Reading the Ceiling Read Online Free PDF

what she’s staring at. My hair is sticking up on end. My eyes are puffy and my cheeks ashed grey. I am in a pair of tartan flannel pyjamas.
    â€˜What’s up with you? Yuan’s going stirfry crazy. And here you are looking all rough.’
    â€˜You’re good friends now, are you?’
    â€˜We talk. He’s pretty cool.’
    â€˜I saw you kiss him at the disco.’
    â€˜Oh. Is that what this is all about then?’
    Her raised eyebrows. Her scrunched-up face with the questioning look. Her you-stupid-girl shake of her head. ‘I know you like him. There are lots of men and boys out there. I don’t need Yuan.’
    I burst into tears.
    â€˜Look, you know I fool around. I kissed him on a dare that’s all. It means nothing.’ Amina throws herself on to the end of my bed, and leans on one elbow watching me sob myself into my pillow. ‘Pull yourself together. It’s not the end of the world you know.’
    **Three days later, I start to come out of my room more often to face the world with its bright shining sun. Reuben calls on a day I’m closest to the phone and I pick up.
    â€˜Ha-hallo. That sounds like you, Ayodele,’ he starts.
    â€˜Yes, it is.’
    â€˜I’ve been phoning . . .’
    â€˜And I’ve got the messages.’
    â€˜Ah I wondered whether you’d like to go for a +charwarma  or something?’
    â€˜Not today, thanks.’
    â€˜Perhaps another time?’
    â€˜Perhaps.’
    By Thursday the following week, my head is in a twist. I chose the guy I didn’t want, and am now ignoring the one I did want. I feel stupid.
    We are about to go for our end-of-year, end-of-school picnic party. This is our very last time together as a class. I am late on purpose, having asked Amina and Remi to save me a seat. Although we were all allowed to bring one guest, most of us haven’t bothered. Remi has invited Kojo, her boyfriend, and he will be driving up to meet us later.
    Reuben finds me as soon as I arrive and comes up to grin and mumble a few words.
    â€˜You’re looking nice,’ he says, but his eyes do not quite know where to look on my body. They jump from my face to my boobs, then my feet. He stares at my leather flipflops while I think up an answer.
    â€˜Thank you’ is the best I can do.
    His eyes flicker back up to mine and then stare past my right ear towards the main school entrance, where our rowdy, chattering friends wait. ‘Which bus are you going in?’
    â€˜That one. With Remi and Amina.’
    His hands find his pockets. ‘Just wondered, whether. Um. You’d like us to sit together?’
    â€˜Thanks but the others are waiting for me.’
    His eyes shift past my face to a spot beyond my left ear. ‘See you then.’
    Most of us are wearing jeans, khaki trousers or shorts. Amina’s version of our teenage uniform is tight, tight, dark, dark drainpipe jeans with a loose T-shirt screaming ‘babe’. I see her clambering into the bus, squealing about something or other, as she usually does.
    We are going to a tiny village up past Pirang. Mrs Foon, a teacher at our school, has relatives who own a farm by the river. The buses have come to pick us up on the forecourt of our school. We are waiting for the drivers to be given final instructions. Everyone is trying to find someone they’d like to sit next to. Stragglers jostle for improved bus seats. An hour later, we’re crammed into the two buses. They ease out through the front gate, past COAST HIGH SCHOOL written out in red china grass against a patchy bit of lawn, onto the road to start our journey. We’re taking everything we need for our party. There are plastic sacks of ice stuffed into metal bins for our drinks. A couple of car batteries to power the music and small speakers. Half a tin drum, cut lengthways, that will be our BBQ. Bags of charcoal. Lots of crates of soft drinks with a few stray ones of