Imaginary Foe Read Online Free Page B

and yapping and snapping at my ankles. Mum said that his soul had left his body and gone to Heaven. I imagined Spot’s soul to be a translucent grey mass floating around in that infinite white place they call Heaven. The grey mass housed Spot’s personality, which would live on endlessly in the white world. I pictured Nanna’s grey mass floating around, which I was sure would be larger than Spot’s. I imagined it merrily humming away, as she always did when she was working in her kitchen.
    I sat across from Nanna in an armchair and talked to her in a continuous monologue, not wanting to let in the stark silence. I told her about my new kitten, Seymour. I managed to keep my flimsy way of dealing with the situation working for a while, but then a cockroach crawled over the top of Nanna’s head. It walked down her face and passed over her slightly parted mouth. It stopped still for a few seconds and then continued down on to her shoulder and then disappeared over the back of the couch. I waited for over an hour for Mum to return. While I was waiting, Bruce showed up, out of the blue, and talked to me about dolphins. It was a very good subject for Bruce to choose. I’d seen a show about them on television the week before and I was absolutely fascinated by the creatures.
    I continue sorting through my record collection, searching for something fitting to play. There’s something about Bruce that has been niggling away at me lately: the whole time I’ve known him, he’s stayed the same age. Also, he always wears the same peculiar clothes. He sports a sloppy striped jumper and brown corduroy jeans. And they might get dirty while we’re doing something together, but the next time he shows up, they’ll be pristine. The colour never fades from his clothes – or from his character.
    ‘Earth to Stan. Come in, Stan. What’re you gonna play, man?’ Bruce taps on my forehead with his index finger.
    ‘I don’t know. Unfortunately, I don’t have any music related to killing fathers!’ Bruce appreciates dark humour. Sometimes, one side of his mouth turns up and his eyes twinkle, resulting in an expression of demented satisfaction. The first time I ever saw that expression, it scared the shit out of me. Bruce had laughed so hard at my reaction that he’d scared me even more.
    I put The Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow on the turntable. I love the act of pulling a record from its sleeve and carefully placing it on the rubber mat. I love the initial contact of the needle with the record. ‘How Soon Is Now?’ saturates my bedroom, drowning out all present concerns. Bruce and I sit on the edge of the bed. We sing along with Morrissey and wallow in the melancholy.

4
    Rhonda Parker is going to be at the school social tonight. I’ll make eye contact with her, engage in flirtatious conversation with her and eventually kiss her – gently and passionately like there’s no tomorrow. That’s my genius plan, anyway. If I can keep my nervous twitch from surfacing, I might just be able to carry it off.
    I rub some gel into my hands and smooth it through my hair. I want my hair to look as sexy as possible. I know what girls like – they like that I’ve-just-been-working-on-my-car look. You have to have a fringe that hangs down near your cheekbone, obscuring an eye every now and then. They love that shit. I also, fortunately, have a pretty good idea about what they like in clothes. I figure they love a guy’s skinny hips just as much as we love their child-bearing ones, so I always accentuate my hips by wearing a thick belt with a classic silver buckle. It helps, too, if you jam a thumb in behind your belt and let your hand hang loosely down while you’re casually standing around. It draws attention to a certain area of the male physique that girls can’t resist. I wear black stovepipes that run right down to my ankles and my Winklepickers turn up slightly at the toes. Last year, a girl named Mandy O’Connor had a crush on me. She