The Dark Part of Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

back.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    What’s up was that I hadn’t kissed anyone since I was nine. It was Friday morning cookery class when Frank Castelli, a chubby Italian boy, held the blunt side of a carving knife to
my neck and poked his tongue in my gob while Mrs Hodge had her back turned rolling out pastry for our strawberry tarts.
    ‘I know this sounds silly but you look familiar,’ I said.
    ‘Really?’ he said.
    ‘Yeah.’ We stared at each other, a beam of streetlight slicing between us.
    ‘Maybe out. Brisbane’s not that big, hey.’
    ‘No, that’s not it.’ I drummed my fingers against my temple. ‘Wait. It’ll come to me.’ A memory hook snagged in my brain. ‘I know! You were mates with
Danny Bailey, weren’t you? You went to Grammar.’
    ‘Yeah. Nah.’ He tilted his head back, out of the light, and I couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Only for a bit.’ His voice had gone quieter, low and kind of distant.
    ‘I’m best friends with Hollie, his sister. God, I remember now. You used to come round to the house. That’s right. How funny.’ I thought back to the time, as a kid,
I’d spied on them: Danny and his school mates, watching porno vids and drinking Mr Bailey’s vintage piss out of the cellar. But right then, I was too shy to mention it so I just smiled
and blinked and tossed my hair back over my shoulder.
    ‘He’s still inside, isn’t he?’ Scott ran his fingers through his hair a few times. I still couldn’t see his eyes.
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Were you there when it happened?’ Hollie had never told me who was there that night in the changing rooms after footy practice. The school and the
parents had made sure that the boys’ names, except, of course, Matty Taylor’s, were kept well out of the papers.
    ‘Yeah, nah, but I wasn’t in on it.’ Scott cleared his throat and stretched out his legs. His face was back in the streetlight. He stared at me, tracing a finger down the side
of my body, brushing against the edge of my breast, giving me awesome tingles. I could feel his erection against my thigh so I flashed him some bad-girl eye, but he’d spotted my scar. I
turned away, patting my fringe down over it, but he pulled my hand off and ran a finger along the ridgy bit.
    ‘Don’t!’ I batted his hand away.
    ‘Whoa, sorry. What’s the big deal?’
    ‘I just don’t like it, alright? It’s ugly.’
    ‘Nah, scars are cool. It makes you look dangerous. Like you’ve been in a fight or something. How’d you get it?’
    ‘I fell off a bike when I was seven,’ I lied. ‘Nine stitches.’
    ‘Impressive.’
    We pashed again. Our tongues synchronized better this time. He wrote my phone number in pen on the inside of his arm and I got out. He rolled the car backwards down the street without the engine
on. I crept around the side of the house and climbed back through my bedroom window.

    I stand in front of the cheval with my legs wide apart. There’s music in my head, a throbbing beat which starts slow but gets faster. I swing my hips from side to side,
watching the bones ripple beneath my skin. My naked body excites and disgusts me. Last night, I met a boy with purple eyes.
    Mum’s pearls are much smaller than the stripper’s; elegant, rosy buds which shimmer when I hold them up to the sunlight. She says she won’t ever wear them ever again because
they were a present from Dad, but a few times I’ve caught her standing in the mirror with them on.
    It’s easier than I thought getting them up inside me. I’d been worried it might hurt but it doesn’t. They sit up there nice and snug as I dance around my bedroom, flicking my
hair and kicking out in my strappies. When I’ve had enough of that, I squat down on the floor, just like the stripper, and fish around for one end. As I pull them out, I pout and wink at the
mirror and lick my lips. I imagine Scott watching me and I feel real bad, real sexy. I wonder what Hollie will say when I tell her I’ve