Dangerous to Know Read Online Free PDF

greasy paper plates. It was meant to be a green festival but that didn’t seem to have stopped everyone chucking stuff all over the place. “I was really scared, you know,” she said quietly. “When we nearly got caught, I was terrified.”
    I smiled at her. “It’s all right. Me too. Only a bullshitter like Jono would pretend they weren’t.”
    She passed me the joint, blowing out a long coil of smoke, staring out at the mayhem unfolding around us. “If Mum finds out I’m here, she’ll go mental. She’ll go on and on about how I shouldn’t upset Dad and she’s right.” Bethany shut her eyes a moment. “I don’t know how she does it but she can make me feel … worse than anything. So guilty.”
    At first, I didn’t know what to say.
    “Listen,” I told her eventually, gripping her hand. “We’re here now. It’s like we’re walking on a tightrope between two skyscrapers. We can’t look down. Even if we do get caught – which we won’t – what’s the point if we haven’t had a good time, OK? So don’t think about it. And anyway, you deserve a break. Your dad’s been really ill – you’ve moved house, gone to a new school. It’s a nightmare. Have some fun.”
    I passed back the joint. Bethany smiled uncertainly but said, “You’re right.” She shrugged. “Jesus, I thought it was bad enough when Mum and Dad said we had to leave London because of his job.” She shut her eyes.
    For a moment we just sat there, holding hands, her fingers squeezing mine. What could I say to her?
Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right?
I don’t make promises I can’t keep.
    “Thanks for coming.” I kissed her again; we both tasted of tobacco, burnt weed. I probably shouldn’t have even been smoking the stuff. Maybe I had the same switch in my brain that Herod did. A switch just waiting to be flipped, opening a door to strange places. Letting the Creature in.
    Stop it,
I told myself.
Stop thinking about that.
    The psychiatrist said it was most likely Herod’s gigantic skunk habit that had scrambled his mind, along with what he called “the pressures of late adolescence”, and there I was anyway, smoking Buggy’s sticky like there’d be no tomorrow. A gambling man.
    “Jack,” Bethany said “Are you OK? You were miles away. I’m not going to go on about this or anything, but who was that guy outside the caravan? Don’t say if you don’t want to.”
    I watched as a crowd of girls stumbled by, faces painted with glitter that shone in the firelight. An old hippy with a beard walked past wearing a tutu and a top hat, smoking a pipe, arm in arm with a lady who had long grey plaits down to her waist.
    “He’s my brother,” I said. “Owen. He left.” I didn’t really want to think about it, to be honest.
    Bethany waited, edging slightly closer. The night was getting chilly, and we wrapped our arms around each other’s shoulders, close together. She was a good listener. Didn’t force stuff out of you. Just waited.
    “I haven’t seen him for five years.”
    “Oh,” said Bethany, and gripped my hand in hers. I loved that about her, the way she just let me talk, not pushing.
    I’ve been pressured into talking about private stuff too many times. I’m sick of it.
    “But don’t you want to find Owen now you’re both here?” Bethany asked after a while. She didn’t say anything about why he’d gone: it was as if she just knew not to go there. “Five years is like, wow, a long time.”
    Owen. I couldn’t believe I’d actually seen him.
    I wondered if Bethany’s mum had passed on the gossip-version of Herod and Owen’s story – all that bullshit about crack she’d heard in the hospital
    I shook my head. “What would I have to say to him? Mum was gutted when she realized he was never going to bother with uni. First of all he kept saying he’d deferred. But it never came to anything. He’d got into Oxford, too. Now all Mum goes on about is me getting ridiculously good marks in