A World for Sharon

By Marzia Bosoni

Sharon is thirteen and her life revolves around music, arguing with her parents and dreaming of freedom. But her mother's sudden death opens an abyss of rage where her neither father's tormented silence, nor the coarse understanding of Mrs. Theresa can reach her. It is in that abyss where Sharon risks losing her little brother David, who clings desperately to the fantasy world invented by their mother. Perhaps the bizarre embracing of that world and its eccentric characters who inhabit it will help the siblings to find each other among the darkness of pain. But to do so, Sharon will have to face her demons. And she will have to take David back home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: May 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781547586400

Book preview

Prologue

... and the only way to reach this incredible world is to be invited by one of its inhabitants or by asking its guardian to open the door. But the guardian’s name is secret, and nobody knows what it is.

Gazing at the little girl who had finally drifted off to sleep, the mother fell silent, arranged the covers over her shoulders and bent down to give her a kiss.

Good night, Shari.

She slowly straightened up and smiled as she felt a movement in her belly.

Somebody else also enjoys my stories, she whispered, stroking her tummy.

Chapter I

Sharon put on her headphones and got up from the table.

"Aren’t you staying to watch the film with us? They’re showing E.T. tonight, it’s one of your favorites!"

The young girl looked at her mother and made a face. I’ve seen it a million times! I practically know it by heart. I’m going to listen to some music and then I have to finish reading History.

She left the room while her parents cleared the table and her little brother curled up on the sofa waiting for a film he would not be allowed to watch until the end because it finished late and the following day was a school day.

David was six and that was his first year in primary school; Sharon, who was seven years older than him, was in eighth grade, but she still wasn’t sure about what option to choose for her academic future.

She enjoyed studying, but she felt that her parents put too much pressure on her. Her mother, specifically, did not openly disapprove of her daughter’s behavior or choices, but she seemed to be permanently dissatisfied with her: Sharon was never smart enough, tidy enough, honest enough, or skilful enough.

The girl was almost certain that whatever school she chose for her future would be met with one of her mother’s sighs. That was why she postponed the decision day after day; naturally drawing more worried looks from her parents, who saw her as exasperatingly languid.

As a result, Sharon spent hours in her room to escape their looks and to dream about a different life, in a different world where she was the one who made the rules.

When an hour later she came out to go to the bathroom, she saw her mother sitting on David’s bed. She switched off her MP3 to listen to their conversation.

... there are only two in the whole world! One of them is incredibly wise, while the other one is incredibly silly, and it’s not at all easy to tell them apart!

Upon hearing these words, the child burst out laughing.

But you can tell someone is silly if they say silly things.

Not necessarily, the mother replied, smiling. Sometimes something crazy can be considered intelligent if the one who hears it is also ignorant!

For example? asked the boy, skeptically.

"For example, on a normal day somebody asks the SillyWise: ‘What should I do with my life?’ And the SillyWise answers: ‘Look at the river: it always flows in the same direction.’

According to you is that a wise or a silly answer?"

It’s silly because...

You’re the silly one who still needs to hear these stories! his sister cut him off as she burst into the room.

Sharon! her mother reprimanded her. And look who’s talking! At his age you wouldn’t fall asleep until I had told you an adventure from your fantasy world!

Yes, but the difference was I knew full well that it was all an invention, while he thinks SillyWise and Blurrps actually exist...

They’re called Burrps! yelled David. They don’t like to be called anything else!

And they’re also crabby, added his mother. Still, I’ve told you over and over again, Sharon: words...

Words create worlds. I know, I know... the girl said as she raised her eyes towards the ceiling. She then left her brother’s room switching her MP3 back on, drowning out her mother’s comments, and her sighs.

Chapter II

Sharon loved her brother, but she couldn’t stand the way he was being raised; beginning with the choice of his name. Her mother was obsessed with the meaning of names and with the power of words: David, which meant ‘he who is loved’, seemed to her to stress the difference between them. He was loved, while she...

Her name also had a beautiful meaning, according to her mother, because it meant ‘lush plain’, but Sharon found nothing spectacular about having to always explain to her teachers that yes, she was Italian, and no, she had not been adopted.

Sometimes she would have liked to discover she was an adopted orphan, because it would have meant an objective distance between her and the rest of the family and it would also have justified certain details, like her unusual red hair.

You got it from your grandmother, who had Irish blood, her mother had explained.

However, Sharon, preferred to think she had got it from her mother; her real mother, who had been forced to abandon her, but that perhaps some day would come back to get her.

When she started middle school almost all her teachers had been new to her because of an internal reorganization scheme when her school had merged with other high schools in the area. Therefore, Sharon had decided to pretend to be an adopted orphan with a couple of teachers who had asked her if she had a foreign background.

It had simply started as a joke, but when a teacher had congratulated Sharon’s parents for having made the wonderful decision of adopting, taking into account the complications involved in international adoptions, all hell broke loose.

The worst thing was not her lowered grade for her immature behavior and obvious lack of respect or even the fact that the teachers –among whom the news had spread like wildfire– had kept a close eye on her for the rest of the year. Nor even the extremely boring sessions with the school psychologist that she had had to bear until everyone had finally realized that it had only been an innocent joke in order to get some attention.

No, the worst of it had been her parents’ reaction.

Her father who, contrary to his timid and taciturn nature, kept trying to talk to her and ask her with a mixture of worried anger.

How could you do something like that? Do you really want to be adopted? Is there anything you want to talk about?

They were questions she tried to answer meekly, while inside she was thinking So much ado about nothing!

Her mother, on the other hand, had at first yelled at her because of the embarrassing situation she had put both her teachers and her parents through. This had been followed by much sighing; and often, when she thought Sharon wasn’t looking, she had taken to observing her and shaking her head.

The girl couldn’t stand it.

What? What’s there to sigh about?

Almost a year had passed and by now nobody at school talked about it anymore, but her mother’s sighs continued just the same, as the distance between them grew.

In this context, the presence of her little brother, who was a model student and a meek and obedient little boy, only managed to exacerbate Sharon’s feelings.

When one of her relatives praised David, she would exclaim:

Yes, he’s so clever. He’s like a trained little dog. Look, he even gives you his paw!

When a teacher gave him a good grade on his school work and the boy proudly showed it at the table, Sharon would remark bitterly:

You’re the little teacher’s pet, aren’t you? Why don’t you take an apple and a bunch of flowers for her tomorrow?

Naturally, her attitude was always rebuked by her mother.

Stop trying to humiliate your brother and teasing him just because he’s smart. You were also smart when you were in primary school.

Did I really use to be a smart little girl?! she would reply outraged. Because now I’m naughty and rude, right? Or maybe it’s just that I’ve learned to think for myself and have stopped trying to please my teachers. And you!

These arguments infuriated her because they revealed that which she couldn’t stand about her brother’s upbringing: her parents were raising him just like a trained puppy, incapable of thinking for himself but always willing to do the right thing.

It was awful.

If this continued they would completely ruin him and when he got to secondary school he would be the laughing stock of the whole class.

She loved her brother and she wanted him to wake up, to stop believing in fairy tales even sooner than she had.

There, that was the point. Unspoken, and unspeakable.

She had also been a gullible child –her mother was right about that, but she was also to blame. She had believed in Santa Claus and in fairies and in that ridiculous world that her mother had created for her until she had turned nine.

When they later told her the truth, the disappointment had been huge. It had been too much to bear for her young and tender heart.

It was true that her mother