Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom Read Online Free Page B

know.’
    ‘It’s complicated. One day I’m going to get out, but I can’t just yet.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Hannah asked, feeling very confused.
    ‘It’s too difficult to explain. Do you want to come to the show tonight?’
    ‘How much is it?’
    ‘It’s free.’
    ‘So why are people queuing up to pay?’
    ‘Because they’re not you. Look in your pocket.’
    Hannah slipped a hand into her jeans and pulled out a small square of card. A ticket! She unfolded it. Two tickets!
    ‘It says it costs twenty pounds,’ she said.
    ‘I know. But to you, zero pounds. It’s an apology.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘For being shouted at earlier.’
    ‘It wasn’t you who shouted.’
    ‘Well, you can give them back if you don’t want them.’
    ‘Of course I want them! Thanks very much. How did you get them in my pocket?’
    Billy shrugged, grinned, and walked away. After a few steps, he turned back and casually said, ‘I might be free later this afternoon, if you’d like to pop over.’
    ‘OK,’ she answered, and was about to ask him what time, but she sensed this wasn’t how Billy thought. He didn’t seem like a clock kind of a person. She’d just have
to guess, and amble along when the time felt right.
    ‘And whatever you do,’ he whispered, ‘don’t enter the raffle.’
    Then he was gone.

Death by carrot
    H ANNAH TRIED TO PLAY IT COOL . She really did attempt to convince herself there was a way to fill the rest of the morning with
something other than her new friend and his circus, but no dice. Since meeting Billy, even her most interesting possessions looked boring. She could find nothing to do. Nothing. 13 She shlumpfed round her room, feebly flopping on flat feet from one farcical fandango of fruitless futility to the next. A brother or sister might have helped to
distract her, but Hannah was an only child, so the only person keeping her company was a voice in her head which spent the whole morning shouting, ‘VISIT BILLY! VISIT BILLY! VISIT HIM
NOW!’
    Hannah got so bored she spent more than twenty minutes watching TV, which was a strange thing to do, since the TV was off. This was a house rule. No TV before that mysterious tipping point at
the end of the afternoon when parents basically give up.
    ‘Are you watching TV?’ Hannah’s mum yelled from the kitchen.
    ‘Sort of,’ said Hannah.
    ‘What do you mean, “sort of”? Either you are or you aren’t.’
    ‘Well, I sort of am and sort of aren’t.’
    ‘Are you being cheeky?’ shouted Hannah’s dad from the cupboard under the stairs.
    An obvious reply popped into Hannah’s head: ‘Sort of.’ She knew she’d be in trouble if she said this, but she could feel the words bouncing around her mouth like two
kittens fighting in a paper bag.
    Hannah’s Dad spent a lot of time in the cupboard under the stairs. Nobody knew why. It was where he mended things and broke things, and tried to mend the things he had broken, but more
often ending up breaking the things he had mended.
    This is what he did at the weekend, anyway. From Monday to Friday he worked as an accountant, which basically means that he did maths all day, every day. Just the thought of this gave Hannah the
wollycobbles. 14 Hannah’s mum, by the way, was a Health and Safety Consultant, which means that she spent all day, every day, teaching people how to
be more cautious, unadventurous and fearful. I won’t go on about this topic, since I don’t want to be a gloombucket, but suffice to say, Hannah was something of a disappointment to her
parents.
    Hannah decided that the only way to avoid getting told off again was to run back up to her room. She looked in the mirror and began to practise Billy’s mysterious-visitor/jellyfish-attack
face, inventing a couple of significant improvements, which she decided she could show him later if the conversation flagged.
    She pulled down the skin under her right eye and examined the crescent of pink flesh this exposed.
I diagnose
, she