Justine Larbalestier - My Sister Rosa (Extract)

7/21/2019 Justine Larbalestier - My Sister Rosa (Extract)

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JUSTINE LARBALESTIER



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CHAPTER ONE

Rosa is pushing all the buttons.

She makes the seat go forwards and backwards, the

leg rest up and down and in and out, lights on and off,

TV screen up, TV screen down.

We’ve never been in business class before. Rosa has to

explore everything and figure out what she’s allowed to

do, what she isn’t, and how to get away with the latter.

The flight attendants love her. Flight attendantsalways love Rosa. They’re not alone: most strangers do.

She’s ten years old with blonde ringlets, big blue eyes,

and dimples that she can turn on and off like, well, like

pushing a button.

Rosa looks like a doll; Rosa is not a doll.She’s in the window seat, which means I’m between

her and any potential victims. For the moment she’s

enjoying the buttons. She can get lost like that, pushing

buttons, counting sand, calculating angles, figuring out

how things work, how to make them work for her.



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I’m hoping she’ll be distracted the whole way to New

York City. It’s not a strong hope. This flight is a lot longer

than hour. Rosa will get bored, she’ll look for ways tomake trouble, ways to make my life difficult without our

parents finding out. That’s the game she plays. My job is

to stop her.

Business class will keep her occupied longer than

economy ever did. It is pretty sweet. I can stretch out in

my seat. When I reach forward I can barely reach the seat

in front. Nothing is banging into my knees. If only there

were a gym on the plane. If only the plane was headed

home to Sydney.

‘I wonder how hard it would be to open the emergency

exit.’ Rosa is staring at the safety card.

‘For you? Impossible. You’re too small. Besides, no

one can get them open when a plane is in flight.’ I don’t

know if that’s true. I’m sure Rosa will look it up later and

tell me if it isn’t.

‘What about setting the plane on fire?’She wouldn’t be saying any of this if Sally and David

could hear. But this space we’re stuck in for the next

billion hours eats up all our words. They’re swallowed in

the low hum of the engines. I can hear Rosa, every word

she speaks, the click and buzz of the buttons she pushes,



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the creak of her seat as it moves, and she can hear me. We

can’t hear anyone else’s words and no one can hear ours.

‘Che.’‘Yes, Rosa?’ Is she going to ask me about blowing up

the plane this time?

‘I wish we’d stayed in Bangkok.’

I doubt that. Rosa never seems to care where in the

world the parentals drag us.

‘Six months wasn’t enough for you?’ Six months is a

long time for us to stay anywhere.

‘I’ll miss Apinya.’

I cut a look at Rosa but say nothing. Apinya is not

going to miss her. Not after what Rosa made her do.

When we said our farewells Apinya clung to her mother,

crying, and refusing to let go. Her parents thought it was

because she was distraught at losing Rosa. I knew it was

because Apinya was afraid of her.

Rosa turns back to the buttons, pushing each one over

and over. She’s waiting for me to tell her to stop. That’snot going to happen. I plug my headphones into my

phone and start a Flying Fists podcast – I saved five for

the plane – while reading through the last few text from

my besties, Jason, Georgie and Nazeem. I tilt the phone

so Rosa can’t see.



4

She set anything on fire yet?

Funny.

Funnier now that Rosa’s asked about it. I wishGeorgie was here. Jason and Nazeem too. I miss them.

They’re the only ones I can talk with about Rosa. Even if

only Georgie believes me.

Halfway through the second podcast, a special on

Muhammad Ali, Rosa pokes me in the arm.

‘Che.’

‘Yes, Rosa?’ I slip the headphones to my neck.

‘I’ve been good and kept all my promises.’

I snort. Rosa mostly keeps her promises by finding

loopholes. She’ll be a terrifying lawyer.

‘I should get to do one tiny bad thing.’

‘Being good is not a game, Rosa.’ Everything is a game

to Rosa.

Rosa dimples at me even though she knows I’m

immune.

‘I should get a reward for being good.’‘My not telling the parentals is your reward.’

‘But you have told them.’

‘Not about what you did to Apinya.’

Once I told the parentals everything Rosa did. I’ve

stopped. They’re convinced her acting out – yes, that’s



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what they call it – is normal for a kid her age. Besides,

they always say, she’s much better than she was. No,

she’s much better at hiding what she is. As far as they’reconcerned Rosa had a problem. They took her to doctors,

therapists, specialists, who cured her. Problem solved.

‘Wasn’t anything to tell. I didn’t do anything.’

I’m not going to say for the billionth time that making

someone do something awful is as bad as doing it yourself.

‘Other people do bad things all the time.’

