Raven Summer Read Online Free Page B

brother. What’s Iraq got to do with him? Why couldn’t he stay where he come from, in Northumberland?”
    “Like the Nattrasses have done?” I say.
    He pauses. He looks me in the eye.
    “Aye, Liam, like the Nattrasses have always done. Mebbe it’d be better if we all stayed where we come from. It’d save a lot of bother.”
    He laughs.
    “I’m keeping an eye on the Net. Mebbe it won’t be long till we see the video of him getting his head sliced off.”
    He grins at me.
    “Aye,” he says. “I know what you think. I’m a throwback. I’m like something from the Dark Ages. And guess what, brother? I couldn’t give a toss.”
    We play endless war games. I throw myself into it and I get wilder and wilder. I’m growing, getting stronger. I let my hair grow long. Sometimes I go out with Death Dealer resting at my hip. We rip branches off the trees. We make bows and arrows and catapults and spears. We strip our tops off in the baking heat and we battle and fight and charge. The low-flying jets roar over us. We don’t cover our ears. We yell curses at them. We yell, “Bomb them right back to the Stone Age!” We stripe face paint and dye on our skin. Nobody gets really hurt, but all our bodies getnicked and scratched and bruised. Sometimes I see Max standing back from it all, watching me as if I’m a million miles away. He’s suddenly friendly with a girl called Kim Shields. They’ve started spending time at each other’s houses. They go walking together. I feel far away from him. Sometimes I feel far away from everything, like I’m spinning away into outer space.
    Sometimes in the middle of the wild games on the field I find myself at the school windows. I look in at the classrooms I sat in when I first came here: the small desks and chairs, the paintings on the walls, the illustrated books. I remember the smells of our bodies on warm afternoons, the songs we sang, the plays we acted, the delicious lunches, the sweet teachers. I go to high school in Hexham now, and it’s fine, but it’s great to press my face to the window and look into the past, to see me and Max and the other little ones painting together, to see Nattrass scowling in the corner where he’s been put until his temper calms down.
    One day I find Max standing beside me, looking into the classroom with me. Kim’s a few yards behind, like he’s just left her and she’s waiting for him to go back to her.
    “It was easy, wasn’t it?” I say.
    “What was?”
    “Being little. Being looked after all the time.”
    He shrugs.
    “Suppose so. Why? Do you want to be like that again?”
    “Dunno.”
    I raise my hand. There’s a homemade spear in it. I pretend I’m going to plunge it into him, then I howl and run back fast into the field.
    I don’t want to be little again. But at the same time I do. Iwant to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I’ll be in the future. I want to be me and nothing but me. I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind, and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it’s possible to be. I’m growing and I don’t know how to grow. I’m living but I haven’t started living yet. Sometimes I simply disappear from myself. Sometimes it’s like I’m not here in the world at all and I simply don’t exist. Sometimes I can hardly think. My head just drifts, and the visions that come seem so vivid. Max still comes to the tent sometimes, but we’re getting more impatient with each other.
    One night he’s talking about Kim and he says,
    “You should find a girl yourself.”
    “I don’t want a girl.”
    “You should.”
    He even says,
    “And you should cut your hair, or at least keep it cleaner.”
    “What?”
    “That’s what they like, Liam.”
    “
What?
How old are you, forty-seven?”
    “No,” he says. “But I
am
growing up.”
    He lies there. He looks at me. Probably we’re both thinking we don’t want to argue. We’ve been good mates. We’ve done so many things