Radiance by Alana Curran (best english books to read for beginners TXT) 📕

I nodded, pulling a packet of marshmallows out of a cupboard and putting it in the plastic bag which Trevor found.

“Hope I don’t catch a cold,” I sighed.

“You won’t, knowing Karen she’ll take her little heater along with her,” he laughed.

“Where will she plug it in?”

“It’s battery operated.”

“But...”

“She charged it last night.”

“But...”

“It lasts for ten hours.”

I was out of questions, somehow he answered them before I even got to ask them. He probably got asked those same questions a lot.

Karen set up the gazebo like a professional, completely ignoring the fact that the tent behind her was also being set up. We weren’t too far away from where the elephants were chained and Dwayne was taunting them with funny faces and playing with their trunks while they swayed depressingly.

“Dwayne! Leave the poor things alone!” I scolded. “They can turn on you any...”

Before I even got to finish my sentence, a frustrated elephant wrapped his trunk round Dwayne’s tummy and lifted him, beginning to swing him round and round.

“DWAYNE!” Karen shrieked in fear.

“HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!” Dwayne roared furiously.

Trevor got ready to grab him while the elephant hit him against the ground.

“He’ll kill him!” I gasped, grabbing a stick and beginning to prod the elephant’s leg to distract him.

The other elephants didn’t seem to notice anything unusual and neither did any of the people setting up the circus tent.

Trevor took the chance to grab Dwayne’s arms and pulled. The elephant didn’t like this and began to drag them both.

My heart was pounding and my palms were sweating. I just snapped and threw a stone at the elephant. I knew it wasn’t nice to throw a stone at a poor elephant, but this ‘poor’ elephant was trying to kill my friends.

The elephant dropped Trevor and Dwayne, who then quickly scrambled out of the animal’s reach, and then the huge thing looked at me. I could see the anger in its eyes.

He dipped his head and went to sort of scoop me up with its tusks, but I slipped, fell on my bum and moved back so he couldn’t reach me.

We all took quite a while to calm down, but once we did, Dwayne wanted to have another go, but I smacked him across the face and told him to sit.

“Can we at least start a campfire and makes smores?” he asked,

“What do you think I’m trying to do over here?” Trevor grunted.

“Getting your hair soaked,” Karen replied, putting a marshmallow and some chocolate sauce on a wafer.

“Give up on the stupid fire,” I insisted. “We’ll be warm enough with our blankets.”

We waited for about two hours before realising the people pouring in. It was eight o’clock and the sky was already pitch black. All the glaring spotlights made the stars seem practically invisible. I sighed, looking at the stars was something I just loved to do.

“Now’s our chance!” Karen squealed, jumping out with her sign and began roaring at everyone. “FREE THE ELEPHANTS!!!”

“Karen you’re getting your hair wet,” I stated, sheltering her head with an umbrella.

“Just get protesting!” she scowled.

I threw my umbrella into the gazebo, despite the pouring rain and began to protest.

“FREE THE ELEPHANTS!” Trevor, Dwayne and I chanted in unison.

“AND THE MONKEY RIDING THE TRICYCLE!” Karen added.

“Wait a minute, I love the cycling monkey,” Dwayne whined.

“Dwayne!” Karen hissed.

He sighed and unwillingly repeated the monkey remark.

Most of the people stared at us, others looking down at us condescendingly as if we were pieces of dirt. Long story short, it wasn’t a very successful protest, we didn’t even get told off by the security. A sure sign of painful failure.

We could hear the thundering sound of drums and laughter from our outside position under the gazebo. Karen and Trevor looked fed up.

“Maybe we should just go home,” Karen sighed.

“Yeah,” I agreed, putting a cookie into my mouth and chewing it with my mouth open, too tired to care about manners.

“Where’s Dwayne?” Trevor asked.

As soon as Trevor had said this we heard Dwayne yelling for us to come and see what he was doing.

We climbed out of the gazebo and when we turned the corner, we saw that he was on top of an elephant which the circus had decided not to use for their act.

“Karen! Slap it’s bum so it gets mad and you can film it Trevor, quick get your phone, this is going on the internet!”

While Trevor shoved his hand in his pocket to look for his phone, Karen began shouting at Dwayne.

“I am not going to hit the poor animal! It’s goes against everything I stand for! Now get down!” she shrieked.

“Fine! I’ll taunt him myself,” he sneered, stretching forward and pulling the elephants ears.

“Dwayne that’s dangerous!” I screamed, “You’ll get yourself killed.”

“This fat, ugly beast won’t hurt me! He’s too soft!” he insisted. “It’s not the same one who tried to kill me.”

“You’ll fall!”

“I won’t!”

As Dwayne said those words, the elephant got angry and began to kick and throw his trunk around to get Dwayne off.

Karen screamed in fear for her brother while Trevor stood and casually videoed the whole thing.

