasmin blinked hard. Was there a talking toy llama in her cupboard?

‘Hellooooo, anybody home?’ the llama said.

Yasmin remained frozen to the spot.

‘Right, well, I’m gonna give myself a tour of the house,’ the llama said in a broad cockney accent, getting up out of the pile of old socks it seemed to have been using as a bed. Before it could escape, Yasmin slammed the door shut.

Was she dreaming? Just to be sure, she pinched herself. Ouch! She was definitely awake, and now her arm hurt. But she was pinching herself because there was a talking toy llama in her cupboard. And not just any talking toy llama. It was the gross toy llama from the market! It must have fallen out of her schoolbag earlier when she tossed it to the ground.

‘All right love, tell you what. Openup the cupboard and I’ll explain myself,’ the llama said reasonably. ‘I don’t want no trouble.’

Tentatively, Yasmin opened the cupboard door just a crack. It felt like there was a swarm of angry bees in her stomach. She put her eye to the gap and peered in.

The llama laughed. ‘Come on!’

Yasmin opened the door an inch more.

‘That’s it, I don’t bite.’ The llama peered out at her. ‘But I do spit!’

With amazing precision, the llama aimed a perfect spray of matted fur fluff through the crack in the door, hitting Yasmin right on the nose. Seizing the opportunity, he jumped out of the cupboard and on to the desk, knocking off all her schoolbooks.

The little trickster! Yasmin thought, wiping her face. I’ll show him!

Grabbing her filled-to-the-brim laundry basket, Yasmin catapulted across the room with a trail of dirty clothes flying in her wake. She barrel-rolled across the bed like a cop in a Hollywood film and slammed the basket down, trapping the llama underneath.

‘I want to be angry, but I’m actually quite impressed,’ the llama remarked from inside his new prison.

Yasmin looked at him gruffly, putting her heaviest maths textbooks on the top of the basket to keep it secure. She sat down on the bed to catch her breath and make sense of the situation.

‘Wot?’ the llama asked cheekily. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

Oh! I knew there was something I was supposed to mention. The cat did, in fact, have Yasmin’s tongue. Though not literally. In a world of talking toy llamas, it’s probably best I’m clear about that.

What I mean is, Yasmin didn’t speak. Ever.

In the last seven years or so of her life, Yasmin had barely said a word. It’s not that she didn’t know how to speak; she did. It’s just that she didn’t want to, and for three very good reasons.

1: You’ve seen how loud her family is. It’s a good thing this is a book and not a TV show, or you’d have a headache by the end.

2: When Yasmin first learned to speak, her brothers used it as yet another thing to tease her about. Every time she opened her mouth, they would burst into hysterics at the sound of her voice. They even started calling her Trombone which, if you’ve ever heard a Trombone, is a particularly unkind nickname.

3: The Purple/Poo Incident. To be discussed later.

So, Yasmin kept quiet. It’s not as if anyone noticed. She would just have been another voice trying her best to be heard over the dinner table. If she was going to speak, she wanted to be heard. To make an impact. So, just as she’d got the hang of talking at three years old, she gave it up, and she hadn’t looked back since.

Yasmin shook her head vigorously from side to side and let her eyes refocus. Nope, the llama was still there. Had she fallen over in the kitchen and banged her head? Was she having a weird dream?

‘Look, look, look, I think we might have got off on the wrong foot back there,’ said the llama. ‘I’m Levi. What’s your name, love?’

Yasmin chewed at her lip nervously. If this was just a crazy dream she might as well go along with it. Maybe she’d snap out of it and wake up in bed. Cautiously, she picked up her schoolbag and pointed to her name written on the front.

‘Yasmin, huh? Ya don’t speak?’

Yasmin shook her head.

‘Interesting . . .’ Levi seemed to be mulling something over in his fluff-stuffed head. ‘I don’t blame ya for keepin’ quiet. Best to keep yourself to yourself round these endz.’

Yasmin looked confused.

‘These endz?’ Levi prompted. ‘It means these streets . Whitechapel ain’t what it used to be. I’ve been living here for a while and even I don’t recognise the place no more. There’s more and more trendy young people in flashy clothes setting up coffee shops. I mean, how many coffee shops d’ya need?’

Yasmin couldn’t work this all out. A talking toy llama from Whitechapel? She was quite sure that even real llamas didn’t live in London, and certainly not in the heart of the East End. The most exotic thing she’d seen where she lived was a rat in the garden that turned orange after it ate a bag of cheese balls.

‘How long you lived here? Twenty . . . thirty years?’ Levi enquired.

Yasmin snorted and hopped up on to her bed to reach her huge blackboard. Picking up some chalk she wrote: I’m only ten! It’s my birthday Yasmin slowly opened her eyes. She .

‘Then where are all yer presents? Yer parents must be cheapskates.’

It was true that Yasmin was a bit miffed with her rubbish logic puzzle book.

‘What about your mates, they at least get you a card?’

Yasmin shook her head and wrote: I don’t have friends at school.

‘No mates, eh?’ Levi raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ll have to sort that.’