Read Online The Worst of Me by Kate Le Vann - Free Book Online

manipulated over several thousand years. Oh, and faith. Bollocks to faith. I'd rather get hit in the head by faith than a dinosaur bone.’
    ‘A six-thousand-year-old dinosaur bone,’ Lewis said, and they all laughed.
    ‘This guy doesn’t even believe in creationism,’ Jonah said. ‘He’s just saying it’s a good thing if people believe these fairy tales, because he says they need to believe life has meaning and that’s where it gets really dangerous.’
    ‘But why is it dangerous?’ I said. I liked to ask questions. I was still weighing everything up. I honestly didn’t have an opinion most of the time, I wasn’t playing dumb. ‘I would like to believe life had meaning.’
    Jonah gave me a little smile. ‘Because when people are allowed to use religion to explain history, they’reallowed to use it to judge behaviour, and to enforce behaviour, and those books, those stories that someone made up, can be reread by any psychopath to say anything from abortion is always wrong, to women shouldn’t be educated, to —’
    ‘Oh, Sharia law, that’s what they want,’ said a workman at the next table. He had a quite high voice, and it temporarily silenced my friends and seemed to echo for a moment in the café. He seemed to wait for an answer before he tried again. ‘They’d like to make us cut people’s hands off and put women in tablecloths,’ he said. ‘I mean, the cutting people’s hands off is one thing – cheaper than prisons I suppose, but women in tablecloths? Wouldn’t like that much!’ Then he laughed. And we laughed too, sort of pretending it was at whatever he was laughing at, but we all met each other’s eyes and I had to stick my fingernails into my palms so I didn’t just
howl
.
    On the way back, Jonah and I fell a little behind the others, walking with our arms around each other, and we reached the school gates at the same time as Ian and Sophie.
    ‘Oh, hi Cass,’ Ian said.
    ‘Hi,’ Sophie said. One syllable, and it managed to sound silvery and breathy and feminine. I always thought I sounded like a teenage boy whose voice was just about to break.
    ‘Hi,’ I croaked.
    Jonah squeezed my waist.
    ‘I can’t remember . . . did Issy say you were coming round to her thing tonight?’ Ian said. ‘I’ll be passing through, obviously, so . . . might see you later?’
    ‘Um, yeah I might be,’ I said, feeling a bit helpless. Isobel hadn’t asked me round to hers, although we did usually spend Friday nights watching a film there. Josette’s party had been the only recent exception.
    ‘Girls’ night tonight, then?’ Jonah said, as we walked in. I’d told him that Ian had been my boyfriend before him, and he’d seemed reassuringly uninterested, just a little smirk playing around his mouth when he said he knew him. A good response, I thought.
    ‘It’s just what we usually . . .’
    ‘No, no! Only a crazy person would try to muscle in on a girls’ night. I’ll make sure my compadres and I get up to something appropriately manly as a response. Maybe we’ll start a fight in a snooker hall.’
    ‘Just make sure you don’t get Lewis into trouble. His mum’ll kill you.’
    During afternoon registration, Isobel leaned back on two chair legs and sang, ‘Caaass-i-deeee!’
    ‘Iiiiii-so-belllll!’ I sang back.
    ‘My place tonight for the usual? Or are you blowing us out for a hot date?’ She grinned around the pencil she was chewing. Good, so I was invited after all. Inspite of the snub of Josette’s party, I’d really been the one neglecting my mates this week, not spending lunch hours with them and never going out in the evening because I was trying to bank good-girl points with my mum in the hope of negotiating longer weekend nights out.
    ‘Who is this hot date, anyway?’ Dee said, joining me as we headed out of the classroom. ‘Sorry you couldn’t make it last week, by the way, but the film was terrible anyway.’
    ‘No, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘And I bet the film I