Cameron Away With Words

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78895-657-4
Verlag: Little Tiger Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

Set in a world where words appear physically when people speak, AWAY WITH WORDS explores the importance of communication and being there for those we love. Gala and her dad, Jordi, have just moved from home in Cataluña to a town in Scotland, to live with Jordi's boyfriend Ryan. Gala doesn't speak much English, and feels lost, lonely and unable to be her usual funny self. Until she befriends Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. The two girls find their own ways to communicate, which includes collecting other people's discarded words. They use the words to write anonymous supportive poems for their classmates, but then someone begins leaving nasty messages using the same method - and the girls are blamed. Gala has finally started adapting to her new life in Scotland and is determined to find the culprit. Can she and Natalie show the school who they really are? An intriguing, thoughtful and lyrical exploration of how we express ourselves, for fans of Katya Balen, A POCKETFUL OF STARS and Lisa Thompson.

Sophie Cameron is a?YA?and?MG?author from the Scottish Highlands. She studied French and Comparative Literature at the University of Edinburgh and has a Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. Her debut novel?OUT OF THE BLUE?was nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2019. She lives in Spain with her?family.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cameron, Sophie

Leseproben

When somebody talks a lot, Iaia always says they ‘chat more than a parakeet’. That’s exactly what the Eilidhs were like. They spoke non-stop as we walked from registration to our first class, their words twirling round each other as they fell to the ground. Eilidh O had started to talk to me more slowly, though, so I was able to read some of what she was saying. That was how I learned that she and Eilidh C both lived in a village a few miles away from here, and that they had been best friends for five years. (Or maybe it was since they were five years old. Either way, it was a long time. Almost as long as Pau and me.)

When we reached the Geography classroom, Eilidh C pointed to a desk in the front row. “We  here,” she told me, putting her bag on top of it.

She hurried up to the teacher’s desk, where a bald man in a red jumper was stifling a yawn. He nodded and gave me a tired smile as Eilidh C explained who I was. The timetable said his name was Mr Menzies, and that was the word that came out of his mouth when he introduced himself, but the way he said it sounded like ‘Ming-iss’. That made even less sense than Eilidh sounding like ‘A-lee’!

Mr Menzies pointed to a desk beside the one where the Eilidhs had left their bags. As soon as I sat down, Eilidh O said something and spun round, holding a pencil case shaped like a milk carton. Inside were lots of pens and pencils decorated with cartoon characters. My hand hovered as I wondered if she’d asked if I wanted to borrow one. Eilidh nodded and nudged the case forward, so I took a pen with a cute plastic dog on the top of it. When I pressed it down, the nib of the pen changed colour from red to blue to green.

“Thank you,” I said. I had my own stationery, but nothing as nice as hers.

Eilidh O leaned over the gap between the desks and pointed to the dog. “  ‘dog’ in Spanish?” she asked, her words coming out in clear teal letters.

I wanted to tell her that my main language was Catalan. I learned Spanish in school and spoke it with some of my friends, and I watched lots of films and TV series in it, but Catalan was what I spoke at home with Papa and with Iaia. But I didn’t know how to explain all of that, so I just answered the question.

“Perro,” I said. “Dog is perro.”

“Perro,” Eilidh O repeated, but she had trouble with the double r and it came out wrong.

I said it a second time, exaggerating the sound. Eilidh tried again and again. Eilidh C joined in too, and then a few other kids around us. Soon the desks and floor were cluttered with perrrrro, perrrrrrrrro, perrrrrrrrrrrrro, almost like little sausage dogs, each longer than the last. It all looked and sounded so silly that I forgot that I was supposed to be in a bad mood and started giggling.

“OK, that’s enough,” said Mr Menzies. (‘Enough’ was another weird word – why did that gh sound like an f?) He went to the whiteboard and wrote something. “Mountains,” he read out, with a yawn so big that we could see the fillings in his back teeth.

A cloud rolled over my brief spot of happiness as soon as he started the lesson. Mr Menzies spoke in a low grey mumble that slid from his mouth like dirty water running from a tap, so fast I couldn’t even tell where one word ended and the next began. When he handed out a worksheet for us to label all the different parts of a mountain, I felt more lost than if he’d sent me off to climb one without a map.

