Skulk Read Online Free PDF

more wasted than me,” she shrugged. “She’s probably lying down in a darkened room. I wish I was.” She ran a hand dramatically over her face, although not so hard she smudged her eyeshadow, and groaned.
    Jewel did turn up, eventually. She floated in halfway through double English, just as Mr Strummer was gearing up to launch into Henry IV, Part 2 . Her sunglasses seemed fused to her face, two deep greenish pools beneath a sweep of choppy black fringe. She clutched a can of Red Bull in one hand and a piece of folded paper in the other.
    Mr Strummer looked up from his preparations, smoothed back his floppy grey-brown hair and held his other hand out to receive the note. When he’d read it, he harrumphed, but didn’t question her.
    “All right, sit down,” he said, “and take those shades off. You’re indoors now.”
    Jewel sighed, deeply and loudly, and reached up to take off the sunglasses with all the urgency of a particularly unbothered sloth, shaking her hair forwards over her face.
    She sat down beside Ameera, and Mr Strummer found his place in the text and drew in a deep breath.
    “Ahemhem. Open your Eares!”
    Which was our cue to do the exact opposite.
    Ameera waited a prudent thirty seconds before turning to Jewel.
    “You OK?”
    “No. I’m dying .” Jewel squinted across the desk at us. “I ought to be in bed – or preferably a coffin.”
    I turned my eye roll into a glance up to check on Mr Strummer. He was still droning on, his voice rising and falling unevenly over the poetry and fifteenth century puns. We think he’s a failed actor – he’d always rather act our set texts out than have us work on understanding them for ourselves. If you were careful, you could talk right through his performance and never bring him back from his private Bard-world.
    “How come you came in, if you’re so sick?” Ameera asked.
    Jewel shrugged. “Ugh. Mark bribed me with a family emergency note and a shopping trip if I’d get out of the flat so he could have the Duchess round for lunch.”
    “Is he still going out with her?” Ameera winced.
    “Don’t even.” Jewel waved a hand weakly, as if gossiping about her brother’s girlfriend was just too much for her delicate constitution. To be fair, she looked a lot sicker than Ameera. Her eyes were bleary under her fringe.
    “I do not get it. She’s such a munty, sourfaced bitch,” Ameera said, loyally.
    “Last week she bought a Chihuahua,” Jewel stated, hanging her head and holding up her hands in defeat. “She called it Mr Pooches .”
    “Oh my God,” Ameera gasped. “An actual Chihuahua. Has she got like, no idea ?”
    Handbag dogs are like, really 2000, you see. Everyone knows if you can’t rustle up either a sugar glider or a giant Afghan hound, you just aren’t trying.
    I turned my gaze to the window and watched the branches of the birch tree outside shake as a flock of mangy pigeons dropped in from the grey sky. For a moment they sat there, about five of them all together, twitching their feathers and twisting their necks. Then they took off again, scattering in all directions. One lone pigeon was left squatting in the tree. It glared in at the window. It was almost looking right at me.
    Could it be a person too? Could it stretch and flex its wings into elbows and fingers, until it was a naked stranger, sitting in a tree? I could visualise it more clearly than I would’ve liked.
    But it didn’t have a stone, so maybe not.
    “Right, Mags?” Ameera said, bumping shoulders with me.
    “Huh?”
    “You’re coming out with us on Saturday night.” I opened my mouth to disagree, but she didn’t stop for breath. “I’ll come over to yours and make you over and then we’ll go to Falco’s for pre-drink drinks, and then on to that new place, with the ice, and finish off at Nobilis . And if you don’t find a man in one of those places I’ll, I’ll...” she paused, and I seized the moment.
    “No,” I said. “Thank you, really, but