Skulk Read Online Free PDF Page A

glossy and bouncy.
    She nudged me, amiably, in the ribs.
    “You should come with! You know when you don’t come drinking with us, the terrorists win. Why do you hate freedom, Mags?”
    That got a snigger out of me, and she grinned in triumph.
    “Yeah, see? You can’t be good all the time.”
    I don’t know why I never tried to explain to Jewel and Ameera that I wasn’t spending my evenings studying, or reading War and Peace , or whatever else they thought “being good” meant. I don’t think they would’ve thought less of me for creeping out at night and artistically vandalising stuff. I just never wanted to share that part of my life – except as Thatch97 , on graffitilondon.com. I told myself I was quite happy living a bunch of totally separate lives.
    “Oh, crap,” Ameera stopped abruptly in the middle of the corridor and her shoulders sagged like a puppet with its strings cut. “Forgot my Ovid. It’s in my locker.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and turned on her heel to head back to our form room.
    A cold twist of nerves hit me right in the gut, and I found myself saying “I’ll come with you,” before I really knew what I was doing. Ameera looked at me with a questioning twitch of her eyebrow, and I shrugged. “I left my notebook, might as well pick it up now. Plus, you’re so hungover you might wander into the wrong room.”
    My excuse made her smile, and I followed in her wake as she made her way back against the stream of people heading to their first lessons.
    It wasn’t that I believed Ameera was going to go into my locker and find the stone. I knew, with every rational part of my mind, that she wouldn’t.
    It was just that I’d remembered that she could , and now I couldn’t stop the vision from playing over and over in front of my eyes. All she’d have to do was jiggle the door just the right way. All the lockers in the school were the same, pathetically unsecure, possibly in a calculated attempt to stop us bringing in anything illicit. I’d learned that one the hard way, when Cath Forbes planted a porno mag in there the day before end of term inspection. Out of pure luck, I escaped a fate worse than detention by a margin of about thirty seconds. I took the moral high ground and didn’t retaliate, which is Liar for “I couldn't think of a good enough revenge that was worth the inevitable escalation”.
    I’d never have left anything valuable in my locker if I’d thought about it for more than two seconds. I felt like an idiot for even considering leaving the stone there. My blood felt like it was running hot, super-heated by my relief as I reached into my locker and my hand closed over its cool, smooth surface.
    For a second, while Ameera dug through enough Starbucks receipts to wallpaper my house looking for her Classics textbook, I ran my fingers over the smooth surface of the stone and felt its weight in my palm. It wasn’t particularly heavy, and yet...
    Perhaps I was imagining it, but the stone felt as if it was weighing me down, anchoring me to the ground, as if gravity wasn’t what it used to be and if I put down the stone I would just float away on the breeze. It made my fingers twitch.
    I pocketed it, swearing I’d find a better hiding place later.
    Despite the detour, we made it to the Classics room before the teacher, and I got out my Ovid and started doodling over the back cover.
    “Also, you need to get laid,” Ameera said, glancing over my shoulder at the swirls and jagged lines.
    I’d been hoping she’d forgotten about trying to get me to go out. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks, and hated myself for it. I made a sort of non-committal “Eehhh,” sound.
    Unsurprisingly, Ameera wasn’t put off. “ Falco’s was crawling with hot guys last night. You’ll have no problem hooking up with someone. Me and Jewel’ll totally be your wingmen,” she pressed.
    “Where is Jewel, anyway?”
    Ameera didn’t seem to mind me changing the subject. “She was even