Pig Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bridie told me how last year, on the Year 9 camp, one of the instructors had got hot for her. He sat next to her for every meal, used her legs for the bandaging lesson and during some nights Bridie swore she saw him wandering around outside her cabin.
    For me the Year 9 camp was a total blank – except when Darren Geraghty and Andrew Parker tied Moe to a kayak and pushed it out to the middle of the river because they thought it was time the ‘towel-head’ learnt to swim. I had to dive in and bring him back. It was July and the water temperature sat in the single digits.
    Bridie explained that it was after camp, away from everyone’s view, that the instructor started getting really dirty.
    He added her on Facebook and posted sleazy comments and rated her and sent her gifts like a g-string and lipstick.
    â€˜I bet you he’s still there, that instructor,’ Bridie told me. ‘I’m trying to think of an excuse to get out of camp but I know my mother will make me go. You’re the first person I’ve told. I’m so scared, Damon. But you can’t ever tell. Promise.’
    Was it because of the way she’d said my name? Was it because she’d confided in me? Because from that instant I knew that I was the one to protect her. She had chosen me.
    On the morning of the Year 10 camp, while the mattress in Mum and Archie’s room squeaked and moaned, I took the key to Archie’s gun cabinet, smuggled out John Cannon’s Remington revolver and began to plan.
    As soon as we got to camp and were assigned our rooms, I went into the bush and marked a spot that had a clear view to Bridie’s cabin.
    The first two nights, I took the revolver and my sleeping bag out there and sat up watching, never once taking my eyes off my charge, while inside my mind I would rehearse the plan. The second I spied Bridie’s stalker snooping around her cabin, I’d be up behind him, the revolver nudged into the small of his back.
    By the last day, I was getting impatient. Bridie hadn’t noticed me. I don’t mean noticed me in the bush, keeping guard, I mean noticed me at all. She hadn’t even looked my way, not even when the dirty prick made her partner him in one of the ‘trust’ games.
    But maybe that was because she knew I was watching for both of us. All that day I reminded myself that I was the one she had chosen to keep her secret. Me. No one else.
    That night the conditions were perfect for our stalker. Everyone was tired. The novelty of pathetic knock and run games and sneaking into each other’s cabins had run out of puff. By midnight the only sounds were the night animals and the rushing river. If the instructor had half a brain, he’d know that tonight was the safest night to try it on with Bridie.
    I would be there, ready and waiting.
    Archie’s revolver was tucked into the top of my undies. But the pistol was heavy and dragged on the elastic around my waist. It felt like at any second it could drop through the leg of my trackie daks and onto the ground. So I shoved it in my pocket and kept my hand tightly over it.
    A strip of concrete marked out my new patrol. Nine long strides covered the length of the cabin Bridie slept in. That took me past the first window, the door, the second window, and the ninth step gave me the all-important view along the side of the cabin. After that last step, I’d click my heels together and, keeping my hand firmly on my pocket, spin around and begin the nine strides back.
    It must’ve put me in some kind of trance because I didn’t hear Darren Geraghty and Andrew Parker sneak out of the bush. Not until it was too late and Parker had me around the neck while Geraghty twisted my hands behind my back. Between the tangle of elbows and arms, I saw Bridie step out of the door.
    I wanted to call to her but Parker’s fingers were squeezing my throat. The only sound was him yelling, ‘What are you up to,