“Here.” Eilidh C leaned to the right so I could see her worksheet on the desk in front of me. She said something I couldn’t catch, but I could tell from her grin and the warm shades of the words that she meant for me to copy. I wrote down the answers as quickly as I could, not bothering to stop and check the spelling.

“Thank you,” I whispered. That brought my word count for the whole lesson up to seven. The teachers back home who wrote Gala is a clever girl but talks too much in class! on my report cards would never have believed it.

When the bell rang, I packed up my stuff and followed the Eilidhs to the next classroom. At my old school, each class had their own room, and the teachers came to us, but here there were separate rooms for each subject, and we had to move between them. Music was at the other end of the building and, by the time we got there, there were words stuck all over my shoes and trousers.

Luckily this class was easier: I didn’t need words to play a song on a keyboard, or to laugh along when a boy called Ross started singing in a loud voice that sounded just like the seagulls cawing outside.

Even so, by the time the bell rang for break, I was really tired and having trouble taking much in. The Eilidhs were still chattering over each other, and by now the current of words running through the corridors came all the way up to my calves. The girls went upstairs and joined a group of kids sitting in a circle in the corridor. They introduced themselves as Scott, Olu, Frankie and Amina. Their names and greetings fell to the floor like confetti, each one in their own personal style and a different colour.

“This is Gala,” Eilidh C said. She was starting to feel like my own personal introducer, if there was such a thing. “She’s    Spain.”

The girl called Amina said something, but I didn’t understand what. Everyone was talking so fast, words flying here and there as they shoved crisps and snacks into their mouths. I took out the sandwich and the clementines that Papa had packed in my bag and tried to keep up.

Olu used a translation app on her phone to ask me a bunch of questions, including if it was true that I lived with Mr Young. I nodded and said yes, that he was my dad’s boyfriend. Ryan and Papa had been worried that kids would tease me about that, but everyone smiled. Clearly they all liked Ryan. I used to like him too, until he made me move away from my friends and Iaia and everything I knew.

“ that?”

The boy called Scott was looking at my sandwich. I opened the bread to show the small bar of chocolate inside. Everyone’s eyes went wide.

“A chocolate sandwich?” Olu said loudly. “That’s so !”

Eilidh C’s nose had wrinkled up like I’d revealed a sandwich full of slugs. I didn’t get it. It was no different from Nutella on toast, and I knew people here ate that because Ryan had it all the time. Not everyone seemed to find it strange, though. Frankie called it ‘amazing’, and Eilidh O said something in a warm apricot colour. She pointed to the sandwich, then mimed making one for herself. I smiled, ripped off the end of mine and passed it to her. Everyone waited for her verdict as she chewed.

“ good!”

I wanted to tell her that I would bring her one the next day but I spent too long searching for the words and missed my chance. Eilidh C offered me some of her crisps, and Amina used the app to ask me a few more questions. Scott showed me a photo of the town in Spain where he went on holiday last year, then they all got caught up arguing about something with Frankie, and I lost track.

Soon I gave up trying to follow and just sat and ate the clementines that Papa had packed for me, wondering what my friends back home were doing. They’d be in Biology: Pau would probably be on his third warning for talking too much, and Laia and Mariam would no doubt be in a fit of giggles over nothing. The time difference meant they were always an hour ahead of me now. Like they were in the future, and I could never catch up.

Ten minutes later, the bell rang for the next class. The Eilidhs had French but I was going to have one-on-one English lessons to help me learn faster. Amina and Frankie showed me where the classroom was so I didn’t get lost.

As I walked down the corridor, I heard someone call my name. Ryan was jogging towards me, words splashing round him with every step.

“Gala,  for you!  first day?”

I shrugged. “Is OK.”

“That’s great.   anything, OK?” Ryan smiled. When I didn’t answer, he squeezed my shoulder. “Well, I’m  if   me. See you at home.”

The word home fell past his hoodie and on to the floor. I wanted to stamp on it with my shiny new black shoes. Home for me and Papa was Cadaqués. It was our small, cosy flat with the pink and purple flowers that grew all over the balcony. It was the squashy old sofa in the living room and the little green parrots that woke me up singing outside my window. It was not this cold grey country. It was not quiet, sleepy Fortrose. And it was definitely not Ryan’s house.

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