The Whole of My World Read Online Free PDF Page B

She’s trying to get me ready for it. She knows I’m avoiding her – that Dad and I both are – and she’s trying to break through before . . . it’s too late.
    I shake my head, no, unable to form the word, even though my whole body shouts it. Did he even need to ask?
    Josh releases a dry, humourless laugh. ‘I told her you’d say that.’
    Sound still won’t form in my throat. I take long, slow breaths, forcing moisture into my mouth, hoping my voice will come with it.
    â€˜So . . . what? You can’t even celebrate your birthday anymore? Everything has to be different? Everything has to change?’
    Yes, I want to say. Everything has changed. Even my birthday – especially my birthday. The idea of it, the shape of it. What it means. There’s no one around and suddenly I’m conscious of the absence of noise, the emptiness of this place. The fact that it’s just us.
    â€˜You only turn fifteen once,’ Josh says quietly. ‘You can’t pretend it isn’t happening.’
    I should just go along with it but I can’t. No one knows that better than Josh. ‘No,’ I manage eventually.
    Josh sucks air noisily, his frustration almost physical.
    â€˜I can’t,’ I rasp, my voice stronger, though still a shadow of itself. ‘Everything is different, whether you like it or not. I thought it would be okay by now but it’s not. We just have to get used to it and start again.’
    But it’s more than this. Much more. How could he ask? How could he?
    I pull myself up and brush my trackpants roughly. ‘You ready?’
    But I don’t wait for him to reply. I’m already headed to the gate.

 
    Â 
    A cyclone fence stretches along Leafy Crescent, rusty and broken in parts. Fernlee Park is green and overgrown, with small billboards along the boundary. A long race leads into a brown-brick stadium. No one is out on the ground yet and the whole place looks deserted.
    I follow Tara into the car park behind the stadium, loose pebbles rolling beneath my feet. Dust kicks up whenever a car drives by, and there are already other kids waiting at the entrance. They all clutch notebooks and pens, and a few have cameras slung around their necks.
    â€˜Hi.’
    â€˜Hey.’
    Tara doesn’t introduce me, but no one seems to care either. Or notice. ‘Who’s here?’ she says to no one in particular.
    A short, thick, redheaded girl, who, up close, looks much older than the others, answers with the tired voice of someone sick of having to know everything. ‘Rocky and Jury came by. I haven’t seen Blackie yet but his car’s here.’ She points to a dark green Toyota Corolla, a hotted-up two-door with a black spoiler and dark windows. ‘I’m sure he’ll come out to say hi.’
    â€˜He’s in physio,’ a boy says. ‘He came early to see Barry.’ He looks about sixteen and is sporting a blond-streaked mullet that I think is supposed to look like Bono’s from U2, given his ‘Under a Blood Red Sky’ T-shirt, but looks more like Kim Wilde’s.
    â€˜Did you see him?’ The redhead isn’t happy that someone knows something she doesn’t.
    â€˜No,’ Bono Boy sniffs. ‘But I heard on the news he’s injured, and Barry’s door is shut.’
    â€˜It’s probably a hammy,’ one says.
    â€˜Might be his knee again,’ says another.
    Either way, they all agree Blackie is with the physio.
    The redhead sticks her hands in her jeans pockets and draws a semicircle with her toe in the dusty ground. If it wasn’t for her lined face, you’d think she was a kid – thirteen at most. But then she smiles and tiny creases touch her eyes, and I wonder if she could be in her thirties. ‘Buddha’s had his hair cut,’ she says, as if making an earth-shattering announcement – and it must have been, because she gets