Pig Boy Read Online Free PDF

Damon. Look at it. Feel it.’
    It scared me. All guns did. But lightly, so I was hardly touching it, I’d run my fingers along the barrel and then smile and nod. That was enough for Archie. He never said he thought I was a sissy. He’d just smile back at me and go on with the story.
    Archie also had a Smith & Wesson that looked like it came straight out of the cowboy days. He reckoned it belonged to a card player from the Wild West.
    The best was his Remington army revolver from the 1860s. According to Archie it was used in the American Civil War and perhaps even in the Battle of Gettysburg, which claimed the largest number of casualties.
    The owner’s name was inscribed on a brass plate. ‘John Cannon. One Country. One Flag.’
    Archie would tell me stories about the Civil War. We’d try to imagine what sort of a man John Cannon was and what went through his mind when he held the revolver. That gun gave me the best times with Archie and the worst too.
    â€˜John Cannon was a brave soldier, that’s for sure.’ I remember hearing the spit catch in Archie’s throat when he swallowed. ‘He would’ve been fighting for what he believed in, Damon. Fighting for his land, his freedom, his womenfolk …’ It must’ve been that last bit that lodged itself in my brain because almost two years later, on the morning of the Year 10 camp, Archie’s words were screaming in my face.
    But camp didn’t turn out the way I planned. I wanted to come out as a hero but Andrew Parker took the title from me.
    Bridie Tebble had class and she was pretty. Not hot – pretty. Like the kind of girl you’d dream of taking to your formal. She was nice too. She never once called me ‘Damoink’, not like the other bitches that swarmed around her.
    But that was because Bridie and I had a special bond. We were the best English students in the year. Every day she travelled from Mereton because the English department was reputedly better here at Strathven High.
    Bridie was the only one I bothered with. The others were losers, thinking they were gifted because they were in the same English class as me. They never averaged more than twelve out of twenty on their assessments.
    Bridie averaged about a fifteen and I usually got between eighteen-and-a-half and twenty.
    When our assignments were handed back, Bridie would lean in close to me, peering over my shoulder to see how I did. She was tall and as she spoke her breath warmed the curve between my neck and shoulder. ‘Right Damon,’ she’d say. ‘This is war.’ I never answered. I couldn’t even move. Instead, I’d stand there willing her lips to part so I could feel her warm breath again.
    Year 10 was my first attempt at the state writing competition. After lots of coaxing, Mrs Finch got Bridie to enter as well. So Bridie and I spent one lunchtime and one afternoon a week in Mrs Finch’s room planning our work. Sometimes Mrs Finch would only show for the last fifteen minutes. I had all that time alone with Bridie and we became tight.
    Bridie was always dying to read each new instalment of her story. It was a piece of melodramatic crap about a sixteen-year-old girl who is raped at a school camp then tries to drown herself.
    â€˜What do you think?’ she’d ask. ‘Do you like it?’
    â€˜Keep reading,’ I’d reply just so I could watch her mouth and the smooth skin across her neck.
    One afternoon when it was just Bridie and me, I asked if her story was based on real-life experience. Not that I cared or was interested. It was a test. I wanted to find out if she had any secrets and if she did, would she trust me with them?
    I waited, my breath held tight in case one sound would make her change her mind. But when Bridie’s eyes flicked over to the classroom door I knew that she’d passed the test.
    Bit by bit, between picking her fingernails and twisting her golden ponytail,