Never Ending Read Online Free

day, I thought, Why bother? Why not just let rip? ” Another shrug. “If it wasn’t for my extenuating circumstances I’d have been kicked out long before the summer holidays saved them the trouble.”
    “And, what, you’re the coolest kid in school now?” Caron says, teasing.
    “No, I’m the weirdo. The one nobody looks at or talks to.”
    “Yeah, well, better that than sympathy .” The older girl makes a gagging sound.
    Shiv gives her a sidelong look. Caron’s face is pale in the gloom of the grotto. It’s good to meet someone as sick of sympathy as she is. Who understands.
    “What about your friends?”
    Shiv thinks of Laura and Katy. “They hug me a lot,” she says. “But it’s like I’ve been diagnosed with something – so, even while they’re hugging me, I get the feeling they’d rather not touch me in case they catch it too.”
    Caron nods. “What they want is for you to be the way you were before. But you can’t , can you? None of us can ever be that.”

    Just as the dinner gong sounds and they get up from the bench to head back inside, Shiv spots him.
    A glimpse of white among the rhododendrons down by the drive. He stops, as though aware of being observed, and half turns their way. Then the figure continues, disappearing, swallowed up by the bushes. The briefest of sightings … but she could swear it was Declan.
    Shiv realizes she has been holding her breath. She releases it.
    Usually, she sees him in the street, or a busy supermarket, or on the school field – crowded places where some boy has Dec’s haircut, or build, or his way of walking, or a top the same colour and style as one he used to wear. This is the first time she’s seen him on his own.
    “You OK?” Caron looks where Shiv was looking.
    “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

Kyritos
    As the hire car crunched to a halt on the dazzlingly white stone chippings of the villa’s parking bay, Shiv released her grip on the door handle and sank back into her seat. She gave an exaggerated sigh. Beside her in the back, Declan – who had both hands over his face – tentatively parted his fingers.
    “Are we … are – are – are we … still alive ?” he said, through fake sobs.
    “Blimey,” Dad said, laughing with relief. “I thought the drivers in Italy were crazy.”
    “Is that you , Daddy,” Declan said, with childlike wonder, “or am I in heaven ?”
    Shiv turned her face to the window, her shoulders shaking. There was a stone wall overflowing with a brightly flowered climbing-plant of some kind; if she focused on those flowers, on the bees gathering pollen, she might not wet herself laughing.
    “You handled it very well , love.” This was Mum, her teasing voice. “Foreign roads, an unfamiliar car, several hundred kamikaze Greek drivers – and you only swore seventeen times.”
    “One of those was the C-word,” Shiv said. “Doesn’t that count treble?”
    “Look –” Dad let go of the wheel and splayed his fingers – “I’m shaking.”
    “Mum,” Dec said, “I think you’ll find kamikaze is Japanese, not Greek.”
    Dad exhaled, tipping his head back against the headrest. As he did so, his foot must have slipped off the clutch and the car, its engine still running, stalled with one last lurch.
    Declan covered his eyes. “No, nooo, we’re moving again!”
    They burst out laughing.
    Dad lowered the windows, letting in flowery, resinous smells so familiar to Shiv from previous holidays. The blast of heat was delicious. Ahead, a small olive grove separated their villa from the next, each grizzled tree standing in the scrawl of its own shadow.
    They were here! The early start, the long trip … all of it fell away like a shrugged-off coat.
    “D’you think we can go the whole two weeks without using the car?” Dad said.
    While Dad unloaded the cases, Shiv followed her mum and brother round the side of the villa, spring sunshine soaking into her skin. It’d been sleeting when they left home, the weather’s