Raven Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

together. So we say nothing for a while. Then he starts talking again, and he starts like he’d have started in the old days, like he’d thought something really important about hiding places or treasure or how to trap rabbits.
    “I’ve been thinking lots of things,” he starts. “And talking to my dad and the teachers.”
    “Aye?”
    “Aye. About the future. About the directions I should take.”
    “Aye?”
    “Aye. It’s obvious, really. I should be something like an agricultural engineer.”
    “What?”
    “Aye. My dad deals with them all the time. Says there’s great opportunities.”
    I let him go on about what the job is, what it can lead to. We go to sleep soon afterwards.
    I think of him dreaming of being married to Kim and of tractors and harvesters and conferences in nice country hotels while my dreams are filled with war, with snakes, with bloody wounds, disaster and death. I keep feeling blood trickling over my skin.

9
    One day Mum’s spreading cream onto a bruise on my chest.
She’s inspecting all the nicks and scabs and cuts. She tells me I should take more care, but Dad just snorts at her.
    “He’s just being a proper lad,” he says. “Let him be. What’s the point of living in the backwoods if you can’t get a bit of blood on you?”
    Then he points at my body, at all the stripes and nicks and bruises on it.
    “Anyway, look,” he says. “His skin’s just like one of your paintings.”
    She pauses in her movements for a moment. She regards me, then begins to touch the colors and marks more gently with her fingertips.
    “Well, well,” she murmurs as I back away.
    She makes a rectangle with her index fingers and thumbs and looks at my skin through it.
    “You’re right,” she says. “The boy’s a living work of art.”

10
    One Saturday morning I’m wandering alone
when my name’s called out. There’s laughter. I look around stupidly. A stone falls from the sky, then another. Then Nattrass and a couple of his mates, Eddie and Ned, are coming out from behind a dilapidated cow shed.
    “You’re looking dozy, brother,” says Nattrass. “What’s up? You in love or something?”
    His mates laugh along with him. They’re all filthy, streaked with earth and sweat.
    “We saw you,” he says, “and we thought, We could probably let him in on it. He’ll have the guts for it.”
    “For what?” I say.
    “Come and see.” He smiles. “If you let on, mind, you’ll suffer for it.”
    They lead me back to where they came from. Past the cowshed, into the long narrow allotment behind Nattrass’s house. It’s all overgrown. A broken greenhouse with an ash tree growing in it. Brambles and raspberries growing wild. It’s Nattrass’s place, his hangout, his hideout. I remember it well. Used to play here so often, until we started growing apart, until I started hanging out with Max.
    They’ve cleared a space. They’ve marked out a square. They’re digging a pit. Their spades are resting on the great pile of earth that’s been dug out.
    “Go on, then,” says Nattrass. “Ask what we’re up to.”
    He wipes the sweat from his brow with a filthy hand.
    I look down into the pit. No treasure, as usual: just stones and tangled roots and soil. It’s maybe six feet wide. It’s already two feet deep.
    “Go on,” he says.
    “OK, so what you doing?” I ask.
    “We’re digging your grave, Liam! Hahahaha!”
    His mates roar with laughter along with him.
    “Just joking,” he says. “Get a spade, Liam, come and help, otherwise come back and have a look tomorrow.”
    “If you’ve got the nerve for it,” says Eddie.
    “Aye, if you’ve got the nerve,” says Ned.
    They grunt and laugh together. I spit.
    “Just one thing,” says Nattrass. “We don’t want you telling nobody. OK, brother?”
    I just look at him and turn away.
    I go back the next day. As I walk by the cowshed, I hear kids’ voices. Two girls are coming towards me, leaving the allotment.
    “Don’t go, Liam,”