The Great Gatenby Read Online Free PDF Page A

after a time, and I liked that.
    Of course it wasn’t the same with the teachers, who got more and more frenzied the longer we kept going with each other, until the mere sight of us together would drive some of them into a sad state closely resembling uncoolness. I mean, by talking about it like that I make it sound like a joke, but of course it wasn’t: these guys got heavy man, heavy. And Melanie would get really depressed by their actions and nasty little comments. She’d never give them the satisfaction of seeing what they were doing to her, but she’d go away and cry about it and some days she wouldn’t want to talk to me or have too much to do with me because of the pressure these guys were putting on her. It wasn’t too good for me, either.
    I mean, Gilligan, for example, had us into his study every few days in those first three weeks, to try out all his different techniques from the Teachers’ Textbook of Messing Up Students’ Lives . He used a new approach each time, so you gotta give the man points for variety; but the basic idea was always the same: ‘Split, separate, go your own ways, don’t have nothing to do with each other.’ I mean, what right do these people have? I mean, what right? What the hell business is it of theirs who my friends are?
    One time Gilligan gave us the ‘You’ll screw up your studies and you won’t get any homework done — I’ve seen it all before’ approach.
    Another time he had us in separately and told us we were a ‘bad influence’ on each other — whatever the hell that means — then threw Georgie Stenning’s name in as another bad influence, which was true but what the hell, she was fun, and a lot better influence than Gilligan, and besides she didn’t have too many other friends anyway. Then he had a line about how spending so much time in each other’s company meant that we were antisocial and were isolating ourselves from ‘the group’, which seemed to me to be a good enough idea when I looked at who ‘the group’ were. But it was like he wasn’t going to rest till he had us the same as everyone else in that damn place.
    Well, we used to sit there and ask him searching questions, like Melanie’d say: ‘Sir, I don’t understand why you won’t allow us to choose our own friends’ and ‘Don’t you trust us sir?’ (that was an oldie but a goodie). One time I asked him if he’d be happier if I was gay, and that got him a bit mad. Melanie said to him: ‘Sir, I’m sure my parents would be happy for me to be going out with Erle. Do you want me to ask them?’ But that didn’t work. Then another time she said: ‘I know this’ll sound cheeky sir, but I don’t think that it’s any of your business.’ Gilligan didn’t like that too much.
    Through it all, however, we fought onwards, bloody but unbowed. The Librarian was reasonably cool and let us get away with a fair bit, so we got to know some corners of the library quite well; though if we got too passionate for those vicarious volumes she’d throw us out. We used the carpet storeshed quite often, but God it was dangerous.
    The only other guys in the dorm who were actually going with anyone were James Kramer, who was going with a very very cool girl called Michelle O’Byrne, and Steven ‘Punk’ Nimmo, who was going with a really funny kid in year nine named Charlotte Morgan. In fact James said he’d gone with Georgina Stenning for quite a while in year eight, which surprised me, although I don’t know how serious those year eight relationships are. But he and Georgie were still on good terms.
    It did create a bond between the three of us though, James and Punk and me I mean, like we were sort of different from the other guys in the dorm. And to tell you the truth and at the risk of sounding like I’ve got a real head, I think