Read Online Skippy Dies by Paul Murray - Free Book Online Page B

squeezed out altogether.’
    ‘Hey, Skip, what was the hotel like on Saturday?’ Geoff asks. ‘Did you have a minibar?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Was there a hot tub?’
    Scccrrrrcccchh! Scccrrrrcccchhh! Scccrrrrcccchhh!
    ‘Jesus, Ruprecht, what the hell are you doing?’ Skippy rounds on him.
    ‘Burnt toast is a carcinogen,’ Ruprecht replies placidly, continuing his excoriation.
    ‘A what?’ says Geoff.
    ‘It gives you cancer.’
    ‘Toast gives you cancer?’ Mario says.
    ‘Giving us cancer would actually be a step up for this place,’ Dennis says, looking around splenetically at the Ref.
    ‘Car-SIN-oh-jen,’ Geoff repeats slowly.
    Scccrrrrccccccrrrrcccchhh
, goes the knife on the bread, then Skippy grabs Ruprecht’s plump wrist. He looks up in surprise.
    ‘It’s annoying,’ Skippy says, embarrassed.
    The bell goes. Potato-Head Tomms rises and claps his hands for them all to carry their trays over to the trolleys. ‘I just
     have to get something from my locker,’ Skippy tells the others. It’s 8.42, the corridors are full of puffy-eyed boys in coats,
     hurrying to check-in. News of Saturday’s swim meet has spread: as he makes his way against the tide to the basement steps,
     people he’s never
spoken to are nodding to him in acknowledgement; others punch him on the arm or stop to say congratulations.
    ‘Hey, well done on the other night, Juster.’
    ‘Here, heard about your race. Nice one, man.’
    ‘Good job, Juster, when’s the semi-final?’
    If you’re used to people looking past or through or most often over you then the attention is pretty strange. Now two guys
     from the low streams, Darren Boyce and someone else whose name Skippy isn’t even sure of, break free from the shoals to approach
     him. Darren is smiling and holding out his arms – then at the last minute he shoves his friend so he clatters into Skippy
     and sends him crashing into the wall; they laugh and move off in the other direction.
    He picks himself up. The toast-sound echoing through his head again,
Scccrrrcccchh, scccrrrrcccchhh, scccrrrrcccchhh
. The pill’s already wearing off! Shh, I know, calm down!
    Down the steps through the waves of bodies. When he came back from summer holidays this year the boys had changed. Suddenly
     everyone was tall and gangling and talking about drinking and sperm. Walking among them is like being in a BO-smelling forest.
    The basement is crammed with narrow aisles of lockers. They remind Skippy of coffins, cheap wooden coffins with combination
     locks. To one side there’s a patched pool table, on which Gary Toolan is crisply, blondly annihilating Edward ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson,
     while Noddy the janitor looks on, leaning on his broom, cackling approvingly. A few doors up from Skippy, a small group has
     gathered furtively around Simon Mooney’s locker, indicating the presence of contraband.
    ‘Atomizers. Black Holes. Fifth Dimensions. Sizzlers,’ Simon Mooney is reciting, poring over a plastic bag. ‘Then we have rockets,
     bangers – these are like the loudest bangers you’ve ever heard.’
    ‘What’s this one?’ Diarmuid Coveney points.
    ‘Don’t touch.’ Simon whisks the bag primly out of reach and reopens it at a safer distance. ‘That, my friend, is the infamous
     Spider Bomb. Eight individual fireworks in one.’
    There is a murmur of awe and appreciation. ‘Where d’you get them?’ Dewey Fortune asks.
    ‘My dad bought them in the North. He goes up there all the time on business.’
    ‘Wow – do you think he could get me some?’ Vaughan Brady suggests breathlessly.
    Simon considers this with a drawn-together mouth, like he’s sucking a sweet. ‘No,’ he says.
    ‘Well – how about you sell us some of yours?’
    ‘Hmm…’ Simon does the sweet face again. ‘No.’
    ‘Why not? You’ve got loads.’
    ‘Can we at least set a couple of them off now?’
    ‘Come on, think of what Connie’d do if you let off a banger under his chair.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, what