Nine Days Read Online Free

the top of the lane and how am I supposed to get home now? If I walk back the other way around the block I’ll be late but if I walk on she’ll see me and then what will I do?
    So I wait and wait and after a while I can’t hear her laughter anymore. I sneak my head out and she’s not there and thank God for that so I walk into the lane and then all at once someone speaks and I jump out of my skin and drop the meat on the cobbles.
    ‘Hello,’ she says.
    ‘Cripes.’ I place my hand flat on my chest. ‘A man wouldn’t want a dicky ticker.’ I pick up the meat and there’s a bit of dirt on the paper but no one’s going to notice. Extra tenderising, free service.
    ‘You’re Francis’s brother, aren’t you? I’m Annabel Crouch.’
    I tell her I’m pleased to meet her and I manage not to laugh.
I’m Annabel Crouch,
she says, as if I haven’t noticed her in church every Sunday since her and her father moved here. As if every boy for miles around that finds himself saying rosaries for unclean thoughts doesn’t know who Annabel Crouch is.
    ‘I know Francis from dance class.’
    Dancing is something I never tried. Connie learned for a while, when she was still at school. Dad would put the wireless up loud and they’d go into the backyard because inside was too small for two people to turn and she’d teach him. Over to the vegie patch, down to the dunny, across to the tree and twirl. A pair of galahs, Ma said. The thought of Francis twirling is not at all attractive.
    I tuck the meat under one arm. ‘I imagine Francis would be quite a sight on the dancefloor.’
    ‘He says it’s an essential social skill for the modern young man. You look just like him. Only different. You’re not at St Kevin’s anymore, are you?’
    ‘Me and school. I’d had enough, well and truly.’
    ‘Shame. Heard you got the prize for English Composition. And Art, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Those days are well behind me. Being bossed around by brothers and prefects. I’m my own boss now. In a manner of speaking.’
    ‘Francis is a very good dancer. He’s good at all sporty things. And so thoughtful. He’d have been in the first eleven last year, except they wanted him to help with the coaching. To give the other kids a go. But you must know that already.’
    I think of Francis at dance classes. New shoes, piano inthe corner, arm around Annabel Crouch. Tea and biscuits. ‘Indeed. Nothing you can say about Francis is news to me.’
    ‘And the way he knows all the serials from the radio,’ she says. ‘If you ask real nice, he does The Shadow so’s you can hardly tell his version from the real thing. Must be good to have a brother.’
    ‘Yep.’ I move the parcel to the other arm. ‘I can barely sleep for happiness.’
    This talking to pretty girls business: who’d of thought it’d be so easy? Here I am, sausages and all, chatting away to Annabel Crouch like she’s Connie. I stretch out one arm and lean against the wall, all casual, like I’m in a film. Things are looking sweet.
    And then. Disaster. Annabel Crouch smiles. All at once something happens to my arm and my eyes and stomach and my Adam’s apple. Her smile’s got a direct line to her eyes and her heart. All at once I can’t swallow so good. How did I swallow before, without thinking about it? My arm, the one leaning on the fence, is frozen with embarrassment. It doesn’t know what it’s doing stuck out at such an angle. I don’t look like a film star, leaning here. I look like a one-armed man trying to keep a wall from collapsing without anyone noticing. Why am I trying to hold up a wall? Her lips, her teeth. Annabel Crouch probably gives away a hundred smiles a day, no charge, but this particular one is all for me. I can see behind her ear where the hair is pulled tight into her ponytail, the long white line where her skin joins her scalp, tiny soft yellow curls escaping. It’s like a picture: the white of her skin, the yellow, the red brick of the building