The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

top of the hill. The day weighs so heavily on my clock hands that I’m having to drag myself along like a ball and chain. Bloody clock of dreams! I’d happily hurl you down Arthur’s Seat.
    That evening, no matter how much Madeleine sings to help send me off to sleep, it doesn’t work. When I decide to tell her about Joe, she explains that perhaps he treated me like that to look big in other people’s eyes, and that he’s not necessarily all bad. He must be very smitten with the little singer too. The torment of love can transform people into wretched monsters, she tells me. It annoys me that she’s making excuses for him. She kisses me on my clock dial and slows down my cardiac rate by pressing on my gears with her index finger. I close my eyes in the end, but I’m not smiling.

C HAPTER FOUR
    A fistful of emotions, a poked-out eye and a hasty departure from Edinburgh
    A year goes by, with Joe sticking to me as if magnetised by my clock hands; punching my clock in full view of everybody. Sometimes I want to tear out his crow-black shock of hair; I try not to flinch when he humiliates me, but he’s getting me down. My quest to find the little singer is proving fruitless. Nobody dares answer my questions. At school, Joe is the law.
    Today, at break, I take out Arthur’s egg from one of my pullover sleeves. I’m trying to track down Miss Acacia by thinking about her as hard as I can. I forget about Joe, I even forget I’m in this bloody school. As I stroke the egg, a beautiful dream glides across the screen of my eyelids. The eggshell cracks open and the little singer appears, her body covered in red feathers. I hold her between my thumb and index finger, frightened of crushing her but not wanting her to fly away. A tender fire sparks between my fingers and her eyes flicker open, when all of a sudden my skull goes ‘crack!’
    Egg yolk is trickling down my cheeks – the tears of my dream draining away. Joe towers over the scene with the remains of eggshell between his fingers. Everybody’s laughing and some people even applaud.
    ‘Next time, I’ll smash your heart against your skull.’
    In class, everyone makes fun of the eggshell pieces stuck in my hair. I’m itching for revenge. The fairies in my dreams vanish. I spend nearly as much time despising Joe as I do loving Miss Acacia. Dreams have a hard time surviving when confronted with reality.
    Joe’s humiliations continue day after day. I’ve become the toy that he uses to calm his nerves and dull his melancholy. No matter how often I water the flowers that are my memories of the little singer, they’re being starved of sunlight.
    Madeleine goes to great lengths to comfort me, but she never wants to hear any tales of the heart. Arthur hardly has any memory eggs left in his pouch, and he sings less and less.
    On my birthday, Anna and Luna come over for the evening – it’s the same ‘surprise’ every year. As usual, they’re having fun putting perfume on Cunnilingus, but this time Luna gets a little over-enthusiastic when she douses him. The hamster stiffens in a spasm and keels over, stone dead. The sight of my faithful companion stretched out in his cage makes me very sad. A long ‘cuckoo’ escapes from my chest.
    As a consolation prize, I get a geography lesson on Andalusia from Luna. Ah, Andalusia  . . . If only I could be sure that Miss Acacia was there, I’d leave right away!
    Four years have gone by since my encounter with the little singer, and nearly three years since I started school. I still look for her everywhere, but I can never find her. Little by little, my memories are being crushed under the weight of time.
    On the night before the last day of school, I go to bed with a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I don’t get a wink of sleep. I’m too busy thinking about what I want to achieve tomorrow. Because this time I’ve made up my mind, it’s time to conquer the Amorous West. I just need to find out where the little singer is