Nicking Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

“
C’mon
– let’s do it!” If we don’t watch him, he’s going to land us in real trouble sometime.

6
    What I’ve realised is that Lemur needs us – that his best plans are the ones that we’ve all helped shape: Hector with all his knowledge of weird and wonderful facts and his enthusiasm for planning; Bru with his ability to look at things from odd angles and ask the kind of questions that show up gaps in the thinking. Me, I think I’m good at coming up with alternative suggestions. And Skooshie? He crashes in, taking Lemur’s ideas and making them crazier, until even Lemur can see we’re sledging down a vertical mountain with no helmets and no brakes. At this point, if we’re lucky, somebody will shout Whoa!, allowing us to tip ourselves sideways and sprawl in the snow catching our breath, while the sledge careers on down into the ravine…
    So all I’m saying is that usually when Lemur says, “I’ve got a plan,” it’s time to start listening
very
carefully.
    For Cathkin, what we need, as Hector says, is a plan devised and executed with military precision. A plan that is better than any other plan we’ve ever come up with. If we get caught, there will be no second chance. I will be kept in until I’ve done my Highers. “That I canguarantee,” my mum has said. If you know her, you’ll know she’s not exaggerating.
    From the sixth floor of our flats you can see everything. You can see anybody coming from or going into the back of the building. Any advancing armies (or unwelcome relatives), we know they’re coming, no bother. The only weak spot is right up against the wall of the flats – anything slinking in that way you could only see if you loosened the safety catch on the window and leant out. That’s not recommended – I know because I’ve gone close enough to see if it was do-able and there was hell to pay, believe me. Also, in our house we only have windows on two sides of the flats. So if people come in the front door, for example, you can’t see them at all. I admit this would be quite a weakness in any serious attempt at defence.
    Out the kitchen window you can see all the way to the West End. You can make out the tower of the university. And across the city more church spires than you can count. (Kit and I have tried: it has lead to arguments. She was so wrong.) And beyond the city, the Campsie Fells on the horizon. I like living high up. Not only is it always bright, even on quite cloudy days, and you can see what’s going on, it also gives you a brilliant feeling of being truly Weegie, like the city’s all yours. Who else is lucky enough to feel like this? Well, the people one floor up, maybe. And the ones on the sixth and seventh floors of the other flats, on the sides facing in the right direction. But you know what I mean. When I look out, I promise myself I will never live anywhere but here.
    But the high-in-the-sky advantageous viewpoint cansometimes be an actual disadvantage. Out our living-room window, on the other side, is where you get a panoramic view of Cathkin. It’s the stuff of cheering daydreams. You can stand and look, imagining the players shouting for the ball on the pitch and the crowds roaring on the terraces. But this prime location is what’s causing us so many problems. Because doing Cathkin isn’t just a question of getting past the corrugated metal put up to stop enterprising adventurers like us. The further we get into the park, the clearer the view my mum could have of us: dealing with
that
is the bigger challenge.
    “It’s a death-trap,” she says. According to her, it would only take one of us to laugh too loudly for the whole roof of the abandoned stand to come crashing down on our heads. Or we’d trip on the unstable concrete (worn by time and smashed by hooligans), and tumble below the terracing, breaking a leg in the process (the leg wouldn’t finish us off, but the starvation would, as we lay in the dank, dark hole, too weak to call for