Fairytales for Wilde Girls Read Online Free PDF

kind of awkward.
    This was James: nervous fingers, acne-scarred, shirts always stretched at the neck as if he had escaped a daily throttling. A lanky Iggy Pop body, muscle plates like insect shells. Isola’s oldest flesh-and-blood friend, and her second pretend-brother.
    Emotions argued on his face when he saw her; an oddly intense happiness battled a forced apathy.
    â€˜Hey,’ he muttered, apathy emerging triumphant. He’d smoked right down to the filter and crushed the cigarette butt under his shoe, leaving it like a love token by the gates of the old nunnery.
    â€˜Where’s the sidekick?’ he asked quietly as they began walking.
    â€˜Sidelined.’
    â€˜Oh, yeah. I heard about that party,’ he said, scratching his whiskery cheek.
    They stopped on the High Street to buy cappuccinos in flimsy paper cups from the little café. Isola went to the florist next door and, when the shop attendant was busy misting the roses, nicked a flock of purple hyacinth blossoms. She zipped them in her schoolbag and they continued walking.
    James’s neighbourhood was loud and dry. A man in orange overalls was chainsawing through the last tree on the street while new houses were being built – three great raw skeletons, skinned tree-bones on display. The industrial cacophony made Isola wince, and she tried not to imagine the rattling chainsaw as the pained, frightened wails of the tree. This wasn’t Vivien’s Wood, she told herself sternly, but her pace sped up just the same.
    A man atop a ladder whistled obnoxiously as they passed. All the workmen laughed.
    In her periphery, Isola saw James’s neck stiffen, his fists curl. Isola didn’t pause – she didn’t want to start a scene, get him in a fury. It would take him hours to work himself out of it. She glanced over her shoulder and flipped them off.
    They slipped through backyards and doubled back to the Sommerwell house, which lay sideways on an urban stretch of streets leaning into the valley below. There weren’t any trees left on this street, either.
    Upstairs to James’s room. It resembled a genetic splice between a going-out-of-business record store, a movie theatre and a cosy little crack house. A python rubbed its belly on the side of a glass tank in one corner. Tarantino flicks were forever playing on the television, a glitzy pulp of moving wallpaper.
    Upstairs the air was hot and thick with remembrance of her last visit.
    Images unspooling like the movie reels he loved. They hadn’t spoken since. She had returned without anything prepared. No apologies, no promises to put the past behind. Another girl would have avoided James until the freshly spilled awkwardness evaporated dry. But Isola was not another girl, and she wasn’t sure if it would ever truly dissipate.
    She had not thought this through.
    He sprawled on the eternally unmade bed, his face coloured in the garish brights of Pulp Fiction . Isola sat on the carpet, breathing hard, suddenly nervous. What had possessed her to come here? And then she remembered, why she hadn’t walked through her forest this afternoon, why she’d felt unnerved enough to call on her childhood prince –
    His hand dangled off the bed, hovering near her. Isola itched to swat it.
    She got up again, plopping her schoolbag in the far corner. His room was coloured like a bruise: the windows were constantly curtained, the only light the sickly blue glow of technology. She ran her finger along the DVD stack, squinting to read the spines. She’d seen almost everything here, which meant James had seen it all ten times over. Isola wriggled her finger into the crack at the top of the python tank. The snake opened one eye lazily, then closed it again, supremely unconcerned by her presence.
    She smiled, and made a resolution to be more like him. To spend more time chilled and uncaring, maybe even more time sleeping on flat, warm rocks.
    â€˜Good advice,