Wildlife Read Online Free PDF

me, of course, oh, the strangest of them all. Must find a place for it, a deeper, darker private little corner.
    Must try to appear to engage socially and so avoid excess probing by camp counselor, who is
en garde
! Alert to my special needs! Ready whenever I need her! No matter what time of night or day! Don’t hesitate. Don’t.
    *     *     *
    If you had not died, if you had kept your wits about you, yes, I’m still angry with you, I would not need to have spent time with a woman called Esther who wears bad shoes and directs her gaze delicately to one side as I burn to cry but hold it in, control it with breathing and long pauses, because crying there with well-meaning Esther would have been too hideous. And whatever happened, she must not, no never ever be given cause to nudge that large clinical-issue unpatterned box of tissues in my direction across the dust-free-even-in-sunlight teak coffee table. I was not a good subject, Fred.
    But I excel at grief privately.
    If only you hadn’t… then I would not need to be preparing my cat-and-mouse game with the camp counselor. Her name is… Jesus, can’t remember, not Esther. Working out the right face for the jolly camp counselor… plausibly grim, of course, after what I’ve been through, am going through, and yet slowly unfolding, slowly opening up to new experiences. Interacting with others. Gradually healing. Yeah. I know the drill. I can pull it off. Can I pull it off?
    But in reality, I’m stuck, Fred. Stuck at stage-three grief, or is it four? Hating myself, and angry with you. Maybe there’s also a bit of five, or is it six, in the mix? Depression. But no sign yet of six, or is it seven? Realization. Testing New Reality. No.
    Just missing you.
    Psychiatrists don’t really subscribe to neat “stages” of grief. I found them myself, printed them out, lost them. The idea of defined hurdles is comforting. Despite not being able to get over any of them.
    Greatest pain in the world: the moment after waking. Remembering again as consciousness slaps my face in the morning’s first sigh. Nips fresh the not-healed wound.
    Should I tell someone about the tangled dreams the sometimes-sleeping pills drag into the not-enough hours?

12
    We are summoned to the dining hall as soon as we arrive for our pep-talk greeting from the principal, Dr. Kwong. Kim Kwong. She’s tiny, brainy, and elegant, so of course she’s known as King Kong. No one is listening—everyone is fizzing with overexcitement, like when
MythBusters
put all those Alka-Seltzers in a confined space, added water, and blew the door out. But there are the usual words like
opportunity
,
responsibility
,
leadership
,
challenge
, and on and on it goes.
    House selection happens next. This is what everybody’s waiting for. It’s just like
Harry Potter
, but with brighter lighting and no hat.
    When my name is read out for Bennett House, after Holly and Eliza, I say,
yes
, and the girl next to me, Sophie Watkins, says, all sneery, that’s not a good house.
    Six people per house, and even our exact bunks are allocated—each one has a number. No arguments, no swapping.
    I’m lucky getting a bottom wall bunk. It’s what I wanted. I’m student number thirty-five.
    You are supposed to yell out your number while assembled on the oval in case of an emergency. Would it really make the slightest difference in a bushfire or bomb blast? Imagine everyone screaming out numbers at the same time, or forgetting their number. Crazy number soup. As if you wouldn’t have something better to do than yell out a number.
    It is one of those systems that this place seems to love. If we open our door after everyone’s security cards have been slotted for the night into the panel next to the door, it triggers a (silent) alarm. They’d implant microchips if they thought the parents would sign up for it.
    I see Michael on the way out.
    “What’s your number, Sibylla?” he asks.
    “Thirty-five. You?”
    “Forty-nine. I