‘You’re not—’ I begin.

‘Look at that old man. He’s being bad.’

Across the aisle a middle-aged guy in a business suit is

waving his arm to get a flight attendant’s attention. He

gulps down an amber-coloured drink as if it were water.

‘Drinking like that is bad,’ Rosa says, primly. ‘That’s

his seventh one.’ She crosses her arms as if she’s made

a brilliant point. ‘Why aren’t they refusing to give him

more? Or putting him in plane jail?’

‘There is no plane jail.’‘He’s bothering that woman,’ Rosa says as if she cares.

The man is now leaning into the woman next to him,

which is hard to do. In business class there’s almost a table

between the seats. The woman is leaning as far away as

she can. She has headphones on and a book in her hands.



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I should do something. Maybe the man will be

ashamed if a seventeen-year-old boy calls him on his

shitty behaviour.Before I can get up a flight attendant stops next to us.

She doesn’t turn to the drunk, she turns to Rosa. ‘You

called, young lady?’ she asks, leaning forward to turn off

the attendant light.

Rosa beams, dimpling, and lets her ringlets bounce.

The flight attendant can’t help but return the smile.

‘I’m fine, but I don’t think that woman is.’ Rosa points

past the flight attendant. ‘That man is annoying her. Is

there something you can do? My brother says you don’t

have plane jail, but if you do you should put him in it.

He’s a bad man.’

The flight attendant turns her palms out apologetically.

‘No plane jail, I’m sorry, but it’s so sweet of you to be

worried. Let me investigate.’

She smiles at Rosa again.

‘I like your earrings,’ Rosa says. They’re red jewels setin gold.

‘Thank you.’ The flight attendant heads back up the

aisle.

‘See?’ Rosa says. ‘I do care about other people. I helped

her. What’s my reward?’



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‘Helping someone else is your reward.’

Rosa rolls her eyes, an expression she saves for me.

The drunk man stands, sways in his seat, and thenlurches into the aisle. He reeks. He stumbles, grabbing

the side of my cubicle to steady himself. He smells of

alcohol and stale sweat.

‘Hey, little girl,’ he says, staring at Rosa. ‘Pretty hair.

Just like Shirley Temple. I bet you don’t know who…’

Rosa sticks her tongue out at him.

‘She knows who Shirley—’ I start to tell him, but the

drunk has already pushed off from the cubicle. He doesn’t

seem to be able to hold on to one thought for long.

‘This way,’ he tells himself, plunging towards the toilets.

The flight attendant Rosa spoke to walks down the

other aisle and crouches to talk to the woman the drunk

was harassing. We can’t hear what she says, but soon the

woman gathers her things and follows the attendant to

the front of the plane.

‘They’re putting her in first class,’ Rosa says. ‘I did that.I saved her. They should put me in first class too. That

should be my reward.’

It’s my turn to roll my eyes.

‘The McBrunights should have put us in first class,’

Rosa says. ‘They’re rich. I bet they travel first class.’



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The McBrunights are Sally and David’s oldest friends.

They’ve all known each other since they were my age.

They are flying us to New York City to start a business.My parents have started many businesses. They specialise

in it. They start them, then sell them and walk away.

‘They’ve moved her, but how are they going to punish

him, Che? I wish there was a plane jail.’

‘They’ll probably spit in his coffee.’

‘That’s not enough.’

‘I was kidding, Rosa. They won’t do that.’

‘They should.’

‘The world doesn’t always work that way, little sister.’

‘How doesn’t the world work?’ Sally asks, leaning over

me to give Rosa a kiss. ‘How are you two?’

‘Business class is the best,’ Rosa says. ‘I like rich-people

seats. Let’s always fly like this.’

Sally laughs. ‘I wish.’

‘You can get the McBrunights to pay,’ Rosa says.

‘Though you should tell them to put us in first class nexttime.’

Sally snorts.

‘I want to see it. Imagine how many buttons there

must be.’ Rosa pushes one to straighten the back of her

seat and then pushes it to make it go back down.



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‘You’ve tested all the buttons, I see.’

Doesn’t she always, I don’t say.

‘David did the same thing and now he’s sound asleep.’Sally and I exchange smiles. David can sleep anywhere.

‘I’m going to watch all the movies,’ Rosa says.

‘Do you need to go to the toilet?’

‘Sally!’ Rosa says. ‘I’m ten, not two. I can go by myself.’

Sally holds her hands up. ‘Fine. Fine. You can go by

yourself.’ She lowers her voice to whisper in my ear.

‘Keep an eye on her.’

I always do.

Sally leans over to kiss Rosa, and then gives me a swift

hug. ‘Get some sleep!’

