Boyracers Read Online Free Page B

clothes I can’t afford to wear, being chair in the Debating Society, editor of the school yearbook, or even listening to the hash-heads yak stonedly about Bob Marley, OK Computer, Trainspotting, and
    She’s the colour of a magazine
    stopped caring about quadratic equations and French past-participles and whoever Scotland’s First Minister is and the only thing I can find any sort of enthusiasm for is disappearing from the babble into an eternal dream where
    She’s in fashion
    she moves through the rarified air, hair bright as sunlight. She takes her seat beneath the Midsummer Night’s Dream poster. Words in delicate script above her head, Now fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace . Her hand tanned and smooth. She leans. Her bag: Prada. Her throat, speckled and lightly undulating as she swallows. Her phone: Nokia. It plays the love song from Titanic. I imagine her asleep, moaning softly, her hand folded back on her forehead, eyelashes like thin pencil marks. Mrs Gibson is reading to us from The Great Gastby. Outside, a bee bats against the illusion of the glass, and Tyra’s eyes flick over at mine, then away. A pen works lazily between her fingers. I write, and in some way it is a communion: They. Cannot. Touch. Her.
    me, Frannie, Dolby and Brian in Rosie’s, laughing and ordering girls off a menu. Dolby’s finger runs down the list and he muses, ‘Hmm, I’ll have the redhead. Lightly bronzed and easy on the feminism ,’ and Brian goes, ‘Excellent choice,’ and the waiter turns to me, for some reason angry, and barks
    What foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams!
    Mrs Gibson skelps me on the head with her book and I jerk awake. The whole class is laughing, but Mrs Gibson’s alright about it, so Imumble something about cough medicine, Miss, um, makes you drowsy. She lets me off, like a guardian angel/fairy godmother/Good Witch of the North. I glance over at Tyra, blushing. Mrs Gibson starts talking about the theme of ‘Desire and the American Dream’ in The Great Gatsby, somehow seeming to know fine that I was out til one in the morning, cruising car parks talking about Schwarzenegger films with the Lads and I don’t care what Brian says, Predator is a much better movie than Terminator.
    Tyra’s eyes swim with amusement. Me and her are two of the oldest in our year: my birthday’s in March, hers is in April, which I think means mentally we’re both more mature. She’ll be one of the first in our year to pass her driving test, get a Mazda from her parents, start driving it to school with the window down and Sixties songs playing. I used to sit beside her in Computing Studies and she would have to lend me a pen every week, which usually had her initials on it. Maybe she’s attracted to me because I’m obviously, y’know, a bit of rough.
    Mrs Gibson scratches something on the board about symbolism, roses meaning blood/love. Connor Livingstone, meanwhile, is staring at me, imperious and cool. Wealth oozes from him. He does not fall asleep in class. He does not cruise round car parks. He doesn’t have a single spot. Since his first year at Falkirk High School he’s been getting private tuition three nights a week, his future assured in the paid-millions -to-move-millions-around industry. His neck suggests rugby and when he speaks, his accent glides all the way down from Windsor Road. Probably reading Tolstoy while I was watching E.T. Still, when Mrs Gibson asks a question and Connor’s hand shoots up like an excited toddler’s, it’s me she turns to.
    ‘Now that you’re awake, Mr Allison, how would you summarise Gatsby’s character?’
    I pause, aware of the eyes of Connor, Tyra, the whole class. I pat my pen against my mouth, look catalogue-model Connor up and down and say, ‘He’s fake. He’s all surface.’
    Mrs Gibson cocks her head. The class waits for her reaction, pens poised. Then she scrawls in huge letters on the board THE SURFACE IS FANTASY and everyone writes it down.