Remix Read Online Free

something she wants to talk about. Something I won’t like… We find a shady spot under some trees since the sun is trying to BURN THE FLESH FROM MY BONES and I clamber to sit on the fence so I’m eye level with the necklace-twiddling nutter in front of me.
    “What’s up?” I ask.
KAZ
    Best to treat this like a plaster and rip it off in three … two … one…
    “Tom’s here.”
    “You what?” Ruby actually glances over her shoulder as if he’s materialized behind her. “Tom’s where?”
    “Here. At Remix.”
    “O…K…” Ruby looks entirely nonplussed. “And this is the first I’m hearing of it because?”
    But I don’t have to say anything for her to know the answer.
    I am such a wimp sometimes.
RUBY
    Brilliant.
    Thomas sodding Selkirk.
    Kaz is gabbling about how she only found out the other day and she wasn’t sure whether to even mention it because we’re probably not going to bump into him anyway when there are so many people here.
    It’s all just noise to cover up what she really wants to happen: she wants to see Tom. All summer – ever since they split – by so many twists of fate that it’s been a cat’s cradle of coincidence, Tom and Kaz have failed to bump into each other. She was on choir tour, he went away with his family to France, Kaz got shipped off to Wales. In the week and a half in which they’ve both been within sight of the sea, they’ve not been within sight of each other.
    There’s no point fighting it. Much as I want Kaz to get on with her life and into someone else’s pants, it’s not going to happen if she’s on red alert for her ex.
    So much for leaving all that shit behind.
KAZ
    Ruby stops me with a resigned wave of her hand. “I think we should just go find him. Get it over with.”
    My response to this is to throw my arms around her waist and lift her from the fence, my cheeks hurting from grinning a wide and incredulous grin.
    “Are you sure?” I drop her unceremoniously on the floor.
    “I suppose.” She squints against the sun behind me. “But don’t pull that shit again, you hear? This is you and me – we don’t do secrets.” There’s a moment in which she watches me before her expression relaxes. “Now. Fire your special flare gun that forms an image of a man wearing slightly too-short trousers, light a candle and sing ‘Jerusalem’ backwards or whatever. Summon the Selkirk.”
    I hold up my phone with Tom’s number on the screen. “Or I could just use this, like a normal person.”
    He answers on the second ring.
    “Hey, Tom,” I say, doing an excellent impression of Mickey Mouse.
    “You called, m’dear?” The friendliness of his voice – the familiarity – renders me mute for a moment. “Hello, Kaz…?”
    “Sorry, yes, hi. Umm… I heard you’d be here as well. From Naomi. Or Dad. No – Naomi!” Either way it sounds like I’ve been keeping tabs on him. “Dad’s taking Naomi to London.”
Stop talking now, mouth
. “For the weekend. Naomi said that your dad said—”
    Ruby actually leaps forward and puts both hands over my mouth, whispering,
“Shut. Up.”
    Tom doesn’t seem to mind that I ended my last sentence with a “whumph”, but I can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “If by ‘here’ you mean Remix, then yes. We just got here. Me and Naj and Roly.”
    Now what?
    Ruby, whose eyeballs have been rolling around so much I’m surprised they’re still in the sockets, mutters, “For fuck’s sake” and takes my phone. “Hey, Tom, how’s it going? We’re in the middle of exploring the campsite and wondered whether we should come and explore your part of it, wherever that may be. Possibly explore whatever food you’ve got. And whatever drinks.”
    There’s a pause. “Totally like scavengers. Think of us as a particularly sexy pair of racoons.”
    I can hear him laughing from here, no more immune to the Ruby Effect than anyone else. She concentrates as he explains where they are.
    “Got it. See you in