Summerwater by Sarah Moss (top 10 motivational books .txt) 📕

would he be, a day like today, though he does go out in the rain. You’d have to, wouldn’t you, can’t lie in a tent all day. He picks berries, he’s got these grubby big glass jars with the labels peeling off them, probably from the pub, Branston pickle and mayonnaise, full of bilberries and also orange rowans which don’t even look edible, but he must get some money from somewhere because there are also sweetie wrappers and tins of stew, the really cheap own-brand stuff from the supermarket at the foot of the loch. If Mum and Dad weren’t always here she could make him some sandwiches.

Some black stuff she hadn’t noticed comes off onto the towel, but it needed a wash anyway. Dad did take her phone for a week when they spied on her and found out she’d been posting stuff during lessons, which was school’s fault the classes were so boring and also school’s fault because if the teachers don’t even notice half the class on their phones they’re clearly not paying much attention either and they’re the ones getting paid. So she took his phone from his jacket pocket and held it hostage for hers and he went through her room when she was out and found his phone but also some private things and she was so angry she banged her head on the wall in front of him and he yelled at her that she was crazy and hysterical and then they didn’t talk for several days until she found her phone on her bed one afternoon when she came home from school, with a stupid mushy note from Dad.

Mum sniffs and then slurps her tea and sighs. She can’t possibly be tired, they haven’t done anything this whole week. Though Becky is tired, she thinks, she would like to get under her duvet and stay there for days, until the end of this alleged holiday, until the season in her head changes and she feels like getting up and maybe that will be never. She watched one of Dad’s stupid wildlife documentaries with him once, she can’t remember why, must have been really bored, and there was this Arctic vole thing that sleeps about nine months of the year and is basically nearly dead, its heart beating like four beats a minute, just enough to stop the blood congealing in its veins, only every few days it has to wake up enough to shiver for about half an hour so it doesn’t completely die, and if she could do that, she thinks, if she could be just not-dead until she’s grown up, then maybe she could keep going. Though then you’d wake up at eighteen with no Highers, and if the teachers are right you’d be better off dead anyway.

She pushes the tray into the oven so that it bangs against the back and while Mum is still jumping she slams the oven door. There, she says, OK, can I go now or would you maybe like me to scrub the floor first? Well, says Dad, if you’re offering now, sure, go ahead, but Mum says, Rob, don’t tease her, yes, Becks, go on, why don’t you go join Alex at the pub, we can run to a couple of quid for a bottle of ginger. Take your phone, catch up with your friends. Join Alex at the pub, she thinks, you have to be fucking kidding, plus it’s still pissing it down out there so she can’t even just go hang around the beer garden for the wifi and also she doesn’t really feel like going on her phone any more, it’s not as if she has anything to tell anyone. Still raining. Still bored. Still sharing a room with my brother, eww. Becky hasn’t actually seen Jamila for months; her parents finally managed to move to India, ‘back to India’, they say, better opportunities there for the children these days, but it’s not back anywhere for Jamila and she doesn’t want better opportunities, she just wants her friends. Even so, she’s seeing the world, isn’t she? It’s better to be complaining about hot weather and nosy aunties than rain and your mum’s stupid hippy tea. Tanya’s mum’s paying her (not enough) to look after her little brothers, Megan’s at home and actually having the best time of any of them because her parents are out at work all day and her sister left home last year so she can basically do what she likes, which is sleep all morning and upload videos of herself making her own face packs out of weird stuff she buys from the wholefood shop.

I still don’t see why we can’t get wifi here, Becky says, leaning against the counter so it digs into her hip and hurts, then we wouldn’t have to be always going off to the pub, you know Alex is going to try to buy beer one of these days, you’re basically driving us to drink, I bet you can get weed in that pub as well if you know who to ask and you’re always telling us it’s not like the stuff that was around when you were our age, what if he gets hallucinations and paranoia and goes bipolar, won’t you wish you’d just paid for broadband? I’m not having the wifi conversation again, says Mum, you can come and sit here with us if you’ll stop complaining for half an hour or you can go to your room or you can go to the pub. Those are your options. Oh no they’re not, Becky thinks, you have no idea, and I hate you, I never asked to be born, you have no idea what it’s like being a teenager now seeing as there wasn’t even like Facebook when you were young, but she said pretty much exactly that last week and her parents shouted ‘bingo’ and laughed, and though they’d just proved her point Becky cried and then Mum