The reek of alcohol returns.

‘He’s a very bad man.’ Rosa watches him drop into his

seat. ‘He hasn’t been punished,’ she says, before closing

her eyes and falling asleep immediately. Just like David.

Across the aisle the drunk man has passed out. His

mouth is open. I’m pretty sure he’s snoring.I start to work my way through the fight movies. I

think about all the stuff I told myself I wouldn’t think

about. Like how we’re heading to New York City, not

home. How long it’ll be before I get to go back to Sydney.

How I’m turning seventeen hours after we land. It’s



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going to be the worst birthday ever. Just me and Rosa

and the parentals.

Mostly I think about how Rosa is never going tounderstand why I make her keep so many promises.

How can I make her see that being good isn’t a game?

I can’t sit still. The air smells like recycled plastic. I

drink the last of my water but my mouth stays dry.

As soon as I’m sure Rosa’s deeply asleep I go to the

area between business and economy. The curtains are

drawn. There’s a white plastic bar with white plastic

stools that swivel. I pour myself more water, bracing my

foot against the base of the stool to stretch my calf. I

drink, switch legs, pour myself more. Four glasses later

and my tongue still sticks to the roof of my mouth.

I drop to the ground to do some push-ups. Just a

quick set of twenty. I’m conscious that someone might

try to walk past, that Rosa might wake up.

I make a circuit of the business class cabin. David is

still sleeping. Sally is reading. She smiles when she seesme, squeezes my hand, turns back to her book. Rosa

hasn’t shifted position. Her mouth is slightly open, and

she’s breathing softly and evenly. She looks like an angel.

I walk through economy where everyone is crammed

into tiny seats that barely go back, and yet most are



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asleep. I’ve never been able to sleep back here. I’ve never

been able to sit still long enough, and I was always flying

with Rosa next to me, making me twitch as I waited forwhatever it was she was going to do next.

I didn’t sleep last night, too worried about Rosa. I

stayed up most of the night talking to Georgie, Jason and

Nazeem; not talking about Rosa but knowing I could if I

needed to. It’s going to be harder staying in touch from

New York. Sydney and Bangkok are only a few hours

apart, New York is more than half a day behind.

I do another circuit of business, worried that I’ve left

Rosa alone too long. My heart starts to beat a little faster,

but there she is, still sound asleep. Sally’s asleep now too.

Everyone’s asleep but me.

I watch another movie. There isn’t a single fight in it.

We’re going to be last off the plane. We always are,

because David doesn’t believe in rushing. It doesn’t

matter how close to jumping out of my skin I am, howdesperate to stretch my legs, to not be confined, to run,

we have to go at David’s pace.

As we finally step off the plane onto the air-bridge,

the drunken – now hungover – man, red in the face and

panting, pushes past us to get back on.



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‘What a rude person,’ Sally says.

Rosa laughs.

I almost join her. We’ve made it all this way withoutRosa doing anything.

After an hour of going through immigration and

claiming our luggage we’re ushered into the biggest car

I’ve ever been in. Rosa and I sit in the back row. There

are TV screens and bottles of water and boxes of tissues

and bags of nuts. It’s almost like being on the plane again.

I have an urge to scream.

The parentals sit in the middle row where there’s a

little fridge and discuss whether wine is such a bad idea

and decide reluctantly that it is.

Rosa starts pushing buttons. I stare out the window

even though all I can see is the car parked beside us. My

eyes burn. Even my toenails are tired.

‘More rich-people buttons.’

‘All cars have buttons for the windows,’ I mutterwithout looking at her.

‘Not like—’

‘Raining out there,’ the diver calls from the front as

he starts the car. ‘Might want to keep that window up.’

Rosa puts up the window.



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Once the car is out on a highway all we can hear is

the roar of the engine, the traffic, the wind rushing past.

I sink back, staring out at grim, wet darkness, punctuatedwith occasional smears of coloured lights. I doubt I’ll be

able to see the New York City skyline. I’m not sure I care,

which kind of sucks.

It’s going to be my seventeenth birthday in a bit over

an hour, which sucks worse: turning seventeen far from

home, without my friends.

I close my eyes and start to drift.

‘Want to see something?’ Rosa says right into my ear.

I startle. ‘What?’ I ask, blinking.

Rosa’s grinning, which is never good. I am all the way

awake.

The window next to her is open a crack, spitting in

rain.

‘Close the window, Rosa.’

She slides a small book out of her backpack, turning

it so I can see the front.An Australian passport.

She opens it to the photo page: the horrible drunk

from the plane.

I lunge too late as Rosa pushes it out the window.

