Read Odd One Out for Free Online Page B

library?”
    He lapsed into a Scottish accent. “Och, pet, there are other places than libraries.”
    Scottish. When had she heard a Scottish accent recently? Donald in the bookshop. “The bookshop? Do you mean your friend’s bookshop?”
    “Is that the time? Got to go, Sylvie.” He hung up.
    She pulled on her sneakers, picked up her bag and jacket and set off. The area already seemed familiar. Quiet roads lined with elegant stone houses beside modern apartments, all leading to the long shopping street. The sky was blue, but there was an autumn crispness to the air and a few brown leaves crunching underfoot.
    As she walked, she thought back to the first of Sebastian’s treasure hunts, a present for her eighth birthday. She remembered it so clearly, the one lovely thing in a time of turmoil. For the months beforehand, the mood in the family house had been an unhappy one. Her parents always seemed to be fighting. Odd things started happening. Sylvie’s favorite painting of a small boat, an inheritance from Fidelma’s grandmother, disappeared off the living room wall. So did the gold lamp in the hallway. Her father started staying out all night, coming home as Sylvie was on her way to school. He left one night with a suitcase. That time he didn’t come back for a week. Her mother was either crying or angry all the time. She stayed in bed or sat on the back verandah. She rarely went into the studio. If she did, her paintings were angry splashes of color, dark lines, fierce shapes.
    Sylvie’s birthday arrived. There was the present of a jigsaw puzzle, unwrapped, but no party and no cake. Her mother told her she was sorry, but she couldn’t manage it. Vanessa and Cleo were otherwise occupied. Already a tight duo, they spent most of their time in their shared bedroom talking makeup and fashion, or out with their friends. There was no point asking them to help her make a birthday cake. Sebastian returned home late that night from an interstate theater camp. He noticed there were no party leftovers. She heard him go in to their mother, heard raised voices. “She’s only a little kid. Couldn’t you have done
something
special
for her?” She didn’t hear her mother’s reply.
    The next day Sylvie woke to find an envelope with her name on it at the end of her bed. A sheet of paper was inside. She opened it. It was Sebastian’s writing.
    A chair that grows wings?
    Lands of pixies and elves?
    If you want the next clue,
    Better look on the shelves!
    It took her nearly an hour to figure it out. Sebastian wouldn’t help. “It’s a treasure hunt, Sylvie. You have to work it out.” She eventually realized what it meant. A chair with wings. The wishing chair. It was the name of one of her favorite Enid Blyton books. She found it on her bookshelf. She looked at the front cover, on the back. No clues there. She flicked through the pages. There tucked in the middle was another slip of paper. On it, two sentences of jumbled words.
    Og ot het ozo. Kool ta eth gritse.
    It took her an hour to figure them out, too. “Go to the zoo? Look at the tigers?” she asked Sebastian. “Is that what it says?”
    “If that’s what it says, then we’d better do it. Come on.”
    They caught the ferry across the harbor and then a bus to the top of the hill. At the zoo, in front of the tigers’ enclosure, he gave her another slip of paper. It told her to go to the café. They had chips and an ice cream, as directed. Another slip of paper. To the harbor for another ferry ride, to Manly this time. Another slip of paper. To a bookshop. There behind the counter was a parcel with her name on it. Five Enid Blyton books. It was the best birthday of her life.
    Until they got home that night and heard the news. Their parents were getting divorced.
    Things grew worse. She heard her mother talking to her friends in her studio, using words she didn’t understand. Division of assets. Maintenance payments. Custody battles. As a child, she’d thought they