Skulk Read Online Free PDF Page B

no.”
    “Look,” Jewel leaned over, and then sat back quickly as we realised Mr Strummer had fallen silent.
    “So,” he said, snapping the book closed, which was quite impressive really since it was only a flimsy paperback, “What do we think is Shakespeare’s dramatic purpose in beginning the second part of Henry the Fourth’s story like this? Hmm?”
    I frowned at my copy, as if deep in thought, and waited for someone else to answer. Luckily, Alice Thurso accidentally caught his eye from the back row, and while he was engaged in trying to extract an answer she didn’t have, Jewel scribbled a note and passed it to me.
    If you don’t have fun we’ll never ask again, it said.
    Ameera grabbed it back almost before I’d read to the end of the sentence and scrawled an addition underneath.
    LOOKING HOT + YUMMY MEN – INHIBITIONS = A GOOD TIME OR YOUR MONEY BACK.
    She drew a little heart, and then scribbled it out and drew a cock instead. I cringed.
    Jewel seized the pencil, crossed out the cock and drew some boobs, and a question mark. I cringed even harder and shook my head.
    Jewel underscored the words we’ll never ask again , and passed the note back with a flourish of finality.
    I looked out of the window again. I tried to give the idea fair consideration, but my mind kept going blank. For a moment I just sat there, staring. The pigeon was gone. There was yet another spider on the window ledge, hanging from an invisible thread and drifting slightly in the wind.
    My stomach rumbled. The wardrobe had made me too late to grab my usual second breakfast from Mr Patak’s on the way to school.
    I picked up the pencil, pulled the paper in front of me and scrawled down FINE.
    Fine. I didn’t feel much like going out tagging right now anyway, and it’d be better than staying at home. Surely.
    As we were going out for lunch, I made an excuse about leaving my bag behind and slipped out into the playground.
    The memory of that night hit me like a falling meteorite. The bins, with the motion-sensor light. The picnic tables. The grass. The wall.
    I stared at the patch of grass by the fence, where a group of Year Sevens were sitting cross-legged eating sandwiches. That was where he fell, where his blood seeped into the ground.
    I turned and looked up at the back wall, a vision in negative of my artwork floating in front of my eyes. The men with paint-rollers had done a brilliant job. Nothing was left of all my hard work. Two year nine girls saw me staring at the wall, pulled OMG, what a weirdo! faces at me and giggled behind their hands.
    The school had won this one, but I’d be back. One day I’d finish what I started.
    A little huddle of Year Eights jumped out of their skins as I rounded the corner of the Kit Shed, and totally failed to hide their cigarettes behind their backs.
    “Miss Wolfcliff’s coming,” I said, and they dropped the cigarettes and scattered like a flock of starlings.
    I knelt down on the patch of earth by the shed, and dug out the triangular plastic protractor from the bottom of my bag. It served pretty well as a mini shovel – it’d certainly never been any use to me in lessons – and I used it to dig a hole about the length of my hand by the wall of the shed. I dropped the stone in and covered it over, arranging a clump of weeds to cover the dug earth. It wasn’t all that deep, but it would do for now.
    Thump thump thump thump thump whirr whirr screech clang thump.
    A DJ in mirrored sunglasses was mangling a popular song on the raised turntables at one end of the bar, while at the other end I sat frozen on a violet leather sofa, nursing my cocktail and watching Ameera and Jewel flirting with a pair of C-list boyband singers twice their age.
    I cursed myself for forgetting that there was something else I could have done on a Saturday night: I could have taken the stone home and tried to magic myself into a fox in front of my mother. That would’ve been more fun than this.
    “Maggie?” A man