‘I win,’ Rosa says.



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CHAPTER TWO

Rosa is a ticking bomb.

I don’t think it matters what you call it: psychopathy,

sociopathy, anti-social personality disorder, evil, the

devil within. What matters is how to prevent the bomb

from exploding.

It would be a lot easier if the parentals believed

Rosa is a bomb. It would be even easier if she simply

wasn’t a bomb. Trust me, I would give anything for herto not be the way she is. Rose ticks off everything on the

Psychopath Checklist except for promiscuity, driving

too fast and other related adult evils. Give her time.

The checklists – there are different versions – each

have dozens of questions designed to fit into differentfactors. The four that make sense to me are:

Callousness. Rosa doesn’t care about anyone but

herself.

Disinhibition. Rosa is impulsive. Her risk assessment

is terrible because she doesn’t believe anything can



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happen to her. If she wants something she takes it.

Fearlessness. Nothing scares her. She’s never worried.

Charisma. She has way too much.Rosa is a ticking bomb and she’s my responsibility.

My sister, the psychopath. My sister, the sociopath.

My sister, the anti-social personality disorder sufferer.

Though it’s not she who suffers, is it?

My sister Rosa was born when I was seven years old.

It was a home birth. I watched the whole thing, though

Nana and Papa worried it would traumatise me. There

was much shouting at David.

‘He’s a seven-year-old boy! You’ll be paying his psych-

iatric bills for the rest of his life! Was it not bad enough

that you make him call you by your first names! How

will he learn respect! That poor boy doesn’t even have

his father’s surname! This is not what our parents

survived the holocaust for! Making that poor little boy

watch his own sister being born!’Her birth didn’t traumatise me.

Watching Rosa being born was amazing. Also boring.

Also scary. Beautiful too. Then boring again.

I watched Sally pace for hours, trying to get

comfortable. I sat in a bean bag the midwife brought



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with her. I hoped we could keep it. It was orange and

made faint squeaking noises. I didn’t know what to do.

The lights were dim, too dim to read the read the stackof books beside me. I’d just started reading chapter books.

I wasn’t sure if it would be okay to play with my tablet.

Would it be too bright? Too many flashing lights? I didn’t

want to get in trouble. I sat there and watched Sally pace.

David paced too. Occasionally he would pat my head,

which annoyed me, but I smiled, and wished there was

something I could to do to make Sally feel better.

The midwife explained everything as it happened to

Sally, answering her and David’s questions, telling them

about the contractions, timing how long it was between

them. I wasn’t entirely sure what a contraction was,

though the parentals had told me many times. I didn’t

think it would be okay to ask the midwife again.

The music was soft and lulling. The midwife’s

voice was almost as soft and lulling as the music. I

fell asleep.I woke up to Sally yelling, ‘I hate this music!’ Someone

had put a blanket over me. My thumb was in my mouth.

I pulled it out, hoping no one had noticed. I was too old

to be sucking my thumb.

‘You chose—’ David started.



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‘What music would you like, Sally?’ the midwife asked.

‘Not this!’

David changed it to Billie Holiday. Sally hated thattoo. He kept changing the music until she nodded.

‘Elgar’s okay?’

Sally laughed. ‘Don’t care.’

I drifted off again to the sounds of cellos. When I

woke Sally was naked in the bathtub. She was smiling.

The music was gone.

‘Come here, Che.’

I went over and Sally gave me a wet hug.

‘Does it still hurt?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s nice in here.’

Her belly was still enormous.

‘When will the baby come?’

Sally’s hand was on my head. Water dripped past my

ear and down my neck.

‘I don’t know. But she’s closer than she was. You’ll

have a sister.’I knew that. I was excited about it.

Sally groaned. ‘I love you, Che.’

David kissed me and told me to get something to eat.

Sally grabbed his hand. I went back to the beanbag. I

wasn’t hungry.



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I fell asleep again. When I woke Sally was out

of the bath and David was massaging her lower

back, pushing her hips together to ease the pain.She was laughing at something David or the midwife

said.

It was ten hours since we’d called for the midwife.

I fell asleep again. I woke to Sally screaming, ‘I can’t!

I can’t! I can’t! Make it stop!’

Every time she screamed my eyes filled with tears. I

wished there was something I could do.

She was standing, leaning with her forearms on the

bed, and David’s hand gripped tightly in hers. On the

floor between Sally’s feet was a mirror.

The midwife smiled at me. ‘Do you want to see, Che?

She’s crowning.’

I crept closer, scared of getting in the way. In the

mirror I could see something dark and slimy between

Sally’s legs. It didn’t look like a baby’s head. It kind of

looked like a monster.Sally screamed louder. ‘Get it out of me!’

