Ostrich Boys Read Online Free PDF

the window as high as it would go, and leaned over far enough to see Kenny and Sim scrambling away through the flower bed on their hands and knees, dragging our rucksacks through the dry earth behind them. When I turned back Caroline was sitting at the table, holding Ross in both hands again. Mr. Fell was pouring himself a glass of orange juice. He offered me some but I shook my head.If he was going to get mad at me about our graffiti he was going an odd way about it. I guessed he didn’t know what we’d done—not yet, anyway. I couldn’t work out why he’d been to see the police.
    He was a tidily shabby man, always wearing what appeared to be the same baggy cords and old-fashioned cardigan with patches on the elbows—although Ross had told us he had a wardrobe full of them. He had a thick but neat, graying beard and half-moon glasses on a chain around his neck. Like Ross, he wanted to be a writer, and I supposed dressing like one was halfway toward actually being one. He was the opposite of Ross’s mum, who never seemed to be able to switch off her bossy-lecturer mode, even when at home. She spoke to everybody like they “could try harder.” And this past year Ross had somehow got it into his head that he was adopted. No way did he think he had any of the same genes as either of his parents. He’d made a long, long list of all his differences. The shared ambition with his dad being the
only
similarity.
    “Penny says to say hello,” Mr. Fell told me, nodding his head at the bedroom above, where Mrs. Fell had confined herself since Ross’s death. Caroline had already told me that the funeral yesterday was the only time her mum had left the house this past week. “She’s sorry she can’t get up to see you. Doctor’s got her on so many pills she’s beginning to rattle. She’s still … still struggling, unfortunately.”
    He was talking to me in a particularly adult manner, asif confiding in me. I nodded in what I hoped looked like an understanding way and wondered how on earth I was going to prize my best friend out of his daughter’s grasp.
    “I’m glad you came round, Blake. I’ve been meaning to get in touch because there’s something I’d like to ask you.” He’d been staring at his orange juice but now he looked straight at me. There was a worry in his eyes that I didn’t understand. “I’m not quite sure how to put this … but how did Ross seem to you? In the days running up to his accident, I mean.”
    I was confused. I looked from him to Caroline. She kept her eyes on Ross.
    “Okay. I think.”
    Mr. Fell nodded, scratched his nose. “Anything bothering him? That you know of? Anything in particular that he might have told you?”
    I thought about Mr. Fowler, Munro, Nina. Caroline was quite defiant in her not looking at me, and I also thought about the way she’d taunted her brother, embarrassing him in front of most of the school last week.
    I said, “Just school and stuff, I suppose.”
    Mr. Fell kept nodding and even gave me a brief smile. “The usual things you lot have to put up with?”
    “Well, yeah. I suppose so.” I wasn’t lying, I just wasn’t going into detail.
    “He didn’t seem … anxious?”
    I couldn’t see where this was leading. “I don’t think so.”
    Mr. Fell was silent. He drank his orange juice in one long gulp and sighed.
    “Can I ask why?”
    He looked up at me again, surprised. “Yes, of course. Of course you can.” But it took him a while before he answered. He stared hard at Ross’s urn—like it was a crossword, sudoku and Rubik’s Cube all rolled into one.
    “The police, well, they needed to talk to me about something—something that hadn’t really crossed my mind.” His eyes flicked between his daughter and me. “Anybody’s mind, for that matter. But it has very much upset us—Caroline, Penny and myself.” It still took him an effort to spit it out. “It’s the driver of the car that hit Ross who’s brought the matter up. He seems