Llama Out Loud!. Annabelle Sami

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      Yasmin slowly opened her eyes. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was, frankly, unbelievable.

      ‘Didn’t your mum ever tell you it’s rude to smack people with tennis rackets?’

      Yasmin blinked hard. Was there a talking toy llama in her cupboard?

      ‘Hellooooo, anybody home?’ the llama said.

      Yasmin remained frozen to the spot.

      ‘Right, well, I’m gonna give myself a tour of the house,’ the llama said in a broad cockney accent, getting up out of the pile of old socks it seemed to have been using as a bed. Before it could escape, Yasmin slammed the door shut.

      Was she dreaming? Just to be sure, she pinched herself. Ouch! She was definitely awake, and now her arm hurt. But she was pinching herself because there was a talking toy llama in her cupboard. And not just any talking toy llama. It was the gross toy llama from the market! It must have fallen out of her schoolbag earlier when she tossed it to the ground.

      ‘All right love, tell you what. Openup the cupboard and I’ll explain myself,’ the llama said reasonably. ‘I don’t want no trouble.’

      Tentatively, Yasmin opened the cupboard door just a crack. It felt like there was a swarm of angry bees in her stomach. She put her eye to the gap and peered in.

      The llama laughed. ‘Come on!’

      Yasmin opened the door an inch more.

      ‘That’s it, I don’t bite.’ The llama peered out at her. ‘But I do spit!’

      With amazing precision, the llama aimed a perfect spray of matted fur fluff through the crack in the door, hitting Yasmin right on the nose. Seizing the opportunity, he jumped out of the cupboard and on to the desk, knocking off all her schoolbooks.

      The little trickster! Yasmin thought, wiping her face. I’ll show him!

      Grabbing her filled-to-the-brim laundry basket, Yasmin catapulted across the room with a trail of dirty clothes flying in her wake. She barrel-rolled across the bed like a cop in a Hollywood film and slammed the basket down, trapping the llama underneath.

      ‘I want to be angry, but I’m actually quite impressed,’ the llama remarked from inside his new prison.

      Yasmin looked at him gruffly, putting her heaviest maths textbooks on the top of the basket to keep it secure. She sat down on the bed to catch her breath and make sense of the situation.

      ‘Wot?’ the llama asked cheekily. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

      Oh! I knew there was something I was supposed to mention. The cat did, in fact, have Yasmin’s tongue. Though not literally. In a world of talking toy llamas, it’s probably best I’m clear about that.

      What I mean is, Yasmin didn’t speak. Ever.

      In the last seven years or so of her life, Yasmin had barely said a word. It’s not that she didn’t know how to speak; she did. It’s just that she didn’t want to, and for three very good reasons.

      1: You’ve seen how loud her family is. It’s a good thing this is a book and not a TV show, or you’d have a headache by the end.

      2: When Yasmin first learned to speak, her brothers used it as yet another thing to tease her about. Every time she opened her mouth, they would burst into hysterics at the sound of her voice. They even started calling her Trombone which, if you’ve ever heard a Trombone, is a particularly unkind nickname.

      3: The Purple/Poo Incident. To be discussed later.

      So, Yasmin kept quiet. It’s not as if anyone noticed. She would just have been another voice trying her best to be heard over the dinner table. If she was going to speak, she wanted to be heard. To make an impact. So, just as she’d got the hang of talking at three years old, she gave it up, and she hadn’t looked back since.

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