‘Here she is!’

Rosa shot out so fast she was a blur. The midwife

caught her. David and I gasped. I looked down.

She was so little, so perfect, with the biggest eyes I’d



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ever seen, looking straight at me. I couldn’t stop staring.

It made my heart hurt.

I started crying and that turned into hiccuped sobs. Icouldn’t stop.

The midwife put Rosa on Sally’s belly and Sally

cradled the tiny baby in her hands. They were almost

bigger than Rosa.

David patted Rosa’s back. I had this huge tight feeling

in my chest. Love. I was full of love for this tiny little

creature person.

‘She’s beautiful,’ the midwife said. ‘Congratulations.’

She gave David scissors to cut the umbilical cord,

which looked like a pink and blue rope. It seemed to

pulse.

Sally smiled at me.

Tears were still pouring out of my eyes but I wasn’t

sobbing. It almost felt like the tears had nothing to do

with me. ‘Can I touch her?’

‘Of course.’I reached out to touch her tiny hand. Her fingers

curled around my index finger. My heart hurt even

more.

‘You’re going to have to look out for Rosa, you know,’

Sally told me.



20

‘Protect her from the world,’ David said. ‘You’re her

big brother.’

Protect the world from her, he didn’t say.‘How patriarchal of you,’ Sally said with no heat at all.

She blew David a kiss and then bowed her head.

We were all staring at tiny Rosa.



JUSTINE LARBALESTIER is the author of Razorhurst ,

which won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel

and was shortlisted for both the NSW and Victorian

Premiers’ Literary Awards, and Liar , which won theYA Western Australian Premier’s book award, the

YA Sisters in Crime Davitt Award and was shortlisted

for the CBCA Older Readers award, among many

other honours. She also edited the collection

Zombies Versus Unicorns with Holly Black.

Justine lives in Sydney where she gardens, boxes, andwatches too much cricket, and sometimes in New York

City where she wanders about public parks hoping they’ll

let her do some gardening – and misses cricket a lot.

justinelarbalestier.com

A u t h o r p h

o t o b y N i k i B e r n



‘Vivid and bloody and bold and fast – I feel like Razorhurst is in my bones now.’ – ELIZABETH GILBERT

—————

‘A timeless tale of love and violence in long-lost

Razorhurst with characters I truly cared about.’– MELINA MARCHETTA

—————‘Sure, it is shiny and chilly and bloody and sharp,

like the razor of the title, but Larbalestier’s book is alsomagical and glamorous. Everything comes together

in a surprising, gory, inevitable ending from oneof the smartest writers in YA fiction.’

– E. LOCKHART, author of We Were Liars, on Razorhurst —————

‘A bloody and evocative novel, written in clean and livelyprose.’ – Sydney Morning Herald on Razorhurst

—————

‘It is rare to find a psychological thriller that succeedsat a high level…Liar combines superb storytelling withquestions about truth and lies that will engage and

tease the reader.’ – Bookseller & Publisher —————

‘Liar is a very clever book that will confound its readersuntil the very last pages – and beyond…All we can do is

to be thankful to Larbalestier for allowing us to be sweptaway by her marvelous web of lies.’ – The Canberra Times

—————‘Characters both living and dead reveal crucial pieces

of the plot slowly over the course of one harrowing day.Larbalestier pulls no punches with the gruesome, gory

details about the violence of poverty, and the result

is a dark, unforgettable and blood-soaked tale of outlaws and masterminds.’ – Kirkus on Razorhurst



Rosa had never killed anything as bigas a hamster. She was scaling up. That hamster

had been three or four times the size of the sparrow.

I didn’t want to think about what was threeor four times the size of a hamster.

Che Taylor’s little sister Rosa is smart, talented, pretty

and so good at deception that Che’s convinced she mustbe a psychopath. She hasn’t hurt anyone yet, but he’s certain

it’s just a matter of time. It’s up to Che to protect Rosafrom the world – and the world from Rosa.

After their parents move them to New York City to launch

yet another exciting new business, Che longs to return hometo Sydney and his three best friends. But he can’t leave Rosabehind – who else can keep her from unleashing her worst?

And with so many opportunities in Manhattan for Rosato play her increasingly complex and disturbing games,will his efforts be enough?

A gripping psychological thriller from thebestselling author of Liar and Razorhurst .

Publication date: February 2016

ISBN: 978 176011 222 6 • Format: Paperback

Aust. price: $19.99 • NZ price: $24.99This is an extract from My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestierand is for promotional use only Not for resale

Justine Larbalestier - My Sister Rosa (Extract)

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