Read Online Candy by Kevin Brooks - Free Book Online Page B

answered the phone, the one with the slur in her voice? Or was she the one with the bubbly laugh, the one who’d called me Joe the Hat? Maybe she’s both? I thought. Maybe she has a split personality? Maybe she’s a schizophrenic prostitute with a serious drug problem and a psychopathic monster for a pimp…?
    Yeah, I told myself, maybe she is…but she’s still incredibly pretty, isn’t she? She still has the brightest smile and the darkest eyes and that wonderful scent of freshly washed skin…and everything about her still turns your body inside out…and she’s still going to the zoo with you on Tuesday…
    BANG! BANG! BANG!
    The sudden knocking on the phone booth window scared the life out of me. When I’d finished jumping out of my skin, I peered through the window and saw a shrunken old lady leaning on a stick, squinting at me.
    “You all right?” she screeched. “You sick or something?”
    I opened the door. “Sorry?”
    “I thought you was dying in there,” she said, clicking her teeth. “You finished now? Only I got some calls to make.”
    I stepped out and held the door open for her.
    And then I went home.

chapter five
    S ometimes a day is just right: the weather, the world, the way everything feels—your body, your clothes, your presence of mind…sometimes it all fits together in just the right way, the way it’s supposed to be.
    Tuesday was one of those days.
    It started off frosty and cold, with a misty white haze in the air, but as the morning cleared and the sun came out, the winter mist burned away and the skies shone down with the bright blue promise of spring. It was still too early for any real warmth in the air, but the flood of fresh light was enough to breathe life into everything.
    Birds were singing.
    People were smiling.
    The air felt vibrant and fresh.
    It was a fine day for going to the zoo.
    I caught the ten-thirty train, which got me to Liverpool Street at just past eleven, then I took a tube to CamdenTown and walked the rest of the way from there. The streets were busy, but not too busy, and my heart was racing, but not too fast. Fast enough to put a smile on my face and a bounce in my step, but not fast enough to make me feel sick. That kind of fast.
    Good fast.
    Exciting.
    Thrilling.
    Energizing.
    Part of the excitement, I suppose, came from knowing that I should have been at school. It was a childish kind of excitement, a forbidden thrill, and as I walked the downtrodden streets of Camden, then up through Parkway and into the splendor of Regent’s Park, I knew in the back of my mind that I’d probably pay for it later. I hadn’t had a lot of time to think things through, so all I’d done that morning was wait for Dad to leave for work and then plead with Gina to cover for me. I didn’t tell her the truth, of course. I mean, we’re pretty close, and she’s very understanding, but I’m not sure she would have understood why I was going to the zoo with Candy. So I made up a story about some equipment problems with Friday’s gig in London.
    “It’s really important,” I told her. “If we don’t get it sorted out today, the whole thing’s going to be called off.”
    “I can’t give you a lift into London, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “I have to go to work in a minute. I’m late already.”
    “No, it’s not that. I just need you to ring up school for me and tell them I’m sick.”
    She looked at me. “You want me to lie for you?”
    “Yeah—if you wouldn’t mind.”
    She laughed. “And what’s going to happen when Dad finds out?”
    “He won’t—”
    “Yes, he will—he always finds out. He’s like Columbo.”
    “What—you mean squinty and out-of-date?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “OK,” I said. “If he does find out, I’ll just tell him I lied to you. I’ll tell him I pretended to be ill and conned you into ringing up school—”
    She shook her head. “I’m supposed to be a nurse, Joe. I’m supposed to know whether