Read Online The Island by Olivia Levez - Free Book Online Page B

its tiny door.
    â€˜If you’re in charge of your bus, Frances, who would you like to get off it?’
    I take the bus from her; imagine a tiny Wayne and Cassie sitting inside. Think of squeezing Wayne between my fingers till he pops like a bug.
    But really there’s only one person I want to get off my bus right now, and she’s sitting in her classroom grateful as anything that I’m missing English; that I’m not there messing up her precious lesson.
    Here’s Frances. Let’s put her near the teacher’s desk. Let’s sit her with someone nice. Let’s talktalktalk to her and touch her arm to say, well done, you star, and put smiley faces on her report card and let’s benicebenicebenice.
    Let’s tease her out with words,
    fake smiles, fake words, fake promises,
    so that she will trust me with her rawest, secretest self.
    And then I can pull out her heart like a long piece of silly string.
    Bitch.
    Â 
    Fizz
    It’s burning; it’s burning nicely.
    I’m leaning forward on my elbows and blowing slow and steady and there’s no wind because the stone wall I built is keeping the fire safe and protected.
    I’m thinking of the warm Spaghetti ’n’ Meat I’m going to have for dinner. In the morning I’ll find that pool again but take my plastic bottle this time. And I’ll find something to heat it up in on the fire because I’m pretty sure that Steve said that any water’s safe to drink if you boil it first.
    The fire goes out.
    Shaking, I put the last waterproof match back in its little packet and place it in the zip-up inner section of the Red Nylon Bag. I keep patting it to check it’s still there.
    One match.
    Oh God.
    I want to laugh. I want to scream.
    Fran Stanton who can’t make fires. The girl who –
    Don’t go there. No, don’t go there –
    couldn’t pass a bin, a park, a roof without lighting a fire.
    Well, do you know what? She can’t light a frickin fire on a beach. Not to save her life, she can’t!
    And do you know what’s so frickin funny? The funniest thing of all?
    Well, listen to this:
    She. Has. Only. One. Match. Left.
    There. Told you it was funny.
    I eat cold Spaghetti ’n’ Meat made with could-be nut water and wrap myself round and round inside what’s left of the life raft. I put my hoodie on and wrap my Nike T-shirt around my legs to keep warm. It gets cold here at night.
    So there’s nothing to do but to try to sleep.
    I try not to think about the shrinking size of the torch beam beside me.
    I’m watching a beetle creep across the sand when the light fizzes and goes out altogether.
    Â 
    A Walk in the Park
    If you take the main path through the park and keep on going, you come to the lido and that hurts, because it’s where I used to take my brother all the time.
    It’s cheap and clean and little kids love that sort of thing. It was me that taught him to steal and it was me that taught him to swim.
    Today the lido is open because it’s a bank holiday and half-term so you’d think it’d be heaving and the kids would be out in droves, swimming and splashing around. But it’s not and they’re not because it’s raining, raining, raining.
    I only realise how heavy it’s coming down as I near the row of kebab shops and restaurants that is Herne Hill. I only just remembered to grab my black parka as I left the flat and it’s just as well because my jeans are soaked already and water drips off my hood and off my nose. The park pounds with the usual runners, all dead serious with their armbands and step counters and strap-on water bottles. Everyone’s running and no one knows where they’re going.
    It’s early and Cassie won’t be up for hours yet. She’s sleeping off all the late nights and she’s got a few appointments later – Darren 2 p.m., Leroy 4 p.m. – so it’s better that I’m