Read Online Malcolm and Juliet by Bernard Beckett - Free Book Online Page B

announced into the cruel silence of time starting back up, his elbow bruised, his pride severely grazed.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Even I know that was too early.’
    Silence again as Malcolm, soggy and broken, walked to the camera and turned off the power. He was glad he hadn’t had the nerve to hit record. Say something , he thought. Please say something . But the look on Juliet’s face told him the only words she could think of were words that would make it worse. She stood and smiled, the sort of sympathetic smile only the truly hopeless ever see.
    ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it would be right for me to keep this.’
    Juliet handed Malcolm back the $100.

Principles
    Malcolm could feel the bulge of the tightly folded $100 in his pocket the next day at school. Finally he had found it, something he could not share with his mother. He would spend the money after school, something to cheer himself up. A new computer game maybe, or a concession booklet for the movies. Not that it would work. It was going to take more than shopping to claw his way back out of this hole.
    The gloom of failure covered him all morning, even affecting his performance in class, where his answers were uncharacteristically slow and sloppy. It wasn’t the sort of morning that needed another disaster.
    It was bad enough just to pass Charlotte in the corridor, see her smile, and know just how impassable the lands between them really were. It was worse having to watch all the other boys, crude stupid boys whom Malcolm had always felt a little sorry for, and realise so many of them had managed the simple act which seemingly was beyond him. It was torture enough to see in his mind the years stretched out before him, barren years of lies and frustration.
    Malcolm’s day was turning out quite miserably enough already. It didn’t need the help of the principal, Mr Ramsay, who called Malcolm to his office in the middle of class.
    Mr Ramsay was an oddly proportioned man whom Malcolm didn’t much like. He was one of those people who look fat in front, but thin from behind, as if the product of a laboratory mix-up. He had huge, lush eyebrows which curled down over his glasses, while elsewhere on his body the hair was struggling to get a start. His eyes were tiny, his nose on the large side and his teeth were crooked. In fact there was no single part of him that could be called normal, and some days this made Malcolm feel sorry for him. Today, though, Malcolm was far too busy feeling sorry for himself. The only thing he could think, when he was called into the well-appointed office, was I bet you can do it. I bet you do it all the time.
    ‘Malcolm, please, have a seat.’ Mr Ramsay smiled his wonky smile and his eyes screwed up even smaller, two dark dots beneath the foliage. ‘So how’s this year’s Science Fair project going?’
    In Malcolm’s experience Mr Ramsay only did two moods: he fawned and he bullied. It was impossible to respect a man who believed life could be balanced out this way.
    ‘All right, thank you.’
    ‘You know we have high hopes for you this year Malcolm?’
    ‘I have high hopes for myself too, sir.’
    ‘Oh, please, no need for the sir. You’re not like the others you know Malcolm, and I mean that as a compliment. You understand that, don’t you?’
    Malcolm nodded. This was going somewhere. Even through his misery he could see that much.
    ‘If there was a way of having a school full of Malcolms, I’d be a happy man.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Yes, very happy indeed.’ Mr Ramsay stopped abruptly and fixed Malcolm with his famous I’ve been straight with you, now you be straight with me stare.
    ‘So, tell me Malcolm, it’s not true is it, this rumour I’ve been hearing?’
    ‘What rumour sir?’
    ‘About your Science Fair entry. They’re saying you’re doing a study of teenage sex. That’s not correct now, is it?’ And the principal’s face told Malcolm there was