Graffiti My Soul Read Online Free PDF

drainpipes.
    â€˜Teachers are always busy,’ I go, once I’m back on my feet and dusting down.
    â€˜You think?’
    â€˜Chances are, they’ll be too stressed with the key stage tests to worry about us. Anyway, who’s going to remember a small scuffle when Lucy Gilbert has just been knocked up?’
    â€˜You’re funny, d’you know that, V?’
    Jason is so far gone now, he’s grinning like one of those kids who’s been shot-up with too much Ritalin. I might as well be talking to myself.
    9
    This is how we have our fun: Friday night, cold and clear. Riding our bikes from Broadhurst to Auriol. A two-mile circuit that takes in the best of our area: video shops, kebab shops, offies, pubs, posh coffee bars, and more old people’s hairdressers than there are old people. None of these interest us. We’ve already had a drink, and we don’t want to have our hair done. Our rule is that we’ll lap and lap until we find someone to have fun with. This will normally be in Auriol, where it’s more densely wooded than Broadhurst, and is less hardcore with the street lighting.
    Like fruit pickers, we’re seasonal. Summer is no good for our fun. We work better in the darkness of winter. One kid’s terrifying gloom is another kid’s safety net.
    We trawl until we come across a suitable player. If it’s someone from school, great. Someone from the upper years, even better; usually a Year 12 muppet who still hasn’t passed their driving test, and is too much of a dork to go out drinking.
    Tonight is a night like any other. It’s seven-thirty. We’ve been on the road for twenty minutes and haven’t passed anyone of value. A man with a briefcase who’s on his way home from the station; an old woman who looks like she’s heading for the bus stop at the top of Auriol. Neither of them are right.
    We can lap four or five times until we find what we are looking for. We’re pros. We’re fussy about our playmate. We could go onto the high street, where there is guaranteed to be all-night action, butwe prefer it here, on these streets. Catching people only yards from their houses only adds to the fun. Another bonus point if we can get them under a Neighbourhood Watch sign. There is minimal over-eighteen activity round here after dusk. Adults with any sense know that they need to drive everywhere, even if it’s just down to the Tesco Metro at the bottom of the street for a pint of milk. The muppet kids don’t have that luxury, and this is when we strike.
    There’s no one in our houses to give a shit where we are. Mum is on another block of late shifts, this week it’s been seven out of seven, and Jase’s mum has gone to her group meeting where she talks to other depressives who’ve lost children and eat too much cake to get over it. Jase says it’s a kind of AA for grievers. Apparently they know everything about each other except their real names. I tell Jase that people have to give a name for everything these days, that they won’t be happy until every aspect of human nature has been labelled or explained; that soon there’ll be a support group for people who still can’t come to terms with the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy or something, but he’s cycled so far ahead I don’t know whether he heard me. Racing off and ploughing up the hill that leads into Auriol at the first mention of his mum and her group.
    This kind of picking on people comes naturally to us. If I didn’t run, and Jase didn’t smoke all the time, I guess this could be our second careers.
    Jase is on his way back down. He’s almost flying down the hill, hand off brakes, feet elevated from pedals, but even at those speeds the prospect of take-off isn’t pleasing him. I suddenly think that if a car pulled out of one of these side roads any moment now, Jase would go the way of his sister. I feel like the biggest