Midnight Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

smaller piece, glistening with saliva. Ben had swallowed the offering, along with some nausea, and since then he supposed the four of them had been friends. All the same, he didn't mean to allow that to keep him away from Dominic.
    On Monday his aunt walked him to school as usual, though in Stargrave he'd walked as far to school by himself. She said "Do your best" and patted his bottom — a gesture which she seemed to assume would embarrass him less than a kiss in front of his schoolmates — as he tried to dodge out of reach through the gates. The July sunlight capped his head with heat and glared from the tilted-open windows of the school as he waved to his aunt until she was out of sight and then strode across the crowded stone-flagged yard.
    Dominic was standing near the boys' entrance to the school, humming to himself with his hands in the pockets of his baggy shorts and gazing down past his clean scabless knees at his feet, which were tapping the rhythm of his tune, a jazzed-up hymn, as his socks sagged to the beat. His face looked as if it had just been rubbed with a rough towel; his broad short nose and wide mouth seemed squashed by his high forehead, above which sprouted coppery hair that made Ben think of exposed wire. Ben was suddenly aware that Peter and Francis and Christopher were watching, and he blurted out the only question he could summon up. "Is your name Dominic?"
    Dominic watched his feet stop tapping. "Want to make something of it?"
    "No, why should I?"
    "Just thought you might have." Dominic bent to pull his socks up. "Nicidom, you could have made, or Nodicim. Modinic's my favourite, though. Sounds like something you have to drink when you're ill." He straightened up and stared past Ben as if he didn't like what he saw. "What do you want, then?"
    "Your dad sells books, doesn't he?"
    "And yours feeds worms."
    Ben gasped and didn't know how to respond. "When we had to say in class what our parents did and Mr Bolger let you off answering," Dominic continued, "I kept wondering what you'd have said."
    Ben bit his lip and realised that though he was struggling to keep his feelings down, they weren't necessarily of grief. Without warning they spluttered out of him so violently he had to wipe his mouth. "I expect I'd have said they were under the sod."
    Dominic made such a shocked face that Ben shrieked with laughter. It felt less painful this time, more of a relief. "What would Mr Bolger have said," Dominic prompted gleefully.
    "He'd have said," Ben responded, and deepened his voice: "'How dare you contaminate my classroom with such language, boooy?'"
    Dominic laughed at that, or at least wagged his head open-mouthed to indicate mirth. "So what were you going to say about books? I've never seen any of your gang in our shop."
    "I'm not in a gang," Ben said, and turned to look where Dominic was staring. Peter and the others had come up behind him, their faces puffy and threatening. "Were you skitting at us?" Peter demanded of Dominic.
    "Just at a teacher," Ben said. "We're talking. It's private."
    "Maybe you'd better go in the girls' bogs," Francis suggested, fluttering his hands.
    "What do you want to talk to him for?" Christopher complained to Ben. "He thinks he's too good for everyone just because his father's a stupid shopkeeper."
    "He's not stupid, he's a bookseller. You're stupid if you think he is. My great-granddad used to write books."
    "We're sorry, your lordship," Peter hooted, bowing low.
    "Your two lordships," Francis said, and repeated it more loudly as if to bully someone into appreciating his wit.
    Christopher ducked his head as if he meant to butt Ben. "You watch who you're calling stupid."
    "I am watching."
    Christopher shoved him against the wall and then, as a teacher appeared in the boys' entrance, swaggered away with his cronies. "So what did your great-granddad write?" Dominic said.
    "Books of old legends and stuff that hadn't been written down. I wanted you to ask your dad if one of