“Dwayne!” I gasped.

“CALM DOWN DUMBO!” Dwayne shouted, finally falling off the elephant and scrambling away.

I slapped him across the face (again) and declared that we were leaving that instant.

We grabbed our bags and Karen folded away the gazebo, but the elephant was still having a tantrum and was practically screaming at us, as we made our way to the gate.

I looked back and gasped when I saw the elephant had broke it’s chain, so I screamed and we sprinted down the road like pro athletes.

I was redecorating my bedroom because all the colours were annoying me and I was sticking to a plain yellow colour scheme. Grandma had bought me a new bed and everything.

“Are you going to the party in the town centre tonight sweetheart?” Grandma asked me as she carefully painted the edges of the ceiling.

“Yeah, with my friends,” I told her.

“That’s nice, what are you going as?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer her, but then I realised that I didn’t really know.

“Not sure, I’ll call Karen later and she’ll help me out with it,” I smiled.

“Karen sure is a lovely girl and that Trevor boy is nice too, but I don’t care for that other brother of hers.”

“Dwayne?”

“He’s a graffiti artist,” she sighed.

“Really?”

I was about to say that it was cool, but this was my grandmother, she didn’t like people who vandalised things. Neither did I, but I always like graffiti print.

We finished up the painting and got started to put away all the rainbow furniture which had been left out in the hall while we painted the bedroom.

“Maybe we can put them in the shed, or the attic,” Grandma suggested.

“Or we could give them to a charity shop,” I added.

“Yeah, but would a charity shop take all this stuff?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe we should just put it into the attic for now,” I agreed.

So after all that had been done, the paint was dry. I wasn’t surprised, it took hours for us to get all the furniture into the attic, in fact, there was still one more box which needed to be taken up.

Grandma was looking quite tired and out of breath, so I decided to do it for her.

I climbed up the ladder into the attic.

I put the box into on top of some other boxes, but then I saw something at the corner of my eye.

I didn’t move, I could clearly see who it was.

Radiance.

Still looking at the corner of my eye, I decided to ask what she was doing there. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure it was going to leap out of my chest.

“Radiance, what are you doing here?” I asked quietly, a slight croak in my voice.

She didn’t answer, she just stood there.

I closed my eyes, shaking with fear and took a deep breath.

I spun round to face her properly, but was surprised to see that no one but an old manikin was in her place.

How could she have gotten away?

It wasn’t my imagination. I definitely saw her! I knew what I saw! But I knew that if I told anyone they wouldn’t believe me. Why would they believe me?

I eventually made myself believe that it actually just was my imagination and decided to return to grandma to see if she had taken her inhaler.

“Are you alright grandma?” I asked while I climbed down the ladder, to see her sitting on a small stool with Daisy cuddling up beside her.

“The question is are you alright, Alessia?” she corrected. “Who were you talking to up there?”

“Oh, just myself.”

“Don’t make a habit of it, people who talk to themselves often go mad.”

I rolled my eyes and Arthur ran round the corner and began to bark furiously at the opening to the attic.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He probably smells a rat, Arthur is good at sniffing out rats,” Grandma said proudly.

I looked at Daisy who seemed to be frightened of what might be up in the attic.

I reluctantly heaved Arthur up into the attic so he could kill the rat, but I was afraid of what I might have seen.

He started barking at something in the corner of the ceiling which I couldn’t quite see then his head moved up, barking that something that was moving along the ceiling.

I turned round to see if there was anything and for a split second, I saw a shadow jumping down the latch. Arthur followed and also jumped down daringly.

“Arthur!” I gasped, running to the latch and hurriedly climbing down the ladder to see if he was hurt.

By the time I got down, I heard him barking in another room. I followed the sound of his bark and he turned up in the living room yapping at an open window.

Baffled by the whole situation, I stroked his ears to calm him down.

“Don’t worry boy, you and I are just seeing things,” I assured.

He whimpered and licked my face sadly.

Grandma came in.

“Right, shall we get your canopy up?”

Before calling Karen, I looked in my wardrobe to see if there was anything I could string together that would make a reasonable costume.

I kept my eye open for any old clothes that I could rip and maybe make a zombie costume.

Nothing however popped up, but a little, white dress with floral netting caught my eye and as I pulled it out of the wardrobe, I imagined all the things I could do with it.

With some more netting, the right make up and my chunky emo boots which I bought especially for the play my drama class staged for the Halloween Production, it would be quite doable.

There was a material shop not too far from the house and I was sure it would do plenty of netted fabric for me.

I put on my coat and looked out the window to check if it was raining and Karen was wrong. It was pouring rain outside, but it didn’t bother me. I just grabbed my umbrella and headed down the street.

I met Hattie on the way.

“Hi,” I smiled.

“Hey there, Alessia, where