Slam Read Online Free Page B

forgive her for saying it. She seemed older than me, which I decided was because she spent a lot of time dealing with boys who fell in love with her in two seconds flat.
    â€œWhere would you rather be right now?” she asked me.
    I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew the answer. The answer was, there wasn’t anywhere I’d rather be. But if I told her, I’d be dead.
    â€œI dunno. Skating, probably.”
    â€œYou skate?”
    â€œYeah. Not ice-skating. Skateboarding.” I know I said I’d never use that word again, but sometimes I need it. Not everyone is as cool as me.
    â€œI know what skating is, thank you.”
    She was scoring too many points. Soon I’d need a calculator to add them all up. I didn’t want to talk about skating, though, until I knew what she thought of it.
    â€œHow about you? Where would you rather be?”
    She hesitated, as if she was about to say something embarrassing.
    â€œActually, I’d like to be here, on this sofa.”
    For the second time, it was as though she knew what I was thinking, except this time it was even better. She had worked out the answer I wanted to give, and she was passing it off as her own. Her points score was about to go into the billions.
    â€œRight here. But with nobody else in the room.”
    â€œOh.” I could feel myself start to blush, and I didn’t know what to say. She looked at me and laughed.
    â€œNobody else,” she said. “That includes you.”
    Deduct the billions. Yes, she could see what I was thinking. But she wanted to use her superpowers for evil, not for good.
    â€œSorry if that sounded rude. But I hate it when my parents have parties. They make me want to watch TV on my own. I’m boring, aren’t I?”
    â€œNo. Course you’re not.”
    Some people would say that she was. She could have gone anywhere in the world for those few seconds, and she chose her own home so that she could watch Pop Idol without anyone bothering her. These people, though, wouldn’t have understood why she said what she said. She said it to wind me up. She knew I’d think, just for a second, that she was going to say something romantic. She knew I’d be hoping she’d say, “Right here, but with nobody else in the room apart from you.” And she left off the last three words to stamp on me. I thought that was pretty clever, really. Cruel, but clever.
    â€œSo you haven’t got any brothers and sisters?”
    â€œWhat’s that got to do with anything?”
    â€œBecause if your parents weren’t having a party, you’d have a chance of being alone in the room.”
    â€œOh. Yeah, I suppose. I’ve got a brother. He’s nineteen. He’s at college.”
    â€œWhat’s he studying?”
    â€œMusic.”
    â€œWhat music do you like?”
    â€œOh, very smooth.”
    For a moment, I thought she meant she liked very smooth music, but then I realized she was taking the piss out of my attempts to make conversation. She was beginning to drive me a bit nuts. Either we were going to talk, or we weren’t. And if we were, then asking her what music she liked seemed an OK question. Maybe it wasn’t incredibly original, but she made it sound as though I kept asking her to get undressed.
    I stood up.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œI think I’m wasting your time, and I’m sorry.”
    â€œYou’re OK. Sit down again.”
    â€œYou can pretend there’s no one else here, if you want. You can sit on your own and think.”
    â€œAnd what are you going to do? Who are you going to talk to?”
    â€œMy mum.”
    â€œAaaah. Sweet.”
    I snapped.
    â€œListen. You’re gorgeous. But the trouble is, you know it, and you think you can treat people like dirt because of it. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m really not that desperate.”
    And I left her there. It was one of my greatest moments: all