The Sound Read Online Free PDF Page A

the cheek.
    ‘Hi,’ I answer, feeling the pressure of his lips long after they’ve left my face.
    I am a little at a loss for words. I had, for some reason, expected Jeremy to turn up in a variation of his outfit from yesterday’s lunch – a blazer, shirt, rah trousers combo
– but instead he’s in long shorts, a short-sleeved polo shirt and flip-flops. It takes me a few seconds to recalibrate my image of him. It’s possible, just possible, that Megan
might be right and that Jeremy is hot. Still not my type, because he is, after all, still in possession of a penis. But hot nonetheless.
    ‘You look nice,’ he says.
    ‘Thanks,’ I say. I spent a while panicking about what to wear before deciding to listen to my mother’s frequent proffered maxim: ‘take me as I am or not at all’.
Admittedly this backfired with Will, but hey, I’m not a private-school-attending East Coast prepster. And I don’t have Blair Waldorf’s wardrobe. My wardrobe is more Oxfam stock
room crossed with Topshop sale rack and manifestly free of designer labels. I’m me. They can take me as I am.
    Jeremy walks me to the car and opens my door for me which is something I thought only happened in movies and not in actual life – Will never so much as opened a can of Coke for me in our
five months of going out.
    ‘How was your day?’ Jeremy asks as he climbs in beside me.
    ‘Well,’ I say, watching him easily reverse down the driveway and back onto the Polpis Road – something I failed epically to do this morning. ‘I didn’t get
projectile vomited on in front of a hundred people. So I guess you could call it an improvement on yesterday.’
    He laughs, but has the decency to look bad about it.
    ‘I am now an expert at making spacemen out of dried pasta,’ I continue. ‘I’m also getting very proficient at changing nappies and pureeing peas.’
    ‘Sounds almost as much fun as my day,’ he notes.
    I shoot him a questioning glance.
    ‘I was studying all day.’
    ‘What for?’ I ask. ‘Haven’t you sat your exams? I thought you were going to Harvard.’
    ‘I am, but my father wants me to be ahead on the reading.’ His expression is grim as he says it. ‘I’m studying pre-med.’
    ‘Oh,’ I say.
    ‘You don’t have the same pressure from your parents?’ he asks, giving me a quick sideways glance.
    I shake my head. ‘No.’
    ‘You’re lucky.’
    I bite my lip and look out the window. ‘That sucks,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘It’s OK. I got a pass for tonight. That’s something.’
    ‘And Matt and Eliza?’ I ask, hoping that he’s going to say they stayed at home studying or even, one can hope, that they’re being projectile vomited on by a stray
baby.
    ‘They’re already there. They went with Sophie.’
    I nod as though I know who Sophie is.
    Before long we are there. I thought when he said we were going to fortieth he was talking about a bar or a club, but in fact it’s a beach called 40th Pole. Jeremy pulls into a parking
space and he’s out the car before I can unpop my seat belt. He surprises me again by opening my door to let me out.
    ‘Thanks,’ I say.
    He closes the door behind me and then we begin to walk towards the beach. I feel the soft brush of his fingers against the small of my back which sends all sorts of alarming and conflicting
signals to outlying parts of my body. My mind is telling me to walk faster but my body is defiantly slowing in order to have him usher me forwards. Disobedient body.
    We walk towards the dunes, following a path that I can’t make out but which Jeremy seems to know well because his footsteps are sure and don’t falter whereas I’m walking like I
need a seeing-eye dog and keep stumbling over the bits of wood buried in the dune that are meant to stop you from stumbling. I can hear music blaring in the distance. We pass several people coming
the other way along the path and Jeremy greets all of them but doesn’t stop to chat, rather he keeps us