The Edge of Me Read Online Free Page A

because at the end of the day she doesn’t care about anything but winning and how can you fight that?
    But what are they on about, and what’s going to happen tomorrow?
    I run upstairs and slam the door. At first I fail to notice that my bedside table is missing and my chest of drawers has been emptied. My clothes are stacked in tidy bundles on the floor.
    I go to the top of the stairs and call Mum but it’s Dad who appears. His face is ridged and mottled. Behind him, I can see the dark bulk of Andrija standing in the room.
    Dad comes up the stairs and suddenly he’s standing too close to me, breathing hard. I hear a catch in his throat and he coughs it away.
    ‘Dad, what’s going on with my stuff?
    ‘I am going to paint your bedroom.’
    ‘Oh. OK. What colour?’
    ‘Mmm?’
    ‘What colour are you going to paint it?’
    ‘White. White.’
    I breathe. Something isn’t right here. It’s hurting my head.
    ‘Who was that guy?’
    He stares at me and blinks slowly. He looks tired. Exhausted. And I think then that like me, he’s somehow flattened himself, hemmed himself into chair covers and lampshades.
    ‘He is from Serbia. He worked with your mother a long time ago. He is helping us.’
    ‘With what?’
    ‘With …with immigration forms. There is problem with our …with our … status here. The police are making problems.’
    ‘But I thought …?’
    Suddenly he jerks forward and takes my hand in his and then just as suddenly lets it go.
    I stare at him and he looks away. ‘It’s not a problem. Not a problem.’
    But somehow I can’t believe him. And very slowly I feel my breath starting to thin and my rib cage squeeze.
    ‘What’s happening tomorrow?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘What that man said … he said “tomorrow” like it was important.’
    ‘That’s when he’s going to help us. Yes. Tomorrow.’
    ‘So why were you and Mum arguing about it?’
    He leans to one side and picks at a raised freckle of paint on the bathroom door.
    ‘Sanda … I, we … I want to…’
    ‘What? What is it?’
    He sighs. I’m aware of Mum, now standing in the doorway of the front room below, clicking her tongue. Andrija is behind her.
    ‘Nothing,’ he says.
    ‘Dad?’ He turns. ‘Can I have that picture? The photograph?’
    ‘No.’
    He goes back downstairs and closes the door.

3
    I know life isn’t always going to be this way. I mean practically everyone leaves school and grows up and passes their driving test and meets someone and has babies and a job and stuff. School is just school. It’s just part of a long life and I bet when I’m forty-seven and I’ve got grey hair and bunions, I’ll have forgotten all about it and the walk up the corridor into double English where I know he’s sitting. But right here, right now, it’s the hardest thing in the world, and if it weren’t for Dad waking me at six o’clock in the morning to clear my room for painting, I don’t think I’d have come in at all.
    But here I am. And I’m supposed to be going out with Joe tonight and the only remotely comforting thing on the horizon, as far as I can see, is that it’s half-term next week. So when the inevitable happens, when I learn it’s all been some twisted joke and when the humiliation Geiger Counter racks up to eleven, at least I can go to ground for a week.
    He’s there and I walk past him to my table and because everyone’s looking at me and I’m sure everyone’s in on it, I don’t look at him. But the air around him is buzzing, and I walk through it and I breathe him in, and a little Hope Fairy dances in front of me for a moment, then disappears in a puff of smoke.
    I sit down in my place at the back.
    Minutes pass. The smell of text books and floor polish.
    He turns once to look at me, catches me looking at him, and a rosy flush spreads itself across my cheeks. I look down at once and scratch at a mole of gum on the desk with my nail. Zoe’s answering a question in her fake husky rasp, David Moger, next to