Young Skins Read Online Free

crumpled bag of chips.
    ‘We can pay our way. Chip, King?’
    The boy reaches into the bag and takes a wadded hand ful of vinegar-soaked chips. He examines the clump, sniffs them, then peels the chips apart and divides them between the girls. The girls eat them quickly, one by one. They tilt their heads back and make convulsive swallowing move ments with their necks, like baby chicks.
    ‘Good little birdies,’ the boy says, and pats each girl on the head.
    They giggle to each other.
    ‘You shouldn’t take things from strangers,’ Tug says.
    ‘ I gave them the chips,’ the boy says, tapping his vested breast with his spear. ‘What business do you have across the bridge?’
    ‘We’re looking for someone. A boy. A little blondie-haired fella,’ Tug says, ‘a little bit like you. He went away but nobody knows where.’
    The boy knits his brow. He steps back up onto the fence and peers along the curvature of the river.
    ‘There’s no one like that here,’ he says finally. ‘I would’ve seen him. I’m the King, I see everything.’
    ‘Well, we have to try,’ Tug says.
    Leave it be, Tug, I want to say, but I say nothing. So much of friendship is merely that: the saying of nothing in place of something.
    I turn and take a quick look beyond the towpath, along the way we came. A hill leads up to the road and beyond that is the squat, ramshackle skyline of the town. I hear—or think I hear—sounds of distant commotion, shouting, and I picture Mark Cuculann outside Dockery’s, raging at the inverted wreck of his car. Marlene will be by his side, arms folded, and I can envisage the look she’ll be wearing, the verdigris glint of her narrow-lidded eyes, a smile flickering despite itself about the edges of her lips, lips painted the same shade as the proposal I scrawled for her on the passenger door. I feel for the cylinder of lipstick in my pocket, take it out, give it to one of the girls.
    ‘More gifts,’ I say. ‘Well, let’s get going then, Tug.’
    Tug goes to step past the boy. The boy draws up the rod and jabs the crimped end into Tug’s gut. Tug grasps the rod, twists it towards himself. He mock-gasps, and claws the air.
    ‘You’ve killed me,’ he croaks.
    He staggers back, and folds his big creaking knees, and puddles downward, dropping face forwards flat into the grass, arse proffered to the sky like a supplicant.
    ‘You’ve done it now,’ I say.
    I toe-nudge the fetal Tug in the ribs. He jiggles lifelessly. The boy steps forward, mimics my action, toeing the loaf of Tug’s shoulder. The girls have gone silent.
    ‘How are you going to explain this to your mammy?’ I say.
    The boy’s eyes begin to brim, even as he tries to keep the jaw jutted.
    ‘Ah, he’s set to start weeping,’ I say.
    Tug, softhearted, can’t stay dead. He sputters, raises his head, grins. He eyes the boy. He hoists himself up.
    ‘Don’t be teary now, wee man,’ he says, ‘I was dead but I’m raised again.’
    He lumbers up over the fence and out onto the bridge and I follow.
    ‘Goodbye King!’ Tug shouts.
    As I pass him the boy scowlingly studies us, arms folded, aluminium spear resting against his shoulder.
    ‘If ye fall in there’s nothing I can do,’ he warns.
    The bridge creaks beneath us. Halfway across, the thin gnarled branches of the dead tree spill over, reach like witches’ fingers for our faces, and we have to press and swat them out of our way.
    ‘So tell me, Tug,’ I say.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Tell me more about the Clancy kid. About these German lesbians.’
    And Tug begins to talk, to theorise, and I’m not really listening, but that’s okay. As he babbles I take in the back of his bobbing head, the ridges and undulations of his shaven skull. I take in the deep vertical crease in the fat of his neck like a lipless grimace, and the mountainous span of his swaying shoulders. I think of the picture of the Clancy kid, scissored from a Sunday newspaper, that Tug keeps tacked to the cork board in his