Broken Soup Read Online Free PDF

us.
    Stroma must have felt me tense every muscle because she looked up at me and said, “What?”
    I shook my head and said, “Nothing,” but I didn’t take my eyes from him because I couldn’t. He was wearing a black top with the hood up. He didn’t move when I saw him. He didn’t flinch or even blink. He didn’t look surprised. He smiled and I remembered thechip in his tooth. My face felt tight and clumsy, like someone else’s, so I didn’t smile back. I just rested my chin on Stroma’s head and kept on looking.
    I knew I had to ask him about Jack’s picture. I knew this was my chance. I was working out what to say when the woman at the desk called out, “Harper Greene? Harper Greene? Can you fill in this form, please?” And the boy stood up.
    At the same time, Mum came out, empty-faced, eyes dead ahead, and Stroma jumped off my lap. They headed for the door. I couldn’t let either of them cross the road without me.
    â€œIt’s just your address,” the woman with the clipboard was saying to the boy. “You haven’t put one down.”
    He had an accent, American maybe. I hadn’t remembered that. “Market Road,” he said. “Number seventy-one.”
    And he looked straight at me when he said it.
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    Market Road is not the sort of road you stroll down lightly if you’re a girl. I said that to Bee as soon as she started her “Go and meet this Harper Greene” campaign on me. I reminded her that most of the girls walking down there were working pretty hard to pay off their drug debts.
    She said, “Don’t walk, then. Go on your bike if itmakes you feel better.”
    We were sitting under a tree in Regent’s Park, watching Sonny and Stroma fill a trash bag with chestnuts. Stroma liked being the oldest for once. She was ordering Sonny about like her life depended on it, doing quality control on his offerings, and he didn’t seem to mind one bit.
    I’d been talking about the photo. I’d been telling Bee some stuff about Jack. I said, “I just don’t get how it could show up like that out of nowhere. It’s like he’s trying to tell me something.” And I never thought I’d hear myself talk crap like that.
    â€œMaybe the boy knows, maybe he doesn’t. I just think you need to ask him.”
    â€œI’m not going,” I said. Bee shrugged and stared up through the leaves. “I mean it,” I said. “I’m not going.”
    â€œYou’re chicken,” she said quietly, almost like she didn’t want me to hear. “You’re being a coward.”
    I said she was right. I said I was a coward, a sensible one. Isn’t that what you’re told to be when you’re growing up and you’re a girl? Don’t go to chat rooms, don’t go out alone, don’t trust anyone, don’t talk to strangers and don’t meet them, ever. I’d had it drummed into me so hard, safety, safety, supersafety, and I’d soaked it all up like a sponge. I hardly ever crossed a road unless the green man told me to. I didn’t sleep right if the door was unlocked or I knew there was a window opensomewhere. I carried my keys, stuck out sharp between my knuckles, if I was out after dark—even if it was still daytime, even if it was just the walk home from school in winter. So why the hell would I send myself to that part of town to look for some strange boy I had no reason to trust?
    I told Bee about the time me and Stroma were walking down the canal. We came around the corner on an empty path and ahead of us was a man fishing. He was dressed like he’d seen too many war films, combat pants and dog tags and mirrored shades. He had a bare, bright white, too-bony chest and instantly I didn’t trust him. I got this picture of him in my head slicing open a fish with a big glinting knife. I grabbed Stroma’s hand